You know that sensation when you bump into someone while you’re out walking the dogs or getting a coffee and instantly regretting engaging in any conversation that goes beyond, “Lots of snow this year, huh?” or “The Ravens really blew it but feeling good about the O’s.” If you do make the mistake of moving beyond cursory small talk, you’ll invariably discover that the person you thought was somewhat sane has completely bonkers views about “Zionism” or “fascism” or “the liberal media” or the “Epstein class”—insert whatever issue or conspiracy you can imagine from any ideological perspective.

“Okay, pal, I have to run; great to say hi to your pup!”

It’s not clear when it happened—maybe starting around 2015 or earlier with the rise of smart phones, Twitter, and high-speed internet access everywhere—but politics is now the absolute worst conversation topic in modern America. People are mostly fine if you stick to life and other diversions when talking. But the minute the topic turns to politics, people across the partisan spectrum become totally insufferable. It’s all mindless tribal signaling. There’s no nuance. People don’t listen. And they certainly don’t aim to learn something new through a political discussion with another person. Often these days, your political interlocutor will regurgitate questionable “content” absorbed from social media or some agit-prop podcast or influencer. They hate Trump; they love Trump. They think Democrats are sell-outs; they think Republicans are authoritarians. Israel committed “genocide”; Palestinians are all terrorists. Progressives are a bunch of wokesters; conservatives are a bunch of white nationalists. The media is biased to the left; the media is reactionary. On and on.

“Please, God, make it stop.”

If you feel this way when talking about politics either in person or online, you’re not alone. The Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation just released a new study in their ongoing series examining Americans’ views about news, politics, and the media. Strikingly, as seen in the chart below, the researchers found that in 2025 nearly six in ten U.S. adults admitted that they had stopped talking with someone else about political or election news because of something that person said. In 2019, less than half of adults felt this way about political and election-related discussions.

This finding and others like it are typically interpreted as highlighting the increasing intolerance of different opinions among certain types of people—e.g., those with very firm beliefs about politics and elected officials, the college educated, or older people set in their ways. Intolerance is not the entire story here but it certainly plays some part in why people don’t want to talk about politics. In the Pew-Knight research, for instance, more than three quarters of self-identified liberal Democrats reported having stopped talking to someone because of something they said about politics compared to just over half of self-identified conservative Republicans. Likewise, about two-thirds of college graduates said they have stopped talking to someone because of politics versus 46 percent of those with a high school education or less. And more than six in ten people ages 65 or older said that they have cut someone off over politics compared to just over half of those under age 30.

In separate qualitative work, researchers asked people to explain why they might stop talking to someone because of something they said, finding that it is part discomfort and part wanting only to talk among the safety of the tribe:

Some focus group participants discussed tempering what news they discuss based on who they’re talking to. “I can talk about the economy with just about anybody if they’re willing to listen to the boring stuff,” a Democratic man in his 40s said. “But if we go into politics and stuff like that—I’ve lost a lot of friends.”

A Republican woman in her 40s said, “I tend to only really talk about political things when I know I’m with people that are like-minded, just because there’s—it’s just easier that way.”

Another way to interpret the results above is to think of not talking about politics or current events with others as a form of self-preservation. When Pew-Knight asked respondents if various feelings had kept them from discussing the news with others, around six in ten U.S. adults overall agreed that “concern about making things uncomfortable,” a “lack of knowledge about the news,” or a “lack of interest in talking about the news” contributed to their reluctance to talk about current events, respectively.

The generational divide about discussing politics and the news is striking. Only 35 percent of those ages 18-29 in the Pew-Knight study say that it is “extremely” or “very important” for people to get news on a regular basis compared to 65 percent of those ages 65 or older. Less than one third of the youngest adults believe that to be a good member of society, it is “extremely” or “very important” to follow the news versus six in ten of the oldest Americans. Likewise, 55 percent of the youngest adults report that they are “worn out” by the news compared to only 42 percent of the oldest ones. Forty-four percent of those in the younger cohort say they don’t have enough time to follow the news compared to less than one-fifth of the oldest cohort. Fifty-two percent of 18–29-year-olds also say that most of the news they come across is not relevant to their lives, while only four in ten older Americans agreed.

It’s interesting to consider reading this study and other research that older, more academically credentialed, and partisan people are the main sources of social tension when it comes to talking about politics. These types tend to be more unmovable and opinionated than others, regardless of their ideological perspective, and therefore end up being the most annoying and unpleasant people to encounter in the wild. In contrast, young people often get pegged for being the most zero-sum and intolerant age group when it comes to political topics—probably because of campus-based fights over identity, social issues, and foreign policy—when, in reality, most young people are just trying to keep up with life and not get into politics for any number of sound reasons.

This leads us to an important piece in the Wall Street Journal this past weekend, “These Schools Want Civil Discourse on Campus. Even That Is Up for Dispute,” written by Pamela Paul. (Ruy is interviewing Paul for this week’s TLP Podcast; be sure to listen in on Friday.) Paul looks at recent efforts on some college campuses such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Iowa to create better conditions for the discussion of contentious intellectual and political topics. These new programs and institutes within universities vary in structure and focus but all recognize that having civil discussions requires ground rules like those laid out to students at UNC: “Nothing they said would leave the room. Nobody would be shouted down. No one would get ratted out on social media as ‘problematic.’”

Of course, many of these new programs have been labeled as “right-coded” given their origins and focus and politics writ large. Yet the ideas behind these programs actually seem more liberal than conservative in the old sense of the word—as in someone who is liberal-minded, tolerant, open to new ideas, and willing to consider competing arguments and different lines of thought. As one of the students who participated in a School of Civic Life and Leadership class at UNC told a professor:

I’m grateful for the way it pushed me this semester. It forced me to slow down, read more carefully, and take arguments seriously even when they weren’t coming from a place I was comfortable with. That shift has already changed how I think about my work going forward.

This commitment to creating a more civil approach to discussing differences could be beneficial to everyone in America, not just young people, who may be frustrated by talking about politics or resigned to keeping their views quiet to protect themselves. It seems like a lot of work to interact with others in this way, but it might help to improve the overall mood and tenor of American life, even a small bit.

It’s either trying this more open-minded and considerate method of political discourse or putting on sunglasses and headphones and moving right by others when you’re out on your next dog walk. Maybe a little of both would work. Just my opinion.

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Just about a year ago, right before the beginning of Trump’s second term, I published a piece on “The Democrats’ Culture Denialism.” At that point, I observed that Democrats were resisting—strenuously resisting—coming to terms with the role of cultural issues in their stunning 2024 election loss. Indeed, they were desperately clutching at any possible interpretation that would downgrade the importance of these issues and obviate the need to change their associated positions and priorities. I wondered whether this delusional attitude could possibly persist as Trump’s second term unfolded; surely they would come to their senses as they lived through the real world consequences of their defeat.

Well, I’m not wondering any more. Democrats, it turns out, just cannot resist the siren call of culture denialism. The last year has shown over and over again that culture denialism just makes too many things too easy for too many in the party and avoids too many fights that too many Democrats don’t want to have. In short, they have chickened out. It’s the victory of coalition management over coalition expansion.

The liberal commentator Noah Smith is one of the few Democrats willing to clearly call out how little Democrats have changed since their epic 2024 loss.

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…

Nor have I seen much attempt to grapple with many other issues that hobble the progressive movement—the unfairness of DEI, the blatant permissiveness toward crime and disorder in blue cities, the dependence of progressive governance on useless or corrupt nonprofits, the unpopular stands on certain trans issues, and so on. Those issues aren’t as important as immigration and inflation, but they contribute to a general perception of the progressive movement and the Democratic party as being out of touch with the masses and unserious about governing.

Of course, the occasional Democrat has at least poked gingerly at some of these issues. But as a general assessment of Democratic movement on cultural issues, Smith is correct. By and large, the party has not budged.

Consider the trans issue which loomed so large in the 2024 election and where Democrats are indisputably on the wrong side of public opinion. Axios recently asked 20 Democrats viewed as possible contenders for the 2028 presidential nomination the following questions: “Should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports? Do you believe transgender youths under age 18 should be able to be placed on puberty blockers and hormones? [W]hat is your response to the question: ‘Can a man become a woman?’”

Of the 20 contenders, 17 (!) declined to provide answers. Of the three that did (Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, and Rahm Emanuel) only Emanuel provided unhedged answers and even here to only two of the questions: Can a man become a woman (no) and should transgender girls be able to participate in girls’ sports (no).

Interestingly, Gavin Newsom, who refused to provide answers here, did attempt one in another context on his own podcast. His guest Ben Shapiro pointed out: “The question that you’re not wanting to answer...is whether boys can become girls.”

Newsom replied: “Yeah, I just, well, I think, uh, for the grace of God.”

OK then! That clears it all up.

So what accounts for this continuing refusal to engage with a massive area of vulnerability, choosing coalition management over coalition expansion? Why can’t Democrats resist the siren call of culture denialism, even after the humiliating defeat by their greatest enemy in 2024? There are several reasons.

Start with the well-documented decline in popularity of Trump and his administration over the last year. His current approval rating is low and even lower on the economy. Voters do not believe his administration has prioritized the right issues and view a wide range of his specific policies quite negatively.

There is thus a strong temptation to exploit this thermostatic reaction to Trump and his excesses and leave contentious underlying problems alone. Indeed, few things make the Democratic base happier than firing up the #Resistance to Trump and his minions. Democratic politicians find it exceedingly easy to feed off this energy, banking the associated donations, media attention, and activist support. The incentive structure for politicians is overwhelmingly in this direction; there is very little obvious payoff from challenging party cultural shibboleths.

This fundamental dynamic has been reinforced by recent favorable election results for the Democrats. In November, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill easily won the governorships of, respectively, Virginia and New Jersey. Both candidates had moderate images, avoided cultural issues (but did not change their underlying positions which aligned closely with party orthodoxy) and framed their campaigns around “affordability.”

In New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the mayoralty without changing his underlying and very left wing views on cultural issues but, even more relentlessly than Spanberger and Sherrill, talking about affordability, affordability, affordability.

So there’s your playbook. Don’t aggressively push your cultural positions but don’t change them either and talk a lot about affordability. After all, voters only really care about economic issues….don’t they?

That’s certainly what most Democrats appear to want to believe. The idea has penetrated deeply into the Democrats’ DNA that cultural issues are not real issues. They are artifacts of the Republican attack machine, preying on bigoted impulses, rather than real concerns of voters. Real issues concern tangible things like the economy, health care, government programs, and the like. How else to explain the remarkable quiescence throughout the party as it moved sharply and consistently left for a decade across all cultural/values issues from crime and immigration to race and gender? These issues were treated as a costless playground for social justice commitments.

But of course they weren’t and they aren’t. They are very real issues that reflect very real concerns. Voters overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration is wrong and should be deterred not indulged. They believe crimes should be punished, public safety is sacrosanct and that police and policing are vital necessities. They believe, with Martin Luther King, that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” and therefore oppose discrimination on the basis of race no matter who benefits from that discrimination. They believe biological sex is real, that spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved, and that medical treatments like drugs and surgery are serious interventions that should not be available simply on the basis of declared gender identity, especially for children.

These issues reflect deeply held beliefs and values and are vitally important to ordinary voters, especially working-class voters, not diversions from real issues foisted upon them by crafty Republicans. Which party reflects their values and can be counted on to instantiate those values in governance? Cultural issues and priorities, not just or even mostly economic ones, play a huge role for most voters in answering these questions.

Indeed, the Democrats’ touching faith that anointing their party with affordability pixie dust will eliminate all their vulnerabilities is the kind of crude economic determinism that would make Karl Marx blush. Politics isn’t, and has never been, that simple.

It should also be pointed out that affordability is a slogan not an economic program worthy of the name. As Smith points out, just as Democrats are unresponsive to the need to plausibly address cultural issues, they have also been derelict on the economic front.

[I have not] seen progressives or Democrats question the basic idea of throwing ever-greater government subsidies at overpriced, supply-constrained service industries like child care, health care, and education. This approach, which was conceived by progressive economists and communicated to the Democrats via think tanks like the Roosevelt Institute and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, has obvious flaws. It pushes up service prices both microeconomically, by subsidizing demand, and macroeconomically, by raising structural deficits and encouraging inflation.

But I have not seen any reevaluation of this basic approach; if progressives are once again handed power, Americans can probably expect more increases in these dubious subsidies, and the deficits and the inflation that go along with them.

It is not too much of a stretch to see Democrats’ cluelessness on the economic front as of a piece with their culture denialism. Both stem from an unwillingness to challenge what their professional-class supporters are comfortable with and engage with the realities of contemporary politics and economics.

So what hope is there for Democrats to resist the siren call of culture denialism? At this point probably not much and I expect that to be true through the 2026 election and its immediate aftermath, since those election results are likely to be favorable and reinforce the no-change dynamic.

As 2028 comes into view, things may change. Having to win a high turnout presidential election may encourage grappling with underlying vulnerabilities. But it’s hardly a sure thing. Perhaps, like Ulysses, a brave Democratic candidate will strap themselves to the mast so that he or she can resist the siren call of culture denialism. It may take such heroic efforts to succeed.

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Over the holiday break my wife and I experienced one of those ordeals that all parents dread: a young child in the ER, hooked up to an IV, for an adverse response to medication to treat an illness. Though we are fully past it, the sense of near-disaster underscored for me the centrality of great emergency care for all Americans—and the need for universal policies that aid proper rest and recovery.

In our case our son—who is recovering quite well—first came down with a high fever the Friday after Christmas. His symptoms were alarming enough to prompt me to take him to the ER at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital the next morning, where, after a chest X-ray, the doctors and nurses discovered he had developed bacterial pneumonia, presumably brought on by influenza A. The attending physician then prescribed the antibiotic Clindamycin to treat him, and he was released. 36 hours later we were back in the ER due to my son vomiting and complaining of extreme stomach pain. By sunrise Monday he was receiving his antibiotics and vital fluids through an IV and sipping juices and milk with the aid of anti-nausea medication. To our immense relief, his condition dramatically improved, and he was discharged Tuesday evening, and he and his sister are resuming their cozy start to the New Year.

Staying overnight in the hospital with a sick child conjures up the most awful images. A loneliness that few authors have captured laps you amid the ambience of electronic beeps and heating vents. Even when your gut and your mind tell you “the worst” isn’t happening and things will soon improve, you recognize doctors are disinclined to explicitly assuage you until, well, your loved one is doing better.

In those interim hours a host of fleeting, sometimes strange and lucid observations can occur. As familiar as I am with an inner voice that comes with being a writer, I found myself keyed into another voice, the voice that emerges when you come to accept you are in the midst of an emergency. It begins by admonishing you to remember how tenuous your control over your own life actually is.

Medical emergencies are a severe test—of faith you might not want to admit and much else. However temporary, they usually force a reckoning with one’s priorities and discontents—even if one sincerely feels they are, on most days, living a fulfilling life. For most people adulthood is marked by the long struggle to choose well, maintain good health, and build some modicum of financial security without living a life void of color and pleasure. If you are a social democrat like me, you hope politics will bend toward your general philosophy of life and that progressive leaders will do their utmost to safeguard against life’s gravest hazards. Social insurance and public investment can’t eliminate heartbreak and tragedy, trials inherent to the human condition, but such policies can foster the conditions that reduce injury to health and prevent financial ruin from accompanying life’s difficult passages. By legitimating social rights and identifying common obligations and standards, social democracy is meant to give citizens a little more peace of mind in an unpredictable world.

During our admission I reflected now and then on the ways in which social democracy has, by most metrics, receded in my lifetime and what this decline has meant for social trust. Few institutions seem equipped to repair it, and health care workers are now one of the last pillars of public confidence in our system and its professions. That’s not surprising. Although doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff are hardly infallible, I’m not sure society would function at all if their jobs became any harder. It must be extraordinarily taxing to tend to the sick and injured and preserve an identity separate from the adrenaline and drama that punctuates such responsibilities. Together as a country we could do better by them and their patients.

I can nevertheless see why so many outside the medical field regard it with ambivalence. Hospital stays tend to quickly warp your sense of place and agency. As much as I expected we would be discharged within a few days, I was unnerved by how quickly I was absorbed into the rhythms of hospital life and how they affected my mind. When my wife and I swapped places so that I could rest, I pondered how time seemed to move faster in the hospital room than at home, despite having very little to do there but wait, hug, and observe. Desperate for some levity, I repeatedly remarked to my wife that the food remained laughably inedible, seemingly unchanged since our daughter’s birth in 2019 (and possibly since the 1980s). My mind kept returning, though, to the idea of the hospital as a symbol of advance and decline—as a bridge between eras and generations, as a locus of the life cycle, but also as a testament, or record, of a society’s priorities.

I thought, in particular, about how a hospital doubles as a museum of technology and a frontier of innovation and skills-building. It is a place where relatively simple tools and old, occasionally temperamental devices are employed alongside cutting-edge equipment and medicine. It is also a place where lay visitors must yield to the judgment of experts but never hesitate to ask questions or lose vigilance if something appears to be compromised or inadequate. Communication, after all, remains the basis of successful treatment.

I thought, too, about the hospital as an institution that functions like a ministate; admission is akin to entering a new complex reality, a society of patients, doctors, nurses, and staff who seem more of that world than the outside one. It is a place where babies are born and lives are saved but also one where disease and impending loss are managed in installments and shift changes. The collective effort can represent the best of humanity and leave you in awe of the courage, stamina, and fortitude it takes to provide medical care. Yet the process can also feel terribly impersonal and bureaucratic. Hospitals are a marvel of technological and civilizational progress, but they are also among the last places most people ever want to be.

Composure is a pathetic yet necessary thing to hold onto in such circumstances. Your subconscious knows that moments of calm, even outright dullness, can be an illusion punctured by devastating lab results. If you consider yourself a person who is particular about how things are done—and I am one, most of the time—you don’t like being at the mercy of an opaque schedule. You also resent your utter, sudden dependency on others whose names you barely hear. Without anyone making you feel bad or answering annoyedly, you are somehow embarrassed to ask for assistance if it isn’t “urgent.” Meanwhile, as you watch your sick loved one doze off, you “catch” yourself filling your mind with frivolous thoughts or scrolling through gossipy stories you wouldn’t normally read. The need to mentally escape grows even as you are reticent to momentarily leave the room for a cup of ice.

By trying to “turn off the worry,” you become alert to your rising impatience and boredom. That stirs guilt, and then you start lamenting the times you were curt with your spouse or a scold to your kids. You pray you’ll get the time back and make up for every shortcoming. A moment later you recriminate yourself for glancing through an after-Christmas sale instead of wading through more medical articles that might help you ask the “right questions.” As humans it is hard to admit our need for basic comforts and pacifying distractions when our hearts are racing and we are forced to surrender to someone else’s expertise. Every hour you wonder if engaging the inner voice does you any good. The peculiar combination of inertia and feelings of peril is very draining. If you could eliminate every sensation or emotion except the relief you are desperately waiting for, you would. This is not just because you are afraid but because you feel stupefied by how dark everything could get and may already have.

As you summon the will to stop googling every possible complication, you begin to question your own mental reliability. You repeatedly recount the sequence of events that led you to go to the ER—because you are asked to by different nurses and doctors but also because you are determined to prove you have every reason to be there. You struggle to be meticulous and focused so that the number of more terrifying scenarios can be either ruled out or headed off efficiently. At the same time, you can hear the panic in your voice, fearful the care team will judge you for not acting sooner. Kids are resilient, the saying goes. Yet they are so little and vulnerable. The self-reproach is hard to avoid. You feel on trial despite the kind and sympathetic voices echoing in your ear. Your heart pleads, “Just let us go home.”

Until I got my son to giggle riotously on Tuesday morning, the one moment that made me think maybe everything would turn out alright was how strong he felt when I first helped the nurses restrain him during his venipuncture. It was a reassuring strength—unscientific, sure, but still equal in weight to when one of the doctors later said he was “aerating nicely.” I suppose I didn’t ever doubt our stay would be fairly brief—as long as the blood work turned out fine and the fever went away. Still, in those 48 hours the fear never really subsided until my wife was asked Tuesday evening if we’d like to be discharged. Naturally, I was overcome with gratitude, though some sadness lingered. How many distressed parents didn’t get to hear those words before the New Year?

