Three years ago, I offered an outline of the three factions of the American left. It’s plausible these sweeping categories—moderate, left-liberal, and socialist—don’t hold in the coming years, and that the general instability of contemporary politics reorders what we’ve come to know. A presidential year, in theory, demands a reassessment, but the likelihood of a Trump v. Biden rematch and the bilious blend of resentment and detachment that a large number of Americans feel toward both men will probably mean any sort of greater ideological reckoning will be temporarily forestalled. Unlike Jimmy Carter in 1980, Joe Biden is not getting challenged from the left, and unlike George H.W. Bush after 1992, abject defeat hasn’t chastened Donald Trump.
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