Last July, I wrote a piece asking, in the wake of Democrats’ catastrophic defeat in the 2024 election and the obvious need for serious party-wide change, “Is Our Democrats Learning?” At the time, I saw little evidence that Democratic learning was, in fact, taking place.

Posing this question again in early spring 2026, it is my sad duty to inform you that our Democrats continue not to learn. If anything, they are increasingly adamant that such learning is not even necessary. Their mantra now might be, paraphrasing that old joke about the British: “No learning please, we’re Democrats.”

The proximate reasons for this complacency are not hard to discern. Trump and many of his administration’s actions are very unpopular and voters’ views on the economy, their most important issue, are dire. Consistent with these sentiments, Democrats did well in the 2025 elections, continue to clean up in special elections, and appear poised to have a very good election this coming November.

These favorable political winds have made it a great deal easier for Democrats to ignore the need for change. Surely the American people have now woken up, are rejecting Trump and Trumpism once and for all and will never be seduced by right populism again.

But we’ve heard all that before haven’t we? In 2018. In 2022. And now in 2026 with gusto. How quickly they forget.

There was a brief shining moment right after the 2024 election when it did seem like the scale of the debacle would force a real reckoning within the party. But that trend quickly dissipated as #Resistance fever gripped the party, the usual suspects mounted stiff resistance to any revision of party positions and momentum shifted to the energized progressive left within the party.

Currently, the desire for change seems to be hovering around zero, as more and more Democrats have convinced themselves that their problems have essentially been solved. Here at The Liberal Patriot, we know all about that. Funding for our modest enterprise, always precarious, has now completely dried up. Our view that the party has neither solved its problems nor is even very close to doing so has tanked our appeal among partisan Democratic donors, even reform-oriented ones, who now tend to regard us with suspicion. A little heterodoxy is fine but there’s a limit! Hence: no money.

So we are forced to close our doors. The Liberal Patriot, alas, will be no more. “[P]assed on…no more…ceased to be! [E]xpired and gone to meet [its] maker!...Bereft of life…rests in peace!…kicked the bucket…shuffled off [its] mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!” You get the idea: we are now an ex-site.

To wrap things up, let’s review some of those Democratic problems that have not been solved. This is but a selection from a broader rogues’ gallery of problems that continue to bedevil the party.

The culture problem. This is a big one. The yawning gap between the cultural views of the Democratic Party, dominated by liberal professionals, and those of the median working class voter is screamingly obvious. One approach to this problem would be to actually change some of the Democratic Party positions that are so alienating to those voters.

Nah! That would be way too simple plus would create fights within our coalition plus…we’re on the right side of history aren’t we so why the hell would we change our correct, righteous positions? Democrats have instead chosen a different path, aptly summed up by Lauren Egan:

It didn’t take long after the 2024 election—in which their party lost the White House and the Senate—for Democratic leaders to identify the problem: The party had drifted too far to the left on social and cultural issues.

It also didn’t take them long to come up with a solution: simply to shut up about it…

[I]n my conversations over the past few weeks, strategists and campaign staffers I’ve talked to across the country have argued that in order to win back working-class voters, Democrats just need to jiu-jitsu uncomfortable cultural questions about race or gender into criticism of the billionaire class…

The shut-up-and-pivot approach is not without merit. As its proponents see it, people vote largely on economics…But the dismissiveness of cultural issues as not ‘real issues’ that actually matter to voters—and therefore not worthy of formulating an opinion on—has left some party operatives on edge. They worry that by not engaging, Democrats will continue to be perceived as condescending and untrustworthy. They fundamentally don’t believe that the party can win back working-class voters and prevent a lasting GOP majority by pretending these issues simply don’t exist.

Those unnamed party operatives are correct. The shut-up-and-pivot approach won’t solve the underlying problem, even if in the short-term it may be adequate for leveraging thermostatic reaction against the Trump administration. It is trading short-term gain for long-term pain.

The working-class and rural voter problem. This brings us to the Democrats’ working-class and rural voter problem, also screamingly obvious from long-term trends and the results of the 2024 election. Of course, Democrats take comfort from the copious evidence that many of these voters are now having second thoughts about their support for Trump and the GOP. This can be seen both in low Trump approval and future Republican voting intentions relative to those voters’ 2024 levels of Trump support.

But there is little evidence that declining enthusiasm for Trump has been matched by increased enthusiasm for the Democrats among these voters. Indeed, a careful recent study by Jared Abbott and Joan C. Williams for the invaluable Center for Working-Class Politics finds that “waverers”—those Trump supporters who now say they are not planning to vote Republican in 2028—are overwhelmingly not supporting the Democrats but rather supporting neither party or generally disengaging from politics.

In short, Democrats have not yet made the sale among these voters even if they do bank some improvements in working-class support in 2026 as seems likely. They are still viewed with suspicion among these voters and not regarded as “their” party. Current Democratic efforts to reverse that perception are limited by the party’s preference for candidates who simulate a populist working-class affect while still having the “correct” positions on cultural issues—in other words, a liberal professional’s idea of what a rural or working-class person should be like.

The candidacy of Graham Platner for the Democratic Senatorial nomination in Maine is a good illustration of this dynamic. As James Billot notes:

Platner likes to present himself as a gruff, no-nonsense prole who, like Cincinnatus abandoning his plow, felt compelled to enter the race by the sheer weight of national misery. After bouncing between several schools in Maine, he enlisted in the Marines in 2004 and served in Iraq and Afghanistan. A brief spell at George Washington University, a stint tending bar, and another War on Terror tour (this time with the private military company formerly known as Blackwater) followed before he returned home to become an oyster farmer. It was only after Democratic consultants “discovered” him—in a video for a local group opposing a Norwegian company’s plan to build a large salmon farm off his hometown of Sullivan—that he entered the political arena.

What tends to be omitted from this narrative is that his upbringing wasn’t quite so hardscrabble. Platner’s grandfather was a renowned architect, known for his work in modernist interior design; his father, Bronson, is an Ivy-educated lawyer and Democratic donor; his mother, Leslie Harlow, is a local activist and entrepreneur runs a restaurant in Bar Harbor, which happens to be the main client for Platner’s oysters. Thanks to the family largess, he enrolled at the elite Hotchkiss School before moving to another private school six months later—a fact he tries to play down.

OK, from an affluent professional family, attended Hotchkiss, sells his oysters to his mom’s upscale restaurant—now that’s a proletarian. Albeit an exemplary proletarian who wants to abolish ICE, supports biological boys in girls sports and generally sees debate about Democrats’ unpopular cultural positions as a “billionaire-funded distraction.” That’s the kind of working-class dude that gives liberal Democrats the warm fuzzies; actually-existing rural and working voters less so as polling data from the primary race indicates.

No wonder that, as Billot summarizes:

For all the campaign’s talk of winning over Trump voters and bringing back the popular classes, his coalition is composed mostly of #Resistance liberals, college students, and crunchy retirees. That may be enough to win the primary, and perhaps even the general. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for a durable re-realignment, or evidence that Democrats have rediscovered a winning formula for 2028.

Even in a rural town that had supported Trump, Billot could not find any Republicans at a rally for Platner.

Everyone I spoke to was a lifelong Democrat, their first rally likely predating Jimmy Carter. They were less worried about finding common cause with the other side than about Trump putting them in concentration camps. Others even asked Platner, hopefully, if the army might consider mutinying.

We’ll likely see more of these faux working-class candidates who strike a populist tone but are otherwise culturally compatible with the priorities of professional class Democrats, whose formidable infrastructure and fundraising clout can make or break them. That will ensure that Democrats remain mostly uncompetitive in the red rural and working-class states Democrats need to carry to have a prayer of taking and keeping the Senate and, increasingly, to prevail in the Electoral College where voting strength is flowing away from high education blue states.

The trans “rights” problem. Every once in a while, some Democratic politician ventures a mild dissent from the trans activist agenda. Without exception, they are met with a brick wall of intense intra-party opposition which typically results in a hasty retreat by said politician. It is truly a litmus test issue.

This is remarkable. Perhaps nothing would surprise a Democratic time traveler from the 20^th century as much as the incorporation of transgender “rights” into the Democrats’ 21^st century project. Going far beyond basic civil rights in housing, employment, and marriage, Democrats have uncritically embraced the ideological agenda of trans activists who believe gender identity trumps biological sex, and that therefore, for example, transwomen—trans-identified males—are literally women and must be able to access all women’s spaces and opportunities: sports, changing rooms, bathrooms, jails, crisis centers, institutions, etc.

The same logic is applied to children who exhibit gender-nonconforming behavior and profess discomfort with their biological bodies. Their revealed “gender identity” is taken to be a determinative indicator that they were “born in the wrong body” and that therefore they should be encouraged to “transition.” This is done first socially and then through medical procedures (puberty blockers, hormones, surgery) to align their bodies with their “true” sex (their gender identity).

Notoriously, the rise of gender ideology and “gender-affirming care” has also led to an explosion of new language and pronoun use to paper over the obvious contradiction between biological sex and the dictates of gender identity. This has been enforced informally and through formal regulations in many institutional settings.

This is a far cry from Democrats’ original conception of women’s rights and sexual equality. The idea was that women and men should have equal rights and that there is no “right” way to be a man or woman—gender non-conforming behavior is just a different way of being a man or woman. Therefore, no one is born in the wrong body whatever their behavior or affect.

This was a realistic approach to the problems of both discrimination against women and the stereotyping of gender roles that limited men’s and women’s life choices. It required no heroic assumptions about human biology, unobservable internal sex, or the need for medical interventions.

But in today’s Democratic Party, it is de rigueur to believe that being born in the wrong body happens all the time and that such individuals should seek to change their body to match their internal gender identity. Biological sex is merely a technicality that can be overridden by self-identification and medical treatment to turn men into women and women into men (and back again!)

In reality, sex is a binary; males cannot become females and females cannot become males. Transwomen are not women. They are males who choose to identify as women and may dress, act, and be medically treated so they resemble their biological sex less. But that does not make them women. It makes them males who choose a different lifestyle.

As noted, the remarkably radical approach of trans activists and gender ideologues has been met with little resistance in the Democratic Party. But as evidence mounts that the medicalization of children is not a benign and life-saving approach, but rather a life-changing treatment with many negative effects, and voters stubbornly refuse to endorse the idea that biological sex is just a technicality and more and more strongly oppose the trans activist agenda, Democrats’ identification with gender ideology has become a massive political liability.

Indeed, for many, many voters the Democrats’ embrace of radical transgender ideology and its associated policy agenda has become the most potent exemplar of Democrats’ lack of connection to the real world of ordinary Americans. For these voters, Democrats have definitely strayed into “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes” territory. And if they’re not realistic about something as fundamental as human biology, why should they be trusted about anything else?

It’s a reasonable question, to which Democrats currently have no effective answer. And, no, calling the question a “billionaire-funded distraction” is not an effective answer.

The immigration problem. The immigration issue has been a total disaster for the Democrats. They encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems that effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. Over time, the intense unpopularity of these policies has contributed hugely to tanking Democrats’ working-class support. But to this day where are the Democratic politicians who are willing to unapologetically proclaim the following fundamentals of a realistic immigration policy?

1. Many more people want to come to a rich country like the United States than an orderly immigration system can allow.

2. Therefore, many people are willing to break the laws of our country to gain entry.

3. If you do not enforce the law, you will get more law-breakers and therefore more illegal immigrants.

4. If you provide procedural loopholes to gain entry into the country (e.g., by claiming asylum), many people will abuse these loopholes.

5. Once these illegal and irregular immigrants gain entry to the country, they will seek to stay indefinitely regardless of their immigration status.

6. If interior immigration enforcement is lax, such that these illegal and irregular immigrants do mostly get to stay forever, that provides a tremendous incentive for others to try to gain entry to the country via the same means.

7. If you provide benefits and dispensations to all immigrants in the country, regardless of their immigration status, this further incentivizes aspiring immigrants to gain entry to the country by any means necessary.

8. Tolerance of flagrant law-breaking on a mass scale contributes to a sense of social disorder and loss of control among a country’s citizens, who believe a nation’s borders are meaningful and that the welfare of a nation’s citizens should come first.

9. There is, in fact, such a thing as too much immigration, particularly low-skill immigration, and negative effects on communities and workers are real, not just in the imaginations of xenophobes. As Josh Barro observes:

Democrats…need to get back in touch with the reasons that both uncontrolled migration and excessive volumes of migration really are problems…[I]llegal and irregular migration reflect a failure of our civic institutions, a misuse of the social safety net, and a breakdown of the rule of law, and…all of that is actually bad…

Illegal immigration, and other forms of irregular migration that happen with the authorization of the executive branch, really do hurt Americans by putting strain on public resources, imposing costs on taxpayers, and undermining social cohesion.

10. If more immigration is desired by parties or policymakers, from whichever countries and at whatever skill levels, that immigration should be regular, legal immigration and approved by the American people through the democratic process. Backdooring mass immigration over the wishes of voters because it is “kind” or “reflects our values” or is deemed “economically necessary” leads inevitably to backlash.

These are the realities of the immigration issue and each and every one of them has been ignored by Democrats during the first quarter of the 21^st century. Going forward, Democrats must show voters they understand these realities and are willing to dramatically change the incentive structure for illegal and irregular immigration. That means strict border enforcement, elimination or radical restriction of immigration loopholes, and a credible interior enforcement regime that recognizes illegal immigrants, even if they stay out of trouble, are still illegal and therefore susceptible to deportation. Otherwise illegal immigrants who manage to enter the country will quite reasonably assume that they can stay here forever which of course is a massive incentive for more illegal immigration.

But so far what has happened? Clearly Democrats are much happier denouncing ICE (including calling for its abolition) and Trump than they are grappling with the immigration issue and making clear, unambiguous commitments to radical reform. Noah Smith rightly sums up the situation:

I have seen zero evidence that progressives have reckoned with their immigration failures of 2021-23. I have not seen any progressive or prominent Democrat articulate a firm set of principles on the issue of who should be allowed into the country and who should be kicked out.

This was not always the case. Bill Clinton had no problem differentiating between legal and illegal immigration in 1995, and declaring that America had a right to kick out people who come illegally.

I have seen no equivalent expression of principle during the second Trump presidency. Every Democrat and progressive thinker can articulate a principled opposition to the brutality and excesses of ICE and to the racism that animates Trump’s immigration policy. But when it comes to the question of whether illegal immigration itself should be punished with deportation, Democrats and progressives alike lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Every Democratic policy proposal I’ve seen calls to refocus immigration enforcement on those who commit crimes other than crossing the border illegally. But what about those who commit no such crime? If someone who crosses illegally and then lives peacefully and otherwise lawfully in America should be protected from deportation, how is the right-wing charge of “open borders” a false one?

More generally, I have seen no attempt to reckon with why Americans were so mad about immigration under Biden. I have seen no acknowledgement that Americans dislike the violation of the U.S. law that says “You may not cross the border unless explicitly admitted under our immigration system.” I have seen zero recognition of the anger over quasi-legal immigrants’ use of city social services and state and local welfare benefits.

I have not seen any Democrat or progressive even discuss the concern that too rapid of a flood of immigrants could change American culture in ways that the nation’s existing citizenry don’t want. Nor have American progressives looked overseas and wondered why the people of Canada and (to a lesser degree) Europe have forced their own governments to decrease immigration numbers dramatically in recent years…

Sad! But that’s where we are. Given that, why would or should ordinary working-class voters believe the Democrats’ next immigration regime will be any different from their previous one? I think they’d be skeptical and I don’t blame them.

The economic program (or lack thereof) problem. Democrats seem to think that the well-documented discontent with the Trump administration’s economic management now makes the economy “their” issue. In a thermostatic, opposition party sense that may be true, but it remains the case that Democrats do not have an advantage over Republicans on handling the economy.

This makes sense since voters viewed the previous Democratic administration quite negatively on economic management. They may not like what Trump has done, but they have not forgotten what Democrats did.

And let’s face it: the current Democratic economic program is quite thin; voters can reasonably question whether Democratic plans for the economy would be much of an improvement over what the previous Democratic administration delivered. Take energy.

Democrats spent the first quarter of the 21^st century increasingly obsessed with the threat of climate change and the need to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables (wind and solar) to stave off the apocalypse. This was despite a thunderous lack of interest from working-class voters. But for Democrats’ burgeoning Brahmin left constituencies, it became a non-negotiable commitment—after all, they were saving the world!

As the 21^st century unfolded, more and more of Democrats’ policy plans centered around combating climate change and promoting a rapid clean energy transition. The claim was that the clean energy transition was not only a virtuous thing to do but would actually drive the economy forward. Hence, the Green New Deal, a version of which was implemented by the Biden administration.

The working class has not been impressed. These voters view climate change as a third-tier issue, vastly prioritize the cost and reliability of energy over its effect on the climate, and, if action on climate change is to be taken, are primarily concerned with the effect of such actions on consumer costs and economic growth. Making fast progress toward net-zero barely registers. Democrats’ assurance that the clean energy transition will deliver prosperity has fallen on deaf ears. The working class just doesn’t believe it will. And it hasn’t.

In truth, both here and around the world the net-zero, climate maximalist movement is, if not dead, barely breathing. The recent vogue for “affordability” rather than strenuous climate change rhetoric among Democrats indicates that this reality is at least beginning to penetrate. But name-checking affordability falls far short of fully embracing energy realism and all that would entail.

That means acknowledging that, no, climate change is not an “emergency” and does not justify an impractical rapid transition to wind and solar. And that, yes, fossil fuels, especially natural gas and oil, will be a big part of the energy mix for many, many years to come. Democrats must make it clear that they have a realistic understanding of the complexity and centrality of the energy system and will jettison any and all dogmas that interfere with meeting the country’s energy needs and keeping prices low for consumers and industry. That does not mean solar and wind will not play a role in doing so, but so will other energy sources like natural gas and oil, the revived nuclear industry, which was frozen in amber for decades in no small part due to Democratic opposition, and emerging sources deserving of government support like geothermal. The future mix of energy types and policies should be determined by a zealous commitment to energy realism.

If that means we don’t hit “net zero” by 2050, so be it. Truth be told, that was always a “delusional” goal, as Vaclav Smil has pointed out.

Where are the Democrats willing to say all this out loud? They are very, very thin on the ground, if there are any at all. So why should ordinary working-class voters not be suspicious that Democrats, once back in power, will simply revive their chimerical green transition project, with all the spending that would entail? I think they would be suspicious and, again, I wouldn’t blame them.

Of course, Democrats hope that their new party line about affordability will overwhelm such suspicions and related uneasiness about a return to the Biden-era economy. But affordability is just a slogan, and so far the meager policy bones on the slogan are a grab bag of price caps and controls, subsidies and new regulations that may or may not do much to make everyday life more affordable. Their purpose is mostly, if not solely, to signal that Democrats want to do something about the problem; even the most partisan Democrats likely realize as an economic program it doesn’t amount to much.

It is interesting that affordability, as thin as it is, has mostly drowned out Democratic interest in “abundance,” which had a moment in the Democratic discourse. The concept was always somewhat compromised by its tight linkage to policy projects beloved by liberal professionals like a clean energy transition and urban infill housing, but at least there was a “there” there. However, the intrinsic deregulatory and anti-bureaucratic character of the abundance approach is just not that popular with the many Democratic professionals whose ox would be gored by that approach. So affordability it is to keep peace within the coalition.

