What’s Behind the Centrists’ Resistance to the “Resistance Liberals”?

They’re acknowledging now that the people who called Trump a “fascist” were right. But somehow we’re still not to be trusted.

For over a decade, many centrist pundits have reflexively dismissed resistance liberals. We were considered, if we were considered at all, through ugly dismissive stereotypes. Talked to, when talked to at all, with a self-satisfied condescension. It was core to the centrists’ identity that they were the smart, sophisticated, savvy ones.  

However, following a steady drumbeat of events—most recently the federal occupation of Minneapolis—it’s becoming undeniable that America’s Dear Leader is indeed a threat to liberal democracy. And, for that matter, that “fascist” is a reasonable term for him and many in the MAGA movement.

The columnists have slowly updated their language. But in doing so, they have, as a Marxist would say, become involved in a contradiction: What they were saying for a decade was wrong, yet they cannot be wrong. Liberals were right, yet we cannot be right.

Jonathan Rauch, in a recent Atlantic article, conceded that Trump was a fascist. He nonetheless started with a swipe at the people who he was admitting had been correct about this. They had overused the term “to the point of meaninglessness,” he insisted. Especially guilty were “left-leaning types who call you a fascist if you oppose abortion or affirmative action.” The whole argument was strange. “Trump has revealed himself,” Rauch concluded, implying that the information had only just come to light. Yet the evidence he drew on spanned the era, much of it dating back to 2015–16. Were those who used the same evidence to draw the same conclusion a decade earlier wrong to do so? Rauch doesn’t say, but he seems to think so.

For others, it’s simply axiomatic. Economics blogger Noah Smith noted that recounting the horrific actions of ICE sounds like “the kind of thing crazy Resistance Libs would rant about on Bluesky.” Anti-Trump liberals are, it seems, just crazy. Even being utterly and obviously right doesn’t change that.

Nate Silver, in a long conversation with Matt Yglesias, talked around the claim that resist libs were right. The whole thing just seemed to annoy him. He ultimately bypassed the question altogether. It........

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