Conservative populism has now firmly established itself as a significant force in most of the Western world. It remains unclear, however, whether it can build on that to become a dominant power.

The evidence of significance is overwhelming. Populist parties regularly receive twenty or more percent in national elections, at times exceeding thirty percent. Leaders such as Donald Trump, Sanae Takaichi, and Giorgia Meloni have gained power by allying those forces with elements of the old center-right to win majoritarian elections, something that leaders in Eastern Europe such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have long been able to do.

The overall record is nonetheless mixed. France’s National Rally gained significant ground in this month’s local elections, but it nonetheless was rarely able to win in the crucial second round. Left-leaning voters will still rally around even conservative candidates to prevent a populist win, while many conservatives remain unwilling to join the broad coalition of the right urged upon them by Marion Maréchal and Éric Ciotti.

Portugal and Germany are other examples of countries with populist parties that are fast gaining support yet remain off limits to other mainstream parties leading coalitions. Germany’s main center-right group, the Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union, would still rather team up with the center-left Social Democrats or Greens than the populist Alternative for Germany. Portugal’s center-right Democratic Alliance is making the same choice, depending on support from their traditional Socialist Party adversary rather than currying favor with André Ventura’s Chega.

This creates a conundrum for these leaders. Should they emulate Meloni and Trump and cut deals with the old right, even at the expense of significant portions of their agenda? Or should they just persevere in the hope that the tide will soon flow in their direction?

Either course carries risk. Choose moving to the center and a party could go so far that the voters they attract from the old left decide that the new right isn’t different from the old right they reject. Stay the course and you could stay out of power for a long time.

A country’s election and party system will also dictate how conservative populist parties behave. A majoritarian system tends to push a party towards trying to cooperate with or co-opt the old right. But in Great Britain, the splintering of the party system into three national left-leaning or left-wing parties plus two additional regional left-leaning parties means that the conservative populist Reform Party is better off pushing to the right. Forecasts show that it can win an election with only 30 percent of the vote.

Over time, however, these choices will tend to converge towards similar outcomes. A decade from now, conservative populists will gain if the elite consensus fails to solve the problems that are driving the conservative populist surge. Grand coalitions can hold the purported barbarians at the gate for a while, but voters ultimately will give even radical parties their shot at power when the alternatives seem hopeless.

On that score, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz seems to be perhaps the West’s most consequential non-populist leader. With Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer mired in historically low approval numbers and France’s Emmanuel Macron’s centrists fading quickly from the scene, Merz’s grand coalition with the Social Democrats is the last large nation government with a chance to show it can restore economic growth, increase national security, and reduce the social disruption that mass immigration has wrought.

The initial signs are mixed. Merz’s CDU/CSU faction is polling lower than its results in last year’s election, although it has recovered a bit since January. The conservative populist AfD is up, both in polls and in two recent state elections, as is the far-left Left party. Merz will need to deliver by the time the next federal vote occurs in March 2029 if he wants to forestall the shift to the extremes in both directions.

The state of the economy is likely to be the most important question for conservative populists over the next decade. They universally draw from people making less money and with less formal education, but some polls also show a direct correlation between perceived economic situation and openness to populist appeals.

In the U.K., for example, Reform does best among voters who “often struggle to make ends meet” and worst among those who are “very comfortable financially.” Support for the left-wing Green Party shows an identical correlation. In the two most recent German state elections, both held in the former West Germany, support for both the AfD and the Left is much higher among those who say their financial situation is bad than among those who say it is good.

That potentially makes the impact of artificial intelligence incredibly important for populism’s future. Virtually unqualified support for AI is among the core tenets of the cross-partisan elite consensus. As they once said about globalization, the development of AI is supposed to lift all economic boats by increasing productivity. If that happens, then they should be handsomely rewarded at the ballot box.

Globalization’s actual outcome, however, should give one pause. That sea change enriched people with advanced degrees and access to financial capital, while it damaged life prospects for people who work with their hands or on their feet. That is a significant reason why in all nations those with lower incomes and lower levels of education—and especially those classified as manual laborers—have swung so rapidly towards conservative populism.

The AI revolution could have a similar effect on the degree-holding class. British pollster James Kanagasooriam published a fascinating paper last year that looked at what types of jobs are currently at risk of being automated by AI. Jobs with high degrees of verbally specific skills are at high risk of automation. And it turns out that those jobs are found, both in Britain and America, in communities that have done very well economically over the last decades and remain bastions of anti-populist sentiments.

If AI displaces large numbers of jobs via automation, that will leave large numbers of white-collar, degree-holding voters without a means to finance the middle- and upper-middle-class lifestyles they are accustomed to. They will be in exactly the circumstances that blue-collar workers were when their jobs were exposed to globalization, with one exception: they can’t be told to “learn how to code” because entry-level coding will now be performed by AI.

We should then expect the displaced white-collar worker and his/her family to react in the same way their blue-collar fellow citizens reacted in the last decade. They may swing to left-wing populists in greater numbers, but many will swing rightward. Any significant hollowing out of the remaining consensus voters puts the traditional center-right supporter in a massive bind. And we know from history what old center-right voters do when their only viable choices are a populist left and a populist right.

Those who want to resist this analysis should look at how the social democratic left rose from obscurity to dominance within fifty years. It first gained strength among the working class but remained unable to seize power in most nations for years until the twin elite failures of the mid-20th century—the Great Depression and World War II—changed voters’ minds. It took social and economic catastrophe to push democratic polities to embrace the welfare state and Keynesianism, but embrace it they did until the next set of elite failures produced the neoliberal correction of the 1980s that produced our current cross-partisan consensus.

Events do matter, as British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s famous dictum reminds us. Those who think the current elite consensus can, with a few tweaks, solve the West’s challenges, still believe that populism can be contained. Those who don’t, and all populist leaders fall into this class, can look forward to a potentially bright conservative populist future. Today may remain in the elite’s hands, but tomorrow might belong to the outsiders.

Subscribe now

Share

Democrats are cautiously optimistic about November’s midterms as President Trump’s poor job approval numbers and continued success in flipping GOP seats in special elections suggest victory is forthcoming. They ought not to take too much comfort in that, as these points do not show that conservative populism’s appeal is waning. In fact, the evidence from overseas suggests it is still growing.

Japan

Japan’s most recent national election is a case in point. Just last July, the long-dominant, conventionally conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost its majority in the nation’s upper house, the House of Counsellors. The big winners were not the traditional centrist opposition, but instead two conservative populist parties, Sanseitō and the Conservative Party, which skyrocketed to take nearly 18 percent of the vote together. Prime Minister Shigero Ishiba resigned to take responsibility for the fall from grace.

He was replaced by Japan’s first female prime minister, Sagae Takaichi. She cites Britain’s Margaret Thatcher as an inspiration for her career, but as PM, she is more like a Japanese Trump than anything else. Sharply conservative on social issues like same-sex marriage (she’s opposed), she has embraced a rapid rebuilding of Japan’s military and angered China with statements that that country’s use of its navy to blockade Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation” that would trigger laws allowing the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to intervene.

Takaichi also takes a hard line on immigration, pledging to tighten immigration procedures and perhaps even establish a numerical target for the amount of foreign-born people allowed to live in Japan. Combined, these policies moved the LDP sharply to the nationalist right, the better to compete with Sanseitō and the Conservatives.

Last month’s snap election for the lower house, the House of Representatives, was a smashing success for her conservative populism. The LDP won a record 315 seats in the 465-seat chamber. The conservative populists, nonetheless, won 10 percent combined, a record showing for populist hard-right parties in a lower house election. It’s clear Japan now stands firmly in the conservative populist camp.

Costa Rica

Costa Rica is another example of record high support for conservative populism. The longtime democracy has historically tilted toward the center-left, as the National Liberation Party (PLN) won nearly two-thirds of the nation’s elections between 1953 and 2010. Even the PLN’s defeats in 2014 and 2018 came as a result of another party of the center-left, the Citizen’s Action Party (PAC), taking over first place.

This started to change in 2022, as an entirely new party, the Social Democratic Progress Party (PPSD), elected a president on the strength of concern about unemployment and immigration. That man, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, was extremely controversial during his tenure and avoided criminal prosecution only because the opposition could not muster the two-thirds needed to lift his immunity.

Unable to run again because of constitutional bars on consecutive terms in office, it remained for one of Chaves’ ministers, Laura Fernandes Delgado, to carry on his legacy. She argued in the campaign to build a prison like the one constructed by El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to control the country’s soaring crime and to crack down on drug trafficking. Fernandes is also socially conservative, pledging to increase penalties for having an abortion and reaching out to the nation’s large and growing evangelical voters.

Costa Ricans gave her and her party, a split from the PPSD known as the Sovereign People’s Party (PPSO), a historic landslide. She won in the first round with nearly a majority of the votes. Moreover, the PPSO won 31 of the unicameral legislature’s 57 seats, the first time a single party had won a majority since 1990. The nation’s traditional center-right and classical liberal parties mustered only one seat combined.

France

A recent legislative by-election in France further shows how the traditional right is crumbling in the face of populist fervor. The 3d district of Haute-Savoie had always been won by a candidate from the traditional center-right parties since the establishment of the Fifth Republic in 1958. The center-right won handily even in 2024’s snap vote, which saw the populist right National Rally (RN) surge in support. The center-right candidate, Christelle Petex, beat the RN-supported candidate, Antoine Valentin, comfortably by a 56-44 margin as voters to her left swung to her side in the all-important second-round runoff.

Petex’s resignation set off the by-election, which was held on January 25th and February 1st. RN backed Valentin again, but this time two even farther-right parties, Reconquête and Les Patriotes, put up their own nominees. Valentin nonetheless finished on top in the first round with 45 percent, about 5.5 percent higher than he received in 2024. The two ultra-rightists combined for an additional 4 percent, putting Valentin on the cusp of victory simply by combining the record high far-right vote.

Valentin did even better than that, swamping the center-right candidate, Christophe Fournier, by a landslide 59-41 margin. That was a 30-point swing from 2024, on par with the 32-point swing in the recent Texas state Senate election that has Democrats salivating. France’s conservatives, like Japan’s and Costa Rica’s, are swinging hard right, and the nation’s centrists and leftists seem powerless to stop them.

Australia

Populism’s rapid rise has even spread Down Under to Australia. That country has long had a center-right coalition of the Liberal and National parties that essentially occupied all of the space on the right side of the spectrum. That has begun to fray over the last decade, but the Coalition still dominated the right even in 2025’s historic landslide defeat. It received about 32 percent of the primary vote (the nation has mandatory ranked-choice voting), while the largest populist right party, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, got only 6.4 percent.

That is now ancient history. The Coalition now polls at record lows on the primary vote, ranging between 19 and 26 percent in the most recent polls. One Nation has surged and now polls higher than the Coalition, receiving between 22 and 28 percent. It got so bad that the Liberals, the long-dominant party in the Coalition, recently dumped its leader, Sussan Ley, even though she had only held the job for nine months.

One Nation’s rise is easy to explain. Hanson is a longtime political figure known for her nationalist and anti-immigrant views who is credible as a principled outsider. That appeals to disaffected conservatives tired of the Coalition’s losing and temporizing on hot-button issues. Her fiscal nonconformity and plain-speaking approach also appeal to working-class voters disappointed in the governing center-left Labor Party. That ability to attract both left and right is a staple of successful conservative populists worldwide.

The most recent Sky News Pulse/YouGov poll shows this clearly. It found that 12 percent of Labor Party voters now back One Nation, along with 29 percent of the Coalition’s support and 21 percent who had backed independents. It leads Labor with working-class voters, once the very reason for Labor’s existence, and is competitive with both traditional major parties among the middle class. Only the well-off reject populism—another feature of modern global politics—but they are largely concentrated in a few urban and suburban enclaves. If the election were held today, One Nation would easily supplant the Coalition in Parliament as the largest party on the right and would likely win a few surprising working-class Labor seats too.

United Kingdom

Even the populist right’s recent defeat in the avidly watched Gorton and Denton by-election in Great Britain is a sign of strength rather than weakness. The seat has one of Britain’s largest Muslim populations, a constituency that is clearly antagonistic to the anti-immigration, pro-Western culture populist party. It was also historically one of the most left-wing seats in the nation, regularly returning Labour Party MPs since 1935 with huge majorities.

Reform’s second-place finish with 29 percent of the vote is, in this context, a huge success. Nowcast UK’s model estimated it would receive 26.5 percent, with the Conservatives winning 4.5 percent. In the event, the combined Reform plus Tory vote share of 30.6 percent is nearly identical to the model’s. And that model projects that Reform would win 315 seats in the next election, easily enough to form a coalition government with the much smaller rump of Conservatives.

When the best election result for the left in recent days still points to a conservative populist government, one must sit up and face the facts. Trump may be in decline at the moment, but demand for conservative populism is strong and growing. If he ever hits his stride, perhaps by focusing on domestic politics rather than endlessly pursuing the Nobel Peace Prize, Democrats may find their current advantage is as durable as a snowpack come springtime.

Subscribe now

Share

Can Democrats be effective populists? They’d certainly like to believe so. They’d particularly like to believe that if they turn up the volume high enough on economic populism, they can neutralize Trumpian populism and direct anger at the true elites who preside over a broken system. For example, Texas Democratic Senatorial candidate, James Talarico, generally seen as the Democrats’ best shot for flipping that state’s Republican-held Senate seat, has this pitch:

Similar pitches are being made by many Democratic candidates and office-holders, including Graham Platner of Maine and the party’s shining new star, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. What they have in common is a complete lack of interest in addressing what Talarico refers to as “the culture wars.” The real issues are economic; the culture stuff isn’t important (“a smokescreen”) and not negotiable anyway.

Can the Democrats get away with this? Can an economics-only populism really succeed in a populist era where anger at elites is so widespread and so many voters see the system as completely broken?

The answer is no. This narrowly-defined populism is doomed to fail.

An aggressive economic populist pitch by itself is not a get-out-of-jail free card for a party whose brand among working-class voters has been profoundly damaged. It’s just a comforting myth for Democrats who don’t want to make hard choices.

Working-class voters are acutely aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. For the working class, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same. These voters harbor deep resentment toward the cultural gatekeepers who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are.

This is a bitter pill for most Democratic elites to swallow. In today’s America, they are the “Establishment” even if in their imaginations they are sticking it to the “Man” and fighting nobly for social justice. The failure to understand that they themselves are targets of populist anger is a central reason their populist pitch fails—and will fail—to get traction among the working class. Call it the “old wine in new bottles” problem—these voters hear the economic populist words but they sense that behind them is the same old Democratic Party with the same old elites and the same old cultural priorities.

It therefore follows that Democrats’ attempts to pose as populists will fail to convince without a strong dose of cultural populism. Unless Democrats are willing to align with populist sentiment on cultural issues and therefore confront their own elites and associated NGOs and institutions, working-class voters will not take them seriously as populists, viewing them merely as an alternative set of elites.

And an alternative set of elites who do a very poor job governing where they have the most power. Here again Democrats’ purely economic populism falls short. Deep blue states and cities are notoriously reluctant to confront the NGO-activist-industrial complex and the congeries of interest groups, including public sector unions, who drive up costs and make it near-impossible to govern efficiently and preserve social order. For ordinary voters, this amounts to siding with the Democrats’ own elites against the people.