Rounding out the hit parade of Democratic economic policy ideas is that old favorite, “tax the rich.” There are now several versions in circulation whose policy defects we will pass over in charitable silence. But if this is what now passes for an innovative Democratic economic policy idea, they are perhaps in more trouble than I thought.

Finally, there is the juggernaut currently reshaping the entire US economy: AI. Here the Democrats seem utterly bereft of ideas other than they should respond to public fears by promising to stop the negative effects of the transformation. How? Not clear in the slightest.

Looking over this list of problems, one thing that stands out to me is that Democrats have never come to terms with how profoundly mistaken many of their priorities have been. These haven’t just been minor errors in implementing an otherwise fine program. Much of the program was simply wrong and, arguably, not even progressive.

It’s time—past time—for Democrats to discard the conceit that they are on the right side of history and that therefore their positions are, and have been, noble and correct. Until they do so, I do not expect them to develop the dominant majority coalition they seek and vanquish right populism. Indeed, it could be the other way around. That’s a sobering thought.

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Picture a candidate running for elected office who fits this description:

• He believes marriage should be between one man and one woman;

• He criticizes the incumbent president for being too soft on illegal immigration;

• He proudly touts America’s relationship with Israel in a speech to AIPAC, the country’s top pro-Israel lobbying group;

• He supports limits on abortion, calling it a “moral” issue, and inserts language into his party’s platform expressing support for reducing the frequency of abortion;

• He expresses support for the death penalty;

• He believes that black Americans should take more responsibility in their families and their own lives;

• He also appears to favor class-based affirmative action over race-based affirmative action;

• Many of his supporters take a “colorblind” view of race, which he affirms.

Many people likely read that description and concluded the candidate in question was a conservative Republican. However, as the title of this piece likely gave away, every one of these items describes Barack Obama in his first campaign for the presidency.1

In fact, Obama was far from the only Democrat who had such views at the time. Hillary Clinton opposed gay marriage as well and was widely considered a hawk on immigration and foreign policy issues. Democrats also represented several conservative-leaning House districts and Senate seats around this time, and those elected officials often shared the cultural attitudes of their voters.

This may surprise some people in both parties, but it’s a sign of just how much things have changed in American politics since 2008. Over the course of our project, TLP has spent considerable time analyzing Democrats’ evolution, both demographically and ideologically. Since that presidential election, they have lost much of their long-faithful working-class base, which was more culturally moderate-to-conservative, and replaced it with affluent, college-educated, knowledge-economy workers who are far more culturally left-wing. According to Gallup’s latest polling, fully 59 percent of Democrats now call themselves “liberal,”2 a historic high in their data that is up from just 35 percent 20 years ago.

We have also documented how the Democrats’ evolution from a center-left party to a decidedly “left” one has influenced candidates as well. For example, there is evidence that voters have become increasingly less keen on centrist candidates with more “heterodox” views, even sometimes those running in harder-to-win places. Instead, a large majority now says that a candidate must be a “true progressive” for them to get excited.

Some Democrats might object: “The world has evolved, and we expect our politicians to keep up. Even Obama and Clinton are both now pro-gay marriage and more race-conscious than they were in 2008. The party also must adapt to the shifting attitudes of their voters, who have become more diverse and subsequently more liberal.”

This is of course (somewhat) true.3 It’s reasonable to expect that Democratic leaders would move with their base as the world evolves—especially in their direction on issues like gay marriage and abortion—and, perhaps most importantly, as Donald Trump has come into the picture and shattered both parties’ longstanding coalitions. But these demographic and ideological changes have also created real, potentially long-term vulnerabilities for Democrats at the national level.

The reality, as we have long warned, is that the U.S. is a center-right country. As the Democratic base has shifted left and become more reliant on college-educated voters, it has moved further away from the median American on multiple fronts. This, combined with a growing skepticism toward candidates who take more measured approaches or occasionally buck party orthodoxy, risks jeopardizing the Democrats’ ability to build a coalition capable of consistently competing for the Senate and Electoral College, specifically, where they will need some support from voters who may be to their right on contentious issues.

In 2008, Democratic voters were clearly willing to give their candidates breathing room on such issues. This was likely due in part to the fact that a majority of primary voters back then identified either as moderate or conservative. On some hotly debated topics, such as gay marriage, even those voters were not yet on board. Aside from the Iraq War, there were very few litmus tests placed on the party’s candidates. Democrats that year not only won a robust Electoral College victory but huge majorities in Congress, too.

It seems less likely, though, that today’s Democratic primary electorate is prepared to be as ideologically flexible as the one that helped elect Obama two decades ago. And this begs an interesting question: could a candidate like Obama or Clinton, who spurns some party shibboleths on thorny topics or even picks occasional fights with the base, win the Democratic nomination for president today?

One prospective candidate likely to test this question in 2028 is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who has started leaning into his support for Israel. Being pro-Israel has long been a safe bet for candidates of both parties. However, following the country’s war with Hamas and a new one with Iran, its image has cratered among Democrats.

In light of this, many Democratic pols have come to see ties to or support for Israel as a liability, as evidenced by the growing number eschewing campaign contributions from AIPAC. Can Shapiro cross the party’s base on Israel in today’s environment and still have a chance to win its nomination?

One candidate to watch this cycle is Congressman Seth Moulton, who has launched a primary challenge to Senator Ed Markey this year in deep-blue Massachusetts. Shortly after the 2024 election, Moulton argued that his party should rethink its commitment to certain positions that had proven unpopular with the broader public—specifically, allowing individuals who were born male but identify as female to participate in women’s sports. Not only is this an unpopular policy with the broader public (79 percent oppose), but even two-thirds of Democrats (67 percent) oppose it.

Yet, the response to Moulton’s contention among local Democratic and progressive organizations wasn’t curiosity or even debate—it was to immediately threaten a primary challenge. And although he is not seeking re-election to the House, his past expressed position could prove to be a liability in his Senate campaign. This is notable because, this issue notwithstanding, Moulton is mostly a standard Democrat. He is near the ideological center of the House Democratic caucus, and he only votes with Trump 11.3 percent of the time in Congress.4 He has spoken elsewhere very strongly in support of LGBT Americans.

The harsh reality for Moulton is that the Democratic base doesn’t appear willing to let their candidates step out of line in any way on the subject—even when doing so would align them with broader public opinion. This represents a stark contrast to 2008 when Obama received universal support from Democratic base voters, even as the latter overwhelmingly supported gay marriage, the hot-button issue of the day. Of course, Massachusetts voters are not representative of the national electorate, but the animus toward Moulton may be a sign of how much things have changed.

Perhaps the ultimate test of whether centrist heterodoxy is a liability for Democrats will come from another potential 2028 candidate: Gavin Newsom. Last year, he made a point of engaging with high-profile conservatives on his podcast, including figures like Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, and Ben Shapiro, which irked some Democrats. During his conversation with Kirk, he also remarked that he opposed using public funds for gender transition surgeries for inmates (the subject of an infamous 2024 attack ad against Kamala Harris) and called ending sex-segregated sports “deeply unfair.”

Despite adopting positions that some Democrats might find offensive, Newsom is currently running in second place behind only Harris. However, it’s entirely possible that these past positions will come back to bite him in an actual primary campaign.5

It’s worth noting that some Democrats running in more conservative-leaning places are still granted a little latitude to stray from the party. For instance, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, congressmen representing South Texas House districts, were the only two Democrats to vote for the GOP’s bill to keep school athletic programs segregated by sex. Both won their primary elections earlier this month in districts where voters are overwhelmingly working-class and Hispanic—and thus more likely to be more socially moderate or even conservative themselves.

TLP’s friends at and The Bench have also worked to identify and support candidates running in redder districts who break the mold of a contemporary Democrat. In his campaign launch for Texas’s 15th District, Bobby Pulido endorsed tougher restrictions on illegal immigration. He also proudly touts the fact that he is a gun enthusiast. Pulido hopes his “Blue Dog” positions can help him win a district that Trump carried by 18 points.

These are great opportunities for the party to try to expand its coalition. At the presidential level, though, it’s just not clear that Democratic candidates have this flexibility the way they once did.

Our crew sometimes jokes that candidates who fit the TLP mold would win one percent in a Democratic primary but 51 percent in a general election. I think this short-changes us, but it does offer an important critique of how the party has changed. We consider figures like Obama to be liberal patriots: people who have an optimistic vision for the country and who want to help everyone find their place in it, while also being willing to meet people where they are, embrace ideological pluralism, find room for compromise, and sometimes even call out the excesses of their own side.

Candidates like this are likely to find fans across the political spectrum and command majority support, as Obama did. Whether they can succeed in today’s Democratic Party, however, is less clear.6 Can the base tolerate someone who is with them on 90 to 95 percent of the issues but splits from them on a handful of contentious ones? A more ideologically homogenous coalition may well believe it can demand that candidates toe the line, down the line, which could present unnecessary risks with a national electorate.

It’s our hope that Obama-like candidates can begin rising to the top again and remind Democrats of the wisdom of his approach to politics, especially the necessity of compromise. As the former president once told a group of graduating college students, “Democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.”

Wise words. Will his party heed his advice?

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A central if underexamined question looming over the 2028 Democratic primary and the future of the American left more broadly is who will claim the mantle of Bernie Sanders’s progressive populism. Many presume Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is Sanders’s heir apparent, based on her star power and the long-established affinity between the two. But Ocasio-Cortez isn’t necessarily Sanders’s protégé, and there isn’t a firm consensus on the left that she is, in fact, best poised to carry the torch, despite her rumored aspirations for higher office. Others speculate that if New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani were constitutionally allowed to run for president, he would possibly overtake his fellow trailblazer of activist-influencer politics and expand Sanders’s movement to the next generation.

Still, the bigger problem facing AOC and others hoping to follow in Sanders’s footsteps—and perhaps achieve what he couldn’t in his two runs for president—is that nearly all are urban progressives taken to represent the worldview of the Brahmin left. They constitute the new “conscience” of the Democratic Party, the voices who have increased the salience of class and economic power in a coalition that had for too long sidestepped the issues that once gave liberal Democrats their raison d’être. They have ensured social justice means more than making America’s educated and business elites look a little more like the rest of the country. In contrast to Sanders, however, they are much less familiar with the plight of rural and small-town Americans and the distinct challenges they face. Sanders, one of the most popular politicians in America, is, at heart, a very New England type of socialist, at ease with the idiosyncratic communitarian and libertarian tendencies that America’s core political traditions have passed down through the ages. And it is doubtful that even his most talented acolytes share this essential quality to the same degree.

That is no minor weakness for a left largely deprived of the institutions—unions, farmers’ associations, and public interest civic groups—that made New Deal liberalism the vehicle of working-class advance for the better part of the 20th century. The left, already handicapped in this regard, is glaringly limited to a handful of highly educated coastal metros, disengaged, if not entirely by choice, from vast sections of the country. Alongside the Democratic establishment’s own aloofness, that has political costs few besides Sanders have warned of. Indeed, if the perspective gained by place and custom still matters in American politics, the left has a blind spot that will only become more conspicuous once Sanders retires from office.

To be sure, there are other rising leaders from the Democrats’ left flank who are trying to capture the grassroots enthusiasm of Sanders’s first campaign for president. Although he represents one of the wealthiest districts in the country, Representative Ro Khanna of California has increasingly fashioned himself as a maverick antiwar Democrat willing to take on the “Epstein class” and powerful lobbies. He co-chaired Sanders’s 2020 campaign, recently announced with Sanders a new wealth tax proposal, and remains a lead sponsor in the House of Medicare for All and other progressive legislation waiting for an elusive filibuster-proof majority. That lends him a certain amount of “parliamentary” authority, though there are doubts he could ever equal Sanders’s gravitas and impassioned following. But again, the main barrier Khanna must overcome is effectively the same as AOC’s, notwithstanding her more working-class district. Unavoidably, he is a world apart from the dairy farms, machine tool plants, and quaint, semi-vacant downtowns that dot Sanders’s “blue” Vermont as well as other states that are much less friendly to Democrats.

Then there are Graham Platner of Maine and Dan Osborn of Nebraska, two former service members running for Senate in their respective states as political outsiders appalled by the crony capitalism that brazenly pervades Washington. Both bear similar anti-establishment messages in heavily rural, white working-class states that bring to mind Sanders’s folk hero stature in Vermont. The resonance inspires a bit of optimism, not least because it is often assumed the American left has been reduced to a coastal urban phenomenon more committed to elite-mediated identity politics than rebuilding a New Deal-style coalition that unites working people across regions.

There are limits in both cases, however, to the comparison that can be drawn with Sanders. Platner, who is vying for the Democratic nomination against Governor Janet Mills, the party establishment favorite, to topple Republican Senator Susan Collins, is an outspoken progressive on nearly every issue, foreign and domestic (the importance of the 2nd amendment excepted). On top of being a fellow New Englander, that consistent left-wing orientation superficially makes him more like Sanders, whereas Dan Osborn, a self-described lifelong independent who avoids overt criticism of Trump and the MAGA base, has pitched a far more tailored anti-monopoly platform in his bid to crack the GOP’s lock on Nebraska.

Yet Sanders, who grew up in a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Brooklyn, spent years on the political margins before converting traditionally Republican Vermont to his brand of politics; as mayor of Burlington and then as an independent member of Congress, he methodically carved out a left-populist yet “heterodox” reputation that won respect and votes from residents who didn’t necessarily identify with the activist left. Platner, whose campaign has not escaped (and arguably embraces) the “nationalization” of political offices and party stances, is shaping up to be a formidable insurgent, but it is unclear he will earn the same reputation in his quest to upend Maine’s staid politics. Osborn, meanwhile, remains a dark horse enigma waging a lonely battle against polarization itself. Even if he defies the odds in his second race, Osborn may prove to be an anomaly rather than a harbinger of a heartland rebellion. Nowhere on the horizon is there a figure who seems capable of inspiring a grassroots movement that reaches an armistice in the culture wars in order to fight corruption and build worker power on a national scale.

Part of the reason it is difficult to conceive of who might fill Sanders’s shoes is that Sanders, a somewhat unshowy legislator in his early days, evolved from a curiosity into one of the most singular influences on contemporary American politics. His insurgent campaign against Hillary Clinton and the DNC “machine” made him an icon, but he also was (and to some extent still is) an iconoclastic voice within American liberalism. Sanders, for both practical and sincere reasons, hearkens back to FDR to assuage potential converts that “democratic socialism” means the enlightened welfare states of Scandinavia and the unfinished work of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, not the suffocating bureaucratic authoritarianism of the old Eastern bloc. But aside from this carefully drawn parallel with Sanders’s professed hero, he does not fit neatly within the typology of America’s radical and reform traditions.

Conventionally speaking, he emerged far to the left of Kennedy-style liberalism, the direction in which New England and the Northeast in general moved in the latter third of the 20th century. The Kennedy tradition, like its Wilsonian antecedent, was largely in favor of free-trade agreements and confident in America’s soft and hard power to nurture liberal democracy abroad, eventually meshing with Bill Clinton’s Third Way approach. Sanders, by contrast, was a left-wing critic of globalization and fairly protectionist at that, putting him in league with Jesse Jackson, Minnesota’s Paul Wellstone, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, South Carolina’s Fritz Hollings, and Indiana’s Vance Hartke, who all espoused, in different registers, a left-populism focused on preserving good-paying American jobs and rebuilding at home. That partly explains why Sanders attracted independents in 2015 and 2016, some of whom ended up voting for Trump in the general election; Sanders never underestimated the havoc wrought by NAFTA and the China shock and knew it was vital that the left didn’t further hemorrhage or spurn workers in manufacturing and traditional trades.

By the same token, that principled opposition reflected an ambivalence toward globalization that today’s activist left generally hasn’t shared. As many noted in 2016 and then again in the aftermath of the migration surge under Joe Biden, Sanders also viewed open borders not as the progressive position on immigration but as a policy that the right-wing Koch network lobbied for. While he worked tenaciously in his 2020 campaign to deepen support among Latino workers and advocacy groups, Sanders never quite abandoned his earlier position, believing unchecked migration leads to exploitation and thus lower workplace safety standards and wages.

Sanders was also never an eager practitioner of identity politics and the associated theories that became in vogue on so many campuses. He was an early champion of gay rights, supported a woman’s right to an abortion, abhorred racism, and denounced covert US operations supporting rightwing regimes in Latin America. But unlike the “woke” sectarians who scaled the heights of media and academia last decade and their adherents, Sanders was averse to “progressive” race reductionism and similar modes of politics that emphasized difference over common material concerns. Moreover, he never trafficked in attitudes that judged every moral failing or blunder of the US government as an indictment of the people itself; he didn’t ridicule the country’s noblest values as a sham, dismiss its vastly undercelebrated cultural contributions, or regard ordinary workers as oafs and rubes. Americans had a heritage to be proud of, precisely because it was working people who were the agents of both creative change and worthy traditions.

Sanders, in other words, was and is a social republican and a radical “small d” democrat, confident in America’s potential and the ability of all to bring meaning to their communities.

Who, then, are Sanders’s predecessors? Is there something in his intellectual imprinting that distinguishes the 84-year-old from his would-be successors? Long before he leaned into his idealization of FDR, Sanders was an admirer of Eugene Debs, the five-time Socialist candidate for president in the early 20th century. But Debs has never really been Sanders’s model, considering Sanders’s dogged effort to realign the Democratic Party rather than forge an entirely independent movement. In some respects, Sanders shares more in common with Wisconsin’s Robert La Follette or Nebraska’s George Norris—“independent” Republicans of the Progressive Era with vocal rural constituencies who held a communitarian ethos and believed public power and tough regulations would make the economy deliver for the many. Another touchstone is Fiorello La Guardia, the reform-minded mayor of New York who did so much to reify the spirit of the New Deal during Sanders’s boyhood. While Sanders exhorts his listeners to be part of a “revolution,” his message has always been imbued with a strong sense of civic nationalism, as if it had been extracted from a WPA mural. That quality has had an underappreciated effect on his appeal that only Mamdani has come close to matching. Contrary to the caricature of him as an unsentimental and dour figure, Sanders has long sought to replicate the energy and idealism of reformed ward politics in the least likely places, from his start in Burlington to his rural and Rust Belt delegate strategy in the 2016 primary.

Sanders’s unflappable determination—and the aura it has created—is what makes his inevitable departure from the scene so hard to fathom on the left. Whatever the exact alchemy of his influences, it has helped him become an elder statesman in a party bereft of them. Sanders may not be the most poetic orator or exhibit much of a Rooseveltian flair for public philosophy. But a mere gadfly he is not. He has synthesized—perhaps consciously—various elements from America’s past egalitarians, allowing him, a once marginal figure of the Sixties New Left, to embody the “Old Left” in a way no other post-Reagan politician has.

It is an overlooked talent that won’t be easy to duplicate. But as the pro-freedom, pluralist left ponders who might carry the torch forward, its thinkers and cadres must remember it is vital to make the past relevant to the future—and remind Americans it is within their collective power to flourish anew. Sanders did not persevere by believing anything less.

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It’s easy to underestimate how much the Democratic Party has changed in this century. In particular, you can miss how white liberals have changed from being a voice in the choir to the choir director. Cast your mind back to the beginning of the century. At that point, a mere 28 percent of Democrats described themselves as liberal and two thirds were either moderate or conservative.

