There Is 'Nothing Left' Of The Progressive Movement That Delivered Obamacare
A review of the new memoir by former Democratic operative Evan Barker
“Most of the people I encountered in progressive politics, but especially in the criminal justice reform space, came from extremely privileged backgrounds”, Evan Barker writes in her memoir. Barker found that “personal wealth insulated them against the consequences of the policies they promoted.”
Simultaneously, their wealth made them self-conscious. Barker writes about one heir to the Hunt oil fortune in Texas “whose grandfather, H. L. Hunt, promoted racist policies. To me, it seemed like Leah felt immense guilt over her wealth and was using her inheritance to try to right her family’s wrongs.”
In Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative, Barker writes of Chloe, “granddaughter of British Communist Party member Claud Cockburn; the daughter of Andrew Cockburn, a distinguished journalist; and the sister of Olivia Wilde, a famous actress who had two children with Jason Sudeikis.” Chloe promoted criminal justice ‘reform’ by directing donations (“incredible funding”) to progressive district attorney candidates.
“Not long after I spoke with her on the phone, several mysterious donations began coming in through ActBlue, from donors I knew were connected to Cockburn.” Donors received memos from Chloe Cockburn prompting them “to read the Atlantic article ‘The Case for Reparations’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates” and “follow Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors, transgender activist Andrea James, author Ibram Kendi, and others, including prominent ‘prison abolitionists.’”
“I remember thinking Chloe was the living embodiment of a ‘coastal elite’ ... the type of person who orbits the highest echelons of the party ecosystem.” Barker could recognize privilege because she came to politics from a very different place.
Born to the working class, Barker struggled through childhood with “a rare, life-threatening genetic disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD)” that insurance companies would forever exclude as a pre-existing condition.
She became a health insurance reform advocate, speaking on behalf of the Affordable Care Act and supporting Barack Obama’s Democratic Party as they pushed ‘Obamacare’ through Congress and paid an enormous price in the ensuing midterm elections.
“I thought it would bind me to the Democratic Party forever”, Barker writes. According to the theoreticians of Marxist revolution, that is exactly what should have happened. Barker was supposed to become a member of the dependent classes, a reliable Democratic voter because she depended on a Democratic legislative achievement to survive.
Reading this memoir inspired nostalgia in me for the progressive movement that existed in 2009 and 2010. It is gone now, though, and this is a memoir of the going. “I was seeing the destruction of the party of the working class in real time. The Democrats were now run by people who had zero cultural connection to the people the party had long represented.” When she saw it, she cold not unsee it.
Like me, she found her breaking point when she was in the room with other Democrats. I was at a networking conference, however, whereas Barker was a much higher flyer, and walked out of the 2024 Democratic National Convention when she realized that Democrats were cooked.
Barker was never a party insider. She was however an accomplished fundraiser, able to work the Chloes of the progressive movement on behalf of candidates. Her team ethos drew on Alec Baldwin’s character in Glengarry Glenn Ross: “Always be closing”. Barker chose to work with the progressive insurgent candidates and keep them on task with Call Time, the hated work of cold-calling donors.
Her campaign work ended when she took a job at Left Rising, an organization that works with Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, and other progressive nonprofits linked to the Bernie Sanders/Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party. But during the early 2020s, this machinery “seemed to have one, singular goal: punish all white people and demean anyone who wasn’t ‘oppressed.’”
At the same time, Barker could see the progressive youth vanguard becoming cogs within the Democratic Party machinery. Rather than a reform movement, they were a faction within the party. Barker has examples of progressive change candidates undermined by their own party. They not the juiciest morsels in the book, though.
Barker dishes on Shaun King and his Real Justice PAC, both “backed by a web of powerful people who had real money behind them.” As King embarrassed himself through social media grifting, Barker grew discontented. She ultimately canceled King, quietly.
“After one final article came out where King had been caught begging his followers to send his wife money on Cash App the same day she closed on a near-million-dollar home, I messaged my coworker who managed our website and asked her to scrub any association of Real Justice PAC from my biography.”
Then in 2020, “I met several operatives in the progressive movement who said they used ‘they’ and ‘them’ pronouns.” Her turn had come. The gender goblins had finally arrived to forcibly convert Evan Barker to the Church of Woke.