No wonder that even with the thermostatic reaction against Trump and his administration’s excesses and failures, Democrats as a party are still not deriving commensurate benefits. As my Liberal Patriot colleague Michael Baharaeen notes:

[I]t is not yet clear that Trump’s woes have brought his party down with him. For example, polling shows that voters continue to trust Republicans more than Democrats on immigration and the economy, which the [New York] Times’s survey identified as the two most important problems facing the country today. There are also signs that Republicans may be retaining some of Trump’s gains with core segments of the electorate, even as he himself has stumbled.

[Comparing how groups voted in the national House popular vote in 2018, and where their support lies now], it appears that a meaningful share of younger and non-white voters have moved to the right and may be staying there. The most glaring shifts are from racial minorities. In 2018, Democrats won black voters by 84 points and Hispanics by 40 points. Today, those leads are down to 55 points and 16 points, respectively. And even though voters aged 18–29 have soured on Trump, they are still 11 points right of where they were eight years ago.

As Baharaeen also notes, the one group that has moved most meaningfully to the left over the period is white college graduates (by 12 points). This group of course heavily populates the very elites that “populist” Democrats are so reluctant to confront.

Democrats will eventually have to take on cultural populism as part of their brand or just give up on ever being a working-class party again. Simple economic populism is hopelessly inadequate. The voters they need to reach overwhelmingly believe illegal immigration is wrong and should be deterred and penalized not indulged. They believe crimes should be punished, public safety is sacrosanct, and 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, spaces limited to biological women in areas like sports and prisons should be preserved, and 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.

So where are the Democrats’ cultural populists who are willing to robustly defend these sentiments? Essentially non-existent. That bodes poorly for the party’s long term prospects and likely ensures a long life for right populism to the country’s detriment.

Subscribe now

Share

ICE’s terrifying actions in Minneapolis have brought the country to an inflection point like no other since January 6, 2021. Two citizens have been killed by federal agents, the constitutional rights of citizens and immigrants have been repeatedly violated, and journalists were temporarily arrested at the order of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bloomberg reports that ICE has begun to purchase and convert warehouses into mass detention centers in several states, while a new Financial Times analysis of democratic backsliding shows a faster decline under the second Trump administration when compared to similar precedents in Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, and Turkey from earlier this century.

As ever, the Trump White House has shown zero interest in creating an air of impartiality, choosing instead to smear and demean protesters as “agitators,” “insurrectionists,” and “domestic terrorists.” For those who warned “it can happen here”—that is, a police state akin to the Cold War-era dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Pinochet’s Chile, or something even more chilling—the evidence is now overflowing. They implore their skeptics: What else do you need to declare this cannot go on if you want to preserve American democracy?

This is a moment in which the choices before the country, as well as the institutions tasked with upholding the rule of law, couldn’t be starker. Perversely, though, the anti-Trump coalition had been plagued, before this precipice, by the sense it has lost its ability to persuade. While the tremors in Trump’s coalition grow by the day—polls show Trump is now underwater with voters on immigration, formerly his number one issue—it isn’t guaranteed the new backlash to the administration’s rogue actions will become permanent. After ten long years of warning about MAGA’s potential to inflict lasting damage—the kind that not merely denigrates decorum and norms or rolls back progressive programs but shreds basic civil liberties—it can seem futile trying to make the same arguments more urgent and clarifying for the unconvinced. And so, even the most fearless denunciations carry notes of despair, a fear that it is all for naught.

Lest there be any doubt, would-be authoritarians feed off such resignation. While they pounce at the opportunity to describe their foes as “hysterical” and “extreme,” they delight even more in the possibility that, for fear of overreacting, their opponents plead for reasonableness and restraint, as if no fundamental duties of the government to its citizens have already been breached. It is an ugly Catch-22 for all who are aghast at the steady erosion of individual liberty and our constitutional protections. A decline in outspoken but peaceful dissent would be a terrible omen, particularly if such opposition relented merely on the promise of cosmetic change. At the same time, the Resistance, no matter how vocal, cannot evolve into something more powerful—to become a genuine movement to save the Constitution—if others do not similarly see their rights and the integrity of American values at stake.

To avoid paralysis, the Resistance, in the broadest sense of the term, needs to fulsomely commit to three tasks in the weeks and months ahead. They will strike many as unglamorous and nonconfrontational. Nevertheless, they have strategic value that may yet broaden and reinvigorate the coalition necessary to extinguish MAGA.

The first is to aggressively encourage decisive, efficient, and impressive governance in all blue cities and states. Above all, that means pursuing the kind of pro-development policies that foster ample, sustainable population growth. While this might sound like an antiseptic recommendation from the most risk-averse policy wonk, it is crucial: without a rapid reversal in population trends, key blue states, as well as Midwestern toss-up states that have historically composed the “blue wall,” are on track to lose congressional seats, and thus Electoral College votes, after the 2030 census, leaving the GOP with a distinct electoral advantage. Any hope of preventing this will at the very least require measures that ramp up housing construction, attract residents who want to start families, reduce the financial burdens of child-rearing, ease business formation, control health care costs, and aggressively diversify economic opportunities beyond key talent hubs.

Accordingly, Democrats must govern in the states they think of as reliably liberal with the same mix of shrewdness and broad-mindedness that will be required of swing-state insurgents intent on attracting independents and disenchanted blue-collar Trump supporters. Put another way, Democrats must model governance for a national coalition that puts a premium on competence powerful enough to make people vote with their feet (or put down lasting roots). That might sound far-fetched, but what began as a trickle last decade accelerated in the aftermath of Covid, when it seemed as though blue municipalities had grown dysfunctional and indifferent to public safety and inflation. The current trajectory isn’t inevitable if steps are taken now to match blue states’ still enviable share of national GDP with substantial improvements to the quality of life they once banked their reputation on.

This point about Democrats needing to meet expectations for decent living standards—resoundingly affirmed by New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, as well as a growing crop of swing state insurgents—can’t be emphasized enough. Democrats—perhaps due to a generational dearth of strong, genuinely pragmatic Republican challengers in blue states—not only grew complacent about the magnetism of their “superstar cities” but also fatally proud. Prior to the Covid shock, national Democrats like Hillary Clinton, blue state governors, and congressional Democrats obsessed with SALT (state and local tax) reform on the East and West Coasts crowed about how much GDP their districts produced and griped, in a rather reactionary manner, about how much blue states subsidize federal welfare programs and infrastructure spending in red ones. They also continue to blast red states for usually having higher violent crime rates per capita. Empirically they were and are right on all counts. But sounding these notes is a political loser, especially as long as core blue states and the seaboard megalopolises that run through them fail to live up to their New Deal-style promises of plentiful middle-class salaries, sufficient family housing, advanced (not just moderately reliable) infrastructure, and genuine social security that prevents long-term, structural poverty.

The numbers, sadly, speak for themselves. Millions of younger professionals, descendants of the Great Migration, well-integrated immigrants, and middle-class families have been pushed out of major blue zip codes. They have decamped not just to the New Jersey suburbs (also expensive), southern New Hampshire (ditto), the moderately gentrified parts of suburban Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, or, in the Pacific Northwest, to the outer rings of Portland and Seattle. They have moved south, to Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida, and to the interior Mountain West, without yielding a commensurate turn toward either populist or culturally liberal “purple politics” in these regions (Georgia being a very partial exception). Whatever else may be going on—these transplants could be social conservatives exhausted by progressive identity politics, but it is highly unlikely in the majority of cases that this is more than epiphenomenal to factors related to costs and opportunities—the pattern is not inducing the favorable changes in political geography that Democratic activists have pined for since Barack Obama was president. If Democrats want to do well nationally, they need fewer—really zero—people leaving for red states bearing the message to their new neighbors, “I just couldn’t make it work back home.”

At the same time, Democrats need a surplus of high-quality candidates in working-class red districts who can distinguish themselves as they see fit from a national brand tarred by elitism. This is the second imperative they need to swallow posthaste. While it has been advised many times since 2016, too often the DNC and party grandees have backed the wrong horse based on a fetish for fancy credentials or an insipid, Beltway-massaged notion of what it means to stand up to Trump. Not every insurgent candidate necessarily has to have a hardscrabble background, but they should have an intimate connection to their communities and be unafraid of the concerns and tribulations of their prospective constituents.

They must be similarly free to tailor their message in locales where anti-establishment sentiment is endemic. In particular, such candidates, like those backed by The Bench, a new party organization, need to be able to say, “I respect my fellow party members and know that a new generation of leadership is working hard to deliver for their districts and represent the values of their constituents, but I’m running to represent you and ensure we finally have a voice in Washington—not just to squeeze deals out of the federal budget that throw us a lifeline, but to ignite investment that actually provides our young men with dignified jobs, repairs our broken health care system, and makes our small towns and cities great places to raise a family.” In case any progressives are about to quibble over this message, yes, these independent Democratic candidates, male and female, need to talk, compassionately, about men learning responsibility, skills, and the intergenerational value of enablement. That is a positive, pro-freedom message that gives directionless young men a leg up and one more reason to shun the incels, groypers, and manosphere hucksters wasting their lives peddling self-pity and despicable fantasies.

This brings us to the third task, which is for Democrats to rediscover the language of freedom by focusing foremost on the rights codified by the Constitution. Doing so would perhaps be the single most important sign that Democrats are prepared to reclaim the common ground and jettison divisive identity politics, which, pushed to their logical extreme, are incompatible with the liberal ideal of America as a creedal nation. It would also show Democrats are ready to return to first principles and not merely exploit fears of authoritarianism, as they did between 2021 and 2024, when party leaders raised enormous sums off of every danger Trump posed but failed, inexcusably, to expand their coalition.

Democrats should therefore make a more substantive and concerted attempt to find common cause with libertarian, Tocquevillian, and religious conservatives spooked by Trump’s right-wing statism—a model that is increasingly antithetical to traditional American conservatism. Indeed, if Democrats are to stop the indefensible, they will need not just judges in the mold of Patrick Schiltz and Fred Biery, but Americans from all walks of life declaring the administration’s solution to immigration is rending the country in two.

Admittedly, forging this coalition will be anything but easy. And Democrats, after Biden’s lax immigration policies, have more than their work cut out for them on the question of how they would enforce the border while eliminating the rot at the DHS. Democrats must nevertheless try, with an ardor that was conspicuously absent for most of the Trump era. Ultimately, without an emphatic reclamation of the electric cord that has given America its strength, character, and capacity for renewal, we will soon be living in a different kind of country.

Subscribe now

Share

Recently I argued that the left’s 21st century project has failed. After the era of social democracy sputtered out at the end of the 20^th century, the left embarked on a new project they hoped would remedy the weaknesses evident at century’s end and inaugurate a new era of political and governance success. We are now a quarter of the way through the 21^st century, which has witnessed both a genuine “crisis of capitalism” (the Great Recession of 2007-09) and the systemic breakdown of the COVID era (2020-22). Enough time has gone by to render a judgement: despite ample opportunity to advance their cause, the left’s 21^st century project has failed and failed badly.

Consider:

• It has failed to stop the rise of right populism.

• It has failed to create durable electoral majorities.

• It has failed to achieve broad social hegemony.

• It has failed to retain its working-class base.

• It has failed to promote social order.

• It has failed to practice effective governance.

• It has failed to jump-start rapid economic growth.

• It has failed to generate optimism about the future.

Of course, the project hasn’t been a complete failure. Left parties, including the Democratic Party, have succeeded in building strong bases among the educated and professional classes and, if they have lacked broad social hegemony, they have generally controlled the commanding heights of cultural production. As a result they have mostly set the terms of “respectable” discourse in elite circles.

But that’s pretty weak beer compared to all those massive failures and the heady aspirations of those who presume to be on “the right side of history.” Most on the left would prefer to believe that the left’s 21^st century project is basically sound and just needs a few tweaks. This is whistling past the graveyard. After a quarter century, it is time to face the facts: the project is simply not fit for purpose and needs to be jettisoned.

By that I don’t mean that parties of the left cannot win elections. They have, and they will! Already, Democrats look well-positioned to take back the House in 2026, and they even have an outside shot at taking the Senate. And if the unpopularity and poor results of the Trump administration continue into 2028, they’ll certainly have a solid chance of recapturing the presidency three years from now.

But a continuation of the electoral see-saw between Democrats and Republicans is not what the left should have in mind. It has been and would be little more than a holding action against right populism. Taking advantage of the thermostatic reaction against your opponents’ overreach and failure to manage the economy effectively is a very low bar—especially given how egregiously flawed that opponent is. It would hardly indicate a revival of the left and a new political project to replace the one that has limped along for a quarter of a century. Rebuilding the left’s base among the working class and forging a durable majority coalition will require a genuinely new project based on core principles that break with the failures of the past.

Those principles should be based on the fundamental fact that the left has lost touch with baseline realities of how to reach ordinary working-class voters, what policies could actually deliver what these voters want, and what kind of politics accords with these voters’ common sense rather than the biases of their own base. The left needs to course-correct toward realism to give themselves a serious chance of decisively defeating right populism and achieving the good society they claim they are committed to.

With that in mind, here are seven core principles a serious 21^st century left must embrace for long-term success.

Energy realism. This is an important one. As I have noted, the left has spent the first quarter of the 21^st century obsessed with the threat of climate change and the need to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables (wind and solar) to stave off the apocalypse. In their quest to meet arbitrary net zero targets, they have made this transition a central policy goal and structured much of their economic program around this.

A dubious crusade to begin with, albeit much beloved among their Brahmin left base, the wheels are now coming off the bus. A recent article by Tom Fairless and Max Colchester in the Wall Street Journal summarized the European situation:

European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30 percent from 2005 levels, compared with a 17 percent drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.

Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50 percent above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

It is crippling industry and hobbling Europe’s ability to attract key economic drivers like artificial intelligence, which requires cheap and abundant electricity. The shift is also adding to a cost-of-living shock for consumers that is fueling support for antiestablishment parties, which portray the green transition as an elite project that harms workers, most consumers and regions.

Such have been the wages of the green transition. No wonder countries around the world are increasingly reluctant to sign on to getting rid of fossil fuels, as shown by results of the recent COP30 deliberations. Projections from McKinsey, the International Energy Agency, and so on now see strong fossil fuel demand through 2050, with these energy sources not zeroed out but rather providing close to or an outright majority of the world’s primary energy consumption. Indeed, based on recent trends, these projections are, if anything, too optimistic about how fast the fossil fuel share will decline from its current 81 percent level.

These realities, plus awareness of the importance of development to poor countries, have led even erstwhile climate warrior Bill Gates to remark:

[C]limate change…will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will…thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future….[F]or the vast majority of [poor people in the world] it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.

When Bill Gates starts sounding like Bjorn Lomborg, you know things are really changing!

Here in the United States the relative strength and copious energy resources of our economy, plus somewhat more modest policies, have spared us from the worst that has befallen Europe. But the direction of change is clear. Even during the green-oriented Biden administration, domestic oil and gas production hit record levels. It is unlikely with AI data centers juicing energy demand that this upward trend will be reversed.

Meanwhile, Trump has gotten rid of subsidies for renewable energy and electric vehicles, which were never popular, and a pragmatic public simply does not care. They have always favored an all-of-the-above energy policy, very much including fossil fuels, and do not see climate change as the existential, overriding issue that has preoccupied the activist left.