It might sound a bit maudlin, but upon my son’s return home, I made a New Year’s resolution to not let my petty agonies as a writer get the better of me so often. I was humbled by the professionalism of my son’s entire hospital team, whose diligent, vital labor makes sick kids well and families like mine whole again. Like anyone else with a grueling job, nurses and doctors might want to hide in a closet and scream at the end of every shift, but they didn’t show it in front of us. Their resolve to help countless strangers week after week provided some timely perspective about the modest but meaningful privileges I enjoy. It impressed upon me that there is nothing weak about being grateful for what you have and what you can share.

Inevitably, though, I found myself once again lamenting the toxicity of our national politics, especially the hubris and malfeasance of what the columnist Michelle Goldberg aptly called “Trump’s kakistocracy.” Our country faces serious challenges, mocked in word and deed by its own so-called leaders. This routine degradation amplifies a sense of paralysis and disbelief in democracy. It blinds us as well to the quotidian yet extraordinary things that do fill up the good side of the ledger—to the actions and sacrifices that inspire others to do more than fixate on their own personal ambition. It is no exaggeration that the best health care workers personify the other America that is possible, and yet it is one that feels more distant than ever.

Of course, our health system is riddled with many unnecessary problems, exacerbated by the reckless and cowardly can-kicking of our political class. The cost burden is becoming astronomical—irrationally so. A lot of hard-working families are having their income siphoned off by escalating insurance premiums for substandard coverage. Onerous medical debt and surprise billing still plague millions of households. No matter what economists say about the bigger picture, these trends will be a drag on growth and development unless comprehensive reforms are introduced that bring us in line with France or the Nordic countries. And it will delay efforts to orient the system more toward preventative care and breakthrough treatments—initiatives that would help “unclog” the system, free up urgently needed resources for emergencies, and attract and retain care personnel at all career levels.

I suspect these sorts of advances would boost the morale of health care workers and strengthen public confidence in the overall health system. A society full of people wary of seeking medical care due to cost is one that will suffer a further erosion in social trust. It will also mean public health will deteriorate and compound the harmful effects of the “K-shaped” economy. We need investments that convince workers entering the medical field that their contributions will be truly indispensable and that they will be able to devote more of their time to healing people rather than just managing endless chronic illnesses. Working families likewise should be able to expect their care won’t be compromised by budget cuts or staff burnout. They need to believe that when they are in a medical crisis or are experiencing unsettling health issues, the professionals attending to them really do have the presence of mind, stamina, and resources to efficiently provide the best, most scrupulous care possible.

Nothing about my son’s experience at Methodist left me to fundamentally doubt the quality of the care we received. The nurses were attentive and gentle, and the doctors, though understandably circumspect, did enough to alleviate my greatest anxieties. Long after the general memory fades, I will still remember the older black man who provided our wheelchair transport at five in the morning and the touching look he gave me when he asked, “How are you doing, Dad?” All the same, I can’t help but meditate on how quickly a few mistakes could have made the situation far more frightening for my wife and me. Indeed, if we hadn’t firmly requested chest imaging at the get-go, and if we hadn’t rushed back to the ER based on new and worsening symptoms, we might be stuck in some room with more machines, desperate to communicate with our son.

Difficult as that is to write, it proves we weren’t simply very lucky. In an era shadowed by the rise of AI and its effects on human learning and psychology, it was the old-fashioned gut response that guided us to act wisely. That’s a life lesson I’m not sure any amount of formal training or machine learning can impart on its own.

If there is another lesson to draw here, it is, ultimately, about the importance of family life and the need for holistic policies to support recovery after a medical emergency. My wife and I are both freelancers and in some ways enjoy more time at home and professional autonomy than the average American family. But as with millions of other working parents who have participated in the great sectoral-structural shift away from Fordism and fixed salaries, there are no guarantees that we can postpone work without consequence or turn down multiple jobs to care for sick dependents. Of course, it is that much harder for the moms and dads who are on the clock at a warehouse, big box store, or restaurant, with little to no job security to speak of.

In this respect, something beyond the insurance system needs to change. American workers, the self-employed, and small businesses deserve a safety net that removes the bitterest trade-offs between taking time to treat an illness or care for convalescing loved ones and keeping up with the bills. As progressives hammer home the need to overhaul and improve the “care economy”—to make it the envy of the world and proof that in America the dignity of work is still honored—this imperative to secure the common benefit of paid sick leave should be at the forefront of their demands. For all of life’s uncertainties and unavoidable tragedies, it is one clear step toward a healthier, more optimistic society.

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The educational shift in the Democratic coalition toward more college-educated voters and fewer working-class ones has been well documented, most notably in the 2023 book Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, along with attendant policy shifts toward the cultural and social preferences of the “Brahmin Left.” Book authors John B. Judis and TLP’s Ruy Teixeira explained the schism as follows:

On one side of the divide are the great postindustrial metro centers like the Bay Area, Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Seattle. These are areas that benefited from the boom in computer technology and high finance. These areas are heavily populated by college-educated professionals, but also by low-skilled immigrants who clean the buildings, mow the lawns, and take care of the children and the aged. The professionals, who set the political agenda for these areas, welcome legal and illegal immigrants; they want guns off the street; they see trade not as a threat to jobs but as a source of less expensive goods; they worry that climate change will destroy the planet; and, among the young, they are engaged in a quest for new identities and sexual lifestyles. A majority of them are Democrats.

On the other side of the divide are the small towns and midsize cities that have depended on manufacturing, mining, and farming. Some of these places have prospered from newly discovered oil and gas deposits, but many are towns and cities like Muncie, Indiana; Mansfield, Ohio; and Dundalk, Maryland, that have lost jobs when firms moved abroad or closed up shop in the face of foreign competition. The workers and small businesspeople in these towns and cities want the border closed to illegal immigrants, whom they see as a burden to their taxes and a threat to their jobs; they want to keep their guns as a way to protect their homes and family; they fly the American flag in front of their house; they go to or went to church; they oppose abortion; some may be leery of gay marriage, although that is changing; many of them or members of their family served in the military; they have no idea what most of the initials in LGBTQIA+ stand for. A majority of them are now Republicans, and many are former working-class Democrats.

As noted by John and Ruy, coinciding with the educational shift in the party’s coalition was the rapid decline of religious affiliation and religiosity among Democrats. The Pew Research Center compiled a nice time series chart to show the dramatic decrease in Christian affiliation among Democrats coupled with a sharp increase in the percentage of religiously unaffiliated “nones”—atheists, agnostics, and those with no particular religious tradition.

Although the rise of religious “nones” has occurred nationally, the share among Democratic voters more than doubled from 2008 to 2023—from less than one-fifth of Democrats to nearly four in ten—while the percentage of Christians in the Democratic coalition dropped by 20 points. Over this same period there was a slight increase in “nones” within the Republican coalition but only a 5-point decline in Christians. More than eight in ten Republicans identified as Christian in 2023.

Ryan Burge and other social scientists call the wide differential between Democrats and Republicans based on belief, religious attendance, and religious identity “The God Gap”:

When it comes to belief, the trend lines are clear on this point—it’s really in 2010 and beyond when the gaps between Democrats and Republicans explode. The gap between the share of each party that held to an atheist/agnostic belief was pretty small—never more than five points. But within a decade it had nearly tripled. Now, about 21 percent of Democrats don’t believe in God, compared to 8 percent of Republicans.

Why does this trend matter in politics? Because the values, beliefs, morals, and attitudes of increasingly secular Democratic elites are at odds with many other Americans who remain religious (mainly Christian) in some capacity or were shaped by religion earlier in life.

On the hot-button issue of gender identity, for example, nearly six in ten religiously unaffiliated voters say that greater social acceptance of people who are transgender (“that is, people who identify as a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth”) is a change for the better versus less than one-third of religiously affiliated voters who feel similarly. On immigration, the pattern is different than you might imagine when listening to some activists quoting the Pope: those with low religiosity are far more accepting of rising immigration than are those with high religiosity. The pattern is the same on the basic issue of the role of government. Those with low levels of religiosity are much more supportive of an active role for government in providing assistance to those in need than are those with high religiosity.

You can see the problem for Democrats. Since more than two-thirds of U.S. voters overall remain Christian, the increasingly non-Christian and secular Democratic Party remains out of touch with a huge chunk of Americans.

No one can make the Democrats be more religious, but Democratic leaders and voters could certainly be more welcoming of the faithful and more accepting of their different cultural and social views. There used to be serious effort put into this religious work prior to the rise of Barack Obama. In the early aughts, the so-called progressive movement spent a decent amount of time and money trying to organize and appeal to both mainline and evangelical Protestants and social justice-oriented and more traditional Catholics, along with both Jewish and Muslim Americans.

But those days are over, replaced by the increasingly zealot-like demands of secular non-profits and democratic socialist ideological movements that decry religious adherents as misguided or worse—“white Christian nationalists.” Democrats not that long ago talked earnestly about faith-based concerns for the poor, the stability of families and communities, and religious tolerance but soon moved on to more strident leftist activism on racial and gender issues, climate change, and anti-Israel agitation. In doing so, they also lost a lot of working-class, rural, and minority voters and gained more geographically concentrated non-religious voters living in big cities. This tradeoff was bad electorally and bad for the country’s pluralistic cohesion.

If Democrats want to rebuild their majoritarian electoral coalition and better represent the values and desires of most Americans, they could start by rediscovering their religious and faith-based roots—or at least stop being so hostile to them.

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Editor’s note: The Liberal Patriot will resume publishing on January 5, 2026. Merry Christmas and enjoy the holiday break!

The News Literacy Project, a nonprofit organization focused on helping “educators teach students how to tell fact from fiction,” recently released a sobering study of young people’s trust and confidence in the news media, following up on a 2024 survey of 1,110 American teens ages 13-18 that showed serious concerns about the accuracy, impartiality, and fairness of journalists and news organizations.

The new research entitled “’Biased,’ ‘Boring,’ and ‘Bad’” employed a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods that reveal highly negative sentiments about the news media among the youngest Americans, including:

An overwhelming majority of teens (84 percent) express a negative sentiment when asked what word best describes news media these days.

When asked to think of one thing they think journalists are doing well, roughly 1 in 3 teens (37 percent) offer negative feedback, saying things such as lying and deceiving (81 responses) or that journalists don’t do anything well (66 responses).

More teens believe professional journalists regularly engage in unethical behaviors than they believe journalists regularly engage in standards-based practices. For example, only 30 percent of teens believe journalists frequently confirm facts before reporting them. In comparison, half of teens (50 percent) believe that journalists frequently make up details, such as quotes, to make stories more interesting or engaging.

When researchers asked these teens what is the one thing that journalists could do to improve their trade, the responses were clear—“Get the facts right and minimize the bias.”

I doubt many grown-ups reading these findings would disagree with the youngsters. In fact, according to recent Gallup research, only 28 percent of U.S. adults today report a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust and confidence in newspapers, television, and radio to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly”—down from a recorded high of 72 percent in 1976.

There are clear partisan trends among adults on trust and confidence in the news media that help to explain the decline. A full 62 percent of Republicans today say they have no confidence at all in the accuracy and fairness of mass media, up from only 12 percent of Republicans who felt this way in 2002. In contrast, 51 percent of Democrats today express a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, down from a high of 76 percent in 2018. Among independents, “trust has not reached the majority level since 2003, and the latest 27 percent reading matches last year’s historical low,” according to Gallup.

Having established that most adults and teenagers do not trust the news, with notable differences based on partisan orientation, the question then becomes, “Should Americans trust the news?” This is surprisingly difficult to answer.

Let’s break down the two main components of this question—”trust” and “news.”

Trusting something or someone basically means that you find an organization or person reliable and truthful. In the context of the media, reliability is established over time based on the repeated experience that a particular media institution (and by extension its journalists, editors, editorial writers, photographers, fact checkers, video producers, etc.) publishes solid information for consumers and fixes any errors or misleading information they might produce due to rapidly unfolding events with uncertain or conflicting accounts. Being truthful simply means that a media organization reports something that in fact happened or that they accurately describe a sequence of events or present a public official’s statement in a correct and neutral manner.

Therefore, you might “trust” a media organization that reliably presents truthful information on a regular basis and “distrust” those that do not. Which media entities fall into which category of trust is a matter of individual taste and experience.

“News,” on the other hand, sounds easy to define but is not. News to most people typically involves straightforward events that occurred, like “A magnitude 6.2 quake struck southeastern Afghanistan just before midnight on August 31” or “U.S. President Donald Trump called Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi this week.”

But events aren’t always that simple.

As the latter example shows, news often involves more than just an event taking place—it includes the credibility of sources, varying accounts of what happened from those with direct or indirect knowledge of it, the wider context of an event, and “behind the news” analysis of how and why the event may have unfolded and what might happen next in the story. Each additional component in this news chain, from an event happening to a report explaining the event appearing in the media, introduces the potential for more reporting errors, bias, or misinterpretation that ultimately undermines consumer trust in a news organization if these mistakes are egregious, purposeful, or uncorrected.

In the case of the Trump and Takaichi discussion, The Wall Street Journal reported that after talking with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the Japanese PM’s parliamentary comments on how a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan “could mobilize a Tokyo military response,” President Trump advised her “not to provoke Beijing” on the matter and “suggested to Takaichi that she temper the tone of her comments about Taiwan” but not “walk back” her initial statement.

What exactly was going on here? Should you trust the WSJ’s write-up of the event?

The WSJ report was based “on the account of Japanese officials and an American briefed on the call.” No reason to doubt that. The Journal is a reputable paper with exemplary journalistic standards on the hard news side, even with its conservative-leaning editorial board. The call apparently did happen and in the sequence described in the article.

But were the description and substance of the call and the exact advice Trump offered to the Japanese PM correct? Did Trump in fact counsel Takaichi not to provoke China over Taiwan, as the article reports?

Japanese officials later told other media sources that the WSJ was wrong about this and that the president did not tell the prime minister not to provoke China on Taiwan’s sovereignty issues. So which account is real? And if the initial reporting was correct, what was the motivation or purpose of Trump’s counsel? It’s not clear apart from some speculation related to a trade deal with China. And if the reporting was not correct, why did someone anonymously claim that the president did say these things to the Japanese PM, and for what reason?

What is the news, and what is someone’s agenda?

This particular news report covers just one small event in a sea of actions and statements by governments and public officials on all matters domestic, foreign, and economic. Most normal people don’t care much about these matters or have the time and patience to fact-check everything they read, see, or hear.

Americans do know that governments, political parties, and corporations often lie or mislead the public and that the media is all too willing to go along with it uncritically at times. At the same time, they also know that professional activists and ideologues want to convince them that everything they hear from the other side or from a government official or from a corporation is a form of “gaslighting” and propaganda not to be believed.

So, regular citizens protect themselves by establishing patterns in their minds about the trustworthiness of the sources of the facts they hear about in news events (from public officials, corporate spokespersons, political parties, experts, activists, religious leaders, etc.) and the media institutions that report and analyze these events (the mainstream press, cable news, digital sites, social media posters, online influencers, podcasters, etc.).

Right now, as the data above show, the public is assessing these sources and the media outlets that report on them and concluding, “A pox on both your houses. I don’t trust you.”

But with the right approach to the news, it need not be like this indefinitely.

This one diplomatic news example, although seemingly inconsequential, gets to the heart of the matter about why people trust or distrust the news. Unlike in 1976, when trust in mass media was at its highest, American news consumers today rarely get “just the facts” news reporting from a handful of mostly reliable sources. Instead, there is an “event that happened,” like the Trump and Takaichi call, and then a smorgasbord of other media reports and commentaries that seek to describe, explain, analyze, contextualize, rationalize, or criticize the event that happened after the fact.

I would contend that these secondary news accounts are the primary source of much of the public’s rising distrust of the media—especially when they involve hotly contested events with competing facts and interpretations such as the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the 2016-2024 presidential elections, the Covid pandemic, or the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflicts.

These major world events obviously occurred. But how and why they happened, who or what is responsible or not responsible for the events, and what should be done about it are all highly debatable subjects.

So, should you trust this type of secondary “beyond the facts” news? It depends.

My advice would be: (1) take in a consistent diet of information from long-standing news organizations that spend considerable resources gathering facts and data and follow strong journalistic standards; (2) carefully scrutinize for accuracy the sources of information presented by these outlets and any studies or data relied upon in their stories; and (3) explore as many competing expert, outsider, partisan, and ideological interpretations of this information as possible (with due skepticism) to triage the news and arrange these secondary sources into a hierarchy of trust and reliability that hopefully will help you make sense of the facts and other complex information about the world.

If parsing the news like this sounds like a lot of work, unfortunately it is. That’s why all the contemporary media outlets are filled with video clips, cultural stories, memes, pictures, recipes, puzzles, shopping tips, advertisements, and celebrity features to distract you. They have to earn your interest, trust, and dollars somehow, and it doesn’t seem to be working with coverage of the news itself.

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Nearly a year into Trump’s second term, American politics and life have seen dramatic changes—or have they? That’s the question our friends at the American Communities Project (ACP) explored in a new major survey.1 In their report, ACP gauged Americans’ outlook on the country, its present, and its future. They found some stark differences along partisan lines, but there were also important areas of agreement that might offer openings for bipartisan cooperation moving forward. Below are some key takeaways from ACP’s research.

Hopefulness for the Future Is Shaped by Politics

Compared to 2024, every community type that supported Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election has become less hopeful about the country’s future, while all but one of those places that voted for Trump are now more optimistic. On average, about 48 percent of respondents in Harris-voting areas say they are hopeful about the future of the U.S. in the next few years compared to 59 percent of people in areas that backed Trump. One year ago, those figures were 53 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

When looking over the long term, these trends basically hold. However, people in some communities are even less hopeful looking beyond the next few years, including Hispanic Centers (-4 percent; more on these places in a minute) and Evangelical Hubs (-7 percent). At the same time, LDS Enclaves and Graying America are more hopeful about the country’s long-term outlook than they are about the immediate future.

These findings likely won’t come as a surprise to some readers. Extensive polling has shown that in contemporary America, one’s views about the state of the country are often closely tied to the perception of how much power their side has—specifically, whether their preferred party controls the White House. This has included views about the state of the economy and trust in election results, and we can now add “hope for the future” to that list, too.

Buyer’s Remorse Among a Key Constituency?

Though hope for the future mapped fairly neatly onto the community types’ voting trends, there was one kind of place that voted for Trump but is today less hopeful: Hispanic Centers. In 2024, voters in these 178 counties backed President Trump by ten points after supporting Biden by two. However, evidence from ACP and elsewhere suggests Republicans are losing ground—quickly—with many of them.

According to ACP, at least some of this shift stems from these voters’ discontent around the issue of immigration. As they write:

[Many of Trump’s policy changes] are slow-moving by their nature. The administration’s efforts around immigration, however, have been different. The impacts have been much more immediate and have generated a lot of headlines and dramatic video. Those efforts have also largely targeted the nation’s Hispanic/Latino population. Taken together, it’s reasonable to think those changes could be a big part of the drop in hopefulness in Hispanic Centers.

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of survey respondents living in Hispanic Centers report noticing changes in immigration in their communities this year, more than any other type of place except Big Cities. Moreover, 60 percent said these changes are negative.

ACP’s findings mirror evidence from this month’s national elections suggesting there may be some reversion among Hispanic voters, as majority-Hispanic cities and counties swung back toward the Democrats. It remains to be seen whether Trump was an anomaly or whether future Republicans can keep his gains, but it’s clear that many Hispanic Americans are not happy with the direction of the country—or with President Trump—at present.

Inflation Is King, but Other Issues Are Rising

Consistent with most polling from at least the past year, Americans in ACP’s survey said that, for the third year in a row, inflation was the top issue facing both their communities (50 percent) and the nation (41 percent). This was true both nationally and in every single community type, regardless of its political lean. Additionally, a whopping 81 percent of all respondents reported noticing changes in inflation or rising prices in the past year.

