He's talking about the cultural left not the political one deployed to ensure voter turnout.
Perhaps this will add more context:
Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there
is a difference between the election of a black
president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in
their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights
parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these
ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s
Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually
might be getting worse. I wonder whether the endless
fake cultural wars around identity politics are the
main reason we have been able to ignore the tech
slowdown for so long.[1]