What they do care about is cheap, abundant, reliable energy, and the same could be said about American industry. The recent vogue for “affordability” rather than strenuous climate change rhetoric among Democrats indicates that the left is starting to wake up on this issue. But name-checking affordability falls far short of fully embracing energy realism and all that would entail.

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

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

Growth realism. As I have noted, the left in the 21^st century hasn’t been terribly interested in the issue of overall economic growth. That goal has taken a back seat to others deemed more important, like fighting climate change, reducing inequality, pursuing procedural justice, and advocating for immigrants and identity groups. The invaluable “Deciding to Win” report analyzed word frequency in Democratic Party platforms since 2012 and found a 32 percent decline in the appearance of the word “growth” compared to a 150 percent increase in the word “climate,” a 1,044 percent increase in “LGBT/LGBTQI+,” a 766 percent increase in “equity,” an 828 percent increase in “white/black/Latino/Latina,” and a 333 percent increase in “environmental justice.”

But the key to substantially rising living standards for the working class is precisely more economic growth, especially higher productivity growth. You cannot make up for that by redistribution nor by simply spending more money on government programs. A fast-growth economy provides more opportunities for upward mobility, generates better-paying jobs, creates fiscal space for priorities like infrastructure projects, and, as Benjamin Friedman has argued, has positive “moral consequences” by orienting citizens toward generosity, tolerance, and collective advance. Slow growth has the opposite effects.

It is therefore completely unrealistic for the left to think they can accomplish their goals and build support without centering the goal of economic growth. Attempts to elide this problem result in heavy reliance on chimerical projects like a rapid green transition (see above), which do not and cannot deliver the benefits of overall growth. Or, as in the Biden administration, just spending money on various party priorities and hoping for the best. (Make Spending Money Great Again?) That did not work either.

The left must learn to love economic growth instead of downgrading it. In particular, they should be racking their brains on how to create the best possible environment for productivity growth. That’s not easy and takes them out of their comfort zone, but do it they must. They must ask: how can technological change be harnessed for the maximum effect on productivity growth and a much richer society?

The question is sharpened by the meteoric rise of AI. Of course, there’s a certain amount of dreamy hand-waving about all the wonderful transformations AI will bring to the economy and society. But AI boosters are not wrong that the potential is immense if AI is, in fact, a new general-purpose technology (GPT). If so, the effects on productivity growth could be game-changing and era-defining.

Democrats, however, who have long had a streak of techno-pessimism, are not reacting terribly positively to this development and its enormous growth potential. Indeed, the evolving reaction seems to be downright negative. Senator Chris Murphy, a reliable barometer of party trends, had this to say:

The cultural and economic impact of AI is going to be the biggest issue in politics over the next decade…There is going to be a growing appetite from voters to support candidates that are going to help them manage the potential coming disaster as AI poisons our kids and destroys all of our jobs.

Ok then! Doesn’t sound like he’s thinking too hard about productivity growth dividends. Or economic growth period. That’s a big, big problem for a party that must start embracing growth realism to be successful.

Governance realism. There’s getting elected and then there’s…governing. You’ve got to run the government well and get things done voters care about if you want those voters to stick with you. And that’s where the left has been running into problems—big problems. Commonly, ideological commitments and interest group ties have outweighed the simple, inescapable realities of good governance. Voters just don’t care about the supposedly noble motivations that lead the left to ignore these realities.

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

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

After a quarter of a century, it’s apparent that the left’s prioritization of social and procedural justice over good governance has been a huge mistake. The left must unreservedly commit to good, efficient governance and social order over its various ideological commitments and NGO ties or voters will not take them seriously going forward. Governance realism is not an option; it’s a necessity.

Immigration realism. Nowhere has the left’s lack of political and policy realism been more obvious—and more toxic—that on the issue of immigration. Across the Western world and here in the United States, encouragement of mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems have effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. The results have been predictably disastrous, opening a gaping hole in the left’s working class support in country after country. These policies have ignored the following realities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. If more immigration is desired by parties or policymakers, from whichever countries and at whatever skill levels, that immigration should be regular, legal immigration and approved by the American people through the democratic process. Backdooring mass immigration over the wishes of voters because it is “kind” or “reflects our values” or is deemed “economically necessary” leads inevitably to backlash. Wheelbarrows full of econometric studies on immigration’s aggregate benefits will not save you.

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

If the left wishes to legalize certain classes of illegal immigrants (e.g., long-time residents) so they are not susceptible to deportation and/or increase legal immigration levels, that case must be sold to the American public. That will only be possible if voters believe Democrats actually understand and embrace the baseline realities of immigration outlined above. Democrats are still far, far away from convincing voters of that. Really, the only thing clear about Democrats’ current immigration policy is that they oppose Trump’s immigration policy. That only works—can only work—as short-term politics.

The back door for mass immigration is closing; only an immigration realist left can be successful in the second quarter of the 21^st century.

Merit realism. The quintessential moral commitment of the 20^th century left was to make American society truly colorblind. It was unfair and egregious that racial discrimination could truncate the life chances of black people and visit misery upon them. Therefore, the left advocated and marched for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument, in the process pulling the entire Democratic Party in their direction. Not only was legislation passed to make such discrimination illegal but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became as close to consensual beliefs as you can get in America.

Americans today believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a 2022 University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” That view elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public.

Similarly, a 2023 Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what Americans deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, it should be noted, equal outcomes.

This is what the left used to believe in—indeed, mounted the barricades for. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century. Instead of treating the colorblind society as a noble ideal that should be striven for even if its perfect attainment is impossible, the left lost faith in the ideal because racial disparities did not immediately disappear. Instead, they began to favor color-conscious remedies like affirmative action that went far beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity and to oppose colorblind policies if they did not produce desired outcomes by race.

This inversion of the traditional and noble ideal is still with us today as the left tenaciously defends affirmative action and DEI programs despite their lack of connection to consensual values of anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. Indeed, the very use of the term “colorblind” has become right-coded, evidence of supporting racism rather than opposing it. This is very strange indeed. To grasp how strange this is, we must dig a little deeper to the revolutionary concept of merit.

The left’s traditional theory of the case ran like this: discrimination should be opposed and dismantled and resources provided to the disadvantaged so that everyone can fairly compete and achieve. Rewards—job opportunities, promotions, commissions, appointments, publications, school slots, and much else—would then be allocated on the basis of which person or persons deserved these rewards on the basis of merit. Those who were meritorious would be rewarded; those who weren’t would not be. No more would people be rewarded because of who they were or their position in some hierarchy instead of what they accomplished.

This is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history. It simultaneously liberated individuals to achieve regardless of their position in the social structure and powered overall social advance because it allowed for the replacement of the incompetent and unimaginative with the competent and creative. This was a great thing!

But shockingly, 21^st century progressives have lost interest in this last part of their case, which undermines their whole theory of social organization. Merit and objective measures of achievement are now viewed with suspicion as the outcomes of a hopelessly corrupt system, so rewards, positions, etc. should be allocated on the basis of various criteria allegedly related to “social justice.” Instead of dismantling discrimination and providing assistance so that more people have the opportunity to acquire merit, the real solution is to worry less about merit and more about equal outcomes—“equity” in parlance of our times.

This is nuts. Arguments can be made in defense of the anti-merit approach—consult your local postmodern or critical theorist—but they are all specious and egregiously so. You’re either good at something or you’re not. You either know things or you don’t. You’re either competent or you’re not. These things can be assessed with a reasonable degree of objectivity and those assessments typically reveal differentials in skills, achievements, capabilities, knowledge, and so on—in short, merit. This is what should plug into the allocation of positions, promotions and rewards in a fair system.

And this is what ordinary people—ordinary voters—believe in. They believe in the idea of merit and they believe in their individual ability to acquire merit and attendant rewards if given the opportunity to do so. To believe otherwise is insulting to them and contravenes their common sense about the central role of merit in fair decisions. As George Orwell put it, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

It is difficult to overestimate the damage that has been done to the left and their party, the Democrats, by their radical downgrading of the importance of merit. The left’s original idea was to remove barriers so that people could accomplish what they are capable of, not to disregard the importance of accomplishment. That original idea was fully realistic and accorded with how societies function best and what ordinary voters believe is fair and facilitates their upward mobility. Departing from this beautiful idea has been a tragic mistake of the 21^st century left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a reasonable question, which can only be effectively answered by a course correction toward biology realism. There is no other way.

Patriotic realism. The left in the 21^st century somehow became enamored of the idea that America is a horrible country that we should all be thoroughly ashamed of. They talked themselves into believing that a mighty coalition could be developed by making people feel bad about the country they live in. Sounds crazy, but they did!

This was particularly true around the issue of race. The left enthusiastically embraced the view that America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society to this day, as in the 1619 Project cartoon version of American history. This stance has ironically been very successful among affluent whites but alienated working-class voters of all colors.

As the political observer Brink Lindsey put it in an essay on the loss of faith in America:

The most flamboyantly anti-American rhetoric of ’60s radicals is now more or less conventional wisdom among many progressives: America, the land of white supremacy and structural racism and patriarchy, the perpetrator of indigenous displacement and genocide, the world’s biggest polluter, and so on.

That conventional wisdom is a problem. Ordinary Americans just do not share this animus toward their own country. This includes immigrants, who tend to be particularly enthusiastic about their adopted country, and racial minorities. In fact, the only people who express profound disappointment in America as a group are left-wing activists.

That left-wing conventional wisdom is why “progressive activists”—eight percent of the population as categorized by the More in Common group, who are “deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America’s direction today”—are so unenthusiastic about their country. Just 34 percent of progressive activists say they are “proud to be American” compared to 62 percent of Asians, 70 percent of blacks, and 76 percent of Hispanics, the very groups whose interests these activists claim to represent. Similarly, in an Echelon Insights survey, 66 percent of “strong progressives” (about 10 percent of voters) said America is not the greatest country in the world, compared to just 28 percent who said it is. But the multiracial working class (noncollege voters, white and nonwhite) had exactly the reverse view: by 69-23, they said America is the greatest country in the world.

The uncomfortable fact is that these sentiments, and the view of America they represent, are now heavily associated with the Democratic Party as a whole by dint of the very significant weight these activists carry within the party, which far transcends their actual numbers. Their voice is further amplified by their strong and frequently dominant influence in associated institutions that lean toward the Democrats: nonprofits, foundations, advocacy groups, academia, legacy media, the arts—the commanding heights of cultural production, as it were. It’s just not cool in these circles to be patriotic.

These attitudes have seeped into the larger Democratic world view. In Gallup’s latest reading on pride in being an American, barely over a third (36 percent) of Democrats said they were extremely or very proud of being American, compared to 53 percent of independents and 92 percent of Republicans who felt that way. Just 20 percent of Democrats would characterize themselves as “extremely proud,” down 34 points since the beginning of this century.

And most shockingly, in a 2022 poll Quinnipiac found that a majority of Democrats (52 percent) said they would leave the country rather than stay and fight (40 percent), should the United States be invaded as Ukraine was by Russia.

That’s not to say that Democratic politicians don’t still wear American flag pins on their lapels. But Democrats and especially the left just don’t seem very enthusiastic about the actually existing country of America.

This is not a remotely realistic approach to building a dominant majority coalition. Most obviously, it puts the left and their party, the Democrats, on the wrong side of something that’s quite popular: patriotism and love of country. As Noah Smith has correctly observed: “People want to like their country. They can be disappointed in it or mad at it or frustrated with it, but ultimately they want to think that they’re part of something good.” Making people feel bad about the country they live in is a recipe for failure.

But the problem goes deeper than simple unpopularity, though that is not insignificant. Lack of patriotism undercuts Democrats’ ability to mobilize a coalition behind what they say they want: a robust and far-reaching program of economic renewal. One of the only effective ways—really, the most effective way—to mobilize Americans behind big projects is to appeal to patriotism, to Americans as part of a nation. Indeed much of what America accomplished in the 20th century was under the banner of liberal nationalism. But many in the Democratic Party blanche at any hint of this approach because of its association with darker impulses and political trends. Yet as John Judis has pointed out, nationalism has its positive side as well in that it allows citizens to identify on a collective level and support projects that serve the common good rather than their immediate interests.

Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to dismantle “systemic racism” and promote “equity”…and failed. Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to save the planet through a rapid green transition…and failed. It’s time for Democrats to try something that really could unite the country: patriotism and liberal nationalism.

This approach has a rich heritage. As Peter Juul and I noted in our American Affairs article on “The Case for a New Liberal Nationalism”:

When labor and civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin put forward their ambitious Freedom Budget for All Americans in 1966, they couched their political argument in the powerful idiom of liberal nationalism. “For better or worse,” Randolph avowed in his introduction, “We are one nation and one people.” The Freedom Budget, he went on, constituted “a challenge to the best traditions and possibilities of America” and “a call to all those who have grown weary of slogans and gestures to rededicate themselves to the cause of social reconstruction.” It was also, he added, “a plea to men of good will to give tangible substance to long-proclaimed ideals.’

And it wasn’t just Randolph and Rustin, it was John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King and, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal politics he promulgated. In our recent book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John Judis and I put it this way:

[T]he New Deal Democrats were moderate and even small-c conservative in their social outlook. They extolled “the American way of life” (a term popularized in the 1930s); they used patriotic symbols like the “Blue Eagle” to promote their programs. In 1940, Roosevelt’s official campaign song was Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Under Roosevelt, Thanksgiving, Veterans’ Day, and Columbus Day were made into federal holidays. Roosevelt turned the annual Christmas Tree lighting into a national event. Roosevelt’s politics were those of “the people” (a term summed up in Carl Sandburg’s 1936 poem, “The People, Yes”) and of the “forgotten American.” There wasn’t a hint of multiculturalism or tribalism. The Democrats need to follow this example.

If liberal nationalism was good enough for A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, for FDR and JFK and MLK, it should be good enough for today’s Democratic Party. Democrats should proudly proclaim that their party is a patriotic party that believes America as a nation has accomplished great things and been a force for good in the world, a record that can be carried forth into the future.

Funny that the left should lose track of this. As David Leonhardt pointed out in a podcast I did with him:

[J]ust look at history—the civil rights movement carried American flags while marching for civil rights…think about what an incredible favor it was to them when their counter protesters held up confederate flags, the flag of of treason…the labor unions of the early 20th century brought enormous American flags to their rallies…

That is patriotism…It worked.

That’s right: it worked. And it can work again.

Leonhardt concluded by quoting labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein:

All of America’s great reform movements from the crusade against slavery onward have defined themselves as champions of a moral and patriotic nationalism which they counterpoised to the parochial and selfish elites who stood athwart their vision of a virtuous society. So the connection really between patriotism and progressivism is long and proud and progressivism will be much more successful if it is willing to embrace patriotism.

Indeed, without patriotism—enthusiastic patriotism that promotes national unity, not national garment-rending—there is no realistic path for the left in the 21^st century. None. It’s that simple.

There you have it: seven principles for a 21^st century left that wants to forge a dominant majority, not just trade elections with their opponents.

• Energy realism

• Growth realism

• Governance realism

• Immigration realism

• Merit realism

• Biology realism

• Patriotic realism

Simple, right? They would fit nicely on a 3x5 card to be carried around for handy reference. A left with these principles in their pockets, at least metaphorically, could plausibly bid for working class renewal and political dominance.