There are two interesting outliers in this dataset: first, people living in LDS enclaves were far likelier than anyone else to say inflation was a problem in their community, with nearly two-thirds calling it their top issue. And secondly, those living in Big Cities were less likely than others to identify inflation as the biggest issue nationally, though it was still a plurality view (37 percent) even in these places. This may offer a clue as to why Democrats, who disproportionately inhabit Big Cities, struggled not only to message on inflation in 2024 but to convince the public they were taking it seriously.

Today, though, it has become the Republicans’ albatross. President Trump’s inability to get high prices under control has undoubtedly been a big factor in the GOP’s recent electoral struggles as well as his own sinking approval rating. If they fail to make serious strides between now and this time next year, it seems likely they will face a reckoning at the ballot box.

Behind inflation, there are a handful of other issues on people’s minds, especially at the national level, including political polarization (27 percent) and immigration (26 percent). Another issue that popped in several places was business and government corruption. As the ACP report observed:

Government or business corruption has jumped as a national issue of concern from 2024 to 2025. This year, 23 percent of Americans cited it as a top-three issue. Last year, just 14 percent did. Leading the shift were dense, multicultural populations that did not vote for President Trump. Big Cities leaped 14 percent, while Urban Suburbs jumped 13 percent and the African American South 12 percent. However, corruption also rose as an issue in places that did vote for Trump, including Hispanic Centers, LDS Enclaves, and Military Posts.

One Possible Area of Agreement: AI

Despite very real attitudinal differences across ACP’s 15 community types, there are some issues on which Americans are more aligned. The big one in this survey was the future of artificial intelligence. Nationally, only one-quarter (26 percent) of Americans had a positive feeling about AI’s potential future impact on people’s ability to earn a living. Meanwhile, 62 percent believe there should be more regulation of AI. This view was shared across community types ranging from more liberal Big Cities and Urban Suburbs (66 percent each) to Republican-leaning places like the Exurbs (67 percent) and Graying America (65 percent).

These findings dovetail with other recent survey data. In Blue Rose Research’s 2024 post-election autopsy, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) agreed that “within the next 10 years, we will have AI that can perform most jobs better than humans can”—and the overwhelming majority (79 percent) believe this will be a bad thing.

These results show an American public that remains frustrated by persistently high prices, the country’s divisiveness, and a perception that the government and big business are not only not being responsive but in it for themselves. Such a toxic formula typically bodes poorly for the party in power, as evidenced by this year’s election results. We will be keeping an eye on ACP’s future research to see how all this evolves over the next 12 months and beyond. In the meantime, we strongly encourage folks to read their full, excellent survey report, which can be found here.

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I’m not exactly sure how this happened, but I recently ended up on a second jury for a murder case in Baltimore City, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years. Mind you, in both cases, I was selected as an alternate, which must be the worst civic job ever. You sit in court for a week listening to the evidence and the arguments, and barring some meltdown on the real jury, you are dismissed without having any deliberations with others or getting to see the conclusion of the case.

In my first murder trial, I was convinced that justice would not be served. It involved three friends late at night in East Baltimore getting into some argument after partying that resulted in one friend shooting down another friend in the street and the third one witnessing it and then fleeing. The forensic evidence was solid, but the entire case hinged on the direct testimony of the third friend, who had a rap sheet a mile long and had to be dragged into court by Baltimore sheriffs to testify. He clearly did not want to do so but basically said he saw it all and that it wasn’t right what the one guy did to his friend.

After I was dismissed from the jury, I was very interested in the outcome of the case and thought for sure one eyewitness with a background like this would not be enough to secure a conviction. Baltimore juries are notoriously distrustful of the cops and the criminal justice system at large and doubt many of the people presented as witnesses. A few weeks later, however, I read in a Maryland court publication that the shooter had been convicted of second-degree murder and other charges. Well, I’ll be damned, justice was served!

This recent murder case renewed my skepticism that hard-working cops and state’s attorneys (DAs in Maryland) can get the bad guys and killers off the street. This is mostly not their fault. Baltimore’s current State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates, and his officials, along with the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) and federal law enforcement partners, have made impressive strides after the disastrous tenure of Marilyn Mosby in clearing murders and other crimes (meaning to identify and arrest a suspect), procuring guilty pleas or convictions in court, and getting repeat violent offenders off the streets.

And boy, what a difficult job it is. Despite real reductions in homicides and non-fatal shootings over the past two years, Baltimore still has a lot of murders. And too many murderers get away with it or are never identified in the first place. Why? Robbers and murderers cover their faces and wear concealing clothes. They use burner phones and fake email accounts to communicate and disguise their movements. Shootings often happen in the night or in places with few witnesses or in areas with a robust drug trade and gang presence that scares off the locals. If there are witnesses to a shooting or murder, few residents want to talk about it, and even when they do, their recall is not always consistent or reliable making prosecutions difficult. Police detectives and crime technicians also face monumental challenges in collecting usable evidence given the state of crime scenes, untraceable weapons, locked phones and computers, difficulties finding and interrogating suspects, the lack of community cooperation, and overall workloads.

Equally important, even when the cops and state’s attorneys gather compelling forensic evidence—weapons, bullet casings, fingerprints, DNA, articles of clothing, CCTV footage, phone logs, and text chains—the legal standards in criminal court are so tough that a lot of this evidence gets dismissed by juries after defense attorneys “what about” the entire effort and judges fail to describe “reasonable doubt” in any fair manner.

With good reason in our constitutional system, the burden of proof is always on the prosecution to make a rock-solid case, and the defendant always enjoys the presumption of innocence throughout a trial. This is the origin of the famous William Blackstone maxim, “Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent person suffer.”

However, the reality of human nature among jurors and the limitations put on them by the judge to only consider evidence presented in court, along with the confusion of the trial itself, produce some perverse consequences. This is especially true when evidence is constantly challenged by lawyers or struck down and inexplicably reversed by the judge during the proceedings without explanation. Jurors in their mind: “Are we supposed to consider that seeming admission of guilt in the interrogation room that was just presented?” Judge: “That evidence is inadmissible.” Jurors in their mind: “Why?” Crickets.

Similarly, judges are required by law to tell juries that circumstantial evidence (i.e., forensic information that is the basis for factual inferences) is to be treated the same as direct evidence (i.e., a witness saw something, or an act is captured on video). But this rarely happens among jurors. Circumstantial evidence gets ripped by defense attorneys as “speculation” rather than hard proof without the defense having to provide any reasonable alternative explanations for the evidence at hand. Defense attorney: “I don’t know why my client’s DNA, hair, and fingerprints were found all over the victim’s car. It could have been from some other time. The state can’t prove it was from the time of death.” Since jurors don’t get to ask attorneys about their inconsistent arguments or to explain the logic of their appeals, confusion about evidence and testimony often develops among jurors as the trial progresses, leading to an unwillingness to judge someone as guilty.

This hesitation is compounded in jurors’ minds since Maryland judges are also legally obligated to instruct juries that the prosecution doesn’t have to prove guilt beyond all possible doubt or to a “mathematical certainty.” Yet, in doing so, the judge often leaves jurors more confused about the meaning of the law and left with the impression that any doubt is reasonable and that if they don’t have 100 percent certainty, then they must rule not guilty, as the defense attorney will stress non-stop in closing arguments.

But if mathematical certainty of guilt is not required by the law, then what is the threshold for certainty? 99 percent? 95 percent? The judge can’t or won’t say. It’s up to each juror to determine using their own evaluation of the facts and evidence presented at the trial.

All these factors arose in my second murder case, a complicated six-day trial about a drug-deal robbery and killing committed five years ago at the start of the pandemic. Briefly, without using names or exact details, a young woman was in contact with a drug dealer about setting up the sale of Percocets in a neighborhood in East Baltimore. She drove with a friend to the meeting spot for the drug deal when a guy whose identity was concealed by a hoodie emerged from an alley and got in the backseat of the car with a gun to take the money and drugs the woman had in her purse. The perpetrator scuffled with the friend in the passenger seat, who jumped out of the car after being hit with the gun. The woman was found shot through the neck a few blocks away after crashing and exiting her car and later died from her wounds.

No one got a clear look at the killer. However, Baltimore City detectives, crime technicians, and prosecutors did outstanding work to piece together the facts of the robbery and murder of the young woman from a fingerprint of the defendant inside the car, a DNA match to him from hairs on a skullcap left in the car after the scuffle, interrogations of the suspect where he later called and texted his girlfriend to get her story straight about the event, multiple phone calls before and after the murder with the first man who arranged the drug-deal robbery, and internet searches and maps of the location that all placed the defendant at the scene of the crime.

All of this was presented in court in an orderly but somewhat confusing manner over several days as the prosecution sought to establish the exact facts and expertise of the people involved. The defense attorney, who was quite good at his job, didn’t refute the facts of the case but instead threw out a wall of doubts and charges of shoddy detective work summarized as follows:

That fingerprint and hair DNA of my client inside the car could have been from some other time. Those 34 calls before and after the murder between my client and the guy who set up the robbery could have been about anything. No one could clearly identify my client. Why didn’t the detectives look harder for other suspects? That text chain from my client with his girl to tell her his cover story during the time of the murder, typed out from the station homicide interview room, was just nervousness because of cops. The Google search history of “woman shot in East Baltimore” found on my client’s phone the day after the murder was just something he heard that piqued his interest. The map my client made in Google and texted to the other guy, marking with an ‘X’ exactly where the stash was put in a park after the robbery according to the prosecution, is just speculation and could have been about anything.

In my mind, this was just a clever smokescreen from the defense and the hard evidence clearly implicated the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt. Can I say so with 100 percent certainty? No, more like 98 percent certainty (since a clear identification would have sealed it completely). But this is enough to convict according to the law and the judge’s instructions. The defense’s objections to the circumstantial evidence amassed by the Baltimore police and other law enforcement officials as mere “must have” speculation rather than a damning indictment of a killer made no logical sense in my mind.

The facts showed the defendant and his pal set up the woman for a drug robbery. The defendant attacked her friend in the car and then shot her in the neck after the friend jumped out. She later died. The defendant scattered away with the drug and money loot, leaving behind biological traces of his presence that he later tried to cover up, while relying on a good lawyer to wave away loads of evidence and make fantastical claims (not reasonable ones) about some other mystery killer that he didn’t need to corroborate.

Ultimately, I wasn’t on the jury, and the people who did evaluate the case found the defendant not guilty on all counts. Was this an injustice or justice served? I don’t know for sure. Maybe I’m wrong and the other jurors are correct. Maybe a different jury would have found him guilty. I can’t say for certain.

I do know that the result is brutal for the victim’s family and for the city at large. Either a guilty guy got away with murder since the state couldn’t meet the high threshold to convince 12 jurors of his culpability, or the guy was innocent, and the BPD and state’s attorneys failed to find the actual killer who is still roaming the streets of Baltimore.

Beyond a clear witness identification or video of the killer, the only thing I can think that might have helped the BPD and prosecutors to put this guy away would have been the presence of far greater resources in terms of police manpower, technology, and legal support to track down and disprove ahead of time every conceivable objection a defense attorney might make in court about DNA or fingerprints or phone records or “some other guy” did it. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt (and beyond nearly any doubt given jury realities).

If Americans want more done to stop violent crime and hold criminals accountable under the law, we owe it to the police and the prosecutors to give them the resources necessary to find and put the bad guys away. It’s not enough to talk tough about fighting crime. We need to invest in being smart on crime to help law enforcement secure our cities and get legal accountability within the bounds of important constitutional rights for the accused.

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Two theories of how to win back power have animated Democrats since Kamala Harris’s crushing loss last November. As encapsulated by the nationwide “No Kings” protests held on October 18, one effectively boils down to fighting the Trump administration harder and standing up more firmly for “core values.” In its reading of the 2024 election, the party (as well as mainstream media) simply didn’t do enough during Biden’s presidency to warn of Trump’s authoritarianism.

Accordingly, Democratic leaders have employed various strategies to show greater resolve. From Gavin Newsom broadcasting surreal AI videos that lampoon Trump and JD Vance to blue state attorneys general and legal groups suing the administration for actions that breach the Constitution to congressional leaders tolerating a government shutdown in a bid to extract GOP concessions on health care, Democrats hope to placate a restive base while reengaging irregular supporters and independents who swung to Trump in 2024 but have since regretted their vote.

In contrast to the Resistance revamp, the alternate, populist theory takes a closer look at the sources of economic discontent that have helped sustain Trump’s political dominance and expand his base. Its proponents argue Democrats must reckon with their widening deficit with the working class—not just Rust Belt whites, but Latinos, young black men, and Asians who have grown disillusioned with Democratic rule in major metros. Their case is an implicit rebuttal of Resistance boilerplate. In their view, Democratic pleas to fight for democracy ring hollow when working people can’t provide for themselves and are at the mercy of voracious, privileged forces. As Maine’s insurgent Senate candidate Graham Platner recently put it, the fight must “not just [be] for a romantic freedom,” but for “the material freedom…to live a life of dignity and joy.”

To be sure, the populist case doesn’t minimize the despotic behavior of Trump and wrathful administration officials like Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller. Nor are left-populists under the illusion that they can suddenly convert the Rust Belt’s most fervent MAGA supporters. On the contrary, most seem to be realists, mindful of the brutal political geography that avowed Resistance Democrats typically elide. Yet the intensification of the Democratic Party’s stark regional weaknesses is precisely why left-populists assert the old Resistance playbook is inadequate for this moment—and perhaps was always unsuited to repelling Trumpism. The terrain may be daunting, left-populists argue, but Democrats have no other choice: to actually safeguard democracy, they must back insurgents who could break the losing streak in districts that were pivotal to the Democratic coalition a generation ago.

If the goal is to truly reach Americans who have lost faith in politics, the populist theory of party renewal offers a path to grassroots organizing that the Resistance framework struggles to inspire. Indeed, the advantages seem obvious. Regular working people not only feel like they are not getting ahead but also that they are mercilessly squeezed by the cost of basic needs. Fear of stagflation and rising health care costs are also currently the GOP’s chief liabilities. A vigorous attack on the affordability crisis would put Republicans on the defensive while forcing Democrats to contemplate a vision that transcends regional and cultural divides. (If only for the sheer necessity of changing the “political opportunity structure,” it’s easy to see why moderately populist measures are gaining traction with establishment figures such as Newsom, the de facto leader of Resistance 2.0 and a likely 2028 contender.)

Yet, at least in its current iteration, the populist approach falls short in solving the party’s problems with the working class. This is because it is predicated on the mistaken belief that authentic economic populism can, in every instance, overcome a culture war that progressives have had a hand in perpetuating. Thus far, proponents won’t really venture that defusing polarization requires some daylight between insurgents and progressives’ most untenable cultural positions. That may seem self-defeating, but the reason for such reticence is simple. Notwithstanding some minor internal critiques, most of what sectarian progressives have insisted people of “good conscience” must support has become the third rail of Democratic politics. Even if they wanted to, progressive populists are allowed little room to maneuver. That’s unfortunate, because from the perspective of leery and disaffected voters, it undercuts their claims of independence from a self-dealing and unaccountable establishment.

This constraint highlights one of the key lessons progressives have yet to fully digest about the Trump era. Democrats and progressives of all varieties deflect from the role of culture in a party system convulsed by anti-establishment sentiment, in which “the establishment” is now closely associated with a distinctly anti-populist and handsomely funded progressive vanguard. Democrats, convinced they were the party of a “rising electorate,” became reluctant to absorb any criticism of the sociocultural agenda they embraced, believing the slightest opposition betokened dangerous illiberalism. That made it harder still to convince working-class people outside of existing Democratic strongholds that they had a friend and champion in the Democratic Party.

Now, both the scope of Trump’s coalition and subsequent polling suggest a sea change in public opinion has taken place, at least relative to predictions last decade that Republicans were on track to be a rump party of rural white conservative evangelicals. Remarkably, despite the pervasiveness of the online right’s racism and nihilistic subculture within formal GOP ranks, it is the Democrats who are increasingly seen by regular voters as the party that is out-of-step on the most salient sociocultural questions.

This is unsettling terrain for Democrats. The problem, however, goes beyond overcoming charges of progressive elitism. In a major historical reversal, Democrats are no longer broadly seen as the party explicitly committed to helping more people attain the American dream. This is an ominous development attributable not to right-wing propaganda, but to how insular the party has become. In the post-civil rights era, liberal Democrats frustrated by the defections of blue-collar whites could reasonably say they sometimes paid an ugly penalty for supporting racial integration, affirmative action, and a woman’s right to an abortion. Today, it is harder to conclude working-class voters are turning down a program of economic egalitarianism because they reject the cultural liberalism that is part of the Democratic equation. Rather, more and more voters across race and region think cultural priorities have eclipsed Democrats’ traditional commitments to economic uplift and collective progress, and worse, that what remains of these commitments are mainly symbolic gestures to the party’s New Deal heritage.

Given these sobering challenges, one might think Democrats are finally willing to have an open debate over the way forward. But there are reasons to worry they won’t. For one thing, the Resistance revamp naturally appeals to the Democratic faithful because although it fosters the sensation that something is being done, it demands very little change. Indeed, it mainly serves to vent frustration with a “leaderless” party elite, rather than deal frankly with the party’s long-term strategic errors, particularly its retreat from huge sections of the Midwest and South.

In fact, the prevailing “accountability” discourse—in which Democrats, allied advocacy groups, and dutiful small donors demand each other to hold Trump accountable—essentially keeps inconvenient facts like Democrats’ steep deficit with non-college voters, their looming disadvantage in the Electoral College due to migration from expensive blue states, and the surge in registered Republican voters at the margins of discussion. No one really faces the consequences of having pushed policies and talking points that alienated mainstream voters who once voted for Barack Obama. The script is overwhelmingly about Trump’s awfulness, prolonging Democrats’ evasion of both their cultural baggage and the pessimism that has engulfed so much of American society.

In a healthy party determined to face up to its losses, the case for economic populism, and its corollary, working-class abundance, would overtake the exhausted Resistance framework. Unfortunately, the same demographic trends that have made Resistance liberalism and “emancipatory” identity politics the perceived centerpiece of the Democratic agenda have made it difficult for Democrats to convincingly channel their populist forebearers.

The concentration of Democratic power in superstar cities magnifies the difficulty of engineering a populist makeover. Taking a page from Bernie Sanders’ book, more Democrats have delighted lately in assailing Trump’s billionaire buddies. But while the rhetoric might sound tough relative to the Obama or Clinton years, it can’t obscure the awkward fact that Democrats increasingly derive their support from the knowledge economy’s winners. House Democrats now represent some of the country’s wealthiest and highly educated districts, while Republicans represent some of the neediest—a development not enough Democrats seem perturbed by. On top of Trump’s massive gains with Americans earning less than $80,000 per year, these dynamics have had an overlooked impact on the way in which the party approaches political economy and coalition-building.

In particular, the party’s changing demographic composition has led more elected Democrats, whether “neoliberal” or “fiscally liberal,” to stress targeted transfers and social programs over high-wage pre-distribution and tougher laws against economic predation. This doesn’t mean that the latter set is more important than the other; a party sincerely committed to bold reform would combine dignity-enhancing welfare measures with market regulations that maximize opportunity, development, and financial freedom for the working class. But the shift in the Democratic camp over the last quarter-century raises questions over whether the party will advance ideas and proposals that create a genuine opening in Trump-trending counties.

It would seem, then, that neither theory of party renewal has a satisfying answer for the “working-class hole” Democrats must face. The Resistance revamp simply offers more of the same at a time when Democrats need fresh motivation and a more optimistic narrative. The case for patriotic economic populism could supply these, provided that Democrats do not get in their own way with platitudes that resonate neither with traditional workers nor those desperate to do more than survive the relentless churn of the gig and service economy. Yet in all probability its potential will go unrealized so long as Democrats circle the wagons on cultural stances we have good reason to believe have shed more voters than they have gained.