Fast forward to today and the liberal share has more than doubled to 59 percent while the moderate/conservative share has declined drastically. It’s the liberals’ party now. And especially, it’s the white liberals’ party now.

White Democrats even at the beginning of this century were already disproportionately liberal—that is, more likely to be liberal than nonwhite Democrats. That disproportion has grown sharply over the course of the century. A Gallup analysis from 2023 found that over several decades, the liberal share among white Democrats had gone up 37 points, compared to 17 points among black Democrats and 18 points among Hispanic Democrats.

These trends have combined to radically change the ideological composition of white Democrats. In 2000, white Democrats who were moderate or conservative outnumbered white liberal Democrats by about 2:1. Today that relationship has been reversed. White liberal Democrats now outnumber moderate/conservative white Democrats by about 2:1.

That matters. From being merely a voice, albeit an important one, in the Democratic choir, white liberals are now directing the choir and imposing their culture, preferences, and priorities on the party as a whole. For example, in the recent Third Way survey of likely 2028 Democratic primary voters, white liberals (43 percent) outnumber all nonwhites (35 percent) who anyway are ideologically split in a way white Democrats tend not to be (66 percent of that group say they’re liberal). Indeed, black voters in the survey are split down the middle between liberal and moderate/conservative, with the latter group actually being slightly larger.

That gives white liberals enormous leverage within the party. Any Democrat seeking to build their support in the party has to reckon with this enormous bloc of Democrats, whose influence is enhanced beyond their considerable numbers by their dominance of the party’s infrastructure, allied NGOs and advocacy groups, and left-leaning media, foundations, and academia. Not to mention the money—ambitious Democrats need money and white liberals are a reliable source of cash for politicians who press the right buttons.

This clarifies why it is so difficult for Democratic politicians to carve out a truly moderate path. Back in the day, such a politician could balance the demands of white liberals with the considerable and countervailing tug from white moderates and conservatives. No more. White liberals are in the driver’s seat and Democratic politicians have calibrated their appeals accordingly.

The pull in that direction is enhanced by the fact that white conservative Democrats have practically disappeared and even white moderate Democrats are not particularly moderate by the standards of the country as a whole. In the Third Way survey, moderate white Democrats, while not as enthusiastically as white liberals, still give strong support to Medicare for All that would eliminate private health insurance, a Green New Deal that would rapidly eliminate fossil fuels, canceling student debt and free college, and an annual nationwide wealth tax on billionaires. Not so moderate!

So it is not irrational for ambitious Democratic politicians to put a finger on the scales for an agenda that puts white liberals in their happy place. Quite the contrary.

And no wonder one still searches in vain for the Democratic politician willing to venture a true “Sister Souljah moment.” Recall the original Sister Souljah moment that occurred in June 1992, when Bill Clinton, speaking at a gathering for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, commented on a statement rapper/activist Sister Souljah had made in an interview with The Washington Post. In the interview, she replied to a question about whether black-on-white violence in the 1992 LA riots was a “wise, reasoned action” as follows:

Yeah, it was wise. I mean, if black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?...White people, this government and that mayor were well aware of the fact that black people were dying every day in Los Angeles under gang violence. So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?

Clinton’s comment on this to the Rainbow Coalition was:

You had a rap singer here last night [on a panel] named Sister Souljah…Her comments before and after Los Angeles were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight. Just listen to this, what she said: She told The Washington Post about a month ago, and I quote, ‘If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?…So if you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?

If you took the words ‘white’ and ‘black’ and reversed them, you might think David Duke [founder of a Louisiana-based KKK organization] was giving that speech.

At the time, Democrats were suffering from a highly negative image of being soft on crime and public disorder and practicing a racial double standard (sound familiar?). Given what Clinton said and where he said it (to the Rainbow Coalition), his message was crystal clear: Democrats should not tolerate violence and inflammatory rhetoric, including any that comes from members of their own coalition. There should be no double standards.

Clinton was relentlessly attacked by Jackson and other figures on the party’s left for his apostasy. But normie voters got the message. Here was a different kind of Democrat who was willing to throw obvious Democratic lunacy over the side. Clinton withstood the blowback and he—and his party—reaped the reward.

It’s hard to imagine a contemporary Democratic politician being willing to risk such a confrontational attack on party orthodoxy. Today’s massive contingent of white liberals, herded along by their opinion leaders and institutions, are likely to rise up in unison to punish such apostasy. That key change makes the intra-party cost-benefit calculus of such a move far different—far more negative—than in Clinton’s day. So we don’t see them.

Instead, we get the occasional anodyne attempts at heterodoxy, quickly swept under the rug when they are (inevitably) attacked by the usual suspects. Democratic politicians chasing a moderate image typically do not attack liberal shibboleths but rather emphasize their practical bent and distaste for being “divisive.” But their underlying positions rarely deviate much from those preferred by white liberals.

That will only take you so far, even in era where the political terrain is tilting against Trump and his party. As Damon Linker pointed out in an essay last summer:

[W]hat liberals need to do to defeat right-wing populism…[is] to moderate on culture. That means on policies and moral stances wrapped up with the old culture war (like trans and other gender-related issues) as well as in other areas of policy that have a strong cultural valance—like crime, immigration, and DEI. This isn’t just necessary because Democratic positions on these issues are unpopular at the moment. It’s also crucial because culture is more fundamental than politics: It sends a signal to voters about where a politician or party stands on base-level moral questions. When voters become convinced that a specific politician or party has bad (or just sufficiently different) moral judgment, they lose trust in that politician or party. And then other, more superficial policy commitments don’t matter…

White liberals who are inclined to blame everyone but themselves for why their cause hasn’t gotten farther should consider the wise words of Pogo:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

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It’s no secret that the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has shifted left over the past decade or two. Whereas the base of the party not long ago was older, working-class, moderate black voters, it increasingly comprises college-educated white liberals. This, along with greater levels of partisan polarization and geographic sorting, has over time helped erode the party’s moderate faction in Congress and given rise to new progressive power bases in big urban cities like New York, Chicago, and Seattle.

And while these transformations have made the party more capable of dominating in off-year elections, it has also become harder for Democrats to compete in some parts of the country and with certain voting blocs that were a core part of their coalition not long ago—and that made them capable of winning big at the federal level. Post-election analysis after 2024 found that more Americans today believe Democrats are too liberal than when Barack Obama sought re-election in 2012.

Yet, even in the midst of this transition, a significant share of Democratic voters actually remain ideologically moderate, possess complex views and attitudes on the issues, and aren’t necessarily cheering the party’s leftward shift. Shortly after the 2024 election, for example, a Gallup survey found that a large plurality (45 percent) wanted to see the party become more moderate against only 29 percent that wanted it to become more liberal.

Last week, two prominent think tanks released surveys showing moderate Democrats remain a major part of the party’s coalition. The first came from the center-left Third Way, which found that roughly 40 percent of Democratic primary voters self-identity either as moderate (34 percent) or conservative (five percent).1 Moreover, Democrats overall appeared to hold pragmatic views of politics. For instance:

• 89 percent agreed that “just because a candidate is moderate does not mean they are boring.”

• 88 percent said they are “willing to vote for someone I don’t agree with on every issue as long as they are strong and will fight for the working people of this country.”

• 75 percent said they prefer “a candidate who works across the aisle to get things done, even if it means compromising sometimes” rather than one who “sticks to their progressive beliefs, even if it means getting less done.”

• 72 percent are “willing to vote for someone I don’t agree with on every issue as long as they are authentic and true to what they believe in.”

• And fully two-thirds believe “nominating a Democrat for president who is too far left risks losing the general election to a MAGA candidate, because America is not liberal and someone far to the left will turn off swing voters.”

Most Democrats hold pretty normie views on key issues as well. Two-thirds support overhauling ICE and holding it accountable rather than abolishing it entirely (34 percent). A large majority (62 percent) also continues to support capitalism over socialism (38 percent). According to the report’s authors, these findings demonstrate that “primary voters are pragmatic, and they don’t want their nominee to go so far left in a primary that they can’t win against MAGA in the general.”

The second survey came from a more unexpected source: the Manhattan Institute (MI), a conservative think tank.2 MI set out to determine whether “the median Democratic voter [is] actually moving left—or…the party [is] being pulled left by a smaller activist faction that dominates elite discourse and low-turnout politics.” They found that the party’s coalition is “often more moderate, more internally divided, and more pragmatic than what is found across left-leaning social media, cable news, and donor-funded groups,” and that “more voters favor moving the party toward the ideological center than further left.”3

In fact, compared to Third Way, MI’s data found that moderates make up an even greater share of the party’s coalition at 47 percent. Meanwhile, “Progressive Liberals” (PLs) are 37 percent while the “Woke Fringe” (WF) is just 11 percent.4 MI dug deeper into Democratic voters’ views on hot-button issues and found that they are much more complex than people may realize.

• Immigration. Democrats of all stripes continue to see America as a nation of immigrants, but pluralities of moderates (50 percent) and PLs (44 percent) believed that the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter the U.S. each year should “stay about the same” rather than be increased from current levels (16 percent and 27 percent, respectively).

• Trans issues. Democratic voters often take more cautious positions here than people may expect—even as the party doesn’t always do the same. A plurality of voters overall (including a majority of moderates and plurality of PLs) believe that sporting events should be separated on the basis of sex rather than “gender identity.” Huge majorities across all demographic and ideological cohorts except for the WF (which was split) also believe that medicine for gender transitions should not be administered to people until they are at least 18 years old.

• Crime. Only 18 percent of Democrats believe that the U.S. criminal justice system is “too tough” in its handling of crime. A plurality (34 percent) think it’s “about right,” while a similar share (31 percent) say it is “not tough enough. A large majority (55 percent) also agrees that “police are essential—they should remain the primary way communities address crime and public safety,” while just one-third believe that “police do more harm than good, [and] funding should be shifted toward non-police alternatives.”

• Israel. Nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats say that while they believe Israel has a right to exist, they are worried about how Israel has conducted its war against Hamas. By contrast, only 13 percent agree that “Israel is a colonial apartheid state”—a position that some leading 2028 contenders have espoused—and that it, alone, bears responsibility for “any and all violence that has followed its establishment.”

• Billionaires. The overwhelming majority of Democrats (73 percent) believe that billionaires can exist, even though they want to see them contribute more in taxes. By contrast, just 14 percent say billionaires are “bad for society and shouldn’t exist,” a belief most pronounced among the WF.

These two surveys illustrate that the Democratic electorate is a mixed group and, like most Americans, holds a diverse set of views, especially among its most moderate members. The MI results are especially interesting: a right-leaning organization might have an incentive to show that Democratic voters are uniformly left-wing, which could provide ammunition for the GOP in its pursuit of swing voters and independents. And yet, this is not the story their data told.

Still, these surveys also showed concerning signs for center-left reformers about moderates’ influence—or, perhaps, lack of it—in the party today. For starters, both found that a majority of the Democratic coalition is not ideologically moderate. In the Third Way study, fully 60 percent self-identified as either liberal, progressive, or socialist. And anyone who did the math above will know the MI study found that a plurality (48 percent) either belonged to the PL or WF camps.5

This data mirrors other surveys from nonpartisan groups that have shown the share of moderates and conservatives in the Democratic Party on an inexorable, decades-long decline while the share of liberals is at its highest point on record, as is the share who identify as “very liberal.”

Third Way’s data also showed that even as large shares of Democrats purport to want more moderation from the party, many would still support candidates who espouse support for things like “Medicare for all” (83 percent), the “Green New Deal” (74 percent), and canceling student debt and making college free (72 percent)—all policies that have gotten the party’s candidates into trouble in the past. Two-thirds of voters also say that a candidate needs to be a “true progressive” for them to get excited about voting.

This presents another problem. Many Democrats purportedly want an “electable” candidate—recall that 66 percent said “nominating a Democrat for president who is too far left risks losing the general election to a MAGA candidate.” But MI’s polling shows that several of the top 2028 contenders they support are either way to the left of the median American or serial electoral underperformers.

So, even as most Democrats tell themselves that they want their party to moderate to win over the voters they need, there is clearly a leftward gravitational pull internally. The energy and vibes in a primary election today are likelier to be with candidates like Zohran Mamdani and AOC—whose brand of politics animates the party’s base but will very likely struggle to win over swing voters in key states in a general election—than with moderate reformers like Rahm Emanuel or center-left candidates with strong electoral track records like Josh Shapiro.

Here’s how MI put it:

Activist politics often speaks for the most ideologically intense voters, but on many issues, the majority view within the coalition is that of the Moderates—often alongside black and Hispanic voters—rather than the party’s most activist faction. The Woke Fringe, however, may still exert outsized influence in low-turnout primaries and online discourse. Because this group is younger, it represents a plausible source of future ideological change inside the party, even if it is not the median position today.

This doesn’t mean that moderates are out of luck or that the party is fated to an AOC nomination in 2028. But the winds right now are at the back of the progressive base. If moderates want to chart a different way forward for the Democrats, they’ll need to identify and rally behind a consensus candidate who offers to chart a different path—and they’ll need to do it sooner than later.

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The Democrats are set for a good—perhaps very good—2026 election. They seem almost certain to take back the House and the Senate, while still improbable, is within reach. But once they stop congratulating themselves for taking advantage of thermostatic reaction against a floundering Trump presidency, they’ll face a fresh and more daunting challenge: who to nominate for their 2028 presidential candidate?

That nominee is crucial for two reasons. Most obviously, Democrats should want a candidate who will maximize their chances of taking back the presidency. Successfully sorting through the potential nominees to find that candidate is not a given. On a deeper level, parties typically rebrand themselves after a period of coalitional attrition through a presidential nominee who newly defines their image (think Clinton, Obama). The 2028 nominee should ideally provide that new template for the national party.

That’s the assignment. The Democratic presidential primary electorate will be the ones carrying it out (or not). At this point, what can we say about those voters and what they might be inclined to do? Clearly it’s early and any poll that attempts to survey that electorate cannot precisely predict what it will look like in 2028. That said, Third Way has just released a treasure trove of data (topline, memo, presentation, crosstabs) on these voters that illuminates the playing field aspiring Democratic candidates will have to negotiate. Here are some of the most interesting findings.

(1) The Democratic presidential primary electorate is dominated by women (61 percent), whites (65 percent), and non-college voters (60 percent). In addition, a clear majority (55 percent) are over the age of 55; just 12 percent are under 30.

(2) In terms of ideology, the Democratic primary electorate skews liberal to left as one would expect. The survey asks about ideology in two different ways:

• socialist/progressive/liberal/moderate/conservative

• very liberal/somewhat liberal/moderate/somewhat conservative/very conservative.

In the first categorization, socialist (6 percent) + progressive (11 percent) + liberal (43 percent) are 60 percent of the sample; in the second categorization very liberal and somewhat liberal are both around 31 percent making liberals 62 percent of primary voters when categorized in that way. Moderates in both categorizations are 34 percent of the sample while conservatives are a trace presence.

Naturally, liberals are to the left of moderates on most questions on the survey but this difference is attenuated if you use the first categorization, which subtracts out the socialists and progressives, who are very left, from the liberal category. Moderates are also relatively close to those who are somewhat liberal in the second categorization while those who say they are very liberal (which includes nearly all the socialists and progressives) are quite far to the left of both. Of course, one should remember that, in turn, moderates who vote in Democratic presidential primaries are quite far to the left of moderates in the overall electorate.

(3) Some common-sense ideas that candidates could include in their platforms generate almost unanimous support for candidates who back them. These include: “Building on the Affordable Care Act to cap health care costs for everyone, making it easier to choose your own doctor, stopping hospital price gouging, and streamlining medical bills” (96 percent overall support); “Providing more low-cost vocational training and apprenticeship opportunities, so people can get good-paying jobs in growing fields without a four-year college degree” (95 percent); “Investing in a range of energy sources, including clean energy, to meet our rising energy demand and bring down our bills” (95 percent)”; and “Overhaul ICE to focus only on dangerous criminals, not families who have lived in the U.S. for years and are contributing to their communities” (93 percent). Such proposals not only have overwhelming support within the Democratic primary electorate, they should also be salable to independents, swing voters, and some disaffected Republicans.

(4) On the other hand, some classically left-identified proposals that would be hard to sell outside the ranks of partisans also have strong support within the Democratic primary electorate. These include: “Creating an annual nationwide wealth tax on billionaires” (91 percent overall support); “Passing Medicare for All, meaning that the government provides everyone’s insurance and private insurance is eliminated” (83 percent); “Passing a national plan like the Green New Deal that would move rapidly to eliminate fossil fuels” (74 percent); “Cancelling all student debt and making college free” (72 percent); and “Abolish ICE and halt all immigration enforcement inside the country” (59 percent).

Here though there is meaningful variation across ideological categories within the primary electorate. For example, on Medicare for All, those who are very liberal provide 88 percent support while moderates are significantly lower at 75 percent. On free college and no student debt, the very liberal are at 83 percent, socialists are at 95 percent and progressives are at 90 percent compared to moderates who are down at 63 percent. A Green New Deal and eliminating fossil fuels is supported by 84 percent of those who are very liberal but just 62 percent of moderates. Finally, abolishing ICE and ending interior immigration enforcement has 79 percent support among the very liberal, 80 percent among socialists, 79 percent among progressives but is actually net negative among moderates (47 percent support vs. 53 percent opposition).

Still, there is no gainsaying the fact that, despite the near-unanimous support for moderate reform proposals, there is very significant support for more left proposals—proposals which cold well prove more exciting to voters in the context of heated primary contests. The possibility is real that the Democratic primary electorate could wind up supporting a candidate who not only wouldn’t be the probability-maximizing choice against the GOP opposition but also would do nothing to fix the Democrats’ brand problem—indeed would just make it worse.

(5) Underscoring this potential problem, Democratic primary voters express support for the party becoming more liberal to beat Republicans and say that only a “true progressive” could excite them as a candidate. In the survey, 55 percent say the party should become more liberal. However, while support for this proposition is overwhelming among the very liberal, socialists and progressives, it drops to 42 percent among moderates.

And 62 percent call for a “true progressive” to excite them. Similar to the pattern above though, 97 percent of socialists, 88 percent of progressives and 83 percent of the very liberal demand a true progressive while moderates are split down the middle on the question.

This is more than a bit disconcerting given that the overall electorate has increasingly seen the Democrats as too liberal over time. Quite a few Democratic primary voters are apparently willing to press the accelerator on this.

(6) But when put in the context of electability, Democratic primary voters show more flexibility and pragmatism. Over three-fifths (62 percent) declare they would vote “for someone who can win the general election against a Republican” rather than “for someone who stands by their progressive values, even if it could make them less electable.” This includes 57 percent among those who say they are very liberal. Only the socialists dissent strongly from this preference.

Conversely, 55 percent disagree that nominating a moderate Democrat would just be repeating the mistakes of the past because it wouldn’t excite people to vote. However, here the progressives and very liberal join the socialists in dissenting from the overall judgement.

The problem with this welcome pragmatism—at least among the majority of Democratic primary voters—is that it hinges on a good understanding of who, in fact, is electable. Right now, Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom—two liberal California Democrats—sit atop Democratic presidential nomination polling, garnering nearly half of overall support. They are, respectively, the fourth worst and flat-out worst in performance relative to underlying partisan lean of 21 potential candidates tested by the “Deciding to Win” report. Moreover, another top contender is AOC who is also an underperformer relative to her district.