Unfortunately, a fair reading of the current situation suggests that the left is still quite far away from adopting these principles as the second quarter of the 21^st century begins. There are some tentative moves in the right direction but mostly deep reluctance to challenge the professional class biases and priorities that have led to the left’s failures in this century’s first quarter.

A good time to start doing so would be now. The hour is getting late and, to be blunt, failure is an option.

Subscribe now

Share

Editor’s note: This is a revised omnibus version of Ruy’s three-part series on the future of the left.

Although the extended Trump era could never be described as stable, there have been times when the Trump White House has been more erratic, hubristic, and bellicose than usual. Arguably, Donald Trump’s remorseless reaction to the white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017, which resulted in the death of counter-demonstrator Heather Heyer, was one such moment, as were various outbursts between the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the protests and unrest that followed George Floyd’s killing; still another moment spanned from Joe Biden’s election victory in November 2020 to the Capitol riots and Trump’s attempted autogolpe on January 6th, 2021.

The events of the last few weeks have again spiked the anxiety of all outside of MAGA’s orbit, disturbing even those who have grown inured to Trump’s incessant drama and knack for provocation. There is a profound feeling, even among Trump’s less fervid critics, that his posture—towards domestic dissent, America’s neighbors, its allies, and even the foundations of national prosperity—far exceeds in its intemperance and nihilism anything previously witnessed. Between the U.S. capture of Venezuela’s now ex-president Nicolás Maduro, the massive siege-like deployment of ICE agents in Minneapolis that has resulted in another killing by federal law enforcement, and Trump’s declared intent to acquire Greenland, steeped in animus toward fellow NATO members, we have a stark picture of what “Trump unbound” looks like.

And yet, the language used to convey the significance of what is happening has struggled to keep pace, much less resonate with all who continue to give Trump the benefit of the doubt or fall within the murky league of “anti-anti-Trump” voters (that is, those who are more suspicious of the president’s foes than his own means and motives). Unbowed by mockery, Resistance liberals and Never Trump Republicans have long cried, “None of this is normal!” in response to Trump’s transgressions. Conditions have indeed become manifestly abnormal—enough for Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, a technocrat not known for rhetorical excess, to imply Trump has catalyzed an irreversible “rupture” in the international order and Atlanticist alliance.

But the basic vindication of this thesis, though registered with greater urgency by the media, is unlikely to transform partisan sentiment—at least until a calamity with far-reaching material consequences transpires. There are two main reasons why, besides the obvious fealty of those whose ardor prevents Trump’s approval rating from collapsing. One is that, due to his perseverance, Trump and Trumpism have been rationalized to a degree no one expected in 2015; even many critics have been caught up explaining his behavior as simultaneously sui generis and traceable to American political traditions, such as Jacksonian populism and McKinleyite expansionism, that are “legitimate,” if not particularly ennobling. The other is that the ecosystem of progressivism has frequently suffered from the same disconnect as MAGA and Trump’s sycophants. The cardinal sin of modern progressivism, with its fixation on subverting sociocultural norms and imposing new ones without real democratic input, is that it did not offer conflicted and “politically homeless” Americans a shared reality and universal principles, but a rival dogma no less Manichean than MAGA.

That, fatefully, fed the left’s own epistemic closure on the issues that would dominate the 2024 election. The organs of progressive thought willfully ignored how ordinary people felt about the largest surge in immigration since the 1890s and found it incomprehensible that social justice tribalism had begun to repel Americans who previously saw Trump as a grave and unique threat. Astonishingly—or perhaps not—the Democrats’ reputation on the sociocultural front became bad enough to attract protest votes to Trump’s cause and expand his coalition by over three million ballots.

Events over the last year ought to have disabused Trump’s newer converts of the fantasy he would govern any less ideologically—that a vengeful Trump could ever truly be “pragmatic.” But the laws of electoral politics do not work as they once did. And Democrats, while eager to close the door on Biden-era misjudgments and exploit the alleged unraveling of Trump’s 2024 coalition, still have failed to present an ironclad alternative to our untenable “new normal.”

To understand why Democratic support isn’t soaring at this moment, we must first examine what has effectively permitted many Americans to rationalize Trump’s flaws. There is the misguided impression, based partly on the sheer number of empty threats Trump has leveled, that the Trump doctrine is more bark than bite (expressed in the latest parlance as “Trump Always Chickens Out,” or TACO). When Trump does back off from an ultimatum, as he appears to have done with his threat to seize Greenland, or becomes preoccupied with something comparatively less disruptive, the broader public, investors and major economic institutions, and world leaders are grateful for the reprieve.

Inadvertently, however, that reinforces for some observers that Trump’s most unflinching critics are equally hyperbolic as he is. The Resistance warns American democracy’s death knell is near while Trump blares countless unpresidential, mafioso-style threats; yet the system seems to grind along, at least for those in communities unaffected by ICE’s intimidatory conduct or exploding health care costs. As a result, this false equivalency—unintentionally strengthened further by public intellectuals (understandably) interested in parsing what Trumpism “really is”—undercuts the case against Trump, thus inhibiting genuine mass opposition.

Frustrated by the public’s recurring passivity, the Resistance simply devotes more energy to copiously documenting all the ways in which they are quite right to be alarmed. This, however, diverts the anti-Trump camp from developing a positive vision for how to move the country forward. After a full decade—along with two years of fruitlessly insisting Bidenism was as consequential as LBJ’s domestic achievements—the Resistance has yet to make MAGA patently unattractive to those who like what America First, in its most benign interpretation, stands for on paper: limited immigration, an end to foreign entanglements, preventing another China shock, low-cost energy and staples, and high-wage industrial jobs for the majority of Americans without a college degree.

None of these policy preferences are inherently disreputable, including the more recent goal of overhauling DEI practices; all, in theory, could be justified without the whiff of Trumpian chauvinism. But because the Resistance is fixated on how toxic Trump is, Democrats are boxed into a corner, petrified of taking a nuanced but clear approach that distinguishes the sentiments and concerns of American citizens from the man who has preyed on them.

What happens instead is that the Resistance chorus gets caught up in the perpetual refrain of “We told you so,” which many disaffected Americans have turned a deaf ear to. While cataloging every Trump transgression may, for some, be a way to stand firm and not surrender to indifference, for others, Trump’s transparent flaws have become an unexpected asset: unlike past presidents, he doesn’t try to sanitize what power is about or for. He forthrightly promises to relieve the country of trade and defense free-riders as well as any obligation to atone for historical episodes and practices that betrayed American values. This sort of “honesty” was always going to appeal to the segment of the electorate that was convinced America had gotten a raw deal this century and that liberal internationalism is phony window-dressing that compromises the national interest. More beguiling for the Resistance, however, is that some Americans who don’t identify explicitly as MAGA followers have lately “come around” to Trump’s view of certain national priorities, even if they still intermittently “disapprove” of his manner and tactics.

Trump foes call this “sane-washing,” and while I personally agree this happens all too often, one can understand why it does. Remove the “Trump persona”—the traits that engender such passionate feelings about his morality or lack thereof—from evaluations of Trump’s record, and it can sometimes seem “not so bad” when stacked against the legacies of other polarizing, compromised presidents (e.g., Richard Nixon, who, we must remember, escalated the bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos) or those who fell well short of expectations (a conversation many partisan Democrats promptly like to end). This more “dispassionate” reading of Trump and his impact is not limited to political independents or “low-information” voters. Press those on the left old enough to remember the national conversation from 2002 through 2005, and even today, a good deal will hesitate to conclude Trump is worse than George W. Bush was.

This is not to trivialize that the Resistance encounters what is, from their perspective, genuine political madness: swing and low-propensity voters simply shrugging at the proverbial wolf at the door. But, as unwelcome as it is, such quiescence isn’t exactly irrational. The paradox, and curse, borne by those who believe Trump will irrevocably bankrupt American power is that they have never been wrong about the fundamental risks, but they haven’t been right enough about every forecast of disaster. There has been no great collective sacrifice for dubious ends imposed under Trump (although that may yet change). The tariff chaos has been unnecessary, and the punishing loss of ACA subsidies may be enough to fuel a blue wave this November. But a recession hasn’t hit, and many people expect Trump to exit the national stage in three years, however noisily.

Much of the public has also gotten “used to” Trump—an indictment, one might say, of the major decisions and inaction that preceded his rise. After a quarter century of broken promises, the prevalence of anti-system sentiment has become unremarkable, thus leading unrepentant Trump voters and even Trump haters to ask, what is normal anymore?

“Complacency,” accordingly, is easier and less tawdry than it may otherwise have been. Indeed, although many adjectives and theories have been employed to capture the gravity of Trumpism’s illiberal core—that it will accelerate, not reverse, America’s decadence and eclipse—the effect on moderates and independents seems to have only dulled over time. Tolerance for Trumpian excess is so ingrained now that it takes more extreme forms of overreach to turn popular opinion against him and produce an avalanche of historically dismal polls. And so, as long as the system mostly withstands Trump’s caprice and temper and “fair and free” elections proceed as expected, the “sane-washing,” or whatever one prefers to call it, will continue. That makes it all the more difficult to persuade the less unnerved that Trump’s most recent unprecedented actions are uniquely detrimental to international security, America’s standing, and, ultimately, the welfare of average citizens.

The seeming futility of that endeavor brings us to the second reason why talk of Trump’s abnormality and his gleeful disregard for norms is woefully insufficient to win hearts and minds. Democrats see a basic juxtaposition between a political movement that has summoned America’s demons and that which is decent, compassionate, and of sound judgment. But the problem for Democrats is that what they have defended—or effectively justified by omitting from open debate—strikes many voters who will decide the 2026 and 2028 elections as not especially normal, either. These voters feel, in fact, that doctrinaire progressives reflect none of those upright qualities, that, in the worst instances, the liberal establishment indulged ideologues eager to monetize “DEI,” spread language policies, and vilify disagreement. In a nutshell, Democrats are struggling because they are still afraid to abandon progressive identity politics and dominate the common ground, even though there is no other way to decisively win the places Democrats must win to bury MAGA.

An example from the last presidential election illustrates the stubbornness—and, frankly, the intellectual arrogance—that backstops an otherwise discredited theory of political power. For about two weeks in mid-summer of 2024, as progressives and liberals marshalled enthusiasm for the hastily assembled Harris-Walz ticket and attempted to banish Joe Biden’s enfeebled debate performance from the minds of alarmed voters, Democrats took to the airwaves to marvel at just how “weird” Trump and MAGA’s inner circle are. That moment of levity might have been cathartic, but it did not deliver votes in critical counties or stop blue city defections. Just as bad, it magnified the Brahmin left’s lack of insight on policy choices and rhetoric that many voters previously anchored in American liberalism find foolish, harmful, and yes, downright “weird.”

Most Democrats, of course, find it difficult to believe the demands of their activist base could likewise be considered “abnormal.” They may prefer to stay silent about which Biden policies proved unpopular and use every ounce of discipline to focus on “affordability.” But they are sorely mistaken in thinking they can successfully mimic Trump in this regard and refuse to own up to any error.

At their peril, they ignore that, as the party identified with stronger government, they profit from implementing popular programs but also typically face a steeper penalty for poor governance. And a harsh penalty they faced after promising a return to normalcy under Biden. Support for de facto open borders; a maximalist approach to gender identity that demanded co-partisans (and the state and scientific-medical community) affirm every claim propounded by radical theorists and activists; the injection of “decoloniality” and race-reductionist “antiracist” thought into major institutions as well as everyday speech and personal relationships; a tendency to downplay or dismiss concerns about public safety in the name of countering police misconduct—all these issues and positions came to define modern progressivism, and thus the Democratic agenda, despite few national Democrats explicitly endorsing “wokeness.”

How much will it take to convince middle-of-the-road voters and disenchanted Trump voters that Democrats will act differently if returned to power? In theory, it shouldn’t be too hard—a few definite mea culpas from leaders as different as Elizabeth Warren and Gavin Newsom, backed by concrete steps that show Democrats no longer think they can ignore or discount the issues that got Trump reelected. Yet prominent Democrats who have the authority to shape the party’s future shrink from challenging a disastrous assumption: that voters-of-conscience, by dint of all of Trumpism’s nasty associations, will conclude the worldview of the activist left is unobjectionable and morally coherent, and that its pattern of immoderation merely reflects youthful idealism. Democratic operatives and their activist counterparts were grievously wrong about that in 2024 and remain so today. As TLP’s Ruy Teixeira writes, Democrats are opting, despite plenty of sober advice, to privilege “coalition management over coalition expansion.”

It’s possible, of course, they might not have to make hard choices in light of Trump’s increasingly unstable rule and abuse of power. Perhaps the broader public will soon find ICE’s conduct so ghastly that the “Resistance liberals were right” will become a household refrain across critical swing districts. Perhaps voters who felt ostracized by Democrats will reach an epiphany about the threat Trump represents and the damage he has already done. But such wish-casting ignores the central lessons of the Trump era, when there is no such time to waste. One has to ask, why take that chance if the fate of the country is truly at stake?

Subscribe now

Share

This is the final part of a three-part series on the future of the left in the 21^st century (the first part is here and the second part is here). My basic thesis is that the left’s project in the first quarter of the 21^st century has failed and that a left project for the second quarter of this century must be based on core principles that break with the failures of the last 25 years.

Those principles must be based on the fundamental fact that the left has lost touch with baseline realities of how to reach ordinary working-class voters, what policies could actually deliver what these voters want and what kind of politics accords with these voters’ common sense rather than the biases of their professional-class base. They should provide a drastic course-correction toward realism to give the left a serious chance of decisively defeating right populism and achieving the good society they claim they are committed to.

In the first part of this series, I discussed two such principles: energy realism and growth realism. In the second part, I discussed two more principles, governance realism and immigration realism. In this concluding installment of this series, I will discuss three final principles: merit, biology, and patriotic realism.

Merit realism. The quintessential moral commitment of the 20^th century left was to make American society truly colorblind. It was unfair and egregious that racial discrimination could truncate the life chances of black people and visit misery upon them. Therefore, the left advocated and marched for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument, in the process pulling the entire Democratic Party in their direction. Not only was legislation passed to make such discrimination illegal but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became as close to consensual beliefs as you can get in America.

Americans today believe, with Martin Luther King Jr., that people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In a 2022 University of Southern California Dornsife survey, this classic statement of colorblind equality was posed to respondents: “Our goal as a society should be to treat all people the same without regard to the color of their skin.” That view elicited sky-high (92 percent) agreement from the public.

Similarly, a 2023 Public Agenda Hidden Common Ground survey found 91 percent agreement with the statement: “All people deserve an equal opportunity to succeed, no matter their race or ethnicity.” This is what Americans deeply believe in: equal opportunity not, it should be noted, equal outcomes.

This is what the left used to believe in—indeed, mounted the barricades for. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century. Instead of treating the colorblind society as a noble ideal that should be striven for even if its perfect attainment is impossible, the left lost faith in the ideal because racial disparities did not immediately disappear. Instead, they began to favor color-conscious remedies like affirmative action that went far beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity and to oppose colorblind policies if they did not produce desired outcomes by race.