Therein lies the madness of the Democrats’ current trajectory. The party’s power brokers profess to stand nobly for all that is good and true, when in fact, they have made the unprincipled and indefensible choice to affirm their withdrawal from so many parts of the country. In doing so, they impose an impossible burden on those reformers who want a different future. Progressive populists want to drastically change how the party approaches left-behind regions and Middle America. But until they are permitted to take a middle course on issues that have needlessly estranged working-class voters who are “conservative” only relative to the post-2014 goalposts, proponents of the “populist” approach will be rebuffed by many of the very “persuadables” they have endeavored to win over as proof they are fashioning a big tent.

Put another way, Democratic inroads in key regions will be limited, ensuring one of two undesirable outcomes: a period of unproductive and unstable divided government, with few avenues to advance the economic reform progressive populists have sworn by, or the MAGA Republican hegemony that both progressive populists and Resistance types fear will irrevocably deform American democracy.

Democrats who are intent on avoiding such outcomes must come to their senses. As in the great upheavals of the past, lasting progress won’t be possible if the less-educated and left-behind are deemed morally backward or beneath the rigors of democratic citizenship. Indeed, most of the great achievements in the history of American reform would never have occurred without the energy and fidelity of regular working people, plenty of whom would be judged as conservatives and traditionalists by today’s standards despite their sacrifices to make a better world possible. They made these contributions because they believed the fabric of American life was at stake—that without the freedom to build fruitful lives and purposeful communities, the American experiment would unravel.

Ultimately, Democrats need a better theory of party renewal—one that not only speaks to the anger and distrust that threaten to rend society but also honors once more the desire for strong families, dignified communities, and national belonging.

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The first year of Trump’s second term has been marked by a broad and growing assault on progressive values, norms, and practices. The administration regards anything associated with DEI, positive discrimination, and other expressions of “woke” social justice as anathema; public and private institutions promoting such ideas have been subject to federal investigations and financial penalties.

Aghast Democrats and allied advocacy groups argue this intimidation leaves no doubt about Trump’s autocratic motives. But their case has thus far proved ineffective. The broader public is increasingly concerned by Trump’s draconian immigration measures and his deployment of National Guard troops in U.S. cities to deter crime. Yet it remains uninspired by Democrats’ appeal to stand up for “democratic values,” which, in the minds of cynical and disaffected voters, implies a sociocultural agenda no less partisan and ideological than Trump’s.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to progressive activists. If “wokeness” isn’t exactly in full retreat, its popular support undeniably plummeted during the Biden era. Extensive polling, the surprising diversity of Trump’s 2024 coalition, and the share of minority voters who voted for Biden in 2020 but didn’t go to the polls last November all indicate there are millions of working Americans who think Democrats don’t share their priorities. Though some research suggests “wokeness” is a minor issue for swing voters today, the official stances taken to represent it—among them, elite support for mass migration, trans activism for kids, and inculcating schools and businesses with “anti-racist” and “decolonial” practices—clearly damaged the Democratic brand. When voters say Democrats are out of touch, the elevation of identity politics and relatively niche beliefs over populist economics is an obvious factor.

Given these hurdles, is it possible for left-populists and chastened progressives to chart a middle course on culture? One credible enough to win over some portion of wage-earners who disdain or have become disillusioned with “wokeness” but which the Brahmin left can accept? A lot will depend on whether Democrats come to terms with the cultural dissonance at the heart of modern progressivism. Progressives who grasp that Democrats lost the plot sometime after the George Floyd protests and Covid tend to focus on rhetorical excesses. Yet more costly than any single position related to progressives’ most valorized causes has been the impression that progressivism is fixated on subverting and supplanting traditional norms without regard to the consequences. However inconsistent this impression may be with the standard social welfare goals of the average House Democrat, it has distorted the public’s understanding of what the national party stands for.

At the same time, voter wariness is not the product of abject falsehoods. Partisan Democrats have a habit of blaming every disadvantage on “disinformation,” much as Trump decries “fake news” when basic reporting or public opinion is against him. But Democrats from the Biden White House down to the municipal level had indulged positions that average voters regard as misguided, wacky, or flat-out wrong and inscribed them into policy, usually without significant small-d democratic input. That helped lay the seeds of Trump’s return precisely at the moment of his greatest weakness, in the weeks and months after January 6.

To actually repair the deficit with the working class, Democrats and grassroots organizers aligned with the party must finally accept they are losing the culture war—not because the masses are hopelessly bigoted, but because the party line strayed from what reasonable voters are comfortable with. Americans from all walks of life share a healthy suspicion of dogma, inherited from the Enlightenment and the country’s own political traditions. Whether the proselytizing comes from the sectarian left or the sectarian right, they refuse to submit to beliefs that traffic in guilt and rely on manipulation rather than persuasion. Emboldened progressives forgot this, mistakenly believing the threat of the right’s illiberalism would always dwarf their own rising militancy. In a strange parallel to the Reaganite Moral Majority, identity politics at its most extreme encroached baldly upon the individual’s freedom of conscience. Accordingly, people rebelled.

Reformers sobered by this fact must confront progressivism’s two fundamental contradictions. The first is straightforward. Progressivism is theoretically predicated on building a more inclusive and compassionate society. Yet it shames and ostracizes not only those who, à la William F. Buckley, cry, “Stop!” but anyone who observes the means are sometimes coercive and the ends aren’t always what they are made out to be. The second contradiction is more insidious but critical to understanding why progressives have developed a reputation for misgovernance. It is this: even as progressivism propounds a paradigm of righteous social justice and secular moral uplift, it appears indifferent to, and may at times even condone, policies and behaviors that fuel social distrust, anomie, and self-destructive choices.

Reckoning with these contradictions won’t be easy amid Trump’s crackdown. Democratic politicians hope to regain power mainly by dialing up economic populism and (perhaps) disavowing the left’s most sectarian tendencies. This is a tactical move to compensate for unpopular stances, not a solution to the disjuncture at hand. Skeptical voters won’t think a controversial position has been scrapped just because it is put more blandly or goes unmentioned in interviews. They will just conclude Democrats are in denial about why so many working-class people have deserted them.

The unwillingness to even scrape the surface of the party’s cultural woes is bad politics. It also shows a failure of curiosity. Radical cultural progressives in particular have yet to fully grapple with the grave “spiritual unspooling” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) identified in a 2023 essay. Murphy’s interpretation of America’s tattered social fabric—one that highlights but extends beyond Americans’ diminished economic prospects—makes them anxious. The progressive vanguard doesn’t want to amplify a “conservative”-sounding view on the breakdown of the nuclear family, the loss of associational life, the addiction crisis, and the loneliness epidemic. From its perspective, the institutions and norms that helped sustain rising developmental outcomes in the recent past were uniformly repressive. If culture does have a negative impact on one’s social environment and life chances, it can only be due to chauvinism or Christian nationalism permeating their community.

The progressive vanguard, however, doesn’t want to be accused of inadvertently diminishing economic pain through its focus on intersectionality. Thus, whenever the Brahmin left does admit that bigotry alone can’t explain the state of our politics, it argues that the economic pessimism highlighted by Sandernistas must be the only other significant variable.

The causal relationship between economic conditions, life chances, and spiritual self-worth is indeed pivotal to the story of how we got here. The vise of low wages, poor working conditions, and soaring living costs often leads demoralized people to make reckless or desperate decisions. Communities whipsawed by economic dislocation and technological change become ensnared by the downstream effects of disinvestment. In such cases, it is tempting to conclude that sheer imbalances in economic power, not our culture’s hyper-individualistic and libertine excesses, are leaving so many Americans hopeless.

And yet, the spiritual void that afflicts modern existence cannot be reduced to economic factors, important as vast disparities in wealth, opportunity, and economic power are. From the compulsions of social media and their troubling effects on adolescents and young adults to the omnipresence of hardcore pornography, sexual self-commodification, open-air drug use, and low-level antisocial behavior in everyday life, progressivism has struggled to offer a coherent vision consonant with preserving self-government. In fact, in the face of such ills, progressives typically refrain from the kind of blanket condemnations they direct at rural and working-class whites. These phenomena are largely inevitable, and trying to aggressively fight them, progressives fret, may inflict more harm on “marginalized communities” or undermine the hard-won freedoms of past liberation movements.

By now the folly of this outlook should be apparent. Progressives may believe they are compassionate and searching thoughtfully for the most humane approaches to the issues of the day. A movement, however, that essentially discards the feminist case against pornography and sex work, ignores the downsides of legalized drugs, shirks concern over public disturbances, declares all gender medicine to be settled science, prefers “equity” to stronger educational standards, and all but shrugs at the spread of migrant child labor offers a political gift to opponents who promise to bolster public order and give working families a modicum of control over the direction of their communities.

This does not mean that MAGA represents a more sincere or viable alternative. A disturbing form of cultural nihilism percolates on the “post-Christian” right. Trump, ever the cunning cynic, pulled significant support from “barstool conservatives” who lack a strong social code, have probably few compunctions over extreme porn, drug culture, and unchecked gambling, and are normally apolitical. Yet that outreach, alongside targeted overtures to working-class Latinos, blacks, Asians, and Muslims, also attests to MAGA’s adaptability. MAGA, in a bizarre twist, learned to present itself as a big tent open to anyone attracted to the concept of America First (and the resounding promise of lower prices). By contrast, hardline progressives became only more judgmental of those who wouldn’t parrot all of their beliefs and declarations.

Of course, progressives wedded to the social justice paradigms of the last decade insist that there is nothing elitist about promoting inclusion and respect for diversity. But this conflates support for pluralism and equality before the law with an agenda that zealously sought to delegitimize anything that, in the eyes of an ascendant activist class, perpetuated “cisnormativity,” “patriarchy,” and “white supremacy culture.” By employing this sweeping lens, the cultural-intersectional left kept finding and minting new adversaries. Liberal use of imperfect and often dubious historical analogies was put to illiberal ends. Modest disagreement with the latest innovations in social justice thought and its corresponding lexicon of correct speech was tantamount to being an apologist for the rising backlash, if not something much worse.

Hindsight has only made this harder to dispute. Still, professional activists, extremely well-funded nonprofits and NGOs, and their associated PACs continue to obfuscate the dynamics that fragmented the Democratic coalition and made critics out of erstwhile allies. They refuse to acknowledge that leading Democrats not only accommodated but also avidly supported and raised lots of money off of a form of identity politics that demanded strict conformity and which, by its operational logic, could never be satisfied with the reforms it had already won so long as it aroused opposition of any kind. Eventually, many thinkers and activists who identified more naturally with the “old left” grew tired of this pattern. It was psychologically exhausting, but more importantly, it was visibly accelerating the dealignment of working-class constituencies essential to any renewal of social democracy.

Reformers determined to leave the political wilderness have been—and will be—accused of betraying “core” values. But neither the maximalist rhetoric at the height of “wokeness” nor the theories and demands that fueled it should be confused with the first principles that give a democratic and decent left its impetus. Working families want economic security and safe, healthy communities, not a cultural revolution teeming with rent-seekers and grifters.

Redemption thus requires taking more seriously the concerns of an electorate desperate to balance an admirable and distinctly American “live-and-let-live” ethos with social cohesion. Wokeness, the supposed antidote to Trumpism and all Trumpian sympathies, was discredited for seeming to violate both. And, at least at the margins, it helped return Trump to the White House. That is a bitter legacy to contend with—all the more so given that demographics were supposed to deliver Democrats to the promised land.

Although they are under enormous pressure to admit no error, Democrats have no real choice but to change course on the issues that have cost them dearly. The alternative is to watch MAGA finalize the contours of the political realignment so many of its acolytes and foes have already sketched. And this, not taking common-sense stances, will be the ultimate capitulation to the right. MAGA thinkers believe “multiracial” national populism, spear-tipped with Caesar-like proclamations, will deliver the order blue-collar voters truly desire. Recalling Seymour Lipset’s thesis about working-class authoritarianism, morose progressives are beginning to concur. Yet Democrats are not suddenly fated to resemble, of all things, the old “Dole ‘96” coalition. Nor should they reconcile themselves to such a strange and unhappy future. Democrats should instead draw courage from all the profound achievements their predecessors had a hand in authoring—reforms that were made possible precisely because of the authority vested in the party by the forgotten man and woman.

If American democracy as we know it is nearing midnight—and there are omens it might be—reclaiming that authority should be the overriding priority of every Democrat. Anything less would be an abdication of what American liberalism, in its finest moments, has stood for.

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In a world full of bad actors and rogue nations, Americans don’t seem too worked up about external threats. In fact, when TLP’s friends at Echelon Insights asked whether the biggest threats to the United States come from “outside our country in the form of adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran” or instead from “within our country in the form of polarization, corruption in government, or dysfunctional cultural trends,” roughly three-quarters of American voters said our biggest threats are internal.

Numbers this high almost always reflect basic consensus across demographic lines. Accordingly, around seven in ten Americans, regardless of their gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, or income, agree that our biggest threats are internal, not external. Similarly, in terms of partisanship, the difference is more a matter of degree rather than any serious disagreement about the location of threats to the nation: 63 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of independents, and 82 percent of Democrats believe our nation’s biggest threats are internal.

These findings are perhaps a testament to Americans’ ongoing belief in the military and economic might of the United States in relation to countries like Russia, China, or Iran. Despite the saber rattling and threats from the anti-American axis, Americans themselves don’t feel all that threatened by it—at least for now. This seems like a genuine plus for the country.

In contrast, the three components of the internal threats cited in this question—polarization, corruption, and cultural dysfunction—clearly worry Americans of different stripes, probably in different ways. For instance, those focused more on politics undoubtedly notice the lack of comity, or common purpose, among Democrats and Republicans and worry about the internal cohesion of the country and the possibility of increased political violence. Can we really make it long-term with half the country hating the other half because of their political views? Can elected officials really rise to the occasion and put aside their differences to help fix our broken schools, repair decrepit infrastructure, and ensure that all Americans—regardless of where they live or who they vote for—have decent work options, safe neighborhoods for their families, basic health care, and secure retirements? The answer right now is clearly no.

Others less focused on politics perhaps look at trends around crime, drug use, anti-social behaviors, broken families, social media saturation, and declining ethical and moral standards across age groups as major causes for alarm. Can our people really reach their greatest potential living in unsafe environments with low social trust, heightened fear and anxiety, chronic stress and other health problems, and diminished expectations in life? Can our nation really compete with the likes of China when so many of us believe our own culture is completely sick or broken and that our elected officials are all corrupt? Again, the answer right now is clearly no, thus explaining the findings above.

It's easy for those who are partisan warriors or who are economically comfortable and successful to dismiss the concerns of Americans about internal threats as overblown, “fake news,” or mass paranoia and neurosis. But this is a core part of the problem.

Alternatively, our leadership class in politics, business, education, and the media could take these concerns more seriously and do something concrete to ratchet down the polarization, end the corruption, and improve America’s social and political culture rather than abusing their power to exacerbate these trends and make things worse.

External threats we can surely handle with our military supremacy, economic power, and geographical advantages. Internal threats, however, will require a wholesale change in leadership and the values these leaders and other citizens bring to major institutions of American life.

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America is going through an especially precarious period in its history, and many of its citizens are increasingly worried about where things will go from here. Consider these findings from recent surveys:

• The share of Americans who believe the country is moving in the wrong direction is at its highest point of Trump’s term, 60.3 percent, a shift in recent weeks that has come from Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike.

• Over 80 percent believe America has become more divided compared to five years ago, and two-thirds say we are at a “significant turning point” in history.

• Nearly 90 percent agree that political violence is a problem, with 59 percent calling a “very big problem.”

• Americans don’t believe either party’s hands are clean, blaming both equally for political violence in the country today.

• Last year, after the first assassination attempt against President Trump, fully 80 percent of voters in an Ipsos/Reuters poll agreed with the statement that “the country is spiraling out of the control.”

What this data and the broader decaying discourse in America demonstrate is that many people are simply scared right now: scared of their political adversaries, scared that society and social order are crumbling around them, and scared of what is to come. It’s in these moments that the country desperately needs leaders who speak to the better angels of our nature, who seek to calm rather than inflame—and to remind us of what we have in common rather than stoke anger, contempt, and division.

America historically has had no shortage of these leaders, whose cool heads during turbulent times helped the nation persevere through them. It’s worth looking to the past—and present—to consider the reassuring words that some of them offered to a public on edge.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Perhaps no president in the past century guided the country through a rockier period than FDR, whose governing ethos strongly informs TLP’s. One of the most effective ways Roosevelt comforted Americans during the Great Depression and later World War II was by launching his famous “fireside chats,” a series of radio broadcasts that brought him into people’s living rooms to talk about the challenges facing the nation.

As one analysis noted, “For many Americans, the Fireside Chats, delivered in President Roosevelt’s calm, measured voice, were a source of comfort—a reassurance that during the crises of the Great Depression and World War II, a steady hand was on the wheel.”

But arguably Roosevelt’s most memorable moment of calming leadership was from his first inaugural address in which he admonished Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” He was of course speaking to panic that had set in around the depression, but his words remain as relevant today as they were then. Fear leads people to react with their emotions rather than clear and rational thought. It drives us to indulge our basest, tribal instincts rather than aspire to more enlightened forms.

Sadly, today our fear increasingly stems from each other. America’s leaders would do well to encourage their constituents to fight the urge to lean into hatred and contempt—to not fear our neighbors and instead see their shared humanity.

Lyndon Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy

Some historians have made comparisons between today’s political atmosphere and that of the famously tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, and there are indeed many striking parallels. In addition to widespread social unrest, the ubiquity of domestic political violence—including the assassinations of President Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.—left the nation deeply unsettled. In a 1968 Harris poll, 57 percent of Americans agreed that “our political process has fallen apart when candidates can't campaign without fear of assassination.”

At the start of the decade, following JFK’s assassination, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, was immediately tasked with calming the public, overwhelming shares of whom said they felt “hopeless” and “fearful.” In an address that came to be known as Johnson’s “Let Us Continue” speech, he said:

We meet in grief, but let us also meet in renewed dedication and renewed vigor. Let us meet in action, in tolerance, and in mutual understanding. John Kennedy's death commands what his life conveyed—that America must move forward. The time has come for Americans of all races and creeds and political beliefs to understand and to respect one another. So let us put an end to the teaching and the preaching of hate and evil and violence. Let us turn away from the fanatics of the far left and the far right, from the apostles of bitterness and bigotry, from those defiant of law, and those who pour venom into our Nation's bloodstream.

I profoundly hope that the tragedy and the torment of these terrible days will bind us together in new fellowship, making us one people in our hour of sorrow. So let us here highly resolve that John Fitzgerald Kennedy did not live—or die—in vain.

Later in the decade, Kennedy’s brother, Robert, had the awesome responsibility of speaking to a scared public to deliver the news of MLK’s death. Here, too, an American leader—one who had lost his own brother to the same kind of political violence—offered calm rather than playing on people’s fears:

In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black—considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible—you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization—black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.

In both cases, when tragedy struck America, its leaders sought to reassure them not by identifying an enemy to blame but by calling for them to come together, despite their indignation and even in the face of their differences for the sake of healing the country and helping it find a better way forward.

George W. Bush

One of the most destabilizing events in the country’s recent history was the 9/11 terror attacks. In the aftermath of that day, overwhelming numbers of Americans reported feeling depressed and frightened, with many fearing they would become a victim of terrorism and expecting more attacks on the homeland. A full year after the tragedy, nearly half said they were “more afraid, more careful, more distrustful, or felt more vulnerable.”

At the same time, many Muslim Americans worried they would be scapegoated for the attack and face discrimination. President Bush, who faced the immense challenge of calming Americans’ concerns about their safety, also made an concerted effort to bring down the temperature domestically and reaffirm the country’s commitment to pluralism by defending peaceful American Muslims on the national stage:

I…want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends.