Of course, there’s plenty of time for overperformers like Josh Shapiro and Andy Beshear to make a case for their electability and potentially an audience for that case. But it will take some work and hard politicking. Nothing can be taken for granted given how seductive the siren song of the left may be in the upcoming presidential cycle as the Third Way data make clear.

It’s all to play for. Gentlemen and women, place your bets.

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The 2028 election may seem light-years away politically, but the contours of the race are already foreseeable. The fight to define the post-Trump era has the makings for two potentially extreme and polarizing nominees to emerge—Vice President JD Vance for the Republicans and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for the Democrats.

Why these two? Well, Vance is already the anointed one for Trump and the most fervent ideologue and public communicator for that brand of America First, even though Trump does like to be coy and encourage talk of Secretary of State Marco Rubio perhaps getting his golden endorsement. Vance is a highly capable and smart politician, if not as immediately popular with independents and others who backed his boss one or two times. The wild card for Vance, of course, is how good or bad the conclusion of the Trump era ends up being in the minds of American voters in terms of the economy, various scandals or wars, and people’s basic weariness with the president after four years.

Among Democrats, AOC is clearly the beloved leader of the next generation left. If New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani could be president, he would easily displace her and probably be more successful. But he can’t be president constitutionally, so he’s out. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are well-respected leftist elders but clearly are too old and set in their ways to ignite another round of voter fervor. And a left-populist newcomer like Ro Khanna has many skills and interesting policy frameworks, but he does not currently command anywhere near the star power and potential fundraising and organizational support as AOC. Now, AOC doesn’t currently seem ready for prime time and might flame out. It’s also not yet clear that she wants to run for president and might stand down or make a run for the U.S. Senate in New York. But, if AOC does run, she will have a 2016 Trump-like advantage in the primaries as the only viable candidate of the “anti-establishment” socialist left and in terms of endless free media coverage.

However, unlike the Republican succession process, which will most likely be uncompetitive and de facto run out of the White House by Trump, centrist Democrats are not going to give over their party to AOC and the left without a serious fight. For example, the ideologically moderate Democratic think tank Third Way, among others, is already ramping up to create the infrastructure, ideas, and political backing for a “combative centrist” to lead the party and take on AOC. This is a wise project with a potentially fatal strategic flaw. If leftist Democrats are 100 percent behind AOC (with no serious progressive competition) and there are several moderate/centrist, establishment, or “newbie” options who stay in the contest for multiple months (pick among Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Gretchen Whitmer, Andy Beshear, Wes Moore, Rahm Emanuel, Jon Ossoff, or Ruben Gallego), the left will likely win a grinding delegate battle with a firm plurality of the vote and momentum. Although there are many Democratic voters who are pragmatic and not on the ideological left, the math won’t work unless the field is eventually cleared for one of the non-AOC candidates to hoover up that moderate “electability-focused” support, as seen in 2020 with Joe Biden.

The sooner that winnowing process begins and concludes, the more likely it is the center-left can put up a fighting chance against AOC and the far left. The longer it drags on, the worse it will get for them with no guarantee of a semi-coordinated dropout of uncompetitive candidates in time to rally behind the strongest alternative, as occurred in the 2020 primary season in and around Super Tuesday.

If the prospect of this partisan head-to-head in 2028 makes you wince, you’re probably not alone. Assuming the two parties do move in this direction, nominating AOC and Vance, it’s not a stretch to imagine a significant and well-funded third-party effort emerging to give voters an alternative to either democratic socialism or another four years of MAGA culture wars and erratic economic and foreign policies.

The probability that someone or some entity will try to foment a third-party run in this AOC-Vance scenario doesn’t guarantee any success, however. Third parties are notoriously ineffective, ego-driven efforts that fail to capture the imagination of center-left and center-right voters and many non-ideological independents. RFK Jr.’s effort went nowhere in 2024 as he essentially used the threat of an independent bid to upset Democrats and secure a Trump cabinet position. Likewise, the independent group No Labels flirted with supporting a bipartisan moderate ticket only to fall victim to partisan sniping and a lack of visionary personalities to lead the ticket and attract voters.

If a charismatic ex-partisan or non-partisan wants to successfully spoil the party for Democrats or Republicans in 2028, they will first need to have a simple and clear rationale for running, good communications abilities, and loads of cash. You could imagine the Libertarian Party getting its act together to defend “freedom” from both leftist and far-right economic and social policy incursions. But given its track record, many things would need to change inside that party for this path to work. If a serious third-party effort is to materialize in 2028, it will likely require a wealthy and dedicated individual from the private sector, not the political class, to lead the initiative and make it clear that they are starting relatively soon, not late in the process.

A lot of this sounds like parlor games right now, which is understandable. But anyone who has followed politics and voter trends closely for the past decade knows that a potential AOC-Vance battle in 2028 is not going to please millions of independent, moderate, and patriotic but not traditionally partisan Americans. They will resent the two choices forced on them and will be open to alternatives should they emerge. Republicans and Democrats yelling at these voters to get in partisan line won’t work. We may be in for one wild and quirky presidential election season in due time.

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Last week, Quinnipiac University released a poll showing how Pennsylvania voters viewed their state leaders. One of the most remarkable findings was the standing of Democratic Senator John Fetterman. The topline takeaway for him was solid: 46 percent approved of his job performance versus 40 percent who disapproved. But the data beneath the surface was somewhat bewildering. Fetterman fared best among Republicans, with fully 73 percent supporting him. Independents liked him too, with 48 percent approving against 37 percent disapproving. But among his own party, a paltry 22 percent approved of him.

Fetterman’s popularity with everyone but his base no doubt has to do with his “heterodox” views and penchant for bucking orthodoxies on his side, especially on hot-button topics. Consider some of the things he has done since joining the Senate in 2023:

• Proudly supported Israel in its fight against Hamas and rejected what he deemed the “progressive” view on that issue;

• Warned (presciently) that Democrats were not taking the issue of border security seriously enough in the run-up to the 2024 election;

• Said he is “not rooting against” Trump;

• Admonished his party for forgetting “why we lost” in 2024;

• Opposed shutting down the government over ICE funding and rebuked calls to abolish the agency; and

• Chastised Democrats who yelled during Trump’s latest State of the Union address.

In this tribal era of American politics, Fetterman’s actions have signaled to many in his party that he is not a “team player.” They view Trump and his policies as existential threats to the nation and Fetterman as, at best, an enabler. Of course, voters of either party have a right to expect their side’s elected officials to promote their values and serve as the loyal opposition to a president of the other party. This is nothing new in politics. But the criticism of Fetterman misses some key things.

First, he still largely sticks with the Democrats. According to data from the website VoteHub, Fetterman only votes with President Trump 28 percent of the time. And although this means he sides with Trump more frequently than any other Senate Democrat, it’s not by much: the next-closest senator, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, votes with Trump 25.6% of the time.

Moreover, Fetterman has supported Democrats on several high-profile matters. He has taken a decidedly populist tone on economic issues, supporting many liberal positions such as closing income tax loopholes for billionaires, repealing executive orders targeting labor unions, and tackling “corporate greed.” He voted “HELL NO” on Trump’s biggest policy priority of his second term, called on the president to fire DHS Secretary Kristi Noem over the Minneapolis fallout, and criticized him for paving the way to increased restrictions on abortion. Fetterman has even sided with the left on contentious social issues. In fact, he has said he is a Democrat because of abortion and LGBT issues, specifically.

Second, it’s important to remember that Fetterman represents Pennsylvania, perhaps the ultimate swing state. And while he typically votes the way one might expect of a Democrat, he also clearly believes he should work to represent all Pennsylvanians, not just those in his party. This is likely a key reason why large shares of independents and Republicans support him, even as they almost certainly disagree with some of his more liberal-leaning views.

In past eras, when both parties were more ideologically diverse, it wasn’t uncommon to see members from swing states break with their party. One example of this from the not-too-distant past was Republican Senator John McCain. For most of his tenure in the Senate, McCain was known as a “maverick,” a reputation he earned by breaking ranks with Republicans on matters where he disagreed on principle, like immigration, and often doing so on the national stage.

This kind of politics, however, is now increasingly out of vogue. Demonstrations of independence—once a prerequisite of building winning coalitions in competitive races—are rarely rewarded by politicians’ own voters nowadays. Instead, both parties have begun to pursue of a politics of purity that focuses more on hunting heretics than seeking converts. Toward the end of McCain’s time in office, for example, as the Tea Party brought its uncompromising brand of politics to the national political stage, he received serious challenges from the right wing of the GOP, even though he was the party’s erstwhile presidential nominee and remained a major figure.

This is the dilemma facing Fetterman and other politicians of his ilk. Polarization and geographic sorting have reduced the incentive to stray from one’s political tribe, and when a politician does so, there are often consequences from their own voters. Thus, while candidates like Fetterman might represent the median voter, they will have a very hard time winning if their base rejects them.

It is certainly possible Fetterman will survive a Democratic primary in 2028, assuming he runs for another term. But at 22 percent approval among his own party, he’ll have a steep hill to climb, especially against what is likely to be a strong slate of challengers (and in a state with closed primaries, which makes it harder for non-Democrats to participate). A loss would signal that Fetterman’s iconoclastic style may simply be a product of a bygone era—and a regrettable sign of the times.

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Editor’s note: an earlier version of this piece was first published in UnHerd.

Amid America’s winter of discontent, Democrats and their allies have allowed themselves a moment of schadenfreude. For the first time in a long time, the Trump White House has lost control of the political narrative and suffered several consecutive defeats in the realm of public opinion. The blowback stemming from ICE’s abuses, the Epstein files, extraordinary conflicts of interest, the recent betrayal of the GOP’s tenuous “Make America Healthy Again” bloc, and Trump’s unilateral tariffs, which the Supreme Court dramatically ruled against on Friday, has revealed the frailty of Trump’s unique 2024 coalition and even shaken the confidence of loyal Republicans.

This has given the political opposition a sense that the final chapters of the Trump era may not be defined by general indifference and submission. Not only has no major action of this presidency enjoyed any sustained popularity, Trump, the gold- and glitz-obsessed real estate tycoon, appears to be afflicted lately by a reverse Midas touch: the issues that propelled his almost unfathomable return to power may soon contribute to his and his party’s undoing. Under the circumstances, it is not so fanciful for Democrats to anticipate a blue wave this November and perhaps even a favorable forecast in the 2028 Electoral College, regardless of who their presidential nominee is.

Yet just because reality is presently clobbering the GOP doesn’t mean Democrats have come to grips with their own delusions. A scan of polls concerning Democrats’ most known figures and potential presidential candidates is a distressing reminder that the party has made very limited progress toward diffusing power beyond coastal metros and elevating battleground voices. That spells trouble, given that Democrats would have much better odds nominating someone who has a proven track record of winning over independents and other Americans who are otherwise skeptical of the Democratic brand. Indeed, to win decisively in 2028, it is paramount that Democrats rally to a leader who can compete convincingly in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that will in all likelihood determine the winner.

The unhelpful bias in favor of blue-state Democrats is reflected in the probable roster of contenders. Its tiers can be reasonably divided between the party’s quasi-celebrities and other vocal liberals vying to claim the “Resistance” mantle, who typically indulge questionnaire-bearing interest groups, and pragmatic (and sometimes less charismatic) coalition-builders who, to varying degrees, have appealed to conservative-leaning constituencies. (Granted, a few of the following mooted contenders overlap these categories.)

In most surveys, former Vice President Kamala Harris still leads the pack, followed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who forged his brand as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and resides in Michigan but has long been a favorite of MSNBC/MS NOW viewers. Other possible contenders include Representative Ro Khanna of California; Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; Illinois Governor JB Pritzker; Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego; Arizona Senator Mark Kelly; Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff; Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy; New Jersey Senator Cory Booker; Maryland Governor Wes Moore; and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear. With the exception of Khanna, Pritzker, Murphy, Booker, and Moore, this latter pool has had to navigate more Trump-friendly electorates, yet all trail the current frontrunners.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the party’s evident regional weaknesses, it’s not surprising that blue-state leaders are early favorites. Harris, Newsom, AOC, and Buttigieg are strong, distinctive personalities whose pronouncements and media appearances have a disproportionate impact on the opinions of stalwart Democratic voters. Even with viral media clips, rising stars from purple states have to work overtime to command similar levels of attention. But they may yet raise expectations. Notwithstanding the present enthusiasm gap, it is encouraging that a few swing-state Democrats are regarded as viable candidates for president. There is, after all, plenty of time to generate excitement over their hypothetical candidacies, and their standing in the horse race could rapidly improve if they start driving the national conversation and project strengths that outshine the current frontrunners.

It could also be the case, however, that the early polls reflect Democratic voters’ hardened ideological and stylistic preferences. Identity-driven elements of the Democratic base are in an uncompromising mood and suspicious of elected officials who have made playing to the “center” a big part of their political biography. (Consider the criticisms Newsom faced for pausing state Medicaid enrollment for undocumented immigrants and wobbling on trans issues before he redoubled his scornful attacks on Trump and his cabinet.) Notably, the measured, pastor-like Beshear is the sole red-state option for Democrats hoping to court “Obama-Trump” and “middle-of-the-road” voters. Although Beshear’s record is surprisingly liberal—he has proudly broadcast his symbolic vetoes of conservative bills targeting trans youth and DEI at public colleges (both were overridden by state Republican legislators)—his Bidenesque “unity” message may not resonate strongly with a rank-and-file hungry for uninhibited fighters, as Beshear himself recently acknowledged. Unfortunately, that reinforces the theory that partisan Democrats want, above all, a “Resistance liberal” straight from central casting.

Of course, two rules of thumb apply at this preliminary stage. Unless they have been absolutely routed à la George McGovern or Walter Mondale, the previous standard-bearer is usually going to claim some baked-in support. And Harris, though tarnished by her failure to prevent Trump’s comeback, lost an extremely unusual, truncated race by a fairly narrow margin, both in the popular vote and three of the seven key toss-up states. If Newsom, after several months of trolling and suing the Trump administration, strikes many as the Democrats’ de facto leader, his fellow Californian nevertheless maintains considerable political leverage and financial connections, as well as a strong following among liberal, college-educated women. Even if her support wanes as other Democrats grab the spotlight, a decision by Harris to run again would immediately affect the calculations of her chief rivals and underdog campaigns.

There is also the simple matter of name recognition. Besides Harris, nearly every potential blue-state candidate already enjoys some prominence on the national stage, and several have attempted to use social media to engender support beyond their respective home turfs, as AOC and Newsom have adroitly done. Absent any major stumbles, that media presence reinforces the idea that these candidates are the best that the party has to offer, which leaves the base hesitant to entertain dark horse contenders and other outsiders who might mount an anti-establishment insurgency against the party’s kingmakers and gatekeepers.

Assumptions about which Democrats are strong enough to take on Trump’s eventual heir are further shaped by the ecosystem of progressive podcasters, influencers, advocacy groups, and publications. These platforms buttress the pecking order by rewarding those who relish “standing up” to Trump and affirm blue-state values and blue-state accomplishments. The primary electorate is conditioned, in turn, to link being a blue-state warrior with effective defiance of the Trump agenda, and thus erroneously equate this visibility with popularity on a national scale, when it is anything but.

Another flaw in this logic is that, by definition, blue-state politicians like Newsom and Pritzker have only “resisted” the Trump administration from a place of relative comfort and convenience. In contrast to Shapiro, Whitmer, and the senators from Arizona and Georgia, respectively, they have not had to court Trump voters and independents who might like some of the Trump agenda. In fact, Democrats from safe seats have felt little pressure to confront the progressive left’s cultural baggage or engage voters who looked askance at the national Democratic Party during the years of “peak woke.”

So far, this lack of bridge-building with voters who don’t identify as liberal or progressive doesn’t seem to weigh much on the Democratic base. The outlook of party activists and donors may shift, however, as campaigns formally launch, field operations enter full swing, and candidates are forced to interact more with uncommitted voters. Although the order of early primary and caucus states has yet to be determined, serious candidates will inevitably have to court some portion of the estimated 12 million Biden voters who sat out 2024 and, in the case of open primaries, independents and disillusioned Republicans interested in crossing over. All else being equal, that mix of voters will be more ideologically diverse than what staunch progressives and self-anointed MAGA antagonists are accustomed to and may create a lane for candidates with a more “heterodox” pitch.

That doesn’t mean less-ideological, pragmatic contenders will have a straightforward foil to employ. Parts of the primary electorate will be more isolationist or left-wing on foreign policy, especially regarding U.S. affairs in the Middle East and Latin America, while others will have concerns over Democrats’ record on border enforcement, public safety, and gender identity activism. Threading those factions won’t be easy; at present, no single rumored candidate combines a critical stance on U.S. foreign policy with a willingness to depart from the Brahmin left’s orthodoxies. Nevertheless, we should expect to see a couple swing-state Democrats gain momentum, provided they exude a determination, like Barack Obama in the 2008 primary, to mobilize first-time voters, irregular Democrats, and independents hungry for alternatives to the status quo.

Who might fit the bill and shake up the primary electorate is less predictable. Senators Gallego and Ossoff have garnered a lot of attention in recent weeks, and either one might reinvigorate, through their evolving strand of Sun Belt populism, the coalition of urban progressives, labor activists, economically anxious suburbanites, blue-collar immigrants, college students, and rural anti-monopolists that Democrats have failed to sustain and expand in the Trump era. Shapiro and Whitmer (yes, even after that infamous White House photo) might similarly energize a broad range of voters, despite having irked progressive activists on occasion. Any of these Democrats, moreover, would have a very decent chance of delivering their own swing state on November 7, 2028, and be equipped to build a fierce ground game in competitive states with similar demographic profiles.

Then again, these purple-state Democrats may prove reluctant to take stands that challenge entrenched advocacy groups, whose endorsements and donor networks exert enormous influence over base Democrats trained to follow purity tests. The primary electorate may also simply sway toward the most impassioned darlings of the Resistance. Under the most likely scenario, that would narrow the contest to Newsom and AOC, whose respective talents, while potent and enviable, are undercut by liabilities that working-class swing voters are certain to scrutinize. By Super Tuesday 2028, Democrats hoping to restore the Obama coalition may find themselves right back where they started: led by coastal Democrats who perennially underestimate just how bankrupt the Democrats’ reputation is in hundreds of rural and Rust Belt counties.

Could anyone else convert an underdog bid for the nomination into a full-blown campaign to remake the party? Khanna, who co-chaired Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign, has fashioned himself as a populist maverick by teaming up with Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) to release the Epstein files and check Trump’s military adventurism. Alarmed by the ramifications of the “K-shaped” economy and the economic displacement many expect AI to precipitate, Khanna has also demanded a “new tech social contract.” Yet he represents the wealthiest district in both California and the nation, which obviously does nothing to alleviate Democrats’ deep-seated regional problems.

Democrats, unfortunately, are short of other options to turn things around on that front before 2028. Other emerging figures who might, in time, be better suited to that task, such as Iowa state auditor and gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand, an evangelist for clean and accountable government in an age of bald cronyism, still need to notch electoral and policy victories that raise their national profile. This disjuncture between what urgently needs to be accomplished in the heartland and the terribly small pool of politicians capable of doing it now illustrates one of the main tragedies of Democrats’ strategic and generational blunders. Over the last fifteen years, Democrats did not make the requisite investments in young aspiring public servants who could conceivably replace aging red-state Democrats who either lost their seats or retired from politics, leaving a stark and unacceptable gap in regional representation. While Sand and other insurgents are fighting valiantly to gain a foothold in Trump country, they are, through no fault of their own, a few election cycles behind where national Democrats need to be to transform the balance of sectional power in the party system.