This inversion of the traditional and noble ideal is still with us today as the left tenaciously defends affirmative action and DEI programs despite their lack of connection to consensual values of anti-discrimination and equal opportunity. Indeed, the very use of the term “colorblind” has become right-coded, evidence of supporting racism rather than opposing it. This is very strange indeed. To grasp how strange this is, we must dig a little deeper to the revolutionary concept of merit.

The left’s traditional theory of the case ran like this: discrimination should be opposed and dismantled and resources provided to the disadvantaged so that everyone can fairly compete and achieve. Rewards—job opportunities, promotions, commissions, appointments, publications, school slots, and much else—would then be allocated on the basis of which person or persons deserved these rewards on the basis of merit. Those who were meritorious would be rewarded; those who weren’t would not be. No more would people be rewarded because of who they were or their position in some hierarchy instead of what they accomplished.

This is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history. It simultaneously liberated individuals to achieve regardless of their position in the social structure and powered overall social advance because it allowed for the replacement of the incompetent and unimaginative with the competent and creative. This was a great thing!

But shockingly, 21^st century progressives have lost interest in this last part of their case, which undermines their whole theory of social organization. Merit and objective measures of achievement are now viewed with suspicion as the outcomes of a hopelessly corrupt system, so rewards, positions, etc. should be allocated on the basis of various criteria allegedly related to “social justice.” Instead of dismantling discrimination and providing assistance so that more people have the opportunity to acquire merit, the real solution is to worry less about merit and more about equal outcomes—“equity” in parlance of our times.

This is nuts. Arguments can be made in defense of the anti-merit approach—consult your local postmodern or critical theorist—but they are all specious and egregiously so. You’re either good at something or you’re not. You either know things or you don’t. You’re either competent or you’re not. These things can be assessed with a reasonable degree of objectivity and those assessments typically reveal differentials in skills, achievements, capabilities, knowledge, and so on—in short, merit. This is what should plug into the allocation of positions, promotions and rewards in a fair system.

And this is what ordinary people—ordinary voters—believe in. They believe in the idea of merit and they believe in their individual ability to acquire merit and attendant rewards if given the opportunity to do so. To believe otherwise is insulting to them and contravenes their common sense about the central role of merit in fair decisions. As George Orwell put it, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

It is difficult to overestimate the damage that has been done to the left and their party, the Democrats, by their radical downgrading of the importance of merit. The left’s original idea was to remove barriers so that people could accomplish what they are capable of, not to disregard the importance of accomplishment. That original idea was fully realistic and accorded with how societies function best and what ordinary voters believe is fair and facilitates their upward mobility. Departing from this beautiful idea has been a tragic mistake of the 21^st century left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a reasonable question, which can only be effectively answered by a course correction toward biology realism. There is no other way.

Patriotic realism. The left in the 21^st century somehow became enamored of the idea that America is a horrible country that we should all be thoroughly ashamed of. They talked themselves into believing that a mighty coalition could be developed by making people feel bad about the country they live in. Sounds crazy, but they did!

This was particularly true around the issue of race. The left enthusiastically embraced the view that America was born in slavery, marinated in racism, and remains a white supremacist society to this day, as in the 1619 Project cartoon version of American history. This stance has ironically seemed to have won over some affluent whites but alienated working-class voters of all colors.

As the political observer Brink Lindsey put it in an essay on the loss of faith in America:

The most flamboyantly anti-American rhetoric of ’60s radicals is now more or less conventional wisdom among many progressives: America, the land of white supremacy and structural racism and patriarchy, the perpetrator of indigenous displacement and genocide, the world’s biggest polluter, and so on.

That conventional wisdom is a problem. Ordinary Americans just do not share this animus toward their own country. This includes immigrants, who tend to be particularly enthusiastic about their adopted country, and racial minorities. In fact, the only people who express profound disappointment in America as a group are left-wing activists.

That left-wing conventional wisdom is why “progressive activists”—eight percent of the population as categorized by the More in Common group, who are “deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America’s direction today”—are so unenthusiastic about their country. Just 34 percent of progressive activists say they are “proud to be American” compared to 62 percent of Asians, 70 percent of blacks, and 76 percent of Hispanics, the very groups whose interests these activists claim to represent. Similarly, in an Echelon Insights survey, 66 percent of “strong progressives” (about 10 percent of voters) said America is not the greatest country in the world, compared to just 28 percent who said it is. But the multiracial working class (noncollege voters, white and nonwhite) had exactly the reverse view: by 69-23, they said America is the greatest country in the world.

The uncomfortable fact is that these sentiments, and the view of America they represent, are now heavily associated with the Democratic Party as a whole by dint of the very significant weight these activists carry within the party, which far transcends their actual numbers. Their voice is further amplified by their strong and frequently dominant influence in associated institutions that lean toward the Democrats: nonprofits, foundations, advocacy groups, academia, legacy media, the arts—the commanding heights of cultural production, as it were. It’s just not cool in these circles to be patriotic.

These attitudes have seeped into the larger Democratic world view. In Gallup’s latest reading on pride in being an American, barely over a third (36 percent) of Democrats said they were extremely or very proud of being American, compared to 53 percent of independents and 92 percent of Republicans who felt that way. Just 20 percent of Democrats would characterize themselves as “extremely proud,” down 34 points since the beginning of this century.

And most shockingly, in a 2022 poll Quinnipiac found that a majority of Democrats (52 percent) said they would leave the country rather than stay and fight (40 percent), should the United States be invaded as Ukraine was by Russia.

That’s not to say that Democratic politicians don’t still wear American flag pins on their lapels. But Democrats and especially the left just don’t seem very enthusiastic about the actually existing country of America.

This is not a remotely realistic approach to building a dominant majority coalition. Most obviously, it puts the left and their party, the Democrats, on the wrong side of something that’s quite popular: patriotism and love of country. As Noah Smith has correctly observed: “People want to like their country. They can be disappointed in it or mad at it or frustrated with it, but ultimately they want to think that they’re part of something good.” Making people feel bad about the country they live in is a recipe for failure.

But the problem goes deeper than simple unpopularity, though that is not insignificant. Lack of patriotism undercuts Democrats’ ability to mobilize a coalition behind what they say they want: a robust and far-reaching program of economic renewal. One of the only effective ways—really, the most effective way—to mobilize Americans behind big projects is to appeal to patriotism, to Americans as part of a nation. Indeed much of what America accomplished in the 20th century was under the banner of liberal nationalism. But many in the Democratic Party blanche at any hint of this approach because of its association with darker impulses and political trends. Yet as John Judis has pointed out, nationalism has its positive side as well in that it allows citizens to identify on a collective level and support projects that serve the common good rather than their immediate interests.

Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to dismantle “systemic racism” and promote “equity”…and failed. Democrats have tried uniting the country around the need to save the planet through a rapid green transition…and failed. It’s time for Democrats to try something that really could unite the country: patriotism and liberal nationalism.

This approach has a rich heritage. As Peter Juul and I noted in our American Affairs article on “The Case for a New Liberal Nationalism”:

When labor and civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin put forward their ambitious Freedom Budget for All Americans in 1966, they couched their political argument in the powerful idiom of liberal nationalism. “For better or worse,” Randolph avowed in his introduction, “We are one nation and one people.” The Freedom Budget, he went on, constituted “a challenge to the best traditions and possibilities of America” and “a call to all those who have grown weary of slogans and gestures to rededicate themselves to the cause of social reconstruction.” It was also, he added, “a plea to men of good will to give tangible substance to long-proclaimed ideals.'“

And it wasn’t just Randolph and Rustin, it was John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King and, of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal politics he promulgated. In our recent book, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, John Judis and I put it this way:

[T]he New Deal Democrats were moderate and even small-c conservative in their social outlook. They extolled “the American way of life” (a term popularized in the 1930s); they used patriotic symbols like the “Blue Eagle” to promote their programs. In 1940, Roosevelt’s official campaign song was Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” Under Roosevelt, Thanksgiving, Veterans’ Day, and Columbus Day were made into federal holidays. Roosevelt turned the annual Christmas Tree lighting into a national event. Roosevelt’s politics were those of “the people” (a term summed up in Carl Sandburg’s 1936 poem, “The People, Yes”) and of the “forgotten American.” There wasn’t a hint of multiculturalism or tribalism. The Democrats need to follow this example.

If liberal nationalism was good enough for A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, for FDR and JFK and MLK, it should be good enough for today’s Democratic Party. Democrats should proudly proclaim that their party is a patriotic party that believes America as a nation has accomplished great things and been a force for good in the world, a record that can be carried forth into the future.

Funny that the left should lose track of this. As David Leonhardt pointed out in a podcast I did with him:

[J]ust look at history—the civil rights movement carried American flags while marching for civil rights…think about what an incredible favor it was to them when their counter protesters held up confederate flags, the flag of of treason…the labor unions of the early 20th century brought enormous American flags to their rallies…

That is patriotism…It worked.

That’s right: it worked. And it can work again.

Leonhardt concluded by quoting labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein:

All of America’s great reform movements from the crusade against slavery onward have defined themselves as champions of a moral and patriotic nationalism which they counterpoised to the parochial and selfish elites who stood athwart their vision of a virtuous society. So the connection really between patriotism and progressivism is long and proud and progressivism will be much more successful if it is willing to embrace patriotism.

Indeed, without patriotism—enthusiastic patriotism that promotes national unity, not national garment-rending—there is no realistic path for the left in the 21^st century. None. It’s that simple.

In this series, I have discussed how the future of the left depends on embracing seven principles that have been notably lacking in the first quarter of the 21^st century:

• Energy realism

• Growth realism

• Governance realism

• Immigration realism

• Merit realism

• Biology realism

• Patriotic realism

A fair reading of the current situation suggests that the left is still quite far away from adopting these principles as the second quarter of the 21^st century begins. There are some tentative moves in the right direction but mostly deep reluctance to challenge the professional class biases and priorities that have led to the left’s failures in this century’s first quarter.

A good time to start doing so would be now. The hour is getting late and unfortunately failure is an option.

Subscribe now

Share

Long eras of politics are generally dominated by major events such as the two wars and depression that defined the early to mid-twentieth century and the incredible American economic boom and global power that followed. These events determined the framework for public debate and the policy decisions and strategic calculations that shaped how the two parties approached voters in elections. Democrats mainly established the public response to the two wars and the economic rebuild after the Great Depression, while Republicans led the deregulatory and tax correction to big government intervention in the back end. Both parties during the last century operated under the basic assumption that government should advance national economic and security interests, serve as a partner and check on the private sector, and provide important social insurance measures that markets alone cannot provide.

Political eras are also shaped by the prevailing psychological state of the public. Trust in public officials, belief in our national values, and general optimism about the direction of the country were more pronounced in the last century, even with partisan rancor and periods of skepticism about government spending and concerns about corruption or immoral politicians (e.g., the Watergate scandal, Iran-Contra, and Bill Clinton’s intern affair.)

Today, however, the overwhelming public mood is cynicism—deep distrust of public institutions and the belief that those who lead us are selfish, greedy, dishonest, and incompetent.

This is not merely the well-documented rise of partisan polarization wherein Republicans hate Democrats, Democrats hate Republicans, independents hate both parties, and ideologically aligned media and online operations fuel the hate daily. Rather, political cynicism today means that many Americans, regardless of partisan affiliation, have come to despise the government itself and politics writ large, viewing it as a rotten enterprise filled with self-serving and corrupt people who can’t do anything right.

Cynicism is hard to deny. Take a seat on any barstool in America and describe the current political situation to a total stranger, and you’ll soon get nods of approval: “Uh-huh, that’s the truth. Screw them all.” (Along with discussion of more pressing matters like, “Why can’t the Ravens win a clutch game?” if you’re in any bar in Baltimore where I live.)

This deeply rooted cynicism has produced three outcomes in modern American politics:

• First, sitting governments have almost no leeway with the public and rapidly lose support and legitimacy outside of their core backers regardless of what they do right or wrong;

• Second, the opposition, assuming it has its act together, is always better positioned to take advantage of cynicism in elections without having to fully articulate a coherent alternative; and

• Third, these first two trends combine into an endless cycle of “politics without winners” that teeters back and forth between party control of government with no sustainable majorities or lasting policy changes as failure breeds more cynicism that yields additional anger, despair, and disengagement among voters.

Analysts like to call this current mood a “populist” era, which is true in terms of dominant political factions and policy orientations in many countries. But more precisely, at least in America, it’s an era of cynicism. And Americans have every right to be cynical about government and politics over the past quarter century. Look at the results: multiple contested elections that take weeks to decide and end up in courts, the Iraq War and “war on terrorism” excesses, the Great Recession and Wall Street bailouts, the Covid response and subsequent overreaction, inflation, inequality, partisan gerrymandering wars, dark money campaigns, welfare fraud, tax cheats, huge public debt, more illegitimate and failed wars, and now fears of AI-induced catastrophe for workers.

America is still a rich and powerful country, but its government is widely perceived as inept and hostile to the interests of most people, with policies that either don’t work or are designed to serve the wealthy rather than working- and middle-class families.

This has produced highly unstable politics. Trump succeeds Obama and reverses everything he did but quickly loses public backing. Trump supporters believe his opposition is illegitimate, and then Trump claims the 2020 election was stolen. Biden comes into office on the back of this distrust, reverses everything Trump did, fails miserably on immigration and other matters, and loses public support within a year. Trump rides back into office with public disgust of Biden and Democrats and concerns about the economy, reverses everything Biden did, and again loses public support in less than a year. Democrats in turn say Trump and his supporters are illegitimate, “fascist,” and undemocratic.

Who knows exactly what will happen in 2028 when we don’t have Trump on the ballot? But the cycle of cynicism will likely continue.

Let’s face it, although Trump has clear strengths that address a demand for change among many Americans, being straightforward and honest with people and trying to find accommodation with his opponents to pursue common goals is not one of them. Perceptions of the current president are baked in at this point. He’s not likely to reverse public cynicism or restore trust in government over the next three years. Likewise, Biden promised a return to calmer and less confrontational politics in 2021 but delivered the opposite in pursuit of leftist goals and then misled voters about his age-related health decline. Voters won’t soon forget this. Nor will they forget Democrats’ extreme cultural politics over the past decade, their failed immigration and crime policies, and their partisan legislation that spent a gazillion dollars, which seemingly went up in smoke. Until Democrats confront and fix their horrendous image with voters, they are also unlikely to end the era of public cynicism and restore trust.

Around and around we go.

Here’s my stab at not being cynical. It may be possible to reverse (or at least halt) some of this political cynicism by being clear-eyed about what is needed in terms of future presidential and other political leadership.

What America needs in 2028 and beyond are true patriots and ethical leaders from either party, or a new one, committed to fully renouncing the politics of the past and moving beyond the era of cynicism. This would mean no more pro-Trump and anti-Trump political wars. No more treating other Americans as enemies based on their vote preference or religion or regional background. No more campaigns napalming Americans with negative ads, false and misleading claims in the media, and fantastical promises that can’t be fulfilled.

What is needed is a new era of political realism and personal honesty. If, by some miracle, politicians like this could emerge inside of a party and win general elections, they must resist the urge to cater to ideologues in power, govern with real transparency, admit mistakes and take steps to correct policy errors, be willing to talk honestly with critics and skeptics, and bring opponents to the table. Maybe with this leadership reset, public cynicism about government could abate (at least temporarily).