He added:

Americans are asking: What is expected of us? I ask you to live your lives, and hug your children. I know many citizens have fears tonight, and I ask you to be calm and resolute, even in the face of a continuing threat. I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

At a time when some Americans’ distrust in their Muslim brothers and sisters had grown, the president made clear that the nation’s fight was not with them—and that he had their back.

Spencer Cox

Most recently, following the killing of Charlie Kirk, one prominent leader has risen to the occasion: Utah Governor Spencer Cox, in whose state Kirk was slain. From 2023 to 2024, Cox served as the chairman of the National Governors Association, during which time he spearheaded an initiative called “Disagree Better” aimed at reducing hyper-partisanship and polarization.

Whereas leaders of other states might have used the occasion of Kirk’s death to score political points by engaging in rank partisanship, Cox was “the most consistent voice of calm and conciliation in the GOP,” as The Atlantic put it. To be sure, he did not shy away from condemning the attack in unequivocal terms, saying that the assassination of Kirk “is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the American experiment. It is an attack on our ideals. This cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been, and who we could be in better times.”

Importantly, though, he also added the following:

To my young friends out there: you are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage—it feels like rage is the only option…I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence; violence is violence. And there is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody…

And:

We can choose a different path…We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate. And that’s the problem with political violence: it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side, and at some point we have to find an off-ramp or it’s going to get much, much worse…I still believe that there is more good among us than evil. And I still believe that we can change the course of history.

Even as Cox expressed that he had spent the days since Kirk’s killing as angry and sad as he had ever been, he still rose to the occasion and worked to calm tensions. It’s a model of what Americans should expect from all of their leaders in this moment.

As the country enters an uncertain and unsettling period, it’s important to remember a few things. First, the vast majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, aren’t ideologically extreme, nor do they support political violence. Most are normal people just trying to live their lives, raise their kids, do their jobs, and maybe fit in a hobby or two if they have time.

However, there are some factors that lead to increased support for political violence. One is a belief that the “other side” also supports it—a belief that is often exacerbated by social media. A recent study by Financial Times analyst John Burn-Murdoch found that people are far likelier to encounter extremist statements on social media than they are in real life, which can skew their perception of how radical or crazy the other side really is. Correcting those misperceptions about others is crucial to lowering the temperature.

Another thing we know will never work is pointing fingers and deliberately ratcheting up conflict. It’s next to impossible to find common ground when a country’s most prominent leaders say they “hate” people in the other party and speak about them using degrading, highly charged terms like “evil” and the “enemy within.”

So if leadership doesn’t come from the top, it must come from Americans themselves. To give Governor Cox the final word: “All of us have an opportunity right now to do something different…Log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.”

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When there’s a dangerous fire, most people’s first instinct is to grab a hose, not waste time trying to figure out how it started. Many believe the same about our politics: stop the intellectual analysis and “both-sidesing” and just help us defeat the bad actors. You hear it from Democrats and anti-Trump folks, and you hear it from Republicans and others angry at the left.

But toxic polarization isn’t a normal fire. It’s a decades-long, slowly spreading blaze that many of us unknowingly feed every day—with contempt, cheap shots, and worst-case stories about “them.” Many of us tell ourselves stories about how ignorant, misinformed, and even evil the other “side” is, which acts as an accelerant. Our contempt and fear lead to more support for increasingly hostile, defeat-them-at-all-costs approaches to politics and public life. And if we can’t figure out a way to put out this fire, it will put our experiment in self-government at grave risk.

Can Both Sides Be Right?

A major barrier to reducing toxic polarization is that so many of us—especially those who are highly politically involved—see our current toxic conflict as clearly the other side’s fault.

Many Republicans point to Democrats’ large and rapid attitudinal shifts on issues like immigration, abortion, gender, policing, and more, shifts they argue haven’t been mirrored in scale on the right. These changes, compounded by what they perceive as harsh moral judgment from the left, have led many to conclude the left caused this conflict.

On the other side, Democrats have become infuriated by Trump’s contemptuous behaviors, rule-breaking, and refusal to accept the 2020 election. They believe there is no Democratic version of someone with Trump’s divisive personality and penchant for defying democratic norms, and this leads many to conclude the right caused this conflict.

People in both groups focus on the grievances that alarm them most but often struggle to understand what bothers their adversaries. From the outside, our opponents’ complaints can look minor, silly, or misinformed compared to our concerns, which we (naturally) see as legitimate and based in reality. The more we subscribe to these narratives, the more we risk becoming arrogant, convinced that “you’d have to be an idiot” not to see which group is worse and more at fault for our conflict and division. All this serves to fan the flames of toxic polarization.

Still, it’s important to acknowledge that these competing narratives are built on true foundations. Regardless of which group’s grievances are more defensible, the primary “us vs. them” narratives rest on logically defensible foundations. There are myriad data points and so many events unfolding around us on a daily basis that nobody can accurately process all of it—at least not in any objective, unbiased way. We thus rely on stories, stereotypes, and heuristics to help us make sense of things. So, even when we agree on the same facts, the specific moral frames through which we process the world can lead to entirely different views of what those facts mean—and what they portend for the future.

This helps explain how rational, well-meaning people can reason their way to polar opposite views that they believe are good and righteous—a dynamic philosopher Kevin Dorst calls “rational polarization.” If we can lower our own arrogance, we might develop greater understanding of people who possess very different values and beliefs and perhaps act in ways that persuade instead of inflame—even as we still push for the causes we believe in.

The Fog of Conflict

Part of the difficulty in recognizing that other people are often more rational than we might think is that toxic conflict deranges our thinking, leading us to adopt overly pessimistic and catastrophizing views about them. Conflict rarely feels complicated when we’re in it. Many of us simply see people on the other side and conclude: they are the aggressors; we are just defending ourselves.

But these simple, black-and-white stories blind us to the complexity of the world and the people in it. As historian Geoffrey Blainey has observed, each side in a war tends to see history through its own eyes. Most serious conflicts have many causes, cross-currents, and feedback loops, which makes it hard for the parties involved to ever get a clear view of the conflict. He writes that “the distinction between warmaker and peacemaker is often a mirage.”

One well-known aspect of conflict that obscures our view of people on the “other side” is the tendency to see them as all the same—as a monolithic, homogeneous mass. This leads to all sorts of misunderstandings, including “perception gaps,” which convince people that the other side is much more extreme than they actually are.

Another confusing aspect of conflict is that people in large groups always possess different traits and exhibit different behaviors. In the US, Democrats and Republicans differ—on average—in background, life experience, values, and moral priorities. This leads to differences in how each group manifests their anger and anxiety and even the assumptions they make about the world. For example, a mostly working-class, blue-collar community is likely to come to these things differently than a mostly college-educated group would. Each group will apply different types of social pressures on its members when it comes to their behavior and how they approach the conflict.

And because these differences are usually substantial, each side can point to “bad things they do that we don’t do” and then treat these things as definitive proof that their opponents are the problem.

But the causes of conflict are often complex, and two groups in conflict will always contribute to it in different ways.1 It’s therefore worth examining some of the ways in which Republicans and Democrats can both arrive at the view that “it’s all the other side’s fault,” depending on which events and group traits they focus on.

1. Perceived support for violence

Many people believe it’s the “other side” that’s more violent—that they are the ones whose supporters are more likely to endorse political violence, or at least more tolerant of such violence.

Many on the left believe that right-wing extremism is by far a much more serious threat than liberal-side extremism. They point to events like the Charlottesville Unite the Right march, the assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, murders by far-right extremists (like the 2022 Buffalo, NY, mass murder and the 2019 El Paso, TX, mass murder), and, perhaps most prominently, January 6—the event that, to them, most embodies the violent threat posed by Trump and his diehard supporters.

On the right, many see liberals as the violent ones. Conservatives focus on different events and different manifestations of social disruptions, including things like violence during the 2020 George Floyd protests, aggressive tactics by progressive activists, and, most recently, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They believe too many liberals either support or tacitly condone militancy and violence.

Sometimes, both groups even find evidence of the other side’s violent nature in the same event. For example, following the assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania, some of his supporters cast blame on liberals, while some liberals pointed to the shooter’s past political activity to score points against Republicans.

Some people react in cruel and callous ways to violence aimed at the “other side,” which their opponents interpret as proof of pervasive sickness and immorality. The result of all this filtering is that both groups can end up genuinely wondering, “Why is the other side so violent? Why do so many of them support violence?”

Influencing these views is an instinct many of us have to downplay the significance of violence associated with our group, even as we consider violence associated with the other side hugely consequential. If someone kills a political figure on the other side, we might be quick to imagine a deranged, mentally unwell individual. But if someone kills a political figure on our side, there can be a strong temptation to give it great meaning and quickly designate “them” as all culpable.

The number of people who have committed politically motivated murder in recent decades is extremely small relative to the size of our population. We should recognize that even in the most unified country, there will always be some people drawn to hate and violence. Moreover, many in the media and political realm vastly overstate the number of Americans who actually support political violence.

It’s natural for violent events to upset and scare us. But we should consider whether we’re overreacting to what are rare incidents of violence, statistically speaking, in an otherwise very peaceful country, and how our tendency to cherry-pick bad behaviors and see the worst in each other can amplify divides—and even lead to self-fulfilling prophecies.

2. Class and cultural stereotypes

The divide is also heavily influenced by education and class. Democrats tend to have higher levels of formal education and are more concentrated in high-income, professional sectors and urban areas. Republicans, by contrast, are overrepresented in working-class, rural, and religious communities and are less likely to hold advanced degrees.

These differences help each side create negative, oversimplified stories about the other.

On the left, it’s common to hear that Republicans and Trump supporters are “anti-science,” easily manipulated, or even in a cult. They’re willfully ignorant, duped by conspiracy theories, or too intellectually backward to see what’s obvious to “smarter,” more educated people. You’ll find liberals saying things like, “Of course education makes you more politically liberal; that’s because conservatism is backwards.”

On the right, it’s often the inverse: liberals are “out-of-touch elites” captured by academic jargon and niche activist ideas. They’re arrogant, disconnected from the lives of “normal” Americans, and smugly dismissive of, or even hostile toward, people who aren’t like them.

Again, some of these narratives may contain elements of truth—but in the hands of highly angry political actors, they will often involve worst-case interpretations and excessive contempt. What’s missing is empathy and nuance: understanding that, by and large, people on the “other side” have real, defensible fears and frustrations—and that each group’s fears influence the other’s.

3. Accusations of hate

Democrats and Republicans both believe that people on the other side hate them much more than they do. This is one of many self-reinforcing elements of our conflict. When we think, “They hate us,” we are naturally inclined to act in more hostile ways towards “them.” This in turn encourages “them” to treat “us” worse, which makes us treat them worse, and on and on we continue down a doom spiral of toxic conflict.

In the course of working on reducing polarization, I’ve talked to many Republicans who focus on the toxicity they’ve seen and personally experienced from liberals. It’s true that there are many pieces of evidence one can find to support that narrative. For example, surveys show that Democrats are more likely to cut off friendships—or even family members—for political reasons. Some Republicans are tempted to use this as another building block for the “this is all Democrats’ fault” narrative.

However, another way of interpreting that statistic is that many Democrats (and others, too) are turned off by Trump’s divisive personality and by those who support him even in the face of it (or who even emulate his confrontational and even dehumanizing rhetoric).

Group differences can leave many of us concluding with certainty, “See, this shows this is all their fault!” In these moments, we should try our best to strive for humility and to remember that the complexity of the world, and of conflict, makes it easy for us to see what we seek to find but harder to see the best in our adversaries.

4. Cultural vs. political power

Over at least the past few decades, politically liberal people and ideas have come to dominate key cultural institutions like academia, journalism, and the entertainment industry. This imbalance in cultural power has led to an abundance of conservative-aimed insults and provocations generated by the people in those institutions.

That cultural power imbalance sometimes augments other group differences. For example, many conservatives believe there exists a powerful politically liberal establishment—one that at best misunderstands them and at worst disdains them. Feeling like an underdog fighting a vast, culturally dominant adversary can generate more support for an aggressive, contemptuous personality like Trump’s. For many of his supporters, his belligerence isn’t necessarily a flaw but rather a justified form of defiance against an establishment that is entirely against them.

But while liberals have dominated the culture for at least the past decade, they control few levers of political power at this moment. Consider America’s key institutions: the presidency, U.S. Senate, U.S. House, Supreme Court, governorships, and state legislatures. Republicans have more power than Democrats in every single one, and many Democrats fear they may be essentially locked out of power in key institutions in the near future.

So, although they continue to hold immense cultural power, many Democrats likely feel powerless in the face of Trump’s second term, especially when he has the support of the Congress and, often, the Supreme Court too.

If we treat our political divides like a normal fire, one that simply requires stamping out a perceived threat, we will continue to make missteps, convinced that we’re helping extinguish the danger when in fact we’re feeding it with more kindling.

To put out this fire, we must first understand how it spreads: in the warped stories we tell ourselves about our opponents. Humans are skilled storytellers. We’re good at taking new tidbits of information and fitting them into our existing narratives. In the age of the internet, it is easier than ever before to use these bits to construct and bolster our preferred narratives. Decent people build stories from certain facts, emotions, and social worlds that make sense to them, but many come to view those who have different stories with contempt, accelerating the fire.

This is how we become arrogant, how we so easily fall for the “it’s obviously all their fault” framings that keep us mired in toxicity and contempt. Everyone believes they are on the side of good, but it’s often harder to see that in our ideological adversaries. Only when we understand them as people who also believe their views to be good and righteous, the same as ourselves, will we be better positioned to work towards our goals without dehumanizing, to work to persuade instead of provoke, and to stop feeding the blaze the vast majority of us wish to contain.

Zachary Elwood is the host of the psychology podcast People Who Read People and the author of How Contempt Destroys Democracy, in which he aims to persuade liberal and anti-Trump Americans of the need to work on reducing toxic polarization.

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Ask people what single line they remember about Barack Obama’s 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention, and most will quote his words about unity, about there not being a black, white, Latino, or Asian America, but rather the United States of America.1 But he also recognized the necessity of connecting the language of American unity to progressive policy goals. As Obama described his personal views:

[W]e are connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for her prescription and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandmother.

Barack Obama recognized that persuading people to back policies (or candidates like himself) that call for sharing resources with others first required convincing them to identify with those other people as members of the same community—namely the American people.

Obama’s soaring depiction of our country’s story, in which we’ve committed terrible wrongs in the past but also drawn upon our founding documents and values to make remarkable progress, resonated with enough Americans to elect and re-elect him to the presidency with commanding margins—a feat accomplished by none of the Democratic Party’s three subsequent presidential candidates.

It should be obvious that Donald Trump’s vision of America represents something like the antithesis of Obama’s. What’s less obvious but equally important is that Democratic politicians—influenced by far-left academics—have in important ways departed from how the 44th president talks about our history and our national identity in the years since he left office.

Obama’s approach centers on the need to actively inculcate a sense of peoplehood that unifies Americans of every kind, even as it makes space for identities based on race, culture, religion, and more. He understood that a healthy society requires a concept of America within which people of all backgrounds can find themselves. People need to feel a sense of belonging, a sense of identity, something that connects them to a larger purpose. A concept of Americanness—a liberal patriotism—that can connect Americans to one another across boundaries is crucial to countering Trumpism broadly and racial/ethnic tribalism more specifically. Obama’s integrative vision of our national identity provides an ideological foundation for what political scientist Robert Putnam called “bridging social capital.”

Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Obama, in his final State of the Union, called on Americans to reject “voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same background.” He called on us instead to be “inspired by those...voices that help us see ourselves not, first and foremost, as black or white, or Asian or Latino, not as gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, not as Democrat or Republican, but as Americans first, bound by a common creed.”

Where the Academic Left’s Critique of Obama Misses the Mark

The academic left broke with Obama on three critical issues: how much commonality exists across racial lines, the trajectory of history, and whether to emphasize universal or race-specific programs. These ideas raise important questions that are vital to debate and discuss. However, they are often not only problematic on the merits but also profoundly harmful to the Democratic brand.

Embrace of Race Essentialism

First, there’s the question of whether to highlight commonality across lines of race versus stressing the differences, the latter sometimes to the point of race essentialism. Obama constantly emphasized the former in a balanced way, as he did in his “A More Perfect Union: Race, Politics, and Unifying Our Country” address in 2008: “Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.” Likewise, here’s the 44th president on December 6, 2024, at the Obama Foundation Democracy Forum: “Pluralism does not require us to deny our unique identities or experiences, but it does require that we try to understand the identities and experiences of others and to look for common ground.”

Obama’s approach sharply contrasts with the race essentialist mindset that characterizes the views of Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility. In a statement that reflects her core beliefs, she urged white people to accept that “your race shaped every aspect of your life from the moment that you took your first breath.” Race is certainly an important influence on any American’s life, but DiAngelo’s statement flattens out the wide range of the lives white Americans live. Rhetoric and policy based on such ideas cannot help but fail to adequately address the real struggles of poor whites, who remain the majority of Americans living in poverty.

The Denial of Racial Progress

A second area of disagreement concerns the degree to which we have made progress reducing racism over the course of American history. In the “A More Perfect Union” speech, then-Senator Obama contrasted his view with that of his left-wing former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in terms that could also apply to the academic left in more recent years. The problem was not in calling out racism but instead in speaking,

as if no progress had been made; as if this country…is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know—what we have seen—is that America can change. That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope—the audacity to hope—for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

In a sharp contrast, from its very first paragraph, The 1619 Project laid out its founding principle. It contends that the idea our country was born on July 4, 1776, “is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defining contradictions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619”—when the first enslaved Africans arrived on our shores. At that point, “America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began.” Subsequently, The New York Times, which published this collection of essays, softened this claim as well as other similarly provocative language after receiving pushback from scholars and others. Nevertheless, the core of the argument remains that the enslavement of Africans in what would become the United States—a truly horrific, despicable practice that has no doubt cast a long shadow and still matters today—is the single most important event in our history, more important than the act of creating the nation itself.

Leaving aside the accuracy of this highly questionable assertion, a Democratic Party seen as believing it has no chance of being entrusted with governing our country. The Brahmin Left, however, ate it up, and The 1619 Project, about which historians have raised some serious questions, won the Pulitzer Prize. Similarly, Ta-Nehisi Coates, expressing sentiments that stand diametrically opposed to Obama’s, asserted about black Americans: “We were never meant to be part of the American story.” He says this without qualification. The statement is totalizing and eternal. Coates’s words carry real anguish, caused by racism, that all Democratic officials should understand, but this view fails to acknowledge progress, and its complete embrace would leave the Democratic Party with a politically unpopular worldview that makes it less able to enact positive change through policy.

The Support for Racial Preferences

A third area of at least partial disagreement centers on the question of whether to support universal programs—which disproportionately benefit Americans of color—versus those that explicitly target Americans by race. In The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote, “An emphasis on universal, as opposed to race-specific, programs isn’t just good policy; it’s also good politics.” He also explained:

The only thing I cannot do is…pass laws that say I'm just helping black folks. I'm the president of the entire United States. What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That in turn is going to help lift up the African American community.

Compare this to what Ibram X. Kendi wrote in the first edition of How to Be An Anti-Racist, perhaps the ur-text of the race essentialist academic left: “Racial discrimination is not inherently racist. The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist.” Kendi altered this section in a subsequent edition, after facing criticism. What he wrote provided the intellectual foundation for the push in policy for equity. It stands in direct opposition to what Obama expressed in the “A More Perfect Union” speech, when he called on Americans to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us.”

Biden and Harris’s Move to the Left of Obama on Race

Academics and public intellectuals aiming to stir the conscience of their readers have goals and methods that must differ from those of politicians running for office, who seek the political power to make change. Such provocateurs can take positions to the left of mainstream politicians because, after all, they don’t need to win more votes than their opponent. But what’s especially notable here is that Democratic elected officials shifted to the left of Obama on race as well.

The Biden administration relied on several of the universal programs Obama championed, but Biden also adopted too much of the Brahmin Left’s positioning on race. His first executive order called for a government-wide focus on “equity” that, among other things, promoted DEI trainings in federal government agencies and offices. Biden’s Education Department, likewise, advanced similar thinking on race in its programming. In April 2021, the Biden White House promoted a program of grants for teaching civics and American history that both uncritically praised The 1619 Project and quoted directly from Kendi’s book.