Democrats fixated on countering Trump in the daily arena—on landing blows that conceivably demoralize MAGA—may not have much bandwidth to contemplate a grand strategy. But as Democrats size up the expected 2028 field, it would behoove them to think unsparingly in terms of political geography. Most regard the next presidential election as the party’s best chance to roll back the “MAGA realignment” and vanquish Trump’s heir, whoever he (or she) may be. But any victory in 2028—even one that surpasses expectations—will be but the first step toward building a durable majority coalition. And until Democrats have a proven strategy to match what Obama, for a brief but exhilarating moment, achieved a generation ago, the troubles that have vexed them since may long outlive Trump’s final exit from the stage.

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The specter of welfare fraud haunts the Democrats once again. Concerns about abuse of generous government programs helped power the rise of Reagan-era conservatism in the 1970s and ’80s. Could the criminal abuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in welfare costs in Minnesota, which has brought down the state’s Democratic governor, Tim Walz, be leveraged to similar broad political effect today?

Recall that Democrats’ standard approach to warnings about welfare fraud during the rise of Ronald Reagan was to minimize the problem and characterize the issue as exaggerated and racially charged. Democrats had fallen into a trap: They responded to a serious issue by standing by their ideological priors to placate their base.

Until Bill Clinton and his invocation of Americans who “work hard and play by the rules” finally allowed the Democrats to escape from the Republicans’ fraud trap, the Democrats spent years in the political wilderness.

Early signs suggest the Democrats are embarking on a similar trajectory.

Before announcing that he would no longer seek re-election, Walz admitted that some fraud happened on his watch but deflected, saying that Republicans are appealing to racism, xenophobia, and the ever-reliable bogeyman of “white supremacy.”

Walz’s departure indicates this is no more effective than Democrats’ response to welfare fraud accusations in the Reagan era. Americans detest people getting something for nothing—the very essence of fraud. As the party that typically wants more and more generous social programs, Democrats have a special responsibility to ensure that these programs are clean as a whistle and reward only those who “work hard and play by the rules.”

Democrats are also the party that positions itself as the friend of immigrants and immigration. As such, they have a special responsibility to ensure that those admitted to the country assimilate, follow the rules and contribute—rather than take—from the community. The Center for Immigration Studies estimates that 81 percent of Somali-headed families in Minnesota use at least one welfare program (vs. 21 percent of native-headed households).

Therefore, the first response of Democrats to instances like the Minnesota fraud findings should not be to criticize the other side for attacking them and wave the bloody shirt of racism against President Trump but rather to stress the seriousness of the problem and how it will not be tolerated. The rules apply to everyone, including Somali immigrants, and will be rigorously enforced. No more will we tolerate lax oversight of a community because of worries about accusations of racism or the withholding of political support.

As noted in the New York Times article on the Minnesota fraud:

In 2020, Minnesota Department of Education officials who administered the program became overwhelmed by the number of applicants seeking to register new feeding sites and began raising questions about the plausibility of some invoices.

Feeding Our Future, the nonprofit group that was the largest provider in the pandemic program, responded with a warning. In an email, the group told the state agency that failing to promptly approve new applicants from “minority-owned businesses” would result in a lawsuit featuring accusations of racism that would be “sprawled across the news.”…

Kayseh Magan, a Somali American who formerly worked as a fraud investigator for the Minnesota attorney general’s office, said elected officials in the state—and particularly those who were part of the state’s Democratic-led administration—were reluctant to take more assertive action in response to allegations in the Somali community.

“There is a perception that forcefully tackling this issue might cause political backlash among the Somali community, which is a core voting bloc” for Democrats, said Mr. Magan, who is among the few prominent figures in the Somali community to speak about the fraud...

Ahmed Samatar, a professor at Macalester College who is a leading expert in Somali studies, said a reckoning over the fraud and its consequences for Minnesota was overdue.

“American society and the denizens of the state of Minnesota have been extremely good to Somalis,” said Dr. Samatar, who is Somali American.

Dr. Samatar said that Somali refugees who came to the United States after their country’s civil war were raised in a culture in which stealing from the country’s dysfunctional and corrupt government was widespread.

Minnesota, he said, proved susceptible to rampant fraud because it is “so tolerant, so open and so geared toward keeping an eye on the weak.”

This dynamic is as clear as it is unacceptable. It must be stopped unequivocally and without apology to Democratic-supporting groups and those whose cry “racism” at the drop of a hat.

Failing that, Democrats are likely to once again find themselves in a Republican fraud trap. As more examples of fraud come to light, both in Minnesota and elsewhere (up to $233 billion to $521 billion annually across the country according to GAO), Democrats will find themselves continually backfooted by Republican accusations of negligence if not outright complicity. Continued invocations of racism and xenophobia by Democrats will serve only to reinforce the impression that Democrats are primarily motivated by identitarian concerns and their ideological commitment to large government programs, rather than effective governance—which, of course, is exactly what Republicans want.

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The latter point is crucial, fraud is merely a part, albeit a glaring part, of the overall problem of poor Democratic governance. As I have previously remarked, you’ve got to run the government well and get things done voters care about if you want voters to stick with you. And that’s where Democrats have been running into problems—big problems. Commonly, ideological commitments and interest group ties have outweighed the simple, inescapable realities of good governance. Voters just don’t care about the supposedly noble motivations that lead Democrats to ignore these realities.

Think about it. If you wanted safe streets and public order would your first impulse be to turn to…the Democrats? Or if you wanted a secure, actually-enforced border? How about efficient, effective delivery of public services? Or rapid completion of public projects and infrastructure? Or nonideological public administration?

I don’t think on any of these fronts the reaction of a typical voter would be: “The Democrats! Of course, I need Democrats to do all these things because they’re so good at them!” On the contrary, it seems like over time Democrats—both nationally and in many localities where they dominate (like Minneapolis!)—have become worse and worse at delivering in these areas. That’s a huge problem because why should voters take Democratic plans to improve their lives seriously if Democrats persist in running government so poorly? Democratic governance is their advertising and that advertising makes the Democratic “product” look pretty bad. So voters don’t want to buy it.

Alicia Nieves, a former Texas Democratic operative, puts her finger on a key dynamic crippling Democrats’ governance practices in an excellent Compact article, “Why the Democratic Party Can’t Moderate.” She points out:

[P]rogressive groups have come to increasingly influence and shape the direction of Democratic governance at the local and state level in ways that are now more visible to voters than any action by the party in Washington.

The Democratic Party cannot moderate as long as progressive groups are able to exert control over the state and local party, pushing out moderates like Shawn Thierry [Texas]and Jason Pizzo [Florida]. Progressive policies have led to rising crime, uncontrolled spending, recurring fiscal shortfalls, higher taxes, and visible mismanagement. These outcomes do not remain siloed in one particular Democratic-controlled city or state. Instead, they are synthesized in the minds of voters as reflections of Democratic governance as a whole.

Exactly. The only way around the dreadful image of Democratic governance is through: by directly attacking the dynamic that leads to dysfunctional governance outcomes. However, the revealed preference of most Democrats these days is not to do this. Here are several ways Democrats are avoiding dealing with this problem.

First, Democrats are inclined to dismiss the potential political effects of the fraud and general governance issue because of their recent success in wielding affordability concerns against Republicans. The theory is that voters are so dissatisfied with their personal financial situations and the failure of the Trump administration to improve them that people won’t really care about a problem like program fraud. But people who are financially pressed are especially likely to be incensed at others gaming the system. This is a longstanding feature of American politics, and there is little reason to believe it doesn’t apply today.

Second, Democrats hope to turn the tables on Republicans by bringing up examples like the Mississippi welfare fraud scandal and others, in which more Republicans than Democrats were implicated. That won’t change the fact that voters identify Democrats as the party of welfare programs and react negatively to abuse on Democrats’ watch. “What about…?” is unlikely to work in this case.

Third, Democrats deflect this concern by pointing to the recent success of unapologetic progressives like Zohran Mamdani, who wants to protect immigrants and expand government programs. But his success, and the political dynamic it is sparking, will make it more difficult to deal with the fraud issue.

Mamdani in his victory speech when elected mayor of New York City declared that “there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” While acknowledging in his inauguration speech that mediocrity has become accepted in the public sector and excellence is the exception, he denounced “those who insist that the era of big government is over.” He promised to “govern as a democratic socialist” and to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

One can scarcely imagine an approach less likely to resonate with the average American, particularly the average working-class American, who tends to be suspicious of big government, hostile to collectivism and completely OK with rugged individualism. It’s unlikely to convince such voters that Democrats will eliminate fraud in government programs and ensure that only those who work hard and play by the rules benefit.

Of course, not everyone in the Democratic Party shares Mamdani’s views or those of other progressives. But the influence of their political strain has only grown during the first year of Trump’s new term. This will act as a check on any Democrat hoping to escape the fraud trap, because attempting to do so will probably generate the same accusations of racism and xenophobia from progressives that are currently directed toward Republicans.

Finally and overarchingly, Democrats are riding the sugar high of the thermostatic reactions against Trump administration excesses. Why worry about fraud and incompetent governance when you can mobilize the masses against Trump and his outrages? Nowhere is this more obvious than in Minnesota itself where the ICE raids and accompanying street resistance, including two tragic deaths, has displaced the massive fraud scandal as a central concern for Democrats. ICE out! We’ll worry about fraud later.

These are all excuses and egregiously short-sighted political assessments, mixed with the Democrats’ now-standard cowardly approach to coalition management. The fact remains that the fraud scandal in Minnesota should serve as a wake-up call for Democrats that the issue and its association with wide-ranging Democratic governance failures could hurt their prospects for years to come. But the internal dynamics of their party may not allow the Democrats to mount an effective response. There is no Clinton-like figure out there so far to lead the party in the right direction. That could be a problem—a big problem.

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Editor’s note: this is an extended version of an article that originally appeared in The New York Times on January 7, 2026.

The late, great journalist Mark Shields often propounded the idea that politics should be about looking for converts rather than punishing heretics. He explained:

The heretics look and say, these people who don’t believe, be damned with them, let them go…We don’t need them. The converts are those who are always kind of reaching out to the other side to bring people in, to enlarge, say, look, we agree on more than we disagree.

I find myself reflecting on Shields’ words a lot these days. America’s increasingly tribal politics have created warped incentivizes. Many people today would rather lock arms with their own side against the “bad people” on the other side than look for ways to reach across the divide and build consensus. And as these divisions intensify, so too does the cost of engaging—or even just occasionally agreeing—with the other side, which outweighs the potential payoff of trying instead to connect with them. This has the effect of purifying each tribe: “The people with the bad values and beliefs are on the other side, and that’s where they should stay because we don’t want them.”

Though both major political parties are susceptible to engaging in purity politics, Americans see Democrats as especially guilty of it. Consider what has happened in recent years to some of their members who stepped out of line or veered too far to the middle: activist groups threatened primary challenges, even against members who represented battleground or Republican-leaning states or districts.

Moreover, according the party’s own research, swing voters see them as too “preachy” and “judgmental,” too “out of touch” and “elitist,” and too “woke.” In essence, voters think Democrats care more about in-group signaling than meeting people where they are; about keeping their coalition morally pure than trying to include others who may not think exactly the way their base does on every issue.

Such perceptions won’t help Democrats broaden their appeal in swing or Republican-leaning areas, which will make it harder for them to build a durable majority coalition. And one person who is keenly aware of this is the most popular Democratic politician in America today: Barack Obama. Over the past weekend, the former president sat for a wide-ranging podcast interview. While he focused much of his time discussing President Trump and his policies, he made a point of talking to his side, too:

I do think that culturally…we did turn off—I think there was a certain way of talking about issues for Democrats where we sounded like scolds. I have said this before, there was a virtue signaling that made it seem as if ordinary folks, if they did not say things in exactly the right way, or meet this litmus test, that they were being chastised, pushed away.

The truth is, most of us, all of us are complicated, and we have blind spots, and sometimes we say dumb stuff. If you want to create an environment that is welcoming and makes people feel, okay, there’s room for me here, then the message and the story we tell has to be, all right, none of us are perfect, all of us count, we all have good in us that we can tap into, we can all learn from each other. And I think that is something we need to recover.

This is far from the first time Obama has expressed sentiments like this. For years, he has highlighted what he sees as illiberal currents in his party, admonishing Democrats to reflect on whether they are truly committed to producing change in the world—which requires winning over converts—or simply care about signaling to their peers that they’re on the “right side” of the issue of the day and chastising people who are not.

Some of Obama’s earliest such remarks came in 2015 when he was still president. Speaking at a town hall with college students in Iowa, he identified what was at the time a growing trend of intellectual intolerance on campuses across the country—and made clear that he disagreed with it:

It’s not just…folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal, and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues, who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side, and that’s a problem too. I’ve heard some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women.

I gotta tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view. I think you should be able to—anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with ‘em. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, “You can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say.” That’s not the way we learn either.

The following year, he delivered the Howard University commencement address, which occurred during the height of a contentious presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Obama told the young people in attendance:

Democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.

In his 2017 farewell address, he warned his supporters of the dangers of living in ideological silos, devoid of inconvenient or even offensive opinions:

For too many of us, it’s become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship, or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions… And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it’s true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

By 2019, it was clear that many of these illiberal behaviors had only grown worse, and Obama became more willing to directly call them out. At an event hosted by his foundation, he took aim at “call-out culture” and “wokeness”:

This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically “woke” and all that stuff—you should get over that quickly. The world is messy; there are ambiguities…And I think that one danger I see among young people, particularly on college campuses…there is this sense sometimes of, “The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that’s enough.” Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right, or used the wrong [pronoun]…then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because, “Man, did you see how woke I was? I called you out…” That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not gonna get that far.

Even after Democrats successfully ousted Trump in 2020, Obama continued warning that they could alienate many Americans with these continued behaviors. In 2022, he said on to the hugely popular Pod Save America podcast that Democrats risked being labeled the party of “buzzkills” by making people think they had to walk on eggshells and never say the wrong thing. And in his 2024 DNC speech, he told his party:

Our politics has become so polarized these days that all of us, across the political spectrum, seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or don’t bother to vote at all…

To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices; and that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidate, we need to listen to their concerns — and maybe learn something in the process.

Words that seem quite prescient in retrospect.

Why document Obama’s past statements in such detail? Because it behooves both parties to see how clear and consistent he has been about these things. Though many Republicans have no love for him, hearing these remarks serves as a reminder that plenty of Democrats don’t endorse unreasonable behaviors on their side—and this could perhaps encourage Republicans to more forcefully call them out when they see them on theirs, too.

For the Democrats, tough love can be hard to receive, but it’s often more tolerable when it comes from someone whom people trust and know has their interests at heart. But beyond the moral reasons for heeding Obama’s advice are practical ones, too: their party is still struggling to outrun some of these negative perceptions. And if they hope to build a durable coalition capable of consistently winning national elections, they have no choice but to put aside their judgments of people who don’t see the world exactly the way they do—to stop hunting heretics, and instead begin the hard work of looking for converts.

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Gavin Newsom has had quite a year. While other Democratic politicians have struggled to adapt their pitches to the chaos of the second Trump term, Newsom has responded with a blizzard of activity that has dramatically raised his national profile. He has also benefited from copious, if not fawning, media coverage including a splashy recent profile in Vogue magazine. At first mired in single digits with a scrum of other potential candidates, all trailing Kamala Harris by wide margins, he is now close to her or narrowly ahead in three commonly-cited poll averages (RCP, 270toWin, Race to the WH) of primary voter support for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.

His rising strength is reflected in the betting markets. On Predictit, he is far and away the betting favorite for the Democratic nomination, way ahead of AOC (second) and Harris (third). And in the market on the 2028 general election, he is way ahead of other Democrats and very close to the leading Republican candidate, JD Vance.

What accounts for this remarkable pro-Newson surge? How did this liberal California Democrat win over so many in the wake of Democrats’ comprehensive defeat running…a liberal California Democrat?

The answer lies in Newsom’s ability to be everything to, well not everybody, but to every Democrat. Think of Gavin Newsom not as an ordinary politician but as a message delivery system—and a very effective one. Of course, all politicians to varying degrees are about that. But Newsom stands out as letting absolutely nothing stand in the way—principles, beliefs, prior positions—of delivering the message he deems most politically effective at any given time to any given audience.

That has enabled him to appeal to diverse Democratic audiences. Think of Resistance liberals, whose white-hot anger at Trump is sure to galvanize a large share of Democratic primary voters. Right after Trump was elected, he declared a special session of the California legislature. His office said:

The special session responds to the public statements and proposals put forward by President-elect Trump and his advisors, and actions taken during his first term in office—an agenda that could erode essential freedoms and individual rights, including women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights…A special session allows for expedited action that will best protect California and its values from attacks.

A steady stream of denunciations of Trump administration actions from Newsom and the governor’s office has followed, especially during last June’s protests against ICE actions in Los Angeles which resulted in the deployment of the National Guard to quell riots. Newsom did not hold back his rhetoric or legal actions against this development. He said:

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes—the moment we’ve feared has arrived.

He’s taking a wrecking ball to our Founding Fathers’ historic project.

And so on. Indeed, Newsom has not missed a chance to aggressively oppose everything the Trump administration has done, whether it directly involved California or not. He has traveled to Brazil to oppose Trump climate policies at COP30 and, most recently, showed up at the World Economic Forum in Davos to denounce the administration. And, in reply to Republican attempts to gerrymander congressional seats in Texas and elsewhere, he has happily torn up nonpartisan districting in California to heavily gerrymander the state for the Democrats.

In essence, he has appointed himself “Chairman of the anti-Trump Resistance” and has the receipts to back it up. In Resistance liberal land, they love this just as Newsom intends.

But for those who are concerned that the party must moderate some, not just resist Trump, Newsom also has something to offer. He started a podcast, This is Gavin Newsom, where his guests have include the late Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, Ben Shapiro, and other conservative luminaries. This has provided him with the opportunity to venture some cautious signals that he is more moderate than the average Democrat. In his podcast with Kirk he agreed that trans-identified biological boys in girls’ sports seemed “unfair” to him. And in his very recent podcast with Shapiro, he allowed as how calling ICE activities “state-sponsored terrorism” was not justified and that it was probably not a good idea to call for abolishing ICE. Related, in a conversation with Ezra Klein, he admitted that “we [the Democrats] failed on the border, we have to own that.” He has also, in his actions as California governor, responded to moderates’ concerns about homeless encampments by supporting moves to dismantle them and to concerns about crime with tougher rhetoric and additional tools to prosecute felonies and drug dealers.

On the other hand, he has not been shy about reassuring progressives and “woke” Democrats that he is still one of them. For example, after his podcast statement on trans-identifying boys in girls’ sports, he almost immediately walked back any implication that he would back a policy to change that situation in California or any other place. In his interview with Klein, he was quick to point out and defend the provision of health insurance to illegal immigrants as part of his overall commitment to universal health care. He refused to support a crime ballot measure, the prosecutor-backed Proposition 36, which reversed many provisions of the earlier Proposition 47 by classifying more crimes as felonies and increasing penalties (it passed overwhelmingly anyway). And of course, there’s his overall record as governor of California where he has supported one progressive priority after another through his budgets and willingness to sign the many bills sent to him by his ultra-progressive legislature.