I get it; this suggestion sounds whimsical and impossible.

But the age of American cynicism will not end with more populist attacks or technocratic “deliverism” or fantasies about one-man rule with no legal constraints. It can only be overcome by a new generation of Americans deciding they’ve had enough, recommitting to America’s core values of liberty and equality for all, and acting with integrity, self-restraint, and personal decency.

One can only hope for better politics, moral leaders, and effective government—and make it happen as we celebrate our country’s 250th anniversary.

Subscribe now

Share

In the year since Trump’s reelection, there has been an outpouring of commentary on the confused state of the Democrats but also the disarray of the political left more broadly. One could make the case, as Ruy Teixeira has for TLP, that the modern left, after a brief resurgence in the 2010s following the Great Recession, has hit its nadir due to an excess of cultural radicalism. Another perspective, offered variously by John B. Judis and Jacobin’s Bhaskar Sunkara, counters that despite recent setbacks, the left enjoys more relevance and soft support than it has in several decades.

There is a good case to be made that the bleak prognosis for the American left is overstated. Public trust in political institutions is in free fall in America and across the West, to the presumed benefit of MAGA and “anti-establishment” right-wing populists elsewhere. Yet nearly forty percent of Americans hold a favorable view of socialism—a number that was, ironically, hardly conceivable sixty years ago when Cold War America, though in the birth pangs of its “Second Reconstruction,” was otherwise much more social democratic than it is today. Evidently, more than festering consumer angst over high prices for groceries, concerts, and sporting events is at play here.

In fact, there are indications that the green shoots of a “post-woke” left are already emerging, sometimes far from where the left typically predominates. How this left is construed in the public mind, and whether we can truly deem it as properly of the left in a macro-historical sense, will depend in large part on the ability of insurgents to draw on America’s egalitarian political traditions, in speech and gestures unimpeded by a progressive intelligentsia consumed with America’s sins. Indeed, its ability to flourish will require a studied independence from the repertoire and sectarianism that has characterized the left in the last decade. The central problem for the left as it is presently constituted—or at least the one recognized by friend and foe alike as defining the alternative to right-populism and “zombie neoliberalism”—is that it has heretofore fettered the growth of a flexible oppositional politics, predicated on restoring positive government and the associative power of common people, in the regions the Democrats have abandoned, thus precluding the very realignment in the party system the left professes to seek.

Before addressing the left’s prospects and challenges, it is worth elaborating on what the left as a force engaged in electoral politics means in the present context. Granting that there is no monolithic left in America (or anywhere really), there are two main factions with considerable overlap that have defined what it means to be on the democratic left and which, when push comes to shove, duly back the Democrats in most elections. To some, these strands might be self-evident or not wholly distinct. People’s beliefs and judgments of effective politics change over time, even when they don’t adopt an entirely different outlook on power, rights, and responsibilities. Still, the fact that these strands have contributed profoundly to how we interpret the possibilities for American politics, while fundamentally failing to prevent the return of what they abhor, merits review.

One strand is the economically populist left, composed primarily of precarious service workers, the new wave of labor activists, and intellectuals and policymakers committed to developing a vision of “post-neoliberal” governance. Some are avowed democratic socialists, some are anti-monopolists, and others are “FDR” Democrats (or “Berniecrats,” as they are sometimes dubbed). All believe American society is in peril unless major reforms to reduce inequality and the influence of the wealthiest are instituted. While often caustic toward the Democratic establishment, most, including a good share of self-styled socialists, are reconciled to working within the party to improve the economic security and life chances of ordinary Americans.

The other tendency is the “intersectional” or identity-driven “neo-progressive” left. This strand draws its strength from the “post-material” social movements sown by the Sixties New Left, academia and nonprofits, and immigrant-heavy community groups who have either subsumed or supplanted the traditional ethnic urban machines of yesteryear. It is also sometimes called the Brahmin left, which usually denotes an upper-middle-class background, although that category can also include college-educated progressives squeezed by the high cost of living. Somewhat confusingly, intersectionality attracts sectarian leftists who essentially believe America is irredeemable as well as confrontational liberals like Rep. Jasmine Crockett and the media personality Jennifer Welch. These days it is this version of the left that seems to most inform how both Democrats and their right-wing adversaries conceive of progressivism. Its “systemic” critique of American moral hypocrisy and structural injustice gained immense purchase among Democratic elites last decade, leading to what critics have called the “Great Awokening”—that is, a far-reaching codification of “woke” values in universities, major corporations, and many government offices between 2017 and 2024, which the Trump administration has since reversed.

That effort to change institutional culture and America’s sociocultural lexicon, pursued through various advocacy groups, highlights the biggest difference with the economically populist left. Both strands participated in the protest actions of the first Resistance, and both concur that regardless of what Trumpism is exactly, its mixture of cronyism, buffoonery, and malevolence is not to be minimized. But whereas the populist left has sought, perhaps quixotically, to find common ground in Trump country—to engage in the politics of persuasion and solidarity—the neo-progressives have, in most cases, eagerly dialed up partisan and neo-sectional sentiment. The latter also tend to believe social change is best obtained through the judiciary over mass politics, despite their seeming predilection for direct action.

In these respects, neo-progressives have made their jaundiced view of past liberalisms conspicuous (e.g., the sweeping conclusion that “the New Deal was racist”). Although neo-progressives are also concerned by economic inequality, its impact is discussed mainly in terms of the racial wealth gap and inequitable health outcomes. Neo-progressives, moreover, are much more supportive of globalization in the realms of trade, immigration, and higher education, their obligatory critiques of neocolonialism and Global South “extractivism” notwithstanding. This is an additional source of friction with the populist left. While hardly reconciled to nativist measures and geopolitics, there are voices on the populist left who increasingly recognize that social democracy can’t work without borders and a compelling alternative to MAGA’s conception of the national interest. (It is worth observing that the secondary importance of universal economic issues to the intersectional left could be due to its relative compatibility with contemporary pop culture, whose main industries aggressively curate and commercialize “difference” and “radical perspectives,” thereby dampening interest in a political vision that might transcend our cultural and regional divides.)

Neither strand, of course, is strong enough to set the Democratic agenda on its own. The leverage of the donor class over the party elite is one obvious factor. Still, this mutual weakness exists partly because the left has even less of a presence than formal Democratic branches do in the regions that Democrats desperately need to win to stay competitive in the Electoral College and the Senate. Ultimately, that obstacle comes down to the lifestyle choices and preferences shared across the left. In practice it is hard to fully distinguish the populist left from the culturalist left and thus identify a politically consequential difference between the two, as a majority of left-wing progressives cluster in big metros, have at least some college education, and share an outlook, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that combines both of these key tendencies (see New York City’s “commie corridor”). (The populist left, if we are to be honest, is also habitually afraid of being accused of trivializing intersectional issues.) In short, the left comprises a regionally concentrated, quarrelsome minority whose influence over the Democratic Party has indisputably deepened but is also in keeping with the demographic sorting between the two major parties that has occurred over the last thirty years.

Where does that leave the rest of the Democratic coalition? Arguably, the core of the Democratic base is rounded out by voters in cities and suburbs who are, in a sense, less ideological but hold deeper partisan loyalties. They are more likely to identify simply as a Democrat or a “Barack Obama” liberal (and before that, a “John Kerry,” “Bill Clinton,” or “JFK” liberal). These voters may be occasionally persuaded by left-wing economic arguments, particularly when it comes to health care, or they may be more attuned to the concerns of minorities and the politics of representation. Owing to the proliferation of “Resistance” yard signs over the years, they are sometimes considered more adjacent to the neo-progressives. But they are motivated above all by a strong desire to win elections and expect left-wing activists to fall in line. Unsurprisingly, a deep contempt for Trump and his enablers has kept this often-fractious coalition together, although not entirely, given the number of Democratic voters who stayed home in 2024 or defected to the GOP.

With an eye toward the 2026 midterms, Democrats nevertheless recognize something must shift internally to durably expand their appeal. Although few are outspoken about the costs of the “Great Awokening,” a number of elected officials and allied thought leaders have one way or another signaled it curdled the goodwill of moderates and irregular Democrats who once believed government has a responsibility to advance social justice. And it did—at least temporarily. At the same time, the affordability crisis has taken center stage in national politics, somewhat relieving Democrats of the pressure to methodically review and name the factors that most contributed to Trump’s comeback. (It was recently reported that DNC chair Ken Martin has decided not to release a long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 election.) November’s election victories, driven by a return to “kitchen-table” issues, provided a much-needed shot in the arm for loyal rank-and-file Democrats as well as grassroots activists. For all the animus directed at the Democrats’ lethargic congressional leadership, that has cooled talk of an existential crisis or party civil war.

And yet, the recent boost to morale has done little to resolve the Democratic coalition’s divisions over philosophy, strategy, and policy development. Those within the milieu of progressive thought and organizing still struggle to delineate what the American left of the 2020s stands for beyond the usual demands etched on protest placards. Numerous fault lines appear as soon as the discussion turns toward concrete policy ideas that could plausibly enjoy popular support and reunite the left with its historical vehicle, the working class.

Indeed, while the left is said to be united in two big goals—raising taxes on the rich and building a European-style health care system—it can agree on little else. Many who identify with the left are torn over how to responsibly address climate change; of two minds about competition policy and industrial policy; hesitant to explore how too much “red tape” can hurt the disadvantaged; admiring of China’s progress while constantly disputing our own; naïve about the salience of public safety to advancing social reform; and undecided about whether the American working class has been indulged in its habits and allowed to live “unsustainably” for too long or if it has, in fact, been stealthily fleeced and disenfranchised since the Reagan Revolution. More generally, the left seesaws over whether America is in need of “equitable growth,” and thus a grand project of national redevelopment, or if it should stagnate peacefully, somehow reconcile that path with open borders, and relinquish its (much diminished and discredited) global leadership to China. Too often these types of debates stultify the left when it should be honing its vision of governance. They impress upon other Americans that, at the end of the day, the left is concerned with telling people how to think and live instead of helping them get ahead.

More readily understood is what the left is against: the “isms,” supremacists, oppressions, and evils it has catalogued as though Judgment Day is near. Yet the seeming clarity and resonance of this moral message has been steadily diluted by the lack of agreement over what is necessary to make meaningful change, where it is possible to do so, and what should be prioritized first. The left is afflicted, moreover, by the undertow of its own “antisocial” pessimism. Duly punctuated by calls for a better world, the condemnation of contemporary American society and American history is often so sweeping that one gets the feeling all are powerless to make improvements to our political and economic system that might realize the country’s promise. Indeed, that promise, understood by past reform movements as manifesting through the fruitful, if never perfect, synthesis of the principles of human liberty and egalitarian development, is itself contested by radicals who believe its real purpose is to “manufacture consent” for an unjust and unreformable hegemon.

That is a disquieting and rather debilitating frame of mind to hold. It is also a recipe for irrelevance that Zohran Mamdani, who since becoming New York City’s mayor-elect is now the left’s most famous voice after Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, wisely discarded in order to connect with younger and irregular voters who normally don’t have time for politics. Mamdani, critics assert, passionately embodies the left’s two major tendencies, a potent mix not for its odds of success but for the likelihood it will further destabilize the Democratic coalition outside deep blue metros. He nevertheless beat a complacent Democratic machine and its proxy, Andrew Cuomo, on a platform of concrete and arguably feasible proposals, not by emphasizing vanguard “wokeness”—a testament, one might say, to “the primacy of reform” even in a seemingly jaded and defeatist era.

Yet, hostage to a suffocating parochialism, some activists are already spinning their wheels over to what extent they should criticize their avatar for his rational attempts to soften the unity of his opponents. It’s an all-too familiar situation reflective of the left’s recrudescent infantilism. The activist left, bullhorn of the marginalized, hungers to enter “the arena” up until the moment its representatives must make decisions conditioned by the constraints and opportunities of actually existing politics—including those determined by the left’s own prior failures and absences. Unchecked, this tendency will sabotage the “left wing of the possible” faster than its sworn antagonists might hope to.

The left’s endless purity politics also blinds it to signs of revolt and reform that are happening in spite of the left’s limited geographic reach and the backlash to wokeness. These developments may not correspond easily to the left’s dominant typology, but they signify that grassroots organizing in the Rust Belt and “flyover country” is not so dormant. In fact, progressive populism and a left-tinted anticorruption politics are percolating in some unlikely places, amplified by local elections in which the insurgent—either a Democrat or a technically nonpartisan candidate backed by Democrats—has scored an upset.

The discontent is all the more notable given the widespread belief the Democratic Party is reviled outside its coastal strongholds and college towns. While the right has mocked this year’s “No Kings” protests as a parade of the grey- and blue-haired, or the geriatric and the woke, there are more than flickers of contempt outside of blue cities toward Republican incumbents and Trump’s various power grabs. From Maine to Iowa to Georgia, struggling families, fed-up independents, and nominally “antipolitical” young people are searching for leverage against local Republican machines that have grown overconfident and nakedly indifferent to the public interest. Although these constituencies might not readily identify as “left-wing” or even “progressive”—most swing district insurgents running for office have positioned themselves as independent Democrats focused on “common sense” solutions—they nevertheless channel the basic traditions of the American left: a spirit and attitude against public and private malfeasance, economic predation, and militarism, and a determination to elevate the commonweal over any conspiracy of privilege.

The emergence this year of these new anti-establishment currents in town halls, campaign rallies, and demonstrations also appears to be largely spontaneous. While these gatherings in red counties might be dismissed as a token opposition, they recall an older, word-of-mouth activism, in contrast to the seasoned activists and third-sector professionals who make up the Brahmin left and have become, through social media, a permanent extra-party fixture of the American political scene. Come next November, it will be fair to say that if there is a blue wave, it won’t be attributable to the media-savvy Resistance but to a tide of organic rage against business as usual.

By next spring we will have a better sense of whether these fledgling rebellions in redder regions will coalesce into something greater. In the meantime, the left’s dominant factions would do well to admit that this development has little to do with their own efforts to regroup since the 2024 election. Those giddy enough to believe the tide is already turning against MAGA might credit Mamdani’s shrewd transformation from academic agitator to Rooseveltian reformer or the “Fighting Oligarchy Tour” headlined by Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez. But perverse though it may be, the left owes its rescue to year one of Trump’s second term. The reason, to be clear, is not because Trump’s assault on DEI and his draconian deportation strategy have made the pendulum swing decisively in the opposite direction—the broader public is still unconvinced Democrats, their donor networks, and their more left-wing allies have a credible approach to the dominant sociocultural issues. Rather, it is because Trump has plainly not mitigated the affordability crisis and probably won’t or can’t, based on the policies and narrow business interests he is in thrall to. That has given the left a chance to zero in on material questions once more and champion, not snipe at, all who aspire to some version of the American dream.

Whether the left can summon the discipline to make the most of this moment is another matter. Its Brahmin contingent might see the swelling crowds at Graham Platner’s rallies or the chance of electoral upsets in the Corn Belt as peripheral to its presumed center of gravity. Vanguard thinkers and activists might not even regard the pragmatic populists who straddle the Democrats’ progressive wing and “New Dem” wing as evoking anything akin to “the left.” Voter ire over issues like utility rates or local corruption doesn’t map neatly onto the theories in vogue among those obsessed with vanquishing MAGA. But there is no monopoly on the left, nor anything that predetermines how it might evolve and regenerate. In the fight over what it means to build power and solidarity, those who seek to put the country on a new path must choose wisely.

