Look, I get it. There are some things the number two progressive talking head on MSNBC shouldn’t say and this is clearly one of them. After what exit-polls suggest could be a historic defeat for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, Chris Hayes pointed out that Corbyn could not be faulted for holding back. He ran as a democratic socialist candidate interested in nationalizing industries and raising taxes to cover all sorts of new spending priorities from increasing the NHS budget to putting people to work on green energy projects. And yet, he appears to have lost in a blowout.
It wasn’t hard to grasp what Hayes was suggesting. Every time a moderate Democrat loses an election, the left points to it as an example of why the party should move far left. That’s how Josh Kraushaar read it too:
Warning from across the pond to Dems flirting with Bernie/Warren https://t.co/VR13ixQmTv
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) December 12, 2019
But Hayes quickly began to backtrack:
I should say *no political limiting condition
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 12, 2019
And it’s not hard to see why because he was getting feedback like this:
This is a terrible take.
— David Kaib (@DavidKaib) December 12, 2019
Pretty quickly he was RTing his own critics who were busy making excuses for why Corbyn was a special case:
Don’t with this. Corbyn is deeply unpopular as a leader. The biggest Labour got crushed because the people don’t want Corbyn to be PM not because of his policies. https://t.co/6CuJjhrRv8
— Ken Gude (@KenGude) December 12, 2019
But the critics were not mollified by his RTs:
I once profiled Chris back when I wrote about media. I framed it as, "left-liberal navigates new job in corporate media," but I really should have just written that he's a soft whiny bitch that no one watches or respects https://t.co/uiKElEW33X
— Brendans_Thoughts 💙🔥🌈😷 (@deep_beige) December 12, 2019
And soon enough Hayes repented:
Yeah that was a bad take. Deleted it. I’m sad and frustrated. Just basically wish everyone had a little more humility about what “works” and what “people want.”
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 12, 2019
I denounce myself!
I wasn’t, though, because on arguably the most salient issue they *were* kind of Tory-lite!
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) December 12, 2019
Naturally, that didn’t satisfy the critics:
https://twitter.com/noreallyhowcome/status/1205265653713604608
For a brief moment, he was on the wrong side of history:
Chris i wish you and your fellow colleagues would take a little more responsibility with the power of your platforms. You all all are all directly complicit to the world we live in. History will remember
— NoMoreExcuses (@biksynix) December 12, 2019
A few people argued that Hayes had been right in the first place but the responses to those folks brought the discussion full circle, right back to the idea that moving far left is a winning strategy:
or… the left could just vote for what they want for once and win.
— Supermills 2: 💉 fully vaxxed (@supermills) December 12, 2019
Honestly, I think Hayes did have a point which is why so many socialists reacted like they’d been stung. Put it this way, if Corbyn had pulled out a surprise win tonight, there would be plenty of people on the left saying ‘See, what did I tell you! We just need to go hard left and magic will happen.’ There would have been a whole bunch of think pieces out tomorrow arguing that Corbyn and Justin Trudeau were a sign that the lights were dimming on President Trump’s chances in 2020.
But as it stands, we’re apparently not allowed to draw conclusions about the limits of the far left. That’s actually fine with me because I think that philosophy has already damaged the Democrats this cycle and will likely continue to do so. I get it, they went with the establishment last time and lost, but if they think nominating Sanders is the solution this time around they are kidding themselves.