The left, at first glance, seems to hold the majority of power within our country. But do they really? If we are being completely honest with each other, the left holds significant social power amongst youth on social media, but they do not hold any truly viable power within our democracy.
The Atlantic posted an article on Monday titled “The Twitter Electorate Isn’t the Real Electorate.” And although this was directed mainly towards Great Britain, I think it is true in America as well.
The New York Times reported, “the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.” Social media has given social justice warriors (SJWs) a platform to voice their “woke” opinions on topics, especially minority hardships.
Journalist Jesse Singal published a post stating, “the best data we have suggest that the vast majority of Americans view political correctness as a problem. The opinions most commonly represented in mainstream progressive outlets are not held by the masses, including by the groups seemingly with the most at stake.”
As controversial as this statement is, it has factual backing. The extreme leftist views on race and gender are not shared amongst the masses, including, most notably, racial minorities. In a Washington Post-Scholar School Poll, they found 58% of Virginia-based black people said that Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia should not step down due to the blackface allegations against him, with only 37% saying he should step down. That is a shocking number compared to the 46% of white people who called for his resignation.
If you only lived on Twitter, you would never have guessed these numbers.
Twitter also divides the minority members of the Democratic party. The overwhelming amount of Twitter users want to appear “woke” and constantly voice their opinion, which in turn isolates the members of the group they are advocating for who do not share that same opinion. Many of minorities who have beliefs or useful information which run contradictory to the dominant movement stay silent or are blatantly ignored. In consequence, those groups continue to make bad decisions based off the opinions of the “woke” Twitter users.
The Twitter primary prematurely crowns a candidate the presidency which gives off a false reality—take the 2016 elections for example—as their views are not widely shared, even amongst other Democrats. Fifty-three percent of all Democrats not on social media identify themselves as more moderate or conservative, while only 29% of Democrats who are on social media identify with that title.
According to The Pew Research Center, the majority of Democrats would like to see the party become more moderate than move farther left, even as progressive leftists band together to lobby for a Green New Deal.
In addition, 70% of Democrats not on social media view political correctness as a growing problem within our society, contrary to the massive push on social media by the left to be more politically correct.
With all this being said, there is no problem with voicing your opinion on Twitter. I myself am prone to doing that. But even I, as a more moderate liberal, have felt like a persona non grata amongst the overwhelming amount of Twitter liberals and SJWs.
I just want people to come to the understanding that having an opposing opinion is OK. Voicing an opinion is OK. Nothing positive will ever come from calling people out or trying to fight with people over a differing opinion on Twitter. Also, people need to come to terms with the fact that their opinion is never shared by everybody and very rarely shared by the majority of people, even people within your own party.
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