For economic populists, besides the usual railing against economic inequality, Newsom has been staunch in his support of higher minimum wages and more generous social welfare programs. He also succeeded in getting the earned income tax credit doubled. He is tight with California labor unions, including the umbrella California Federation of Labor, the SEIU and the California Teachers Association, all of whom enthusiastically support Newsom.

Even the emerging “abundance” faction of the Democrats gets the love from Newsom. He has supported key YIMBY initiatives, especially SB 79, which has eliminated long-standing regulatory obstacles to rapid development of dense housing near transit stations. More generally, he has ostentatiously declared himself to be in favor of an “abundance agenda” and has said that the seminal text of the abundance movement, Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, “is one of the most important books Democrats can read.”

But in parallel with all these other commitments, Newsom is—and always has been—close to Big Tech. He has opposed, as his friends in that world demanded, the proposed wealth tax on California billionaires and has generally favored a light touch on regulating the industry, most recently on AI.

Finally for realpolitik Democrats, who don’t align with—or even care about—any of these factions but just want to beat Trump by any means necessary, Newsom also wants to be their guy. He is more than willing to fight dirty; no tactic can be ruled if it is potentially effective. His social media team out of the Governor’s office is now notorious for aping Trump’s unhinged, all-caps style and dishing out scatological insults. To paraphrase Michelle Obama, “when they go low, we go lower.” That warms the heart of super-partisan Democrats and consultants who just want to win.

Gavin Newsom: friend of the Resistance, friend of moderates, friend of progressives, friend of populists, friend of labor, friend of abundance-istas, special chum of Big Tech, and hard man for the Democratic Party. He’s got it all, twinned with a preternatural ability to deliver a perfectly calibrated message to each of these audiences when called upon to do so.

The Gavin Newsom message delivery system brings to mind another famed Democratic message delivery system, Bill Clinton, who was similarly adept at reaching a wide range of audiences and similarly willing to bend his principles to do so. Indeed, Newsom, in a fascinating profile of him written by Helen Lewis for The Atlantic (“The Front-Runner”), professes his admiration for Clinton and is clearly seeking to model much of his political strategy on The Man from Hope.

So is Newsom the next Bill Clinton? I don’t think so. Despite the similarities there is one huge and hugely important difference: Clinton’s message delivery magic was in the service ultimately of reaching a general election audience not just a Democratic audience. But the latter is what Newsom is optimized for—he’s never had to run in competitive elections and beat Republicans. Indeed, he has actually underperformed relative to the Democratic lean of his own state, according to the rigorous “Deciding to Win” report. Not only that, his 10-point underperformance relative to expectations is the worst of 21 potential candidates tested by the report.

But he does know how to appeal to Democratic audiences—which is increasingly what more and more Democrats seem optimized for. This is great for individual candidates in blue states, cities and districts but terrible for the Democratic Party as a whole. It encourages the party—and candidates like Newsom—to think their basic positions don’t have to change much and that their past record, commitments and statements don’t matter.

This is wrong and egregiously so, as the “Deciding to Win” report definitively shows (and common sense would suggest). Your record and past positions matter a lot once you have to speak to a general electorate that doesn’t share the baseline assumptions of partisan Democrats. Just ask Kamala Harris.

Could the Democrats be about to make the same mistake with Gavin Newsom? Absolutely, because he knows just how to talk to them. That’s too bad because what they really need is a Bill Clinton and Gavin Newsom, well, he’s no Bill Clinton.

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Among leading democracies, there are only seven world leaders today with net positive job approval ratings, according to Morning Consult’s latest tracker: Narendra Modi of India (+41 percent), Andrej Babiš of the Czech Republic (+29 percent), Lee Jae-myung of South Korea (+27 percent), Javier Milei of Argentina (+20 percent), Sanae Takaichi of Japan (+23 percent), Mark Carney of Canada (+18 percent), and Guy Parmelin of Switzerland (+21 percent).

That’s it. Call these countries the new P-7, those with leaders who enjoy popular support from most of their voters.

In contrast, 16 other leaders included in the study all receive net negative job approval from their citizens, ranging from –11 percent to –62 percent, with Keir Starmer of the UK, Friedrich Merz of Germany, and Emmanuel Macron of France bringing up the rear of the pack. Mexicans are split on Claudia Sheinbaum, while President Trump lands in the middle of the table at -14 percent net job approval, clustered around Italy’s Giorgia Meloni (-11 percent), Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (-12 percent), and Poland’s Donald Tusk (-12 percent).

Popularity is not an exact science, but if you look at the new P-7’s most successful leaders, they seem to be of two types: (1) strong or pragmatic heads of state like Lee, Takaichi, Carney, and Parmelin, or (2) populist-nationalist outsiders like Modi, Babiš, and Milei. This is not a left-right dimension. Takaichi is a social conservative who just won a resounding election victory with tough stands on immigration and defending Japanese interests against China, and Carney is a social liberal who has forcefully pushed back against Trump’s various attacks on his country and others. Modi is a religious nationalist, and Milei is a libertarian populist. Lee, Parmelin, and Babiš are viewed as steady hands or common-sense reformers. Most importantly, all seven of these leaders match the national mood in their respective countries, Modi perhaps most of all.

In contrast, the world’s more unpopular leaders all suffer from similar problems that do not match the prevailing sentiments of their national populations.

Interestingly, this is not an ideological development. Conservative leaders like Trump and Merz, center-left leaders like Starmer and Pedro Sánchez of Spain, and centrist ones like Macron and Jonas Gahr Støre of Norway are all suffering poor job approval. Likewise, high or low ratings for national leaders do not correspond precisely with more objective economic conditions in respective countries. For example, Mark Carney is doing very well in Canada with a less than one percent projected GDP increase for 2026, according to The Economist, as is Narendra Modi in India with a smashing 6.2 percent projected growth increase for the year. Argentina still faces many economic challenges, including a projected 19 percent inflation rate for this year; however, Javier Milei is performing quite well with voters. Meanwhile, in the United States, overall growth remains positive, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average just crossed a record-high 50,000-point threshold, yet Trump is struggling with American voters.

A few themes do emerge to help explain why so many leaders are unpopular. One, they are polarizing figures who split electorates. Trump and Turkey’s Erdoğan most come to mind here; their supporters really like them, and their opponents fervently despise them. Two, they are viewed by voters as either corrupt (like South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa) or as out-of-touch elites failing to bring about changes that many voters demanded (like Macron or Starmer). Three, they are not addressing voters’ long-standing economic concerns that have been mounting for decades. Although overall economic measurements do not match exactly with job approval ratings, some of the worst-performing leaders in this research are overseeing years of seemingly stagnant national growth—for example, the UK, Germany, and France are all projected to see meager one percent increases in growth this year, and their respective leaders are at the bottom of the heap in terms of job approval.

There is no grand theory of world leader success. But the winners of the popularity contest highlighted here do show that the right combination of appealing personal traits, competence in government, and a commitment to protecting national interests internally or against external threats can convince voters that a leader is doing a good job. Alternatively, an unappealing personality, overall incompetence or aloofness, and efforts to undermine internal cohesion or national interests will get you serious demerits from voters.

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Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released new population estimates. While the big takeaway from the data was that country’s population growth has slowed since last year—largely a result of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown—it also reinforced another trend we saw in the first part of the decade: several blue states are experiencing a major slowdown in growth while key red states are leading the pack. And if these projections materialize in the 2030 census, they could have a profound effect on American politics in the next decade and beyond.

According to three different analyses of this data, here is the list of states that are likely to gain or lose U.S. House seats (and, correspondingly, electoral votes or EVs) as well as their net seat gain:

• Blue states: California (-4), Illinois (-1), Minnesota (-1), New York (-2), Oregon (-1), Rhode Island (-1)

• Swing states: Arizona (+1), Georgia (+1), North Carolina (+1), Pennsylvania (-1), Wisconsin (-1)

• Red states: Florida (+3), Idaho (+1), Texas (+4), Utah (+1)

This picture is striking: Democratic states are projected to lose ten EVs while Republican states are expected to gain nine. The biggest blows to Democrats are the four-seat loss in California and two-seat loss in New York. But just as concerning for them are the seven seats that Republicans are projected to gain in Florida and Texas alone.1 These changes would dramatically shift the equation for both parties when it comes to winning the Electoral College, giving Republicans a stronger advantage and closing off crucial paths to 270 EVs—the number needed to win the presidency—that existed for Democrats in each of the last three elections (and likely will in 2028 as well).

Throughout the Trump era, as the Electoral College has grown ever-more competitive, analysts and strategists have spent substantial time debating the most efficient ways for each party to win it. Both parties are typically expected to bank the states that lean heavily their way. After that, they must find a route through the remaining swing states to reach 270.

Such was the case in 2024. Kamala Harris’s “bankable”2 states amounted to more EVs (226) than Trump’s (219), giving her more possible paths to 270. Most observers zeroed in on two in particular. The first was the Sun Belt—specifically, North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. This region was younger, more diverse, and had experienced significant growth. Though these states had moved left in recent years, Democrats had not been competitive in most of them for very long. The other went through three Rust Belt states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. This region was older, less racially diverse, and growing less quickly. These states had a long history of voting reliably Democratic—so much so that they have been dubbed the party’s “Blue Wall.” But they had also become more competitive for Republicans in recent years, with Trump winning all three in 2016.

The most optimal scenario for Harris was to sweep both regions. However, she could have won the presidency by carrying only one or the other: the Blue Wall alone would have gotten her to 270 exactly, while the Sun Belt alone would have gotten her to 275. Meanwhile, Trump was starting with a lower floor and therefore needed a larger slate of states to win. Carrying only the Sun Belt would have left him just shy of winning with 268 EVs, while adding only the Rust Belt states kept him at 263. (Of course, he ultimately swept both.)

But this balance now appears set to change. If the 2030 census data largely reflects this year’s estimates, neither the Blue Wall route nor the Sun Belt route would, by themselves, be enough to lift future Democratic nominees to the presidency. For starters, Democrats would no longer hold an advantage over Republicans in their respective tallies of “bankable” EVs. Whereas Democrats currently enjoy a seven-EV edge (226 to Republicans’ 219), this would flip. They would lose nine bankable EVs while Republicans would gain the same number, leaving the latter with an 11-point margin among these states (228 to Democrats’ 217).

Then, accounting for a one-seat loss in both Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Blue Wall alone would now only get Democrats to 259 EVs. They would need to add at least one of Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina to get to 270. (Nevada, which has a longer history of breaking for Democrats in presidential elections than the other three, only adds six EVs, leaving the party still short at 265.)

The Sun Belt offers more promise, as three of the four states there are projected to gain one seat each, leaving the region with ten more EVs (52) than the Blue Wall (42). However, even if the Democratic nominee swept the Sun Belt, it would only put them at 269—resulting in an Electoral College tie. They would thus still need to pick up at least one Blue Wall state to win.

Another way of thinking about all this: if we apply these changes retroactively to the 2024 map, Harris would have lost ten additional EVs, going from 226 to 216, while Trump would have gained ten, jumping from 312 to 322. The New York Times produced a handy graphic3 showing a whopping 66 different paths to 270 that would have worked for Harris in 2024 but that would no longer produce a win for Democrats if the census projections hold:

Of course, in recent history, both parties have been competitive in the Electoral College, and it’s not inconceivable that future Democratic candidates could sweep all of the swing states and secure a healthy 311 EVs. But this brings us to another complication for Team Blue: since 2016, each of the seven states comprising these two regions has voted to the right of the nation at least once. Four of them—Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia—did so in all three elections.

In other words, Democrats’ path to 270 EVs will require them to win big in territory that has been less friendly for them than for Republicans in recent elections. As DDHQ analyst Geoffrey Skelley notes, the new map would shift the tipping-point state—or the state that delivers the 270th EV—even further to the right. In 2024, that was Pennsylvania, which leaned 1.7 points more Republican than the nation. Now, it is set to be Georgia, which voted 2.1 points to the right.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom for Democrats just yet. First, things change quickly in politics. And while the Electoral College right now is tilted against the them, there is no guarantee this will persist indefinitely. One reason is that political parties have survival instincts. If the Democratic Party in its current form begins struggling to win presidential elections, it will be forced to evolve. It’s also possible that, say, some Hispanic voters in the Sun Belt who swung against the party in 2024 could come back to them in the face of Trump’s aggressive deportation program, making them more consistently competitive in that region. If this puts states like Florida and Texas back on the map for them, suddenly everything changes.

Second, these early projections may simply not pan out. We saw this after 2020. One forecast, for example, showed Alabama and Minnesota losing one seat each while Arizona gained one seat—none of which ultimately happened. It also overestimated the number of seats that Texas and Florida would gain. Much of this also hinges on the administration of the actual census count, an imperfect process that sometimes overcounts or undercounts different states’ populations. Additionally, as GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini has pointed out:

Blue states and cities campaign to get people counted, and with more people packed into dense urban environments, [they] have more ways to get people counted without talking to them directly. Conservatives, meanwhile, have often raised suspicion about the entire enterprise.

Ruffini also noted that it’s unclear what the impact of Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration could be. His administration is trying to change how the Census Bureau collects data—namely, to base apportionment only on each state’s citizen population rather than the population as a whole, as it is currently done. It’s likely that this move will face legal challenges before 2030. But more importantly, among the states with the largest unauthorized populations (and that are notably cooperating with the administration on immigration enforcement) are the two that stand to see the biggest EV gains based on current projections: Florida and Texas.

It remains to be seen how everything shakes out. But this year’s projections are not all that different from last year’s, and population trends are increasingly telling a clear story: blue states are suffering from out-migration, and red states are reaping the rewards. Moreover, many of the people leaving deep-blue states like California are not only Republicans, but they are often moving to the very states Democrats don’t want to see shifting further right, such as Arizona, Florida, Nevada, and Texas.

The upshot is this: starting in 2032, the road to the presidency is likely going to run through Republican turf until further notice. And Democrats will need a plan—quickly—for what to do about it.

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As someone whose social circles largely lean liberal, both in life and online, I have witnessed many visceral reactions to the scenes coming out of Minneapolis during the past several weeks, especially the two shootings of American citizens. In addition to general expressions of outrage over the shootings and ICE’s behavior, one recurring question has been: how can anyone defend this?

The more American life has become politically and culturally fragmented, the less people seem to understand their fellow citizens who see the world differently than they do. This has created “perception gaps” that lead people to misunderstand others’ motivations (and sometimes even ascribe views to them that they may not possess). It leaves many of us wondering how others could possibly believe what they believe.

When groups in conflict fail to accurately assess the other side’s motivations, or why they believe the things they do, it inevitably prolongs—and often exacerbates—hostilities. It can also make it harder for each side to achieve their goals by limiting the reach of their appeal and boosting resentments on the other side.

At the moment, the Americans seeking major social and political reforms tend to be liberal-leaning. Among other things, they want a more humane immigration system and a check on what they see as creeping authoritarianism in the federal government. So, while much of this piece applies to people of all ideological persuasions, I want to focus on why it is prudent for liberals, specifically, to try to better understand their opponents—and why it may be difficult for them to realize their desired reforms if they don’t.

How Liberals View Their Opponents

In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election, there was a noticeable divergence in how left-of-center Americans reacted to Trump’s win. A large faction—perhaps a majority—fell into what one might call “resist” mode. “This is not normal” became a popular rallying cry. Those in this faction viewed Trump as an intellectually weak and morally reprehensible figure, and they believed his penchant for norm-breaking represented a threat to the republic—perceptions that weren’t without merit.

Many of these liberals also began to subscribe to a particular story about the election and what it meant: half of the country had voted for a man who was clearly a bad person and an ignoramus, judgments that by extension applied to those voters as well. Some members of this faction even seemed to believe that this, by definition, meant they were morally and intellectually superior to the other half of the country, a sentiment perhaps best encapsulated by the self-assured lawn signs that adorn the lawns of many liberal homes.

This narrative obfuscated their ability to see a bigger, more nuanced picture of both that election and their fellow citizens. For starters, not even half of all voters that year supported Trump, let alone half of the country. Moreover, people who supported Trump that year had differing reasons for doing so, just as those who voted for Clinton did.

These liberals also tend to hold highly pessimistic views of Americans who don’t share their values or beliefs. A 2019 survey from the group More In Common found that partisans had stronger perception gaps, which cause people to see their opponents as more extreme than they many actually are. This in turn engenders more hostile views about those on the other side. As the survey reported, “People with large perception gaps are more likely to describe their opponents as hateful, ignorant, and bigoted.”1

Perception gaps have not only made it more difficult for partisans to understand or see the complexity in their adversaries, but many become convinced that they don’t have anything to learn from the other side at all—and that it’s perhaps not even worth engaging with them. Recent polling has suggested that these tendencies are stronger among Democrats, who are substantially less likely than Republicans to say they have a close friend in the other party and more likely to say it is acceptable to cut off contact with a family member who has opposing political views.

It’s not hard to see how this growing estrangement has led many people in this faction to look at Trump’s presidency and exasperatedly, bewilderedly ask, “How could anyone believe such terrible things, or support such terrible people?”

It’s important to note that not all liberals went this route after 2016. Another faction took a moment to reflect on how they missed the major political currents in the country that led to Trump’s win. And though many were concerned by his behavior and his plans for the presidency, they also believed it was necessary for Democrats to figure out how their brand had become so toxic that people were willing to support a candidate like him—and why millions of people who had voted for a polar-opposite president in Obama, including many working-class Americans (long the backbone of the party), had suddenly abandoned them.

People in this faction to were more likely to diversify their information and media diets, engage more regularly with people of different ideological backgrounds, and try to better understand where the disconnects were. The idea was that to defeat Trump four years later, they needed to first grasp why and whom the party lost the first time. These liberals were more likely to see their opponents accurately—what their real motivations and beliefs were, and how they were not a monolith.

Why It’s Important to See One’s Opponents Clearly

Some partisans will inevitably wonder whether getting a more complete picture of their adversaries is really necessary. The people on “that side” have taken actions that led to the chaos and breakdown we’re seeing today. Who cares why they did it? It’s not our job to figure that out. If anything, a reasonable response is to call them out for what they have wrought on the rest of society.

But there are myriad reasons why developing a greater understanding of the other “side” benefits everyone. The first is simply that when people do this they become less likely to see their opponents as monoliths or full of extremists. In fact, most people do not hold extreme views. Perhaps just as importantly, most genuinely believe that their views are morally good. Why else would they hold them? These realizations can help begin the process of breaking down the barriers to talking across divides.

It’s also hard for people to make genuine progress on issues they care about if they can’t even comprehend why their opponents believe what they do or treat their views and concerns as legitimate. Consider the campaign to make same-sex marriage legal, which moved to the forefront of the culture wars as I came of age. I remember well the arguments on both sides of the debate as well as what people thought their opponents believed. Many liberals presumed conservatives who opposed gay marriage simply did so out of bigotry, making it easier to dismiss them altogether.