Looking at funding, the American Rescue Plan included $4 billion of debt relief that would benefit indebted farmers of color—most of whom were African American—but excluded whites. White farmers sued on the basis of racial discrimination. This policy further entrenched the belief among some white Americans that a Democratic president and Congress—focused on equity of outcomes rather than equal rights—stood on the side of minorities and stood opposed to white interests. This was a far cry from Obama’s position that he would not pass laws that only helped black Americans. Struggling black farmers in Alabama are not better off because the government chose not to include struggling white farmers in Iowa. But the latter are definitely worse off for not getting that help, and the reason behind the policy might well lead those white farmers to resent both people of color and the Democratic officials who made that choice.

Furthermore, such choices weaken the multiracial coalition of the economically vulnerable that true progressive change requires, something Dr. King understood. In Why We Can’t Wait, he called for a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged” that would include poor whites. Echoing Dr. King, Obama also tended to endorse universalist rather than race-specific policies.

Rhetorically, as well, neither Biden nor Harris decisively broke with the hard left, as Obama did when he forcefully distanced himself from Rev. Wright, or President Bill Clinton did when he distanced himself from Sister Souljah, a rapper who said after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?”

Some might have expected that Biden and Harris’s more race-specific equity rhetoric would have resulted in increased support among voters of color. It did not. The reality is that the wealthy white liberals who proudly declare their devotion to the principles of DiAngelo’s White Fragility or Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist express positions on racial issues like policing or education that stand far to the left of most African Americans. The views of the Brahmin Left—which TLP’s Ruy Teixeira noted “have come to define the Democratic Party in the eyes of many working-class voters, despite the fact that many Democrats do not endorse them”—are alienating the very Americans most likely to face racial oppression. These groups also happen to include some of the fastest-growing segments of our voting population.

Democratic politicians must find ways to clearly distance themselves from the more extreme, unnuanced aspects of race essentialism, as Obama repeatedly has done. To be fair, President Biden and Vice President Harris on occasion employed language that echoed, at least in part, the Obama vision of America discussed here. Unfortunately, doing so does not have the same impact as putting it at the core of one’s worldview.

A Path Forward

Since Obama left office, Democrats have lost sight of the importance of his type of conception of America. He provided both an accurate picture of the country and showed an ability to win over sufficient numbers of working-class voters of every race—the overwhelming majority of whom are strongly patriotic. Democrats need to reembrace the Obama vision of America and avoid the more identity politics-based vision of the Brahmin Left if they wish to get a fair hearing from working-class Americans on policy prescriptions they propose.

Some intellectuals offer a path forward that differs from that proposed by Kendi, Coates, and The 1619 Project. Writer Heather McGhee has offered a compelling vision of how to talk about race along Obamaesque lines. She wrote:

The zero-sum story of racial hierarchy...is an invention of the worst elements of our society: people who gained power through ruthless exploitation and kept it by sowing constant division. It has always optimally benefited only the few while limiting the potential of the rest of us, and therefore the whole.

McGhee argues that Republicans pit racial and other groups against each other such that if one gains, the others must lose. That story is a false one. She notes that what she called the “race left” inadvertently contributes to this zero-sum vision by “focus[ing] on how white people benefited from systemic racism.” She argues that’s not an accurate story. Many whites suffered, rather than benefited, under the old laws of white supremacy, even as those laws harshly oppressed black Americans above all. For the most part, white people “lost right along with the rest of us. Racism got in the way of all of us having nice things.” Her key illustration is that when courts ordered desegregation of public swimming pools, some communities chose to fill in the pools rather than integrate them. Black people got hurt, but so did working-class whites. McGhee’s formulation is both accurate and politically persuasive to a broad audience.

Democrats need to move away from the language of equity, which implies that it would be acceptable to close the racial gaps in health or education by helping members of the disadvantaged racial groups improve while denying any help to lower-income whites. Obama understood this reality instinctively, as he made clear in his “A More Perfect Union” speech. He called on all Americans to “realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams; that investing in the health, welfare, and education of black and brown and white children will ultimately help all of America prosper.” Like the 44th president did, today’s Democrats must talk along these lines regularly and weave these concepts into their communication about all kinds of issues, not just on special occasions.

To reorient themselves, Democrats must make some choices and offer newer, more inspiring alternatives than they have in recent years. Barack Obama brilliantly walked a middle path between extremes. He managed to acknowledge inequities and the need for more progress while also offering hope. Obama flatly rejected the faddish vision that, in the words of Teixeira, claims “America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society, shot through with multiple, intersecting levels of injustice that make everybody either oppressed or oppressor on a daily basis.”

Perhaps nowhere did Obama strike the balance better than in his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. Obama asked:

What could more profoundly vindicate the idea of America than plain and humble people—the unsung, the downtrodden, the dreamers not of high station, not born to wealth or privilege, not of one religious tradition but many—coming together to shape their country’s course? What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this; what greater form of patriotism is there; than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?

To right the ship, tell a credible and also inspiring story, and win elections, a new generation of Democrats needs to recapture this same spirit.

Ian Reifowitz is SUNY Distinguished Professor of History at SUNY-Empire State University.

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One of the more interesting books anticipating our current politics is a cult novel written in 1977 by an Italian author, Giorgio De Maria. The Twenty Days of Turin tells the fantastical story of a young investigator trying to understand what happened in the city a decade earlier when a series of grisly deaths occurred after an unexplained episode of collective psychosis.

In the book, the young sleuth discovers the probable source of the insanity in a place called the Library, a pre-technology Internet-like arrangement set up in a church sanitarium where people could deposit their most private thoughts and desires—mostly sad and petty or angst-ridden and degraded—and others could read them.

Everything could be deposited into the Library…There were manuscripts whose first hundred pages didn’t reveal any oddity, which then crumbled little by little into the depths of bottomless madness; or works that seemed normal at the beginning and end, but were pitted with fearful abysses further inward. Others, meanwhile, were conceived in a spirit of pure malice: pages and pages just to indicate, to a poor elderly woman without children or a husband, that her skin was the color of a lemon and her spine was warping—things she already knew well enough. The range was infinite: it had the variety and at the same time the wretchedness of things that can’t find harmony with Creation, but still exist, and need someone to observe them, if only to recognize that it was another like himself who’d created them.

The Library became the home for the city’s loneliest and most isolated people seeking to make some connections without any genuine human contact or real empathy. And not unlike the social media-induced frenzy of our current politics (most evident over the past few weeks), a collective mental breakdown soon emerges from this arrangement, with people wandering the streets at night in a catatonic state and strange terror descending on the city, breaking people in inexplicable ways.

Although De Maria’s allegory was written as a response to a range of terrorist acts in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, it rests on keen, if alarming, insights about human nature and what can happen to societies when people get whipped into hysteria by the warped reality of places like the Library.

Unfortunately, these ideas apply all too well to our current situation in the United States. The widespread dissemination of conspiracies, false information, inflammatory rhetoric, and unhinged anger has been building for years and now openly threatens our ability to govern ourselves. Lacking interpersonal trust and believing too much of the nonsense deposited in our own Library on social media, Americans themselves—fueled by unprincipled politicians and tech companies making billions from the distribution of bad information and emotional excesses—risk irreparably breaking their own country into competing factions of militant and extra-constitutional mobs tearing at each other based on distorted or biased realities.

As we take steps to protect the institutions that secure our equal rights as Americans, we must also take steps as citizens to inform ourselves better, separate fact from fiction, and take a deep breath before making monumentally stupid or criminal errors based on lies, hyperbole, or extreme beliefs about others.

American political culture desperately needs more personal responsibility and maturity—from citizens, business leaders, and politicians alike. Nobody has all the correct answers about politics. Sometimes you end up on the losing side of an election or a debate. It’s not “existential” or the end of the world. And it’s certainly not any rationale for political violence or state repression of those with different viewpoints. That’s democracy. People and parties that you disagree with in terms of issues or values aren’t your enemies. America is a pluralistic nation, and people have all sorts of opinions—some good, some bad, but all equally protected under the U.S. Constitution. We have the First Amendment for a reason. The government can’t single out people and organizations for harassment based on what they say or believe, or what they don’t say or believe. The same lesson should apply to individuals in their own capacity as citizens—treat other people with respect and not as targets for political rage and personal vendettas.

Ultimately, Americans and their leaders need to control their instincts better and take more responsibility for their words, deeds, and actions—for their own sake and for the good of the entire country.

The Library is a dark place.

Americans—and especially political leaders in both parties—should stay out of the social media madhouse and try responding to different perspectives with more emotional restraint, demand nonviolence and reasonable disagreement from everyone on their own side, and uphold core national values like liberty, equality, and freedom of speech for all people.

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Editor’s note: this is an updated version of one of TLP’s earliest posts.

As in recent years, millions of working Americans marked this past Labor Day with a sense of trepidation. While the holiday’s ubiquitous steep sales suggested that distributors and retailers haven’t yet passed on the full impact of Trump’s tariffs (recently jeopardized by a federal appeals court), Americans are afraid new price hikes are around the corner. And the pervasive discontent of the last fifteen years has hardly ebbed. A new Wall Street Journal poll finds that since the pandemic the percentage of Americans who believe they have a “good chance” to lead better, more prosperous lives has plummeted to a quarter. At the turn of the century, over seventy-five percent expected to get ahead. Millions either feel poorer or believe their minor pay bumps and savings have been vacuumed up by larger bills for routine goods and services.

Worse, the ability to counter any of these trends through politics or the workplace feels negligible. Modest gains, mostly reflecting phased-in minimum wage hikes initiated last decade in several cities and states, have been outpaced by extraordinary housing costs, sharp price increases for basic groceries and modest family excursions, and higher credit card interest rates and monthly minimum payments. Yet the ongoing debate between Abundance converts, anti-monopolists, “care economy” progressives, and the tariff-friendly parts of the labor-left is more of an academic exercise than something that would yield a blueprint for action.

Currently, few elected Democrats are making an effort to clarify their top economic priorities following the sluggish response to “Bidenomics.” Struggling workers and cost-weary households don’t know who to turn to. Collective bargaining power remains stratified and has come under renewed assault by the Trump administration. Although the pandemic and its aftermath sparked an uptick in strike activity and organizing drives from Starbucks to Amazon to Uber, union households are typically older, concentrated in core legacy industries and the public sector, and comprise a dwindling fraction of the total workforce.

As the boomer retirement accelerates, the labor market is also undergoing a massive structural and demographic shift that Washington is plainly ill-prepared for. The share of Americans working as freelancers in some capacity has surged to over 64 million people, or nearly 40 percent of the working population, and is expected to grow as AI disrupts professional salaried work and spreads the demand for “labor flexibility” to fields in which expertise was once tied to greater employment security. Some of this growth reflects a genuine willingness on the part of workers to forge their own path and maximize the creativity and network power latent in the knowledge economy. Yet market fundamentalists would be mistaken to crow that this testifies to the march of individual liberty and the rejection of active government or collective agency. Unions enjoy their highest approval in decades, while consumers and small businesses are arguably attuned to the perils of monopoly power and anticompetitive practices at a level not seen since the Second World War.

Middle- and working-class Americans are clearly fed up with scraping by. Even so, many seem resigned to long-term labor market trends, believing American capitalism, more than ever, is a sink-or-swim system bereft of public goods and widespread upward mobility. Such pessimism about the dignity of work and the merits of trying to make an “honest living” is bound to affect how Americans approach core life decisions—and whether they take them up at all. That is a sociopolitical time bomb that, unaddressed, will make Trumpism’s extended pull seem like a minor affair.

The great changes afoot nonetheless present a conundrum for social democrats hoping to forge a pro-labor policy agenda that is more than the sum of its parts. Americans are understandably distraught about the possibilities for a meaningful and fulfilling life, as reflected in record-low birth rates and the distressing rise in suicide and early deaths among Gen Z and millennials. For many, the imminent future seems to only promise more unpredictability, harder trade-offs, and fewer opportunities to achieve the American dream. And they deeply sense that with every intermittent, minor improvement to their personal welfare, there is a series of other things going wrong that dwarfs whatever pleasure is to be gained from sleeker devices and new apps.

At the same time, many Americans are no longer accustomed to the idea of a social contract that combines an ethos of self-determination, civic belonging, and egalitarianism. The tides of globalization and advanced computer technology have introduced irreversible changes intimately tied to how Americans express their individuality, participate in the economy, and pursue their ideas of the “good life.” They have become more atomized but also less enamored of obligation and tradition. Few in reality seem terribly satisfied by the directionless, media-saturated character of modern existence. But resistance to change feels rooted in misguided nostalgia and thus too redolent for all who recoil from Trumpism of the grievances that originally fueled it. There is also uncertainty about how much rewarding structure can be carved out of a socioeconomic system that privileges relentless disruption over providing livelihoods that support “conventional” personal milestones. If settling down was once the choice of squares and conformists, many Americans now simply lack the confidence and resources to put down roots and commit to something greater.

Americans, moreover, feel they are on the edge of a great upheaval that will render useless their best efforts to do better than their parents. Perhaps not since the 1880s and 1890s, when the forces of mass production and corporate capitalism upended the lives of artisans, small producers, and middling proprietors, have so many Americans felt beat down by economic change and deprived of a basic foothold. Ironically, that makes doing the things motivated Americans were once expected to do—pursue a stable career, find a spouse, start a family, buy a home—appear risky; but if one can hardly earn enough money to satisfy their own basic needs, how could they have faith they could provide for others?

This explains, in part, why so many Americans, even self-described progressives, are now deeply skeptical of capital-p Progress. For every apparent step toward social inclusion and greater personal freedom, our ability to consolidate and improve upon the developmental gains of past generations has become more elusive. Society is presented by optimists as a mosaic of forward-looking citizens possessing unprecedented material comforts, yet growing numbers feel as though they are undervalued or, worse, have been robbed of their potential.

Techno-optimists in particular should consider the following trends. Since the 1970s, most two-parent households have had two earners, yet the household savings rate is less than half the average witnessed in the booming sixties. There have been laudable leaps in diversity and formal political equality (and the acceptance thereof), yet most economic gains this century have been captured by the top ten percent. First-time home buyers are generally older than those of past generations, while two-thirds of renters say they can’t afford a home—up from 45 percent in 2013. Family formation, once foundational to working-class communities, is increasingly linked to perceptions of economic mobility. Except among the highly educated, marriage rates have collapsed.

Even the chief fruits of globalization and the knowledge economy have been underwhelming. Free trade resulted in cheaper goods in some sectors but did little to substantially improve Americans’ economic security. The tech revolution put labor-saving and time-saving technology into millions of hands, yet Americans consistently report being overworked and suffering from heavy stress. And the positive impact of tech on education—a major source of optimism in the Clinton era—has been dubious at best. Young students’ reading scores, already lagging peer nations before the pandemic, have declined further. Perhaps more disappointing, we haven’t had a wave of scientific and medical breakthroughs that dramatically reduced chronic disease and eliminated major health disparities. Despite notable advances in public and environmental health at the turn of the century, life expectancy has increasingly diverged from other developed countries.

These and other trends go some way toward explaining the ambience of despair and distrust. Still, the failings of the American economy are probably best encapsulated by two forms of privation that New Deal liberals surely thought would be unthinkable in the 21st century. Around fifty million rely on food banks, while the phenomenon of homeless full-time workers has spread across the country. These are more than stains on the American conscience. They are acute signs of a broken system.

What strikes fear in the hearts of Americans who are doing better than just hanging on is that they might be next. That there are no more guarantees of middle-class security. And they are right to wonder if our spectacle-obsessed politics is too dysfunctional to meet society’s challenges. For the most part the message from Washington is that the onus is on regular Americans to simply adapt—as if that hasn’t already been happening with foreboding results. The current trajectory may nevertheless continue despite Americans’ profound anguish and alienation from the establishment. Absent a civilization-rending event, the thrust of history suggests Americans will feel compelled to embrace more technological complexity on the one hand and accept less order and predictability in their economic lives on the other.

This points to the paradox of a populist age in a “postindustrial” (and increasingly “postliterate”) society no longer drawing the masses into the processes of development. At least in Western Europe and North America, modern history taught that rising inequality and rising expectations typically fueled demands for a sweeping political response to the urgent socioeconomic problems precipitated by industrialization. The dilemma for progressives drawing inspiration from the Wilsonian and New Deal traditions is that the pace of change—including for the nature of employment and the distribution of work itself—threatens to limit the impact of reforms that might have been more comprehensive in a previous, more regimented era. Now, as fewer Americans make decisions that reflect a “traditional” stake in the system, some may judge it is either too complicated or, in fact, unnecessary to formulate policies that attempt to satisfy broad social needs. Unfortunately, those opponents of bold reform have a powerful alibi of sorts in the form of polarization. While many Americans believe their country faces severe challenges, there is very little durable agreement about how to solve them.

There is also the matter of whether social democracy, as both a political philosophy and a system of socioeconomic relations and development, has been lost to history. In a democracy, orders and paradigms, even those forged over the opposition of entrenched interests, are the products of consensus. And consensus is conditional on society believing it has shared norms and values; that it has a common purpose oriented to the development of future generations; that there are sometimes necessary, even prudent, compromises in politics; and that core institutions are capable of upholding and advancing the greater good. These pillars of social trust are missing from contemporary society. It is possible technology itself will prevent their restoration. Regardless, the upshot for those willing—or eager—to bid farewell to the lessons of the New Deal order seems clear. A regime of market governance cannot be faithfully replicated in full for a society that no longer exists and whose customs and rhythms have been made obsolete (unsentimentally at that).

It would nevertheless be an abdication of duty for any political coalition determined to harmonize justice and progress to proffer band-aids to the disruptions on the horizon. Economic trends have unambiguously disempowered large swathes of Americans and lowered their expectations. There are also technologies being introduced whose implications for our frayed social bonds most of our current political leadership is incapable of fathoming. Yet there are still effective tools that can be dusted off to manage capitalism, provide real protection from the vagaries of the market and the excesses of its “animal spirits,” prevent (not just penalize) economic predation, and facilitate opportunities for renewal in the least likely of places.

Moreover, the lessons of the past cannot be ignored so long as we have the political consciousness to recognize the good wrought from what were, in most respects, much harsher conditions. The great (though not sole) redeeming virtue of midcentury America is that despite its prejudices and formal discrimination, it championed a growing middle class, accommodated the personal liberties and desires realized therein, and acknowledged the developmental benefits that arose from a far more equitable distribution of economic power. Importantly, the latter was reflected not just in after-tax wages, benefits, home ownership, and deconcentrated supply chains, but in the devotion of time—time freed up through shorter workdays, a family wage, and better health—toward community activities and communal recreation. All else being equal, shared wealth meant shared commitments, not least to an inclusive patriotism bowed neither by the violent provocations of arch-reactionaries nor the unforgiving critiques of radical cynics and utopians.

That may seem quaint or, worse, an oversimplification. But as even left-wing critics of the New Deal order have recognized, this was the broad essence of the period. From the 1930s to the 1970s, through McCarthyism and the civil rights movement, responsible politics was, at the end of the day, mostly about fine-tuning the right mix of stability and dynamism under democratic capitalism. To some degree the leaders of that time, despite their myriad flaws, succeeded. By contrast, global economic integration, the rise of a postindustrial society, and the superficial cultural obsession with “self-actualization,” though granting the illusion of unfettered consumerism and boundless reinvention, have coincided with widespread loneliness, less intergenerational advancement, and a troubling decline in associational life. And our perplexed leaders, though aware of these sources of anomie, have mostly paltry answers.