Subscribe now

Share

This is the second part of a three-part series on the future of the left in the 21^st century (the first part is here). My basic thesis is that the left’s project in the first quarter of the 21^st century has failed and that a left project for the second quarter of this century must be based on core principles that break with the failures of the last 25 years.

Those principles must be based on the fundamental fact that the left has lost touch with baseline realities of how to reach ordinary working-class voters, what policies could actually deliver what these voters want, and what kind of politics accords with these voters’ common sense rather than the biases of their professional class base. They should provide a drastic course correction toward realism to give the left a serious chance of decisively defeating right populism and achieving the good society they claim they are committed to.

In the first part of this series, I discussed two such principles: energy realism and growth realism. In this installment of the series, I will discuss two more principles: governance realism and immigration realism. In the concluding installment of the series, to be released in the New Year, I will discuss the final three principles: merit realism, biological realism, and patriotic realism.

Governance realism. There’s getting elected and then there’s…governing. You’ve got to run the government well and get things done voters care about if you want those voters to stick with you. And that’s where the left has been running into problems—big problems. Commonly, ideological commitments and interest group ties have outweighed the simple, inescapable realities of good governance. Voters just don’t care about the supposedly noble motivations that lead the left to ignore these realities.

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

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

After a quarter of a century, it’s apparent that the left’s prioritization of social and procedural justice over good governance has been a huge mistake. The left must unreservedly commit to good, efficient governance and social order over its various ideological commitments and NGO ties or voters will not take them seriously going forward. Governance realism is not an option; it’s a necessity.

Immigration realism. Nowhere has the left’s lack of political and policy realism been more obvious—and more toxic—that on the issue of immigration. Across the Western world and here in the United States, encouragement of mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems have effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. The results have been predictably disastrous, opening a gaping hole in the left’s working class support in country after country. These policies have ignored the following realities:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. If more immigration is desired by parties or policymakers, from whichever countries and at whatever skill levels, that immigration should be regular, legal immigration and approved by the American people through the democratic process. Backdooring mass immigration over the wishes of voters because it is “kind” or “reflects our values” or is deemed “economically necessary” leads inevitably to backlash. Wheelbarrows full of econometric studies on immigration’s aggregate benefits will not save you.

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

If the left wishes to legalize certain classes of illegal immigrants (e.g., long-time residents) so they are not susceptible to deportation and/or increase legal immigration levels, that case must be sold to the American public. That will only be possible if voters believe Democrats actually understand and embrace the baseline realities of immigration outlined above. The back door for mass immigration is closing; only an immigration realist left can be successful in the second quarter of the 21^st century.

In the final part of “The Future of the Left” series, I will discuss three more principles that must be central to a left revival:

• Merit realism

• Biological realism

• Patriotic realism

Coming after the New Year. Stay tuned!

Subscribe now

Share

Rapid-fire question: Which ONE political thinker do contemporary Democrats rely on most in formulating their current politics and policy approach? Uh…

I can name the theorists who used to guide the Democrats, probably one of the four Anglo-American J’s: John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes, and John Rawls. These four laid the foundations for a free, egalitarian, and pluralistic liberal society with individual rights, policy experimentation, a strong interventionist state, and a basic commitment to national economic interests. Their ideas collectively underpinned the political philosophy and policy agenda of the Democratic Party and its labor allies that rose to dominance from the early 1930s until the 1970s based on a “new liberalism” that married individual freedom with economic action on behalf of America’s working class.

Growing up in the 1980s, my own political turn from knocking doors for George H. W. Bush as a high schooler in the South to doing the same for Bill Clinton in my twenties to later backing Bernie Sanders in 2016 and being mostly independent today came about through reading and consideration of these four illustrious liberal philosophers. Studying Rawls and his critics stuck with me the most since his vision of “political liberalism” provides the strongest defense of fair rules that allow people to live how they want and believe what they want, with mutual respect for people’s differences and basic economic security measures to keep things from getting too imbalanced in society. The communitarian and conservative criticisms of Rawls offer many valid points, particularly around the centrality of life-shaping institutions like the family or church and the folly of state-directed economic activity, but Rawlsian liberalism, with its commitment to value pluralism and a basic welfare state, seems superior as a framework for achieving relative political harmony in a diverse nation like America.

“Vital center” liberalism in the twentieth century offered the most sensible approach to politics given the structure of our economy and society and the security challenges we faced abroad. Unfortunately, that approach is viewed as naïve or a failure or hopelessly nostalgic today. When everyone from left to center claims to be an FDR Democrat, then the ideas and politics animating his historic presidency and its post-war development have lost some meaning or edge.

In modern times, I really can’t say who or what guides America’s Democrats.

Some version of postmodern, anti-colonial identity politics took hold of the elite Democratic class in the past two decades (mostly in the universities), as did a fulsome version of democratic socialism and anti-capitalism. Most progressive activists in the party ignore or denounce anything tied to earlier liberalism, save a vague commitment to individual rights, mainly on the grounds that “neoliberalism” or “third-way liberalism” failed to confront rising inequality in American society and paved the way for the slow and steady exit of working-class voters from the labor-oriented party of FDR and Truman.

The ascension of Trump and the rise of right-wing populism globally further scrambled Democrats’ theoretical mind, as party leaders and strategists continue to search for some elusive figure or social media voice or silver-bullet message to “meet the moment” and rally people behind an indeterminate vision of the future that is connected only by the thread of “not being Trump.”

Democrats under Biden tried to develop an approach to governance built on green industrial policy and “middle-out economics” that flopped decisively with voters as both politics and policy. A small cohort of anti-monopolists have developed several good ideas for breaking up concentrated economic power consistent with earlier liberal attempts to take on corporate “bigness.” Likewise, left-wing populists are having some luck in opposition with their attacks on the wealthy and their recent promotion of “affordability” as the all-encompassing framework for Democratic politics. But, if we’re being honest, these efforts from the left are mostly emotional appeals to frustrated young people who don’t see much of a future in modern life, rightly so in many cases, connected to outdated policy hooks like government-run grocery stores and rent freezes promoted by New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. In its current form, this is not a model for national politics or economic growth that resonates with working-class and rural voters who live outside of politically uncompetitive, highly educated, and expensive urban environments.

Similarly, the “abundance” movement, emerging from the center of the party and a variety of journalistic “thought leaders,” has a solid set of animating ideas to clear out bureaucratic cobwebs and ensure government spending on infrastructure, energy, housing, transportation, and education works in practice and improves lives for middle- and working-class Americans. Again though, if we’re being honest, these are abstract concepts with little-to-no connection to the everyday lives and desires of existing working-class people who want an abundance of jobs, cheap energy, and material goods. Abundance centrism has many important prescriptions to help improve government, mainly in deep blue states and municipalities that have erected decades of regulatory blocks to building and development. But it is not a political vision that animates most party leaders or one that currently enjoys widespread popular support with the voters who have exited the party in droves.

In the battle of ideas among modern Democrats, it’s the right-wing populism and cult-of-personality model of Trump versus unrestrained cultural and economic leftism, discredited neoliberalism, and a yet-to-be-determined combination of left-populism and abundance.

If this seems confusing, it is. You can see why Trump-style populism, despite its limitations, has purchase against its left and center-left alternatives: on one side there’s a clear figurehead with a coherent agenda of restricting immigration and “unleashing” American-led growth through tax and regulatory cuts, and on the other side there’s no leader, no theory of change, and no policy consensus.

Political philosophy will not resolve the internal tensions and theoretical confusion in the Democratic Party, particularly if elections continue to alternate between party control over the next decade. But some serious reflection on the nineteenth- and twentieth-century greats of liberalism mentioned above would do the party a world of good and, perhaps with some updating, provide greater clarity of thought about what they are trying to achieve.

An appealing political party needs a coherent framework for gaining and using power and a set of basic impulses and more detailed policies to carry this out.

Rawls could be most helpful on this front. In Rawls’s world of “political liberalism,” people are treated as mature citizens who are required to be considerate of one another and figure out some way to live together given people’s different opinions and ideas. (No more culture wars.) No one can be mistreated or discriminated against based on their race, gender, or religion. (No more identity politics.) People are free and equal citizens, and anyone can use their smarts and ambitions to get ahead in life. People own property, and the state doesn’t control the economy as in socialist countries. A strong social welfare system also exists to ensure that people don’t live in dire or hopeless economic situations that preclude meaningful progress in life. (A mixed-economy model with a focus on growth and redistribution, poverty reduction, and less income and wealth disparity.)

This is western liberal democracy as we know it, with both center-left and center-right sides, and the basis for successful Democratic Party politics and government in the past century.

It may not be novel, but it just might work as a theoretical framework for renewed action in defense of freedom, equality, economic growth, and national interests.

Subscribe now

Share

One of the great unsettled debates of the extended Trump era is whether Democrats need a “Tea Party” movement of their own. Those in favor share the view that the GOP’s brinkmanship and subterfuge need to be answered in kind. As demonstrated by the many Democrats who opposed the November deal eight Senate Democrats struck to end this fall’s government shutdown, party activists believe the days of congenial bipartisan compromise are long gone and that establishmentarian liberals expecting differently are digging their own grave.

Others who are sympathetic to party reform caution that Democrats need a considered approach vis-à-vis their leadership that is congruous with actually obtaining substantive “policy innovations.” Progressives by definition are supposed to be invested in making government work and proving the value of a more active state. For insurgents who have made it into office, the allure of attacking the system on the campaign trail has typically given way to the exigencies of preventing government from appearing more dysfunctional than it already seems—even when Republicans hold most of the cards. That very imperative to build trust in government when millions of Americans hold it in low esteem has mostly tempered any inclination on the democratic left to fully emulate MAGA’s “burn it all down” mentality.

The intermittent case for a Democratic Tea Party thus rests on the narrower goal of either replacing sedate incumbents or compelling the party’s leadership to adopt activist positions. Core constituencies tied to service worker and public sector unions and professional advocacy organizations have long thirsted for stronger representation in the party’s upper ranks and sought to elect political outsiders pursuing policy outcomes on behalf of a mix of new and old causes. To a considerable extent these progressives have succeeded relative to their limited power in 2010, when the right-wing Tea Party movement wiped out Barack Obama’s congressional majority and blocked whatever remained of his domestic agenda. Today, several party elites, newer members of Congress, and local leaders champion an unapologetic blend of economic and cultural progressivism. Largely unbowed by the backlash to “wokeness,” they are poised to further shape the Democratic agenda—despite failing to improve, and perhaps having worsened, the Democratic Party’s image among blue-collar workers attracted to Trump’s America First rhetoric. “For all its limitations,” as John B. Judis argues in a new Compact essay, “the Democrats’ left wing is now the principal source of the party’s energy and ideas.”

To be sure, the balance of power within the party is far from settled. Left-wing progressives are still an electoral minority and under pressure to disavow or at least mute the stances that have undermined their own advance as well as the viability of red-state Democrats. Yet even Democratic critics of woke dogma admit that progressives have been responsible for reinvigorating the party after the disappointments and setbacks of the Obama era. “It is abundantly clear,” conceded veteran New Democrat strategist James Carville last month in the New York Times, “that the Democratic Party must now run on the most populist economic platform since the Great Depression.” Carville, perspicacious though he is, would not have reached this conclusion without progressives constantly highlighting the mounting indignities of an increasingly monopolized app- and algorithm-driven economy.

What is less evident is how all this insurgent energy might actually be harnessed in 2026 and 2028 to solve the urgent regional problems first laid bare by that 2010 “shellacking.” Up close in the country’s bluest districts, the contest for party control may appear to progressive activists as no less than a battle for the “soul” of the Democratic Party. But from afar, where the party’s reach is weak or nonexistent and positive government itself has shriveled, it is probable such factional disputes strike many left-behind Americans as purely performative and distant from their concerns.

That disconnect crystallizes the core predicament facing today’s left flank. While they have gradually attained what might be called “cohabitation” with coastal powerbrokers, progressives have drifted from the original mission of those who hoped that an insurgency analogous to the Tea Party would (1) prioritize recovering seats and regions lost to the GOP and (2) do so by persuading Americans eager to take a sledgehammer to crony capitalism that liberal governance can be an engine of shared progress once more. These outcomes continue to elude Democrats, raising the possibility that to move forward they must first come to terms with why so many Americans distrust government and dare to convert “draining the swamp” into a signature cause of the left.

It is unlikely that the grassroots left of the early 2010s, hopeful that Barack Obama’s 2008 landslide might one day be replicated by a more assertive reformer, imagined their vision of a Tea Party-style revolt would be isolated to the bluest enclaves. When Trump first won the presidency, many supporters of Bernie Sanders pointed to Hillary Clinton’s terrible ground game in the Rust Belt as proof the Democratic elite had become too insular and disconnected from the working class. The answer was to realign the party in a more social democratic, confrontational, and populist direction. On top of being less accommodating toward corporate lobbyists and high-profile donors, that meant purging the neoliberal mandarins who had impeded ambitious New Deal-style reform, much as the 2010 Tea Party insurgency and its MAGA successor had ostensibly ejected from the GOP “big government” conservatives responsible for hyperglobalism, massive bank bailouts, and endless wars.

The subsequent blue wave in the 2018 midterms, which included many relative moderates, briefly dampened this debate. Sustaining the “Resistance” required a big tent that welcomed affluent suburbanites and culturally moderate Republicans who recoiled from Trump’s character and agenda. Primarying every “corporate” or “establishment” Democrat, the new fetish of the progressive left, was neither feasible nor particularly advantageous despite the need for fresh blood in key districts, as these internecine contests had almost no bearing on the Democratic deficit looming beyond the coasts and the “blue dots” of the Sunbelt. The 2020 Democratic primary, followed by the turbulent summer of Covid and Black Lives Matter, then revived the effort to push the party to match the temperament and outlook of a dissatisfied, youthful base demanding more from its elected representatives. And yet in this same period the Democratic coalition largely accepted the theory that Joe Biden, a quintessential institutionalist whom many hoped would restore the Blue Wall in the Midwest, would be an LBJ-like orchestrator of reform once he entered the White House.

Under Biden’s leadership the party’s dividing lines became murkier. Victory amid a public health emergency that had amplified Trump’s flaws seemed to confer a legislative mandate open to progressives’ input. Democrats keen to bracket the more anarchic episodes of the George Floyd protests were also inclined to discount the prevalence of anti-system sentiment, depicting it as mostly isolated to “ultra-MAGA” Republicans. In the aftermath of January 6, Democrats, certain they were rescuing the country, consciously shunned anti-establishment rhetoric that was in any way redolent of the “insurrectionists”; what Democrats needed was not a “Tea Party” that threatened disunity at a perilous moment in the nation’s history but to prove they were a steady hand that would clean up Trump’s mess. Democrats thus fashioned themselves as the custodians of norms, procedures, and institutions, including the administrative state Trump’s team had been largely thwarted from dismembering.