It’s no doubt true that some gay marriage opponents simply loathed the idea of same-sex relations. However, plenty more had objections that deserved to be addressed, including the fear that they might be coerced by law to support something that violated their conscience. As it became clear that some of these concerns were quite reasonable, gay marriage advocates addressed them head-on. Over time, a majority of even Republicans came to support legalizing it2, and legal protections for same-sex couples were enshrined into law. Getting to this point, though, not only required activists to understand their opponents but to meet them where they were, treat their views as valid, and engage them in good faith.

There’s a lesson here for liberals who want to see movement in their direction on other issues, such as the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement. Rather than dismissing people who support these policies as irredeemably racist, xenophobic, or authoritarian, another option is to try to understand what is driving their concerns. Yes, some may simply harbor prejudice toward anyone who is not a white American. But many also have sincere reservations that liberals can engage with—and may even be open to changing their mind if they are treated with dignity and respect.

Finally, as the side that currently finds itself out of political power and struggling somewhat to regain it, it can’t hurt liberals to take a beat and reflect on whether their current tactics are working. The public is starting to turn on ICE, but that development has not translated into renewed support for the Democratic Party on immigration. The party’s loss of trust on these issues during the Biden years will take time to earn back, and it could ultimately inhibit their ability to win big this fall.

For Democrats to win power and check Trump on these issues, they will need to expand their coalition to compete in districts and states across the country where the electorates are more conservative than their median base voter. And this necessarily means they will need support from at least some people who voted for Trump.

How to Understand Liberals’ Opponents

Over the past couple of weeks, I came across two very insightful takes on how the left can think about its opponents on the right. The first comes courtesy of former Obama administration official Van Jones. While he has long operated as a partisan Democrat, Jones has also lamented how divided the country has become, how estranged many Americans are from one another, and how this has destabilized our politics.

One culprit he has identified is the completely different frameworks that partisans use to process the world. Because liberals and conservatives live in different information ecosystems, are surrounded by different peer groups, and often hold different values, trying to understand people on the other “side” can be like trying to learn a new language.

This is how Americans watching the same videos from Minneapolis can come to completely different conclusions about what happened and who was at fault. So, Jones outlined for each side what, exactly, the other believes. Here’s how he explained to liberals what conservatives are seeing and why it makes sense to them:

• ICE is law enforcement, and disobeying law enforcement is a serious violation—full stop.

• These arrests are needed for public safety. They are sweeping up violent criminals and drug traffickers. The U.S. must crack down on them or risk becoming like Europe, which is struggling with Islamic extremism.

• These protests aren’t acts of conscience but rather acts of obstruction. People physically interfering with law enforcement risk escalating danger for the agents on the scene.

• Lawsuits against ICE are a decision to choose chaos over order. When Democratic officeholders align with protesters, they undermine security to score political points.

Whether or not liberals agree, these views stem from strong moral convictions many conservatives hold about right and wrong. And if liberals hope to open discussions with people on the right and try to persuade them to withdraw their support for Trump’s actions in Minnesota, it might be useful to start by acknowledging the validity of these concerns.3

Another way for liberals to understand their opponents is by looking at who, exactly, voted for Trump. Over the past weekend, More In Common published a new report that did just that. Titled “Beyond MAGA,” it looked at four different factions that made up Trump’s 2024 coalition. The banner takeaway from it: less than one-third of these voters are MAGA hardliners.

The other three factions of his coalition included:

• Anti-woke conservatives (21 percent), who are relatively well-off, politically engaged, and deeply frustrated by the perceived takeover of schools, culture, and institutions by the progressive left.

• Mainline Republicans (30 percent), middle-of-the-road conservatives who play by the rules and expect others to do the same. Most do not follow politics closely. For them, Trump’s strength is that he advances familiar conservative priorities: securing the border, keeping the economy strong, and preserving a sense of cultural stability.

• Reluctant Right (20 percent), the most ambivalent cohort of Trump’s coalition and the group most likely to have voted for Trump transactionally: the businessman who was “less bad” than the alternative. Many feel disconnected from national politics and believe politicians (including sometimes Republicans) do not share their priorities.

This means that fully seven-in-ten 2024 Trump voters are not committed supporters, and some don’t even like him that much. They have been willing to stick with him for a host of reasons, including because they have viewed the alternatives as worse (at least up to this point). But these are the kinds of people who could be gettable if liberals are willing to engage, and there are clear openings for agreement.

For instance, in contrast to the first two groups, a plurality of Mainline Republicans and a majority of the Reluctant Right agree with the statement, “The government should not deport anyone without a hearing before a judge so that people who have a genuine right to be in the US don’t get mistakenly deported.” And roughly the same shares of Trump voters (71 percent) and voters overall (72 percent) reported having a “very warm feeling” toward legal immigrants.

It really may not be as hard as liberals believe to find points of connection with people who supported Trump. But it starts with showing a willingness to engage in good faith, meet people where the are, and look for areas of compromise. The north star for those who want to dilute Trump’s power should be doing what it takes to win converts.

What Won’t Work to Persuade One’s Opponents

The late journalist Mark Shields once memorably said, “In politics, as in religion, you can either spend your time hunting for heretics or looking for converts.” Assuming liberals are more keen on winning new converts than not, here are three things that are unlikely to be effective:

• Shaming or condescending. “It’s okay to admit you were wrong. You can come to the virtuous, enlightened side anytime you like.” Many liberals have shared similar sentiments this week. But though their frustration is understandable, lines like this are dripping contempt and condescension and will cause people to tune out before a conversation can even start.

• Name-calling. “If you support ICE, you are a fascist.” Those who are honest with themselves would probably acknowledge that taunting, mocking, and leveling epithets at their opponents is one of the least effective ways to get them to listen, let alone change their mind.

• Using the wrong moral framework. This one may be less obvious, but people are more willing to hear counterarguments to their views if they are made using their preferred moral framework. While liberals are accustomed to arguments for immigration that center on human rights and diversity, these are less likely to resonate with conservatives, who often favor order and rules. If liberals want to break through to them, re-sharing social media posts that present the liberal argument for a specific policy or viewpoint is unlikely to work. Instead, they would do well to learn how to code-switch.

It’s hard in the heat of the moment of conflict to put oneself in the shoes of one’s adversary—or to even desire to do so. It can feel pointless or aggravating. More tempting is a view that says, “Now isn’t the time to look for reconciliation with the other side; it’s time to stand up and be counted.” Humans also have strong incentives to form solidarity and community with those who already think like them. The warm embrace of like-minded people, especially when one feels under siege by those in another tribe, is a comforting thought.

At the same time, political polarization has made American politics feel totally ineffective, creating periods of either intractable stalemates or total domination by one party over the other. Neither is serving the republic well. At some point, the exhausted majority, including many liberals and conservatives, must decide to try another way for the sake of the country.

One place to start is by simply seeing our political adversaries for who they are, not who cable news, social media algorithms, or even our peers tell us they are. This of course won’t mean an end to all of our divisions. But it may at least offer an opening for our political tribes to engage with each other once more and begin the process of fixing what ails our great nation.

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It’s time to face reality: two-party politics has failed. Americans want more and better choices than the ones Republicans and Democrats currently provide. Whether the two-party system stands or gets radically transformed in the future remains an open question, however.

As reported by Gallup, a record-high percentage of American adults at the end of 2025 self-identified as political independents, 45 percent, including majorities of both millennials and Generation Z plus a plurality of Generation X. In comparison, less than three in ten Americans self-identified as either a Republican or a Democrat in 2025, respectively.

People who cling to a fading notion of partisanship often assert that political independence is a youthful phase and that people’s party affinities deepen with age. While this may have been true in the past, Gallup’s numbers challenge the notion going forward—political independence tops partisan identification among every age cohort born from 1965 on.

The recent increase in independent identification is partly attributable to younger generations of Americans (millennials and Generation X) continuing to identify as independents at relatively high rates as they have gotten older. In contrast, older generations of Americans have been less likely to identify as independents over time. Generation Z, like previous generations before them when they were young, identify disproportionately as political independents.

As political independence increases steadily, the desire for a major third party has also climbed. Sixty-two percent of American adults in 2025 said that a new party is needed compared to only three in ten adults who feel that the “Republican and Democratic parties do an adequate job of representing the American people.” In contrast, 56 percent of U.S. adults felt the two parties adequately represented Americans in 2003.

The desire for a third party makes sense when you examine the sharp declines in public favorability towards both Republicans and Democrats. In the early 2000s, more than six in ten Americans held a favorable opinion of both parties at some point. By the end of 2025, only four in ten felt favorably about Republicans, and only 37 percent felt that way about Democrats.

If you look at the trajectories of the last three presidential terms, Trump-Biden-Trump, you can see how disdain for partisanship plays out. In each instance, the incumbent party’s president lost overall public support rapidly as independent supporters sided with the opposition against the incumbent, leading to frequent switches in party control of both the Congress and the presidency. Trump and Republicans came into office in 2017 with unified control of government only to lose the House in 2018 and both the presidency and Senate after the 2020 election. Biden came into office in 2021 with unified control of Congress and promptly lost the House in 2022, and then Democrats lost both the presidency and the Senate in 2024. Trump again started his second term with unified control of government yet looks on track to at least lose the House in 2026.

Who knows what will happen in 2028 at the end of the Trump era? Stability seems unlikely, however.

Neither party seems capable of building nor sustaining durable national majorities. Republican and Democratic leaders and their policy programs are widely disliked by both political opponents and many independents, as they each pursue purely partisan objectives when in power that further polarize and alienate the electorate. Since voters are essentially forced to choose between two failed parties every cycle, the system chugs along with Americans growing increasingly cynical about government and politics.

But if voters were offered an option beyond the two major parties, many Americans would gladly take it up.

Given the amount of money and anger floating around politics today, it’s genuinely puzzling why a viable third party has not started. Of course, with the stranglehold of Republicans and Democrats over election laws and regulations, third parties face enormous hurdles. Likewise, except for Libertarians, third parties tend to organize around mercurial figures like Ross Perot, RFK Jr., or Elon Musk rather than around a concrete set of ideas or a coalition of voting blocs united behind a common purpose pursued over time.

Perhaps the viability of third parties will change in the not-too-distant future. For example, one could imagine a mostly moderate, pro-business, anti-deficit, anti-culture war party emerging to appeal to disgruntled centrists. Perhaps an old-school conservative party might rise to attract ex-Republicans who dislike Trump’s transformations of the GOP, or perhaps a truly social-democratic, pro-labor party could bring together working-class ex-Democrats who disagree with the party’s cultural and economic turn. One could also imagine two fiery left- or right-populist parties cropping up separately (or combined) to challenge the two-party duopoly.

For any of these third parties to have a chance, however, America first needs a strong independent movement dedicated to changing state and federal laws that enshrine two-party politics. As Jesse Wegman and Lee Drutman argue, this means a switch from winner-take-all to proportional representation in national legislative elections, with the creation of multimember districts and the elimination of partisan gerrymandering (and U.S. Senate and presidential elections remaining constitutionally the same).

Proportional representation models vary by country, but basically all of them create a situation where political parties get legislative seats based on the percentage of the vote they receive in a given election, thus encouraging and rewarding multiparty competition. In the American House of Representatives under this scenario, you could hypothetically vote for the populist-right Patriot Party, the centrist Liberal Party, the enviro Greens, or the Christian conservative Family Party, and each would get seats if they meet certain thresholds of support. The House, in turn, would be required to form some coalition of parties to enact laws to send to their Senate counterparts and eventually the president, who would also have to work with more than his own party and the traditional opposition to get things done.

It’s not a perfect system and potentially creates its own problems with stability. But a politics based on proportional representation would certainly meet the American public where they are in terms of their own often complicated views and the limited party choices they get every election cycle.

Change of this nature would require sitting or future members of both parties voting to reform state and federal election laws to allow for proportional representation in the House. America does not need to become a parliamentary democracy to do this or go through elaborate constitutional amendments. Reformers just need some willpower and solid organization to overcome partisan strong-arming and resistance to change.

At some point, a dedicated group of independents and like-minded members of the two parties need to put their heads together, with serious philanthropic backing, to develop a real movement to create proportional representation in America—with policy designs, model legislation, federal and state lobbying efforts, and public communications and voter outreach.

This is a tall order, for sure, but not impossible given the rising public hatred of existing partisanship and politicians themselves seeing the writing on the wall about dysfunctional government. The U.S. Constitution does not mandate a two-party system. Legislative elections can be changed to support multiple parties if Americans and a new generation of leaders choose to do so. Any takers?

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As the Trump administration has ramped up ICE activity across the country, many Americans, especially Democrats, have grown outraged by the perception that ICE is acting with impunity and fearful that events like those playing out in Minneapolis illustrate the country’s slow decline into authoritarianism—feelings that are not without merit. Democrats believe Trump is no longer moored by legal constraints and just does whatever he wants, and they are desperate to check his power and exercise some oversight of the agency.

At this moment, when emotions are running high and America feels like a tinderbox, it’s crucial that the party think clearly about the long term and for reformers to be strategic about how they address these issues. Unfortunately, some are instead embracing the short-term catharsis of a familiar slogan: “Abolish ICE.”

Most high-profile party figures agreed not long ago that this idea was a political loser. In the 2018 midterms, few actual Democratic politicians endorsed the policy, making it hard for Republicans to attack them with it. In the 2020 presidential primary, just two candidates supported abolishing the agency: Bill de Blasio and Bernie Sanders. But as ICE has become more present in daily American life and its tactics have grown more controversial, the slogan is creeping back into the liberal mainstream—promoted by politicians and pundits alike.

It’s not just the party elite, either. One tracking poll shows that the share of Americans who support the idea has increased considerably since the start of 2025 and currently sits at an eight-year high of 42 percent. Some of this has been driven by independents (going from 25 percent in January to 42 percent today), but the lion’s share of the shifting support has been from Democrats, going from 40 percent the day Trump was inaugurated to a massive 69 percent today.

Of course, it is possible that this poll overstates actual support for abolishing the agency. Some people, for example, could be engaging in what pollsters call expressive response, a phenomenon wherein people give survey responses that are more partisan than their actual beliefs. For many, politics is at least in part about fitting in, and one’s endorsement of slogans like this could be due to peer effects. Some of this could also be thermostatic public opinion: voters react (often negatively) to changes in government policy like a thermostat, shifting against whichever party is in power and their agenda.

Still, it’s a good bet that this mantra will not fall out of favor among many liberals anytime soon, that more of them will in fact become receptive to it, and that Republicans will use it to paint Democrats once again as extremists in the lead-up to this year’s midterm election. Though Democrats are well positioned to win back power this November for a number of reasons, the proliferation of this sentiment in the party—even just among its base voters—could introduce an unnecessary risk to its effort to win back power and offer a real check on Trump.

The most obvious risk would be in districts and states that broke for Trump in 2024 and that Democrats need to win to flip the House and especially Senate. Take Ohio, where former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown is running again and where Trump won by 11 points last time. A December poll found that a majority (53 percent) of voters in the state “think mass deportations of undocumented immigrants in Ohio are a good thing for the state.”

Facing headwinds in this election, Republicans won’t hesitate to use the activist slogan as a cudgel against Brown or other candidates running in red states like Mary Peltola in Alaska or James Talarico in Texas. It could be more effective than in the past given the increasingly national nature of American elections. Even if candidates in these places try to run relatively moderate campaigns, it may be harder to outrun the party nationally and the criticisms or perceptions people have of it. And without capturing at least two of these Trump-leaning states, Democrats have no shot at winning back the Senate this year—which means, among other things, that they would have no power to check Trump’s judicial or cabinet appointments.

None of this, however, means that Democrats can’t or shouldn’t talk about ICE and its actions. It is true that Americans’ disapproval of ICE is climbing: according to polling from YouGov, the agency’s net approval was +16 as of last February, but today it sits at -13, with fully 40 percent of Americans now “strongly disapproving” of their job performance.

A November poll, also from YouGov, found that a majority of Americans (52 percent), including 60 percent of independents, say ICE’s tactics are “too forceful” (compared to just 11 percent who argue they are not forceful enough and 26 percent who said they are “about right”). Even larger majorities believe ICE uses “unnecessary force” against U.S. citizens, immigrants authorized to live in the U.S., and even immigrants who are not authorized to live here.

At the same time, the public still doesn’t totally trust Democrats to deal with the immigration issue. In a survey from the center-left think tank Third Way last fall, voters in swing districts trusted Republicans more than Democrats to handle border security by a margin of 56 percent to 36 percent. This is likely due to lingering frustrations over President Biden’s border policies. Americans aren’t totally against deportations, either: a majority—including 55 percent of Latinos—say that at least some immigrants living in the country illegally should be deported.

Rather than embracing “abolition,” historically a polarizing and risky idea, Democrats would be wise to focus instead on “accountability.” Immigration enforcement is a necessary job, but both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have gone way beyond their mandates. Accountability for them might include greater House oversight of Todd Lyons and Kristi Noem and more stringent conditions on the department’s budget. It may even entail expelling the worst (or least qualified) of the agency’s new hires. If Trump’s 2024 victory and second term have shown anything, it is that Americans right now are very open to holding government institutions more accountable. No agency or department is above scrutiny, including ICE and DHS.

However, promising more oversight must go hand-in-hand with providing a real plan to address Americans’ continued concerns about immigration enforcement. Part of the reason many of them likely don’t take Democrats seriously on these issues is because they don’t believe the party is serious about enforcing immigration laws—a perception that didn’t come from nowhere. There is an opening here for the party to gain back lost ground and rein in the excesses of Trump’s deportation policies. But they must be smart about how they approach it, and not succumb to their emotions or the trendy rallying cries of the moment.

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Editor’s note: a separate version of this piece was first published on UnHerd.

Democrats have often looked to European political parties for examples of what to do to win (Denmark’s Social Democrats) or what not to do to avoid losing (Britain’s Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn). The most instructive example, however, might be a place they rarely think of as fertile ground for the left: Ireland.

That examination reveals that a broad-based majority left ultimately rests on winning large shares of the working class. And even in Ireland, doing that requires an unapologetic expression of nationalism coupled with more centrist stances on immigration and gender.

It’s true that Ireland was a conservative, Catholic country for most of the 20th century. That began to change, however, in the last thirty years. Rapid economic growth helped secularize the nation, while a deep economic collapse after the 2008 financial crisis delegitimized the traditional center-right ruling parties.

Those parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, dominated Irish politics since independence in 1922. Either they or their predecessors won every election between 1922 and 2011, usually winning 70 to 80 percent combined.

The center-left Labour Party was a perennial also-ran, never breaking 20 percent of the vote after 1922. It often served a minor role in government but never came close to winning.

This conservative century came crashing down in 2011, the first election after the 2008 crash. Fianna Fáil, the party in power during the collapse and which had never won less than 39 percent of the vote since 1932, shrunk to a mere 17 percent. It remains a shadow of its former self, winning no more than 24 percent in the three elections since.

The traditional opposition parties initially gained support. Fine Gael won 36 percent, one of its highest shares ever, while Labour’s 19 percent was its second-largest percentage ever. These parties gained a combined 18 percent over the 2007 election and gained a whopping 42 seats in the 166-seat Dáil Éireann, the all-powerful lower chamber.

One could be forgiven if one overlooked the significant gains by independents and openly left-wing parties in light of this result. The leftist grouping gained 15 seats, while independents doubled their vote share and picked up nine seats to bring their total to 14. So long as the Fine Gael-Labour government presided over a robust recovery, though, it seemed that the torch of center-right Irish politics had simply changed hands.