The window for a more courageous stand is upon us once more. But more than ever, the voices of radical reform must be explicit and genuine about what is worth conserving in America. Preserving the dignity of work in an age once fancifully conceived as liberating people from it may prove to be the most salient theme of the next decade. That will require concrete promises to nurture Americans’ skills and talents, shield them from joblessness, and help them make life decisions unclouded by excess debt. But determined reformers will also have to translate greater economic agency into a greater sense of purpose; young people need to believe that there is truly something worth “building” in one's life. Democrats in this moment thus need to affirm the interdependence between responsible self-fulfillment, an economy anchored around shared productivity and enforceable rules against predation, and civic consciousness. If not, the ominous combination of stagnant development and technological disruption promises to enervate society and reinforce the already pervasive belief that the country is plagued by unsolvable social and spiritual problems.

Ultimately, the advance of reform may well hinge on that archaic concept, leadership that transcends favor to party or section. For all who want to restore the fabric of this country, they should hope that today’s would-be insurgents can rise to the occasion—and reinvigorate popular belief in collective progress before the next great upheaval.

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America’s worsening political polarization entered its latest chapter this summer. In an effort to retain their majority in the House of Representatives, the Republican Party, led by President Trump, decided to embark on a mid-decade redraw of House district maps in virtually every state where they hold a state-government trifecta and have room to gain further ground. In response, Democrats have vowed to do the same in states where they have complete power.

This latest tit-for-tat between the country’s two major parties is emblematic of how fights about the future of American politics are becoming almost existential, for underpinning these battles is a troubling development: a growing share of people on both sides of the political spectrum increasingly see it as unacceptable to not only be governed by the other side but to even share power with them. Consider:

• A 2022 SPLC survey found that “Republicans and Democrats are not only extremely distrustful of each other, but…majorities (roughly two-thirds) believe that people on the other side of the aisle are immoral and ‘want to harm people who disagree with them.’”

• A 2021 University of Virginia study found that at least 80 percent of both Biden and Trump voters “at least somewhat agree” with the statement, “I have come to view elected officials from the opposing party as presenting a clear and present danger to American democracy” (and slim majorities “strongly” agreed).

• In the same UVA study, three-quarters of both Biden and Trump voters at least somewhat agreed that “Americans who support the opposing party have become a clear and present danger to the American way of life.”

Compounding all this is a perception held by a giant majority of partisans that their side is losing more than it is winning, a concern that has increased substantially over the past decade and appears to be especially strong among whichever party does not control the presidency.

All this has raised the stakes of election outcomes over time and greatly stressed our system of self-government. When the two parties come to view politics in such zero-sum terms, it reduces the incentive to embrace shared principles governing political behavior or buy into a system that gives the other side an equal chance of acquiring and exercising power. Instead, they become likelier to pursue changes that are merely expedient for expanding their own power or curtailing their opponents—and to sometimes even reverse themselves when the terrain changes and those positions no longer serve their interests.

For example, as the party that has historically favored a more active federal government, Democrats have strongly advocated for abolishing the Senate filibuster since President Obama’s first term, when Republicans made liberal use of it to stymie his agenda. However, when Democrats have found themselves in the minority, their tone has shifted (which hasn’t gone unnoticed by Republicans). Of course, Trump himself has also flip-flopped on the issue depending on whether he and the GOP had power. While there are arguments both for and against the filibuster’s continued existence, neither party has been willing to adopt a principled stand and stick with it.

Arguably a more consequential version of this same dynamic is the debate among Democrats over what to do about a Supreme Court that most of them view as far too conservative and that many fear they won’t have a chance of controlling for at least a generation. Polling shows that a paltry 11 percent of the party’s voters approve of the Court’s performance—the lowest on record for either party—and most believe the conservative justices are influenced by their personal views when making their rulings.

One idea that has been gaining traction is to “pack” the Court, a reference to a failed attempt by FDR to add more justices who would tilt the body in his favor. Though President Biden declined to back the idea in his late-term package of court reform proposals, a number of Democrats I have talked to since the start of Trump’s second stint in office have warmed to it. In the Court’s latest term, the conservative majority issued several rulings on hot-button issues that frustrated a lot of Democrats. Many also increasingly believe the Court is far too deferential to Trump, allowing him to usurp more and more power for himself and threatening American democracy.

While adding more seats to the Court is likely constitutional, such a move would clearly be seen by Republicans as escalatory and risk further politicizing the institution. If Democrats add, say, four more seats the next time they are in power to give liberals a 7–6 majority, it is reasonable to assume Republicans will simply add four more seats after that (or even just remove Democrats’ four new seats). This solution offers no permanent fix—only never-ending, ever-intensifying political warfare.

Perhaps even more unsettling than court battles is the growing normalcy of political persecution. Democrats surely believe their efforts to pursue impeachment and, later, legal action against Trump were sound and morally right. But in an era whose political ethos seems to be defined by “their side did it first,” Republicans inevitably saw these and other actions as little more than retribution against a president whose politics Democrats did not like. They have thus become very supportive of Trump’s second-term efforts to go after people whom they don’t like.

Gerrymandering is just the latest front in this war. And while it’s true that Republicans fired the first shot with their 2010 project REDMAP and did so again by pursuing mid-decade redistricting, Democrats’ hands certainly aren’t clean here, either. But what is most worrisome is that this latest escalation is undoubtedly setting a new precedent for future redistricting. The parties will now see it as imperative to not only draw as favorable maps as possible in states that they control but to do it whenever they feel like it. Failing to do so, the thinking will go, could consign them to minority status in the House for years. An easy fix would be a federal ban on political gerrymandering, which House Democrats proposed in 2019 but did not see through.

Though I am normally an optimist about America, I would be lying if I said the antipathy and distrust that pervade our politics aren’t extremely concerning. Both parties are coming to view politics not just through the lens of self-interest but self-preservation, and there is little desire to turn down the heat. Barring a major shift, a worst-case (and entirely realistic) future scenario is that the two sides come to distrust one another so much that they eventually become convinced the only sensible course of action is to block the other party from gaining power entirely, lest that side beat them to it. Should that materialize, it would mark the end of—or at least an indefinite pause in—the American experiment.

I don’t think that future is inevitable. The vast majority of Americans still care about their country and have grown weary of its divisive politics and steady decline into ungovernability. But those who share these concerns must decide what they are willing to do to forestall that future because our current course is leading nowhere good—and fast.

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In a Washington Post editorial from 1983, former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously wrote, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” This used to be a seemingly uncontroversial idea. However, this is no longer the case.

At the time, Moynihan was referencing his work on the National Commission on Social Security Reform that developed financing fixes for the program and took on long-standing opponents who sought to convince Americans that the national retirement plan was a “giant Ponzi scheme” and that they would never receive their benefits. Moynihan’s larger point in the op-ed was about the ability of Americans to overcome cynicism and distrust to tackle complicated public policy challenges, like Social Security reforms, by first acknowledging basic facts and then working in good faith to overcome challenges that emerged from the facts. He wrote, “There is a center in American politics,” and it rests on the ability of reasonable people to accept and live with the facts and try “to surmount them” in the interest of governing for the benefit of the entire country.

Pew Research just released some sobering data on what Americans today think about Moynihan’s famous dictum. Survey respondents were asked whether most Republican and Democratic voters “can agree on the basic facts, even if they often disagree over plans and policies” or if they “not only disagree over plans and policies, but they also cannot agree on the basic facts.” As the table below shows, an overwhelming eight in ten U.S. adults feel that voters of the two parties cannot agree on basic facts and not just policy ideas, including roughly equal proportions of both party supporters.

In follow-up questions asked of the 80 percent who said voters can’t agree on basic facts, more than half (53 percent) said a major reason why Republicans and Democrats don’t agree is that “they are getting different information,” while more than two-thirds (67 percent) also said a major reason is that “they are interpreting the same information differently.”

This first finding suggests, more pessimistically, that many Americans believe other citizens are living in “alternative realities” with their own competing facts, while the second finding suggests, more optimistically, that people may be seeing or experiencing the same things but deriving different meanings and conclusions from these facts.

Either way, these results present a serious challenge to Moynihan’s ideal of a broad center in American politics coming together to discern the best policies and approaches based on shared foundations and facts.

To parse out whether we’ve entered a fact-free political environment—or instead, heightened contestation over the relevance of certain facts, what they mean, and how they should be applied in policy terms—we first need to ask, what is a fact?

Basically, a fact is something that can be proven to be correct through observation, measurement, experience, or experimentation. Facts are accepted by most people as true and verifiable information, although facts can and should be disputed honestly and updated when new evidence emerges.

In a court of law, the “facts of a case” often involve whether an event happened and can be proven to have happened, or if it didn’t happen and can be shown by observation or experience not to have occurred (e.g., “The defendant was standing alone on the corner of Main and Central at 12:45PM on August 6, 2024”).

Many times, facts are disputed, and the “truth” is difficult to establish, even in criminal courts. In the judicial system, disputed facts and events without rock-solid evidence one way or the other often lead to charges being dismissed. There is a mechanism and set of rules for adjudicating these matters. Judges give jurors instructions on how to weigh the facts and evidence and apply the law.

But on other matters in public life—particularly historical events, social trends, and public policy measures that make up politics—disputed facts and conflicting interpretations of these facts can only be adjudicated through democratic means of investigation, deliberation, voting, and elections. Here trust matters a great deal. If people don’t trust the sources of information that undergird political debates or don’t trust the interpretations of facts offered by various experts or political officials engaged in these debates, then it’s very difficult for rational, consensus-based policy making to occur as envisioned by Moynihan.

Much of the time, Republicans and Democrats agree on the basic facts of a specific problem or issue and what needs to be done to address it. Many bills in Congress or decisions by the executive branch are passed and enacted without controversy or dispute. Think of recent steps to fight the drug crisis or fund the military.

However, modern politics involves a series of big issues that divide people on both the facts and the interpretations of these facts: think the Covid pandemic, inflation, economic inequality, climate change, crime, and immigration. Unlike the consensus issues above, trust about the underlying facts on these big divide issues is at an all-time low in American politics. Why? First, common facts are difficult to establish and agree upon given partisan considerations, and second, interpretations of these facts increasingly lead to irreconcilable conflict rather than comity and temporary agreement on solutions. Partisans tell themselves that their side has the “real” facts and correct views, while the other side makes it up and has misinformed opinions.

Why don’t people agree on facts? There is a continuum from relatively benign reasons for factual disputes to more malign and ideologically driven reasons for disagreements.

Errors and misreporting. Sometimes people or institutions in the government, media, or the academy make honest mistakes in collecting information or presenting data and other facts. Those people and institutions with integrity will acknowledge their mistakes and issue corrections and implement fixes to ensure they don’t happen again. Ideally, Americans and their leaders will also have some patience with others and accept that errors sometimes happen, especially when those mistakes come from the “other side,” and give people the benefit of the doubt to correct errors and get things right.

Issue complexity. Another relatively benign source of factual disagreement today is the reality that many issues are too complex to adequately measure or to create factual findings that are deemed mostly correct and undisputed. This isn’t an issue of people making up facts; it’s more about those in politics, the media, and academic disciplines diverging on how best to collect facts or measure them in the first place. The “economy” is the top complicated issue that comes to mind here. Unlike a baseball game, where you have clear stats about hits, walks, runs, stolen bases, and errors (and even new technology to better assess balls and strikes to help make these calls less subjective), the measurement of overall economic growth, job creation, inflation, trade, and other measures requires elaborate data collection efforts and government surveys of employers and consumers that are increasingly difficult to get right.

Likewise, the intricate global context of economic activity and differences across national borders in terms of statistics make many comparisons difficult to produce, along with issues of the “informal” economy that can’t be easily captured by traditional measures. Issues involving poverty and inequality also fall into the hyper-complex bucket with data and measurement issues that are contested.

Disagreements over economic and social facts are often real and grounded in genuine challenges and differences in how to look at the economy. And sometimes the disputes are for political advantage. For example, Trump’s recent firing of the BLS head after “bad” job numbers raised genuine issues about data collection and revisions by the nation’s leading economic statistics agency as well as legitimate charges of the president and his party allies “shooting the messenger” for delivering unwanted findings and desiring personnel to produce and interpret data in more favorable ways.

Groupthink. Moving into the less benign side, sometimes people or institutions are too set in their ways, too lazy, or too dedicated to the belief that the facts fit a particular pattern to discover, or even acknowledge, changes in the evidence, outliers, or factual shifts. Again, honest leaders and institutions will challenge themselves and others to avoid groupthink, but, of course, this doesn’t always work. Conversely, ideologically driven groupthink is particularly pernicious these days. Think of the worst public health pronouncements and regulations from scientists and government officials during the Covid pandemic, or people on one side of the ideological spectrum rushing to accept a new “social trend” that advances the party agenda because that’s what other people in their circles believe or what activists demand everyone believes for political purposes.

Partisan spin and purposeful deception. Now we’re into the really bad side. Willful lies and distortions of facts are increasingly the source of many political controversies over issues, leaders, and party agendas today. Think obviously cherry-picked data, false or out-of-context quotes in the media, avoidance of difficult facts that undermine party lines, and outright manipulated evidence and data to advance a party’s agenda. If a party or politician wants something to be true, he or she can often get the entire party and its media apparatus to go along with the deception to push fictions and obviously misleading interpretations as facts. Likewise, if partisans want to get Americans to believe the worst about their opponents, the same misleading tactics will work to advance these goals. Facts about issues have become partisan weapons, with interpretations of these facts often turned into moral crusades masquerading as empirical reality.

Outlandish and patently untrue things. This is DEFCON 1 of “alternative facts.” The land of conspiracies, crazy fabrications on social media, fake videos and pictures, made-up events, alternative histories, AI slop, and a host of other fictions presented as facts. Americans used to be able to just write this stuff off as the output of kooks, mentally ill people, and those on the fringes. But unfortunately, the fact-free fantasies of extremists on all sides—aided by rogue actors, tech companies, foreign governments, and online bots—are increasingly driving the political fights and policy decisions of the U.S. government today.

If a person wants to get closer to Moynihan’s vision of fact-based disagreements on policies carried out in good faith with opponents, what should they do?

On the factual front, a concerned citizen must dedicate serious time to finding and reading the most reputable and long-standing sources of information from government, the media, and the academy. It’s not all partisan hackery. Part of this research should involve absorbing proven, trustworthy, and honest data collectors and analysts across the partisan divide and from the independent world—the “straight shooters.” This is increasingly a huge pain to do given how much information is out there from myriad sources. Normal Americans don’t have a lot of time to suss out every bit of information they consume and therefore must rely on others to do some of this for them. Sometimes these intermediaries and middlemen are honest and trustworthy. Sometimes they are not. Maybe AI will improve to a point where the results of factual queries can be relied on to scour these various sources and present reliable facts to readers or highlight areas where the facts are disputed based on reasonable limitations. Until then, we’ll have to rely on ourselves to do the legwork in obtaining correct factual information.

On the interpretation front, regardless of where one gets their information, they should always double-check the figures and quotes they read and look for obvious errors or inconsistencies that aren’t mentioned. Ask, what was left out in this article? Is this chart calibrated correctly and showing the proper data? Are the differences reported statistically valid or just random? Are there multiple people interviewed for a perspective on an issue? Are these people disinterested parties, or are they committed to a particular point of view? Are the facts presented in the piece mostly neutral, and is the thrust of the argument based on a fair reading of the evidence?

Above all, citizens, and especially partisans, really need to challenge themselves and their leaders to play it straight on the facts and get their interpretations correct. It doesn’t serve anyone’s long-term interests to routinely make up stuff or manipulate factual information for short-term gain. Likewise, downplaying doubts or criticisms about the use of facts for partisan purposes is a big reason why we’re in a world where 80 percent of Americans believe that voters can’t agree on basic facts.

Moynihan had it right. In American democracy, everyone is entitled to their opinions, their favored policies, and their informed criticisms of other partisan or ideological approaches. But these disagreements are infinitely more productive and less combative when Americans and their leaders engage in honest conversations about different ideas based on commonly accepted facts rather than lies, manipulations, and distortions for partisan gain.

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Writers who don’t fit neatly into ideological boxes are often dismissed as deceptive or unserious. I’ll admit that part of my own resistance to staying within ideological lanes is selfish: I’m a contrarian who hates being confined by conventions. But I also harbor a deep conviction that truth defies partisan or ideological categories. While formal ideologies, parties, and factions can work to accomplish certain goals for the common good, none of these entities has a monopoly on truth. So when I write, rather than plainly critiquing or endorsing specific positions, I often encourage readers to think more critically about a given issue—to be led by a desire to find the truth, regardless of whether it’s convenient for their “side” or ideological persuasion.

Of course, many people see the world—events, individuals, right and wrong—through a moral framework that makes sense to them but often differs from others. One way to get people to step outside their frame and see the world from another’s perspective is to engage in what is known as “code-switching”: using the moral framing of the audience to whom one is speaking to increase the likelihood that they will be receptive to what a speaker has to say.

I was first drawn to this idea in a college course on bioethics, where I read a feminist case against abortion by Sydney Callahan. I was enthralled by the essay—not so much because I agreed with it but because I had never seen someone make an anti-abortion argument using terms that were typically associated with the pro-abortion faction. And though they didn’t totally buy Callahan’s argument, many of my pro-abortion classmates found themselves agreeing with several of her arguments, admitting that they had never considered the case against abortion from that point of view.

That experience of watching a piece of writing open people’s minds to bridging ideological divides encouraged me to look for more examples of code-switching, and there are many just on the abortion issue. For example, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa and Charles Camosy (the professor of that class) similarly use feminist, left-coded language to frame their anti-abortion arguments. Or consider abortion rights groups in Kansas, who used right-coded language about freedom and limited government to frame their opposition to a ballot measure that would have further restricted abortion access in the state.

There are other prominent examples, too, like Sohrab Ahmari’s pro-labor case for restricting immigration, Andrew Sullivan’s traditionalist argument in favor of legalizing gay marriage, or Christopher Lasch’s left-wing case for the traditional family model.

Using the moral frame of one’s interlocutor is likely to be more productive than using arguments designed to appeal primarily to one’s own side. To be clear, code-switching is not an effort to “trick” others into adopting a position. Rather, it’s a tool for better understanding how others see the world and finding the best way to connect with them across disagreements. Ideally, this process will help people acquire genuine respect for their opponents. And if they can do that, it makes it easier to connect and likelier that others will engage with an open mind.

The pervasiveness of ideological polarization in America has made it imperative that we find new ways to talk to people across the political and cultural divides. Rather than shutting down opposing voices, we must determine how people with different agendas can complement one another and also find opportunities to be in conversation and—when possible—collaboration. Neither “side” is going anywhere anytime soon, so the nation’s ability to learn how to do these things is paramount.

Code-switching is one tool that might help America break free of the trappings of this polarization. The process of learning how to code-switch can help move people outside of their ideological silos to see the world in a different—perhaps even clearer—light. Such “clarification of thought,” to quote the co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement Peter Maurin, serves to bring people together to discuss contentious ideas. Even if they do not see eye to eye, they may at least come to see and appreciate each other’s positions better. This approach allows reason to take precedence over political expedience and tribal loyalties—it dissuades us from only ever preaching to the choir.

In my own attempts to engage with people of diverse ideological persuasions, I’ve borrowed the “lens shifting” technique from Dr. Mark Yarhouse. A clinical psychologist who specializes in working with trans and gender-dysphoric youth, Yarhouse has found that when engaging in controversial discussions like those involving gender and religion, it is more effective to focus on different “lenses” or frameworks rather than a paradigm that dwells on specific “positions.”

For example, Yarhouse recognizes that there are various ways one can frame the fact that there is a minority of folks who do not feel that they fit into the gender binary: a sign of moral error, a biological or psychological disability, or a unique occurrence worth celebrating. Yarhouse, a traditional Christian, finds that although he feels most comfortable with one of these lenses, this doesn’t preclude his affirming the merit of people who see the issue through the other ones. Thus, conversations about such controversial topics might be more productive when we are focused less on arguing for or against a position. Instead, we might all be better served by learning how and when to “turn the volume” up or down on the various lenses through which we express our views.