Democrats were right about needing to prove government could be efficacious, accountable, and an instrument of inclusive development. But Democrats were also under pressure to imbue their governance and political messaging with the critique of “systemic injustice” promulgated by the academic “woke” left. The mission to realign the party as sketched in 2015-2016 and regenerate grassroots support in the smaller cities and towns that had once buttressed the Democratic coalition had transformed in the intervening years. Strident identity politics, which some blame Clinton’s camp for inflaming, infected the entire party, further depressing Democratic competitiveness in Trump-leaning districts. Its predominance compounded the impression among parts of the electorate that Democratic elites, when they weren’t chasing celebrity endorsements, had come to personify every dreaded administrative busybody from a university, nonprofit, or soulless conglomerate. Fair or not, this reputation was incompatible with the task set by the original Sanders movement: to transform working-class perceptions of what public policy can achieve on behalf of ordinary people.

Meanwhile, the usual pressures of party loyalty, along with deepening fear of a Trump comeback, muzzled discussion of why Democratic governance was failing to yield the dramatic changes that had been promised. Having been treated graciously enough by the White House, Biden’s progressive “junior partners” were reluctant to critique “Bidenism” and scrutinize the disconnect between rhetoric and reality (which would inevitably unearth more bureaucratic inefficiencies likely to hurt Democrats, “the party of government,” more than Republicans, at least in the near term). Economic progressives, including Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pramila Jayapal (then-head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus), finally had a seat at the table and hoped—naively, as it turned out—that Biden’s signature policies would start to depolarize the electorate by distributing or catalyzing investments in left-behind regions. They also believed the public was only beginning to understand how a reinvigorated Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and National Labor Relations Board could benefit ordinary consumers and workers. Accordingly, they hesitated to abandon the senescent president before he ended his reelection bid in July 2024, fearful they would trade away their bargaining power for an uncertain relationship with Vice President Kamala Harris or another Biden surrogate uncommitted to a new vision of political economy.

The first year of Trump’s second term has seemingly brought the debate over whether Democrats need their own Tea Party full circle. The cry for a more aggressive, anti-establishment posture was to be expected; after another humiliating loss, many base Democrats, regardless of age, are apoplectic over the machinations of the party elite. Many feel they are at the mercy of a gerontocracy and its luckless lackeys, who are unable or unwilling to foil a much more ruthless and brazenly corrupt version of MAGA. The torpid duo of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, in particular, lacks the respect Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi commanded even in difficult times. While party loyalists are heartened that Democrats of different backgrounds now seem well-positioned to prevail in the midterms on the common theme of “affordability,” the structural critique of the party is likely to persist until the rank and file are forced to unite behind the 2028 presidential nominee.

And so, the allure of a Tea Party-style insurgency is once again waxing. As before, however, the obsession with making blue districts “more progressive” threatens to take precedence over the unequivocal need to flip Republican-held seats. This betrays the conceptual limits of what a progressive or left-wing Tea Party could amount to. Rebellion against the status quo is primarily understood as a project to topple moderate liberals who are perceived as more comfortable enjoying the trappings of power than wielding it and replace them with impassioned younger voices modeled on the Squad and Zohran Mamdani. The main exception is that some left-leaning strategists, embarrassed by the number of winnable races decent candidates lost in 2022 and 2024, are counseling the party to also back Rust Belt insurgents who either eschew woke rhetoric or project a warrior-like energy typically missing from Democrats’ stage-managed campaigns.

Yet the perennial hunger to realign the party is complicated by the legacies and entanglements of the Biden era. This time around the recriminations are aimed in every direction, given that none of the party’s main factions are blameless for its dismal standing with working-class voters in formerly competitive regions. In fact, the simple “left” vs. “establishment” dichotomy is unapt to elucidate, much less solve, the challenges before Democrats, who above all must persuade Americans without much economic agency that government can still be a source of enablement and community wealth-building, not just patchwork anti-poverty programs. Nor is that dichotomy conducive to exploring alternative lessons from the Tea Party, which, after all, tapped into legitimate anger over crony capitalism even as it reheated the usual conservative boilerplate about “free enterprise.” Democrats, primed to defend government from the right’s wrecking crew, still fail to see that a proper Tea Party of the left would indeed overhaul government bureaucracies, eliminate fraud and waste, and tame veto-wielding and rent-seeking interests in equal measure, precisely in order to make the state a nimble and credible agent of widening opportunity and national redevelopment.

America, it is variously said, is stuck in a populist era. It might, however, be more accurate to say that a great swath of America has sunk into a radical neo-Jacksonian mood induced by an unmet Promethean-Hamiltonian appetite; put another way, Americans from different walks of life are hungry for the momentum and material progress that characterized the American Century, yet they are deeply skeptical of the authority required to facilitate similar leaps. Suspicious of bureaucracy in all its forms, disaffected Americans are torn between the possibility that state power can be wielded to revive a dying middle class and a fear that it has conspired with organized money and all manner of special interest rackets to uproot its last foundations.

This jaundiced perception that corruption pervades every aspect of American political life is hardly new. But it has become far more widespread and combustive in an extremely unequal and polarized age, with consequences that bedevil the reform-minded left more than right-populists or traditional “small government” conservatives. Inertia, after all, perpetuates the grievances that lead to more legislative gridlock and institutional decadence, thus stoking more nihilism and anti-system sentiment. As faith in public institutions wanes, this vicious cycle eventually engulfs quarters that normally believe government can and must be a force for good, leading more Americans to suspect great reforms are a thing of the distant past—and perhaps were never so impactful to begin with.

There are, unfortunately, no easy answers at hand for Democrats contemplating a way out of the dysfunction and distrust that has made American politics so sordid. But if Democrats are to convince the angry and dispossessed that elections are not, at root, a rank contest between two modes of kleptocracy, they will have to develop a politics that is unflinching, indeed radical, in its demand for competent and accountable government. Only from there will they be able to set their sights on projects that restore and expand our understanding of the common good.

Subscribe now

Share

Recently I wrote a widely circulated piece arguing that “The Left’s 21st Century Project Has Failed.” By that I didn’t mean that parties of the left cannot win elections. They have, and they will! Already, Democrats look well-positioned to take back the House in 2026, and they may well pick up a seat or two in the Senate (though attaining control of that body still looks out of reach). And if the unpopularity and poor results of the Trump administration continue into 2028, they’ll certainly have a decent chance of recapturing the presidency three years from now.

But a continuation of the electoral see-saw between Democrats and Republicans is not what the left should have in mind. It has been and would be little more than a holding action against right populism. Taking advantage of the thermostatic reaction against your opponents’ overreach and failure to manage the economy effectively is a very low bar—especially given how egregiously flawed that opponent is. It would hardly indicate a revival of the left and a new political project to replace the one that has limped along for a quarter of a century. Rebuilding the left’s base among the working class and forging a durable majority coalition will require a genuinely new project based on core principles that break with the failures of the past.

Those principles should be based on the fundamental fact that the left has lost touch with baseline realities of how to reach ordinary working-class voters, what policies could actually deliver what these voters want, and what kind of politics accords with these voters’ common sense rather than the biases of their own base. The left needs to course-correct toward realism to give themselves a serious chance of decisively defeating right populism and achieving the good society they claim they are committed to.

Here are two such principles. I will discuss five other principles in parts two and three of this series.

Energy realism. This is an important one. As I have noted, the left has spent the first quarter of the 21^st century obsessed with the threat of climate change and the need to rapidly replace fossil fuels with renewables (wind and solar) to stave off the apocalypse. In their quest to meet arbitrary net zero targets, they have made this transition a central policy goal and structured much of their economic program around this.

A dubious crusade to begin with, albeit much beloved among their Brahmin left base, the wheels are now coming off the bus. A detailed article by Tom Fairless and Max Colchester in the Wall Street Journal summarizes the European situation:

European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30 percent from 2005 levels, compared with a 17 percent drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.

Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50 percent above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

It is crippling industry and hobbling Europe’s ability to attract key economic drivers like artificial intelligence, which requires cheap and abundant electricity. The shift is also adding to a cost-of-living shock for consumers that is fueling support for antiestablishment parties, which portray the green transition as an elite project that harms workers, most consumers and regions.

Such have been the wages of the green transition. No wonder countries around the world are increasingly reluctant to sign on to getting rid of fossil fuels, as shown by results of the recent COP30 deliberations. Projections from McKinsey, the International Energy Agency, and so on now see strong fossil fuel demand through 2050, with these energy sources not zeroed out but rather providing close to or an outright majority of the world’s primary energy consumption. Indeed, based on recent trends, these projections are, if anything, too optimistic about how fast the fossil fuel share will decline from its current 81 percent level.

These realities, plus awareness of the importance of development to poor countries, have led even erstwhile climate warrior Bill Gates to remark, “[C]limate change…will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will…thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future….[F]or the vast majority of [poor people in the world] it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been.”

When Bill Gates starts sounding like Bjorn Lomborg, you know things are really changing!

Here in the United States the relative strength and copious energy resources of our economy, plus somewhat more modest policies, have spared us from the worst that has befallen Europe. But the direction of change is clear. Even during the green-oriented Biden administration, domestic oil and gas production hit record levels. It is unlikely with AI data centers juicing energy demand that this upward trend will be reversed.

Meanwhile, Trump has gotten rid of subsidies for renewable energy and electric vehicles, which were never popular, and a pragmatic public simply does not care. They have always favored an all-of-the-above energy policy, very much including fossil fuels, and do not see climate change as the existential, overriding issue that has preoccupied the activist left.

What they do care about is cheap, abundant, reliable energy, and the same could be said about American industry. The recent vogue for “affordability” rather than strenuous climate change rhetoric among Democrats indicates that the left is starting to wake up on this issue. But name-checking affordability falls far short of fully embracing energy realism and all that would entail.

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

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

Growth realism. As I have noted, the left in the 21^st century hasn’t been terribly interested in the issue of overall economic growth. That goal has taken a back seat to others deemed more important, like fighting climate change, reducing inequality, pursuing procedural justice, and advocating for immigrants and identity groups. The invaluable “Deciding to Win” report analyzed word frequency in Democratic Party platforms since 2012 and found a 32 percent decline in the appearance of the word “growth” compared to a 150 percent increase in the word “climate,” a 1,044 percent increase in “LGBT/LGBTQI+,” a 766 percent increase in “equity,” an 828 percent increase in “white/black/Latino/Latina,” and a 333 percent increase in “environmental justice.”

But the key to substantially rising living standards for the working class is precisely more economic growth, especially higher productivity growth. You cannot make up for that by redistribution nor by simply spending more money on government programs. A fast-growth economy provides more opportunities for upward mobility, generates better-paying jobs, creates fiscal space for priorities like infrastructure projects, and, as Benjamin Friedman has argued, has positive “moral consequences” by orienting citizens toward generosity, tolerance, and collective advance. Slow growth has the opposite effects.

It is therefore completely unrealistic for the left to think they can accomplish their goals and build support without centering the goal of economic growth. Attempts to elide this problem result in heavy reliance on chimerical projects like a rapid green transition (see above), which do not and cannot deliver the benefits of overall growth. Or, as in the Biden administration, just spending money on various party priorities and hoping for the best. (Make Spending Money Great Again?) That did not work either.

The left must learn to love economic growth instead of downgrading it. In particular, they should be racking their brains on how to create the best possible environment for productivity growth. That’s not easy and takes them out of their comfort zone, but do it they must. They must ask: how can technological change be harnessed for the maximum effect on productivity growth and a much richer society?

The question is sharpened by the meteoric rise of AI. Of course, there’s a certain amount of dreamy hand-waving about all the wonderful transformations AI will bring to the economy and society. But AI boosters are not wrong that the potential is immense if AI is, in fact, a new general-purpose technology (GPT). If so, the effects on productivity growth could be game-changing and era-defining.

Democrats, however, who have long had a streak of techno-pessimism, are not reacting terribly positively to this development and its enormous growth potential. Indeed, the evolving reaction seems to be downright negative. Senator Chris Murphy, a reliable barometer of party trends, had this to say:

The cultural and economic impact of AI is going to be the biggest issue in politics over the next decade…There is going to be a growing appetite from voters to support candidates that are going to help them manage the potential coming disaster as AI poisons our kids and destroys all of our jobs.

Ok then! Doesn’t sound like he’s thinking too hard about productivity growth dividends. Or economic growth period. That’s a big, big problem for a party that must start embracing growth realism to be successful.

In parts two and three of “The Future of the Left in the 21^st Century,” I will look at five further principles that must be central to any left revival.

• Governance realism

• Immigration realism

• Merit realism

• Biological realism

• Patriot realism

Stay tuned!

Subscribe now

Share

It was only a few months ago that American politics was dominated by incessant chatter about a definitive MAGA realignment. Left and right, many concluded Trump’s comeback marked a tectonic shift in the party system that foretold yet more working-class defections from the Democratic camp, as evidenced by the strong uptick in registered Republican voters. But in the wake of the Epstein files vote, the 43-day government shutdown, and the Democrats’ November victories (bolstered further by evidence that Latinos returned to the fold), a new narrative is gaining traction that could soon saddle America’s most volatile and iconoclastic president with that most ordinary of political fates: the status of a lame duck.

It is striking how quickly the cracks in the new MAGA coalition have shown. Trump’s favorability on the economy has nosedived, independents irate over living costs are moving in the Democrats’ direction, a third or more of the country is on the cusp of recession, and congressional Republicans, alert to the number of Democratic insurgents laying the ground for an upset in red states, are panicking about the midterms. A handful of state-level GOP leaders have also signaled opposition to Trump’s redistricting scheme, arguably the most significant breach between Trump and local party branches since his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and Arizona.

More surprising still is the high-profile rupture within the MAGA elite. Unnerved by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Trump and her withering attacks on GOP priorities, the America First crowd has wondered aloud why this administration, after so much hype about being better prepared than the first Trump White House, seems so rudderless and unfocused. Even progressives horrified by the administration’s most aggressive actions—military strikes on “drug smugglers” in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, indiscriminate ICE raids, and cruel, extrajudicial deportation methods—sense that Trump’s penchant for bluster and provocation is once more cover for the lack of a consistent vision. Although three highly unpredictable years remain, there is a tentative feeling (many would say hope) that the sequel is about to fizzle out.

At this stage in history, of course, it is unwise to prognosticate with great confidence about Trump’s political fortunes. The rapid centralization of power within the executive branch shows Trump’s inner circle has been tirelessly at work in at least one respect, and it is far from unwarranted to fear Trump may indeed try to circumvent the Constitution and plot a third term. Yet it is increasingly evident Trump lacks the policies and momentum to consolidate and grow his unexpectedly broad 2024 coalition in the way transformative elections have traditionally allowed.

Compare the political earthquake of Trump’s 2024 victory to the most consequential realignments since the Second Industrial Revolution—1896, 1932, and 1980. In each of these pivotal elections, the victorious party was able to cement a developmental coalition comprising elite and mass interests that set the nation’s course for a generation or more. In 1896, William McKinley’s GOP consolidated continued support for a program of industrial protectionism and an expansionist presence on the world stage that, while plainly tilted toward privileged and influential economic players, promised rising living standards, the shift toward a consumer-oriented “home market,” and national prestige. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt fused together the interests of Northern urban workers, the slowly industrializing South, and those business sectors that recognized amid the worsening depression the opportunities that would follow from a more state-managed form of capitalism. And in 1980, Ronