Review of Merge Left: Using Class and Race to Win
In 2016, Donald Trump won. Not only did he win, but the right wing won — they won back the presidency, defeating the left. In the United States, the left has recently found itself divided. In 2016, the Democratic party found itself at odds with its own members, with different parts of the electorate favoring completely different candidates — at the forefront of this, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. After the dust settled, Clinton herself blamed Sanders for her electoral college loss (Ember and Lerer), and the routine repeated itself in the 2020 race. The Democratic Party found itself split yet again, torn between moderates trying to garner centrist votes, like Joe Biden, and hardcore populists like Sanders positioning themselves as candidates who listen to the people. This divide was not mirrored on the Republican side of the ballot, with the overwhelming majority of Republican leaders standing behind Trump. In his book, Ian Haney López, author of Dog Whistle Politics, explains his new theory of how the left can unite and win again, merging the faction of the left that tries to bring about racial justice solely through “economic populism,” and the part of the left that ignores class as an important factor in the fight for equality.
López begins his book by explaining the foundation of his theory, polling and focus group research. He claims that “most Americans — including many who do not consistently vote Republican — are susceptible to coded messages about threatening or undeserving people of color but are not consciously committed to defending white dominance.” (20) Most Americans, he states , simply fall into the trap set by the Republican party of preying on in-built racial fear — even liberals whites are susceptible, he writes (92), and due to its coded nature, even people of color (56). He goes on to say that Republicans exploit their racial fear strategy to further their policies, intertwining race, class, and government masterfully. The right-wing base, as well as persuadables, who Haney López says most of are not moderates (87), are drawn to the narratives the Republicans have been pushing. Racist dog whistles like “welfare queens [that] tool around in Cadillacs and young fellows [who] feast on T-bone steak,” (71) help the Republicans claim that the reason behind poverty and other things that liberals want to fix is a lack of personal initiative, and a not matter of circumstance. The enemy is the government, they say — liberals who want to hinder “you,” the likely white, hard working person — because the government cannot fix personal problems.
Haney López’s claims are far from groundless. With his team, he conducted his own research to test the effectiveness of this racial fear messaging. When presented with a dog whistle racial fear narrative, a majority of Democrats, independents, and Republicans found it convincing or very convincing. Thirteen to fourteen percent of Democrats and Independents tested found it to be very convincing, and twenty-four percent of Republicans (55). It is difficult to argue with his research, but it is not definitive. Haney López only shows one narrative from each of his three schools of political messaging (racial fear, colorblind economic populism, and race-class), and does not investigate nuances within each of these messages. Both right and left wing politics have plenty of variance within them, although it is possible that he believes that at their essence, the differences are the same, and therefore can be dissolved into the same terms, but his current research is not all encompassing.
He draws on Trump and the 2020 election to help explain his point. Trump, he says, “personally espouses many of the racist views that the Right seeks to activate and promote, [and] he understands better than perhaps anyone how to exploit racial division for ulterior ends.” (149) Trump is a master at the “merge right” tactic, stoking white fear and allowing the Overton window to include white supremacist thought, but never crossing into the territory of appearing outright racist to his followers. The examination of Trump is very beneficial to López’s argument, and offers sound reasoning to believe that this age old tactic is still alive today.
Haney López did not write this book to examine the right, however. He uses it as an opportunity to prescribe a new, winning, formula for the left and titles it the “race-class” approach (171–194). Democratic politicians need to lead, not only with racial justice, but also with class inequities. With his new approach, he attempts to balance multiple factions within the Democratic party. He is critical of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, saying that the “class-intensifier theory of race” (141) which attempts to call for racial justice by solving it only through economic, class-based solutions is not enough. On the other hand, he analyzes the race-only approach of the 2016 Clinton campaign — which also did not succeed. He discusses how people of color are not excited to talk about race either, with many participants in the studies refusing to accept racism as a structural issue (108). The race-class narrative consists of three core points (174). The first of them is “joining together across racial lines.” By making racial injustice a problem that includes white people, he states, support not only with whites, but also with people of color as well increases. Here, López makes a possibly fatal error Ignoring deep-rooted connections with white national identity in today’s America is nearly impossible, but it may be the case that for Haney López, the people who still hold those beliefs dear are not integral to the success of his race-class narrative. One notable concession that he does make is using when signaling at racial solidarity; they were able to find more support with the wording “white, Black, and brown,” than with “Black, brown, and white” and significantly more support than not naming groups at all (186–190).
The second part of the narrative is to “distrust greedy economic elites sowing division.” Here, Haney López ignores the seeming reality that many Americans admire rich people, but perhaps this is for good reason. The opposite side of the fence does not claim to love big business, either. President Trump says he is the president of the working man, and that he is not beholden to Wall Street like his opponent. Haney López uses this appeal to distrust the economic elite differently, however. He says that the elites are threatening social programs and blaming it on marginalized communities — completely different from the Republican approach. The final piece of the race-class approach is demanding a government for all — with no exceptions, and not for a greedy minority. He frames these three parts in a triangle with arrows showing that it is a circle, and that all the points are dependent on one another. The research behind the narrative is promising as well. A variant of the aforementioned phrasing was tested by Latino Decisions, which polled voters in 61 of the most competitive House districts — and 85% of respondents agreed (177). Other pollsters found similar results.
As shown by the research of Haney López and others, the race-class narrative shows great promise. However, the race-class narrative and Merge Left itself fail to significantly counter two major parts of what Haney López defines as the core narrative of the Right: “2. Distrust government; 3.Trust the marketplace.” (73) If there is an embedded distrust of the government and belief in the market, there is no way that the Merge Left strategy can take the deep hold that Haney López is calling for. If he provided more of a counter to these two parts of the “core narrative” of the right, his prescription would be much more promising.
Additionally, Haney López seems to have one goal — which is to win elections. But the title of his book promises something much greater: “Saving America.” The strategy his book describes is is well-written to achieve the electoral success the left desires, but without “constant reinforcement and creation of real solidaristic environments,” (Shor 43) calling for class-based racial solidarity will never achieve the transformative effect that Haney López wants — electoral politics are not enough. Haney López comes close to admitting this, discussing briefly how Democratic politicians need to drill down on this message, pushing it harder than the right pushes theirs. The possibility of this causing short-term change is much higher than the possibility of it changing the environment of American politics permanently.
Merge Left leaves the reader with a goal and a set of instructions on how to achieve it, but it does not address some of the larger ills of the American political system — but it is not meant to do that. America has been tied into the two-party political system for ages, and it seems like it will be that way forever. Haney López envisions a victory for the left, and his efforts to achieve it are valiant, but what if they are not enough? If the left truly wants to save America, pinning their politics within the current system may limit the potential for positive reform. American politics may need something larger than just the race-class approach, because although it may work well, there is no telling if it is immune to being corrupted by those same politicians who this approach seeks to counter. Merge Left is not the panacea that some want to exist, rather, it is a promising step to make American politics “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Works Cited
Lerer, Lisa, and Sydney Ember. “‘Nobody Likes Him’: Hillary Clinton Risks a Party Split Over Bernie Sanders.” The New York Times, 21 Jan. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/us/ politics/hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders.html.
López, Ian H. Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America. The New Press, 2019.
Shor, Fran. “Class, Race, and Elections.” Against the Current, vol. 35, no. 1, Mar.-Apr. 2020, pp. 40, 43, EBSCOHost. www.solidarity-us.org.
Williams, Joan C. “Catalogues of Wounds — Book Review — North American Politics — TLS.” TLS, The Times Literary Supplement, 4 Dec. 2019, www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/ catalogues-of-wounds/.