Take the thorny issue of immigration. If a liberal were talking to a group of friends who lean right, they might find it useful to turn down the volume on the lens that recognizes the inherent dignity of all human beings—something that likely resonates more with other liberals—and turn up the volume on, say, a pro-patriotism lens: “Immigrants are actually some of the most patriotic, America-loving people around.” By contrast, if a conservative were to engage with a group of left-wingers on the same issue, it might be most effective to start out by concurring with them that the issue of human rights is indeed important and then—as rapport is built—slowly turn up the volume on the lens that recognizes the ways that lax policy toward illegal immigration enables bosses to take advantage of workers and drives down wages.

Maintaining the tension between these lenses rather than collapsing it is easier said than done. Learning to hold on to them loosely—to turn the volume up and down based on the audience with which one is conversing—is a difficult feat, but one worth aspiring to learn. Working to develop this skill over time has allowed me to engage with a diverse array of people and to avoid seeking refuge in echo chambers.

Some may argue that it’s not worth trying to see the world from another person’s perspective or engaging with them in good-faith conversations when it comes to certain issues where the stakes are high. For example, what’s the point in doing this with someone who supports Nazism or chattel slavery? To be sure, code-switching may not be the perfect tool to use in every situation. Direct rebukes of some ideas may be more prudent in some cases. Additionally, others might view code-switching not as an attempt at consensus-building or dialogue but as masking the true intention of manipulating one’s opponents into adopting one’s own position.

Still, when employed well, code-switching can offer all Americans a tool for better understanding one another and depolarizing our often toxic conversations about important subjects. It can even encourage us to examine our own views and consider where we might be wrong and our opponents correct. Justin E. Giboney, the founder of (&)Campaign, challenges people to identify at least five weaknesses within their own ideology and five strengths in those of the opposing faction. When we lack nuance and charity for others and deny their valid points, we risk further entrenching our opponents in the belief that they’re right and we’re wrong, impeding the chance to make progress and lower the temperature.

Furthermore, ordinary people are much more vulnerable to corruption and violence at the hands of those in power when divided amongst ourselves than when we function as a collective. “Divide and conquer,” as they say.

Thus, to get things done and help heal our increasingly polarized society, we need to learn how to be versatile—to communicate our ideas in a way that people who disagree with us will understand and be more inclined to consider. In pursuit of that, we’d all do well to give code-switching a try.

Stephen G. Adubato is a writer and professor of philosophy based in New York. He is also the curator of the Cracks in Postmodernity blog, ​podcast, and magazine. Follow him on X @stephengadubato.

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American politics is stuck in a maddening holding pattern. In the last twenty years, economic conditions would seem to have favored a mass political movement reflecting the basic tenets of left-wing populism. Aggressively curbing monopolies and the political power of the rich, strengthening workers’ rights, stimulating economic development and widespread housing construction, and implementing policies that better protect against the vicissitudes of age, health, and family tragedy—all these stances would seem to coalesce downtrodden voters across demographic and regional lines.

But that has repeatedly failed to happen. Instead, Republicans have become hegemonic in several former swing states without the GOP committing to a single major policy idea that directly and measurably benefits the working class. The regressive tax rates and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP contained in the congressional GOP’s budget reconciliation bill, signed by Donald Trump this weekend, are proof that gestures to Republicans’ blue-collar base are as infinitesimal as they are fleeting. Besides sectoral tariffs, whose true impact on fixed investment is hard to predict, Trump’s base has otherwise been asked to swallow the GOP’s usual magical thinking that tax breaks for the wealthy encourage widespread growth.

The opening to frame this bill as unreflective of the public interest, as downright unpatriotic, is no small opportunity. But Democrats, for the better part of the extended Trump era, have only halfheartedly reclaimed their past identity as the anti-monopoly party. While a few rising stars in the House have taken a page from former FTC chair Lina Khan, it is still second nature for the party establishment to cater to the upscale urban professional classes, who tend to benefit disproportionately from globalization and can stomach expensive housing. A vacuum exists where one would expect political entrepreneurs on the left to rejuvenate the big tent strategy that yielded Barack Obama’s decisive 2008 coalition.

Indeed, the American electoral left as understood today is irrelevant to and disconnected from the places and people critical to building democratic power in the economy. Despite routine paeans in progressive media to the lessons of New Deal liberalism and the various grassroots movements that laid the groundwork for the realignment of the 1930s, few progressives are heeding the advice of former Senator Sherrod Brown and other “red state” Democrats who have witnessed the collapse of their party in the towns and small cities that once powered the New Deal coalition.

The typical rejoinder from the grassroots left is to deflect from this strategic failure and argue that Democrats simply haven’t shown enough backbone when it comes to confronting economic elites. While true, this isn’t the whole story. At this point, it’s safe to assume plenty of disaffected voters are familiar with progressives’ fusillades against the one percent. Blue-collar workers know what ostentatious and obscene displays of wealth look like. They aren’t ignorant about the consequences of rising inequality and economic concentration, either. Many know firsthand the social costs of disinvestment, stagnant wages, decaying infrastructure, failing schools, exorbitant medical fees, and the affordable housing shortage. Many have seen families destroyed by plant closures, unstable employment, and drug addiction. The hardship is monumental—not relative and secluded—and they feel helpless to stop it.

What left-behind Americans have not yet heard is a concrete, persuasive, and consistent message about national redevelopment and restoring the American dream. They are intermittently offered doses of economic populism tied, usually, to bold yet viable proposals concerning market predation, public investment, and social insurance. But a positive story from either the left or the Democratic establishment about America’s past and future is patently missing. Sectarian influences continue to permeate the larger progressive ecosystem, making it extremely unfashionable, if not verboten, to embrace patriotism and celebrate the achievements of past generations. Progressives point to ideas and policies that are meant to benefit the majority, but their overwhelming focus on (sometimes distressingly essentialist) identity politics and condemning much of American history has greatly undermined the traditional social-democratic project of advancing universal public goods and shared prosperity.

That weakness, notably, is not offset by the strength of other, less ideological voices in the Democratic coalition. In fact, establishment Democrats seem oblivious (or indifferent) to the fact that the politics of inclusion and opportunity extend far beyond who gets admitted to elite universities, the makeup of corporate boardrooms, or how Hollywood depicts modern society. For a party purportedly obsessed with deferring to the “lived experience” of the less privileged, Democrats remain strangely aloof about the degradation quietly endured by many of their fellow Americans.

The challenges facing Democrats and those who would engineer a populist makeover for the party amount to more than these blind spots and “unforced errors.” Both the progressive base and the establishment’s gatekeepers are reluctant to affirm the endogenous patriotism of those who don’t have much left to lose but have few feasible new paths to take. Too many Americans are stuck, spiritually and materially, because the greener pastures are prohibitively expensive; as with a new business struggling to penetrate monopoly control over a given market, it’s not so easy for the de-skilled, underemployed, and dispossessed to abandon their roots for a more dynamic region and compete with others who are more credentialed and better-connected.

In theory, the democratic left’s historical purpose ought to compel it to confront this stark material inequality, just as it would any other. Yet progressives’ geographic isolation from distressed areas has bred a fear of, and even disdain for, working-class counties that have turned from purple to deep red. They recognize neither the yearning nor the pride of perseverance that accompanies working-class patriotism. And because these demographics have doubled down on voting for the “wrong values,” they are, in the progressive mind, beyond persuasion or redemption.

The left’s evident discomfort over patriotism, however, cannot be waved away as reflecting a principled aversion to jingoism or repressive social norms. It evinces a class position tied incontrovertibly to what philosopher Michael Sandel has called a prejudice against the less educated. For the cultural elites who predominate progressive circles, the archetypal blue-collar worker’s sentiment toward their country is invariably a source of suspicion, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. If one is emphatic in their love of country, it must reflect an authoritarian or hypermasculine disposition (or submission to the latter). If one is pessimistic about the country’s trajectory, it automatically must indicate bigotry or opposition to every cultural change since the 1960s. Perhaps more vexing for the Brahmin left is that working-class patriotism can persist in spite of a lot of personal misfortune, and that it is impervious to the kind of radical sanctimony that treats patriotism in every instance as foolish and retrograde.

What is frustrating about all this from the standpoint of sheer political calculus is that it shouldn’t really cost the left anything to champion the people whose success our democracy depends on. America’s future is contingent on whether the left behind—rural and urban, white and nonwhite—have the economic foundations to strengthen our civic fabric. It depends on whether politics in hard-bitten places is more than a quadrennial opportunity to stick it to (one head of) the Hydra-establishment. Good governance, inclusive development, and sound reforms are not perfect antidotes to anomie or bias, but they can do much to relieve hyperpolarization and sociocultural strife. Rather than policing ideological fidelity, the left could promote a vision of national well-being—one that smothers the zero-sum group competition that metastasizes whenever underdevelopment is allowed to fester.

It is no tribute to academia and the professional-managerial class that a minefield of sensitivities surrounds the role of patriotism in the left’s approach to public life. This wasn’t always the case. Historically, economic populism and social-democratic priorities have strongly appealed to patriotic aspirations and the importance of national belonging. Although “left nationalism” is now widely regarded as transgressive or oxymoronic, the democratic left has only succeeded at length when it has promised to conserve what is admirable about a nation while realizing its greater potential.

This has been true the world over. In Sweden and Scandinavia more broadly, the folkhemmet, or concept of a people’s home, was central to building a universal welfare state in the mid-twentieth century. In Latin American countries such as Uruguay and, more recently, Mexico under Morena, reforms have been instituted because the left, through thick and thin, nurtured the traditions of social republicanism. Possibly the best testament to the left’s past embrace of patriotism is the United States itself. Patriotism was integral to the Union’s victory over the Confederacy and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments; the push for Progressive Era reforms; the country’s ability to survive the Great Depression and have faith in Franklin Roosevelt’s far-reaching policies; and even the breakthroughs of the civil rights and antiwar movements. When the horizon for equal rights and equal opportunity has expanded, it is because the left steadfastly favored the common good over the sectarian path.

As the bottom sixty percent begins to feel the consequences of Trump’s fiscal policies, DOGE, and a host of other reckless actions, progressives must make a fundamental choice. They can write off all who voted for Trump or stayed home last November and scrounge, presumably, for more votes among those who already share their worldview. Or they can curb their vanity, remind themselves of all that seemed impossible in the age of Roosevelt or Lincoln, and channel the anger—and wounded patriotism—of the downtrodden toward a project of national renewal.

There will, assuredly, be daunting moments on the road ahead. But if the rest of this decade and the one to follow are to be different from the recent past, the democratic left cannot retreat from the country as it is. Nor can it recoil from the patriotism that, in its best expressions, has kept neglected communities from falling apart. In his July 4th address of 1936, Franklin Roosevelt said:

Emergencies and decisions in our individual, community, and national lives are the stuff out of which national character is made. Preparation of the mind and preparation of the spirit of our people for such emergencies and for such decisions is the best available insurance for the security and development of our democratic institutions.

More than ever, the modern left must recognize, free of judgment, the character wrought from the fortitude of people and places whose own emergencies went unnoticed for too long. Perhaps then the great task of restoring our common bonds and common purpose may begin anew.

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Every year, around July 4, Gallup measures how Americans are feeling about their country. And every year, I’m reminded of how an ever-lower share of Democrats—especially liberal Democrats—feel less and less proud to call America their home. This year’s survey, released yesterday, is no exception: only about a third (36 percent) of self-identified Democrats said they were either “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, a record low since Gallup began tracking the question in 2001.

Seeing this sharp decline among Democrats after majorities said for the prior four years that they were proud of their country points to a pretty obvious culprit: the re-election of Donald Trump—and this time with majority support from the electorate. In fact, Gallup notes, there has been a noticeable drop in patriotic sentiment among Democrats since 2016, again aligning with Trump’s election.

In some ways, this shift is understandable. Trump presents a very different view of what it means for America to be great than the one shared by most Democrats. Summed up in his campaign mantra, “Make America Great Again,” Trump—and many of his voters—believe the country is in decline and that its best days are behind us. This is the rationale behind his “America First” agenda that includes, among other things, sweeping tariffs and more immigration restrictions, policies designed (at least in part) to help return America to a time when it was the dominant economic force globally and good jobs were abundant.

By contrast, liberals often believe that those past periods in American life were imperfect, as not everyone who lived here was able to fully participate in it. They consider the trajectory of American society toward one that is more diverse, tolerant of difference, and open to the world than it was in the past as a positive sign of progress. And they believe that Trump represents a bulwark against that kind of change. So, when a substantial share of voters decided to return him to office and support his new policies, many on the left took it as a sign that their country was rejecting their view of progress in favor of Trump’s appeals to nostalgia—and far more Democrats now share the view that America’s best days are behind it.

It is thus not uncommon for Democrats today to view not just their government but even some of their fellow countrymen and women with scorn. Anyone who has spent time in liberal circles since the election, especially on social media, has surely seen some variation of the line, “Fine, if people really feel this way, America deserves what it has coming to it. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.” Rather than merely expressing concern for the country’s future, some have clearly come to look at others with whom they share it with outright contempt.

This is obviously not a healthy recipe for the future. A strong national identity requires buy-in from the overwhelming majority of citizens. So, at a time when many liberals are despairing about the future under Trump and feeling cold toward America, it’s perhaps worth re-thinking what it means to be proud of one’s country and why there is still so much about the U.S. that they can and should look favorably on.

To set this up, it’s first important to remember that America is more than its government. Relatedly, Mark Twain once observed, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” People in countries around the world—democracies and non-democracies alike—no doubt understand this attitude. Even as citizens of, say, China or Russia or Turkey grow frustrated with their governments or maybe even by the values or beliefs of some of their fellow citizens, it’s unlikely to lead them to disavow their own culture, reject their national identity, or ignore the contributions that their countries have made to the world.

America is also more than its shortcomings. It’s of course reasonable, even necessary, for countries to grapple with their past transgressions, not simply paper over them. It is true that American history includes some darker periods—slavery, Jim Crow, the treatment of Native Americans, and the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. But not only has the country worked to overcome much of that, which must also be acknowledged as part of its history, but no country should be wholly defined by its worst moments, either. Few today think of Germany, Italy, or Japan foremost by their actions in World War II—even as they continue to work to remember their past—but rather for their cultural, business, and technological exports to the rest of the world since that time.

So perhaps one way for Democrats to find their patriotism again is to reflect on America’s extensive, positive contributions to the world, especially culturally. Consider, for instance, the innumerable genres of music that have originated here, like jazz, rock ‘n roll, hip-hop, bluegrass, disco, blues, pop-rock, gospel, R&B, punk, and soul, and that have caught on big-time elsewhere. In Europe, supporters of soccer clubs have adopted classics like “Sweet Caroline” and “Seven Nation Army” as part of their chants. Sitting in a cafe in Rome last year, I noticed the playlist running through a catalog of American hits. Anyone who has traveled abroad has likely experienced something similar.

There’s also American sports, which have become so popular that one recent analysis found that six of the top 15 most-watched sporting events in the world are based in the U.S. while the remaining seven were all multi-country or international contests.1 Basketball and baseball have both grown in popularity around the world while the NFL, by far the most popular league domestically, is significantly expanding its reach as well. Several other sports also originated in America and have since spilled beyond its borders, including skateboarding, ultimate frisbee, snowboarding, cheerleading, volleyball, and, most recently, pickleball—the fastest-growing sport in the world today.

And, of course, it’s impossible to ignore the far reach of Hollywood, which for decades has influenced people and societies around the globe. Pew Research has noted that even during periods of rising anti-American sentiment elsewhere in the world—which does appear to be happening right now—most people still have a favorable view of American culture, especially movies.

The ubiquity and popularity of our culture is a testament to America’s rich history. It has gained traction over time not because we imposed it on other countries. As has put it, “The global mass love for the US and its culture is genuine…[it] is an organic democratic process because US culture despite all the showy glitz is still at its heart democratic, because the US despite all its faults is still at its heart a democratic country, where the desires of the demos, and their interest, have outlets that don’t feel entirely chimerical and impotent.”

This relates to another proud achievement: America is one of the only places on earth today that can credibly claim to be a nation of immigrants and that has a history of successfully assimilating new immigrants into our society and watching them make invaluable contributions to it, such as Sergey Brin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Audrey Hepburn, Yo-Yo Ma, Nikola Tesla, Anna Kournikova, and Albert Einstein. There’s a reason why more immigrants have chosen to call America their home than anywhere else in the world (and it’s not particularly close).

Indeed, America’s founding ideal—the notion that anyone can make of themselves what they want in a society committed to pluralism—has not only served us well but also has been a model, even if at times an imperfect one, for other societies. To be an American is to be part of a project bigger than oneself and also, importantly, one’s ethnic or tribal identity. The country has certainly struggled to consistently live up to this ideal, but it is nonetheless something that we continue to aspire to and that has lit the path for other countries to do the same.

There are also other, more tangible ways to reinvigorate a sense of patriotism among Democrats. One thing I’ve noticed in my own, predominantly liberal social circles is that people who have some skin in the game—who have sacrificed in some way in service of their country and fellow citizens—often boast a more hopeful attitude about America. This includes those who have served in the military, worked for the government, and taught in public schools. Insofar as they criticize the country, it’s usually because they see it failing to live up to its ideals, which they believe in.

For liberals who haven’t had these experiences or who are just feeling down on their country at the moment, it may be worth finding for opportunities to serve. This doesn’t necessarily need to be at a national level; local settings can be a great way to feel more connected to American life. Volunteering one’s time in service of others can help foster greater civic pride and is far more effective and productive than, say, re-sharing mocking or contemptuous memes on social media.

Research has shown that civic participation increases “constructive patriotism” and decreases “blind patriotism.” It also shows that conservatives are more likely to volunteer than their liberal counterparts, which may at least partly explain why Republicans tend to feel much more patriotic than Democrats. Engendering feelings of patriotism is unlikely to be enough to convince some people to volunteer, but if and when they find a way to connect with their community, it may be a byproduct.

Another practical (and easy) step toward renewing civic pride is cheering on national sports teams. And there is ample opportunity to do this. Right now, the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team is in the Gold Cup tournament, and Sunday they advanced to the semi-final round after winning a thrilling penalty shootout over Costa Rica. Next year, they’ll be playing in—and hosting—the World Cup, before which American athletes will compete in the Winter Olympics. In 2027, the women’s national soccer team, which has been a global powerhouse for decades, will play in the Women’s World Cup. In 2028, America will compete in the Olympics. These competitions offer low-stakes chances to exhibit some healthy nationalism, and it’s hard to resist the temptation when much of the rest of the country is doing the same.

Finally, all Americans, regardless of politics, should at some point attend an immigrant naturalization ceremony. It is a singular event in America that promises to give a boost of national pride to all present. Last July 4, I attended one in Richmond, Virginia, where I witnessed 75 individuals from 36 different countries become American citizens. Speaking with some of them afterward, I was struck by how hopeful they were about life in America, even after years of grinding through the immigration process, and how it stood in sharp contrast with things I’ve heard from people born and raised here, some of whom seem to take their relatively free, peaceful, and secure lives for granted. Listening to those who have come from other places talk about America might offer a reminder of just how lucky many of us are.

In addition to the clear personal benefits of embracing patriotism, there’s a cruder political calculation that the official Democratic Party also must contend with: voters increasingly see them as an unpatriotic party. This surely isn’t for a lack of effort from their leaders. But the impression exists nonetheless. In a 2024 post-election survey, the Progressive Policy Institute found that working-class voters, specifically, were likelier to view Republicans as far more patriotic than Democrats, 62 percent vs. 43 percent. The above Gallup poll (and others) is only likely to reinforce that gap.

The reality is that a lot of Americans like living here and think patriotism is cool, not cringey. And if voters believe one of the parties doesn’t share that view, that can only come at the latter’s expense.

If Democrats care about building a future wherein all Americans share in its success, they must first tell themselves a story that doesn’t condemn the American experiment based on the temporary reality of who is in power or the nations’ past failings. Even for liberals who have grown jaded by a country that re-elected Trump, there’s still plenty to love here. Patriotism need not be manufactured; there are abundant, meaningful ways to feel and express admiration for one’s homeland. Doing so will be a crucial part of securing a shared, prosperous future for all Americans.

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