That did not happen. Instead, the 2016 vote demonstrated a fundamental shift away from traditional parties of any type. Fine Gael, which held the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) position, dropped 11 points and 25 seats.

That was bad, but it paled in comparison to the shellacking Labour took. It lost 30 of its 37 seats, its vote share dropping by nearly two-thirds. The winners were a collection of mostly left-wing parties that had never governed and thus had no blame for the past. These parties gained 18 seats, while independents picked up an additional five.

One could sense this change was coming if one looked at the results of an historic referendum the year before. Catholic Ireland voted overwhelmingly to legalize same-sex marriage in 2015. Not only did the proposal pass with over 62 percent—it also lost in only one constituency. Urban and rural Ireland agreed that it was time for marriage equality.

Ireland’s secular drift was confirmed in 2018 when a constitutional amendment legalizing abortion was approved. It was again an overwhelming victory, as two-thirds of voters approved the change. Again, only one rural Dáil constituency voted no.

The Irish thus appear to be moving to the left, yet the center-right continues to hold on to power. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael patched up the often-vitriolic century-long feud and have governed in tandem since 2016. Why has the left failed to take advantage?

They have failed to win because they remain unable to fully exploit the anti-establishment feelings among those who are angriest about the state of Irish affairs. The left-wing parties, especially the leading party, Sinn Féin, remain unwilling to adapt to the views of their prospective voters.

Most Americans think of Northern Irish terrorists when they hear the name “Sinn Féin.” It’s true that the current political party once was the political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army, and some observers wonder if the party has ever fully evolved from its violent past.

But for the Irish, the name means something much deeper. The original Sinn Féin was the entity that fought the British during the War of Independence and which secured the country’s freedom. Sinn Féin thus possesses an inherent claim on interpreting Irish national identity that still resonates widely.

Thus, in retrospect, it is only natural that when the parties that guided Ireland since independence lost trust, it was Sinn Féin that picked up the lion’s share of the disaffected.

The party has skyrocketed in support since 2007, gaining 12 points and 35 seats. It is now the largest non-governmental party in the Dáil and the only one that can reasonably form a government in a future vote.

The story, however, is not one of an inexorable rise. As recently as June 2022, it looked as if Sinn Féin would easily win the next election and usher in a left-wing government. It was polling around 36 percent and had been consistently over 30 percent for over a year. It seemed that the question was not if Sinn Féin would govern, but with whom.

Sinn Féin’s voter base, however, was always less doctrinaire than its leadership. A March 2022 poll by Ireland’s leading pollster, Red C, found that Sinn Féin’s voters did not share many of its leftist policies. Many preferred lower taxes rather than more spending and even backed higher defense spending. The pollster concluded, “[I]t appears Sinn Féin’s support is largely from those who feel they haven’t benefitted from the establishment, who no longer trust it, and who believe the political system as it stands is broken.”

In other words, Sinn Féin was channeling the same trends that had birthed Donald Trump and other right-wing populist movements into a left-wing populist party.

This is also clear from a demographic analysis of its voters. The March 2022 Red C poll found that Sinn Féin did worst among managers and professionals and best with semi-/unskilled workers, casual workers, and the unemployed. A June 2022 Red C poll taken at Sinn Féin’s height found the party with 29 percent support among the upper half of the socio-economic strata (known as ABC1 in Irish statistical parlance) but 44 percent among the C2DE lower half.

That heavy working-class tilt is very similar to the modern Republican Party’s.

Sinn Féin started to lose support as immigration became a hot-button issue. Riots and protests about the large number of refugees and immigrants started in late 2022 and have never really gone away. Like many left-infused parties, Sinn Féin failed to unequivocally take the protestors’ side, allowing other political forces to peel away their support.

The polls again show this clearly. Sinn Féin steadily drops in Red C polls throughout 2023, while independents and two conservative minor parties, Aontu and Independent Ireland, rise. By January 2024, Sinn Féin was down to 16 percent support with ABC1s and 36 percent with C2DEs.

2024 was even worse for the party as conservative cultural attitudes resurfaced. The impetus for this was two constitutional amendments proposed by the government. One would expand the definition of family to include stable non-marital arrangements, while the other would replace references to mothers’ responsibilities for family life and care with gender-neutral language.

Most Irish observers thought the amendments would easily pass, building on the experiences with same-sex marriage and abortion. Indeed, the final Red C poll suggested both measures would pass, although not as resoundingly as the previous ones.

They were instead decisively rejected. Sixty-eight percent voted against the marriage amendment, and a massive 74 percent opposed removing references to mothers from the constitution. Only one urban Dáil constituency—Dun Laoghaire, one of the most highly educated constituencies in the country—backed the marriage amendment. None backed removing mothers from the Constitution.

This shocking rejection reverberated throughout Irish politics. The Taoiseach who had proposed them, Leo Varadkar, resigned, although the government coalition survived. But Sinn Féin’s support took the biggest hit.

That’s likely because it had only reluctantly supported the measures because they did not go far enough for the party’s tastes. A party that depended on working-class votes instead took an extreme position, likely backed by the very highly educated voters who were least likely to back them.

What happened next should have surprised no one. The February 2024 Red C poll found Sinn Féin with 28 percent overall, 24 percent with ABC1s, and 36 percent with C2DEs. By June it was down to 20 percent overall, 16 percent with ABC1s, and a mere 26 percent with C2DEs.

That’s bad enough news for Féin and the Irish left. Even worse is where these former Sinn Féin voters migrated to.

The final pre-election Red C poll had Sinn Féin exactly where it was in June, both overall and among both demographics. Other left-leaning parties received 21 percent among ABC1s in the February and final polls; lost Sinn Féin support among the well-off went to the government parties, which rose from 39 to 45 percent. Lost C2DE voters, however, went to both the government parties, which rose from 29 to 36 percent between February and late November, and to independents and right-leaning populists, which rose from 19 to 23 percent.

The shift towards right populists has only exacerbated since the election. The most recent Red C poll, from late last year, showed Sinn Féin receiving 17 percent with ABC1s and 29 percent with C2DEs. Populists now get 31 percent of the C2DE vote, surpassing Sinn Féin for the first time in years.

Democrats looking at these data should easily see parallels to their dilemma. If they don’t take strong stances on immigration, they are simply not credible in a national election among a large segment of working-class voters when matched against a right-populist party that does.

They cannot make up those lost votes among the elites. Those voters favor the status quo, which compromises the left’s ability to engage in redistributive economics. They also prefer a light touch to social and cultural issues—progressive but not too much so. The type of cultural message that resonates with those voters—like being pro-trans but anti-trans women in girls’ sports—would strike left progressives as too timid, just as the progressive gender language in Ireland made Sinn Féin’s leftist leadership queasy.

Sinn Féin ironically followed a similar course to the group they likely despise most, the English. The British Conservative Party effectively did that after winning in 2019, winning with former Labour working-class votes but governing like classic upper-class Tories. They now face electoral oblivion because those voters found someone who they can trust, the Reform Party’s Nigel Farage. Ireland’s proportional representation system keeps Sinn Féin from following suit, but they remain as far away from genuine power as their hated enemies.

A party or a movement that seeks to gain power cannot afford to disregard their prospective voters’ opinions. Sinn Féin tried to do that and lost the winnable election. Whether Democrats follow suit in 2028 is the key question in American politics today.

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As we enter 2026, the United States is preparing to celebrate its 250th year of existence. Such a milestone presents an opportunity for Americans to take stock of how far the country has come and debate where it should go next. Much of that determination rests on how they feel about the state of things today. A large majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe the U.S. is on the wrong track, and have believed so since at least the start of the Great Recession.

Correspondingly, there also exists a long-festering animus toward the country’s institutions and elites. Such attitudes are not unique to America, but they have been a dominant political force here over the past 50 years—and are thus worth examining more closely as the country sets its course for the next 50.

Gallup has tracked public confidence in major U.S. institutions since 1979. Back then, nearly half (48 percent) of Americans, including 49 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of Democrats, had either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in nine key institutions, including banks, organized labor, the church, and Congress. Today, that figure is just 28 percent overall and an even lower 26 percent among Democrats, an all-time low (and matched by Republicans in both 2022 and 2023).

Trust in the federal government, specifically, is also at historic lows. Pew Research has analyzed survey data since 1958 gauging public trust in “the government in Washington to do what is right just about always/most of the time.” During the Johnson administration, that figure hit a high of 77 percent. Since then, however, that sentiment has declined considerably, with only occasional periods of renewed trust (such as right after the September 11 attacks). Today, a paltry 17 percent of Americans have faith in Washington to regularly do the right thing.

Following George W. Bush’s presidency, which included the widely unpopular Iraq war and a global stock market crash, public trust cratered to just 15 percent, spurring a new era of populism in America. The first prominent politician to tap into Americans’ cynicism around this time was Barack Obama, who fashioned himself as an outsider running against Washington but who also offered voters hope that a better future with more responsive institutions was possible. By the end of his time in office, though, many Americans remained cynical, leading to the election of a more pugilistic president with a penchant for picking fights with elites and experts and set on laying waste to several of the country’s institutions altogether.

Americans’ desire for substantial change has persisted since Donald Trump’s first election and was evident once again in the lead-up to—and aftermath of—the 2024 election. Early that year, Ipsos released the results of a survey examining populist, anti-elitist, and nativist attitudes across 28 different countries on four continents, including the U.S. In the aggregate, 57 percent of respondents agreed that their country was broken, but that number was 65 percent among Americans, ranking ninth among all countries in the survey.1

In the same survey, Americans also reported believing:

• The country’s economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful (66 percent);

• Traditional parties and politicians don’t care about people like me (65 percent);

• The U.S. needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful (66 percent);

• Experts in this country don’t understand the lives of people like me (63 percent);

• The political and economic elite don’t care about hard-working people (69 percent);

• The main divide in our society is between ordinary citizens and the political and economic elite (60 percent); and

• The “elites” in America tend to make decisions based on their own interests and the needs of the rest of the people don’t matter (54 percent).

Notably, the U.S. stood apart from other countries on some of these questions, including agreeing at a far lower rate than the overall survey results with statements like “to fix our country, we need a strong leader willing to break the rules” (40 percent agreed in the U.S., the seventh-lowest among all countries, versus 48 percent overall), and “the U.S. would be stronger if we stopped immigration (33 percent in the U.S. versus 43 percent overall). Still, the survey results point to a similar trend: anti-elite and anti-establishment sentiments are strong in the U.S. and many other countries.

Post-election data also highlighted these frustrations. The AP VoteCast survey asked voters how much change they wanted to see in “how the country is run.” A whopping 83 percent supported either “substantial change” or “complete and total upheaval”—and they broke for Trump by 15 points.

More recently, YouGov asked a battery of questions related to anti-establishment attitudes, and there was broad, bipartisan frustration with not just the government but elites and institutions more broadly.

Both Democrats and Republicans are skeptical that elites possess knowledge or enlightenment that makes them better suited to make decisions for the country than regular people could. While many experts and members of the educated class will no doubt dispute this idea, it’s worth asking why so many people, across political party, age, race, gender, economic class, and several other dimensions, have come to believe these things.

Back in May, I wrote that the political party that understands this moment and more adequately addresses voters’ frustrations is likely to have success in coming era of American politics. Though Democrats briefly signaled that they wanted to be that party under Barack Obama, Republicans picked up the mantle in 2016 and have yet to surrender it. Moreover, as Democrats have increasingly become the party of affluent, college-educated, cosmopolitan voters, they may have to work harder to convince everyday Americans they care about their interests and don’t reflexively defend the status quo or establishment.

At the same time, frustration with the establishment does not mean voters are willing to lean fully into left-wing cultural politics or populism, either. As the recent report Deciding to Win noted:

…anti-establishment rhetoric can’t fix problems caused by unpopular position-taking. Democratic candidates who criticize the establishment but run on unpopular positions on issues that are important to voters, like immigration or public safety, tend to be poor electoral performers. Ultimately, anti-establishment rhetoric is a complement to a popular policy agenda, not a substitute for it.

And:

…frustrations with the status quo are not the same as a desire for socialism. While many voters feel frustrated with the status quo and their economic situation, large majorities of Americans continue to have positive views of capitalism, and large majorities continue to have negative views of socialism.

As the party that has long believed the government can help improve people’s lives, many Democrats abhor Trump’s moves to remake (and often gut) federal agencies and departments. It would be unreasonable to suggest the party replicate his tactics to find success. But a full-throated defense of elites, experts, and institutions—or a descent into the left-wing equivalent of Trumpism—in this moment is not politically prudent either. Whether it’s their candidates this year or their eventual 2028 nominee, Democrats would do well to address these anti-establishment frustrations by offering a vision for reforming America’s institutions and restoring trust in them.

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Editor’s note: The Liberal Patriot is pleased to welcome Henry Olsen as a regular contributor to the newsletter, publishing twice a month starting in the new year. Henry’s knowledge of political history, geography, elections, and ideological trends in the U.S. and Europe is unmatched, and we hope you learn as much from his columns as we do. Welcome Henry!

Most establishment Democrats believe the party’s 2028 nominee needs to tack to the center, especially on social issues, to maximize the party’s chance to win. That looks sound on paper, but implementing it faces a serious obstacle: the party’s primary voters.

Democratic Party primary voters are significantly more progressive and left-leaning than they were even in 2008. That fact was driven home in two high-profile mayoral races, in New York City and Seattle, where little-known progressive challengers easily defeated well-known establishment figures.

Those contests are especially significant when one applies those results to the method by which Democrats traditionally apportion convention delegates. Extrapolating from those victories—and other high-profile progressive versus establishment races—suggests there’s a real chance the party could nominate someone who leans into, not away from, the hard progressive zeitgeist.

The Democrats’ intra-party shift leftward remains underappreciated. In the 2008 primaries, Hillary Clinton won the primaries in large part because only 47 percent of the voters were liberal; her margin came from the 53 percent who said they were moderate or conservative. (She lost the nomination because Barack Obama crushed her in the party’s progressive-dominated caucuses, winning 13 of 14 from Super Tuesday on.)

By 2020, however, a supermajority of Democratic primary voters were either liberal or very liberal. Exit polls for most states showed between 60 and 65 percent of voters were some variety of liberal. Only a few Southern states, such as Oklahoma and Mississippi, were as centrist in their ideological orientation as the national party had been just twelve years earlier.

Democrats since then have moved even further to the left. Gallup polling has found that the share of Democrats calling themselves either liberal or very liberal hit record highs in 2024. This is particularly the case on social issues. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats said they are liberal on social issues in 2024, up dramatically from 48 percent just ten years earlier.

Neither Zohran Mamdani’s nor Seattle’s Katie Wilson’s victories should have surprised people in light of these facts. New York and Seattle are overwhelmingly Democratic. Given that, one should expect that an angry party that wants nothing more than for its officeholders to fight against Trump would choose the most radical alternative.

Democrats might say that this sentiment can be confined to the party’s left wing and that a candidate more acceptable to swing voters can emerge during a national contest. But the party’s delegate allocation rules suggest that view is naïve.

Both Democrats and Republicans rely on mass voter primaries to select their nominees, but they sharply differ on how those elections filter into selecting convention delegates. The GOP relies on winner-take-all elections in either states or congressional districts (CDs), greatly enhancing the power of a candidate who can win a plurality of votes. It also allocates delegates evenly to congressional districts, usually giving three delegates to each district regardless of how strongly Republican that region is.

Democrats, on the other hand, use a proportional representation system to select their delegates. Any candidate that receives 15 percent of the vote in either a state or a congressional district gets a proportional share of the delegates. The party also requires each state to apportion delegates to sub-state levels if it has more than one congressional district. All but two states allocated delegates by congressional district (two—Texas and New Jersey—use state legislative seats) in 2020, and the 15 percent rule applies to delegates selected in those places too.

Crucially, Democrats also allocate their delegates across these unevenly, favoring seats that give large shares of their votes to Democrats. This practice varies among states, but in many states it is quite significant. In 2024 in Mamdani’s New York, for example, Manhattan’s 12th CD sent 11 delegates to the convention, while a rural upstate heavily GOP seat, the 24th CD, sent only four. Winning the support of voters like those in the 12th would give a candidate a huge leg up on someone whose appeal was more pronounced among swing voters who likely do not participate in the party primaries.

The New York City mayoral primary is instructive in how this could operate. Mamdani beat former governor Andrew Cuomo after ranked-choice voting in nine of the eleven congressional districts wholly contained within the city. I took each candidate’s share of the vote and applied that to the number of delegates each seat selected for the 2024 convention. That gave Mamdani a 46-33 delegate lead.

This result arose largely because of the party’s allocation rules. Lower Manhattan’s 10th CD sent ten delegates to the convention, and Mamdani’s 68 percent would have given him seven of those ten. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s 60 percent wins in NY 5 and 15 mattered much less because they only sent seven and five delegates, respectively. Furthermore, the allocation formula meant that he would have won only seven of those 12; Mamdani’s 40 percent was enough to prevent Cuomo from running up the delegate score.

Mamdani, therefore, would have won more delegates than Cuomo from these three seats despite losing two of them by large margins.

Wilson’s victory in Seattle is harder to map because it occurred in a non-partisan general election where Republicans and independents could also vote. Her opponent, incumbent Bruce Harrell, won the city’s more affluent precincts, which are also where Donald Trump did best. Wilson won the city’s deepest blue areas, which suggests she would have easily won a partisan primary.

Replicating Wilson’s showing would likely give a progressive a significant delegate haul. Most of Seattle is in the 7th CD, which sends ultra-progressive Pramila Jayapal to Congress. It selected ten delegates to the 2024 convention, three more than any other. Many of Wilson’s best precincts are in the neighboring 9th, which selected seven delegates.

A moderate might do better in rural Washington’s 4th CD or noted Blue Dog Democrat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez’s 3rd. But those two seats selected only eight delegates combined. That person cannot hope to win the nomination without running close to even in the progressive heartland—and that means tacking to the left to prevent losing in a landslide.

This pattern repeats itself in most states. Minnesota, for example, tilts its delegates toward seats in Minneapolis and St. Paul, while Oregon’s rewards Portland and its suburbs. Colorado sends more delegates from Denver and Boulder seats than it does from rural or suburban regions. In state after state, the places where white, socially progressive voters dominate send more delegates to the convention than do the more moderate areas Democrats need in order to win the general election.

The only counterweight to that are black-dominated seats. Black voters support Democrats in similarly overwhelming numbers to white college progressives, and their congressional districts receive similar overweighting in delegate allocation. Pennsylvania, for example, rewards Philadelphia’s 2nd and 3rd CDs. Southern state Democratic primaries tend to be dominated by black voters, and CDs with black majorities in Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina dominate their states’ delegate allocations the way Seattle and New York City rule theirs.

But this raises a separate question for party moderates: which of their putative favorites can garner supermajority support from this wing of the party base? Joe Biden’s support with black voters saved his faltering candidacy and provided the foundation for his victory. Someone trying to replicate his path to turn back this cycle’s version of Bernie Sanders will need to rely on those voters, too.

Does anyone think Josh Shapiro or Andy Beshear currently has that appeal?

The Democratic nomination contest will start in earnest in 2027. Things might change, but the party’s swift drift to the left is now many years old. That means the wins of progressives like Mamdani and Wilson are more likely to be harbingers than exceptions. How Democrats navigate this torturous path will likely have a significant, if not decisive, impact on their ability to win back the White House.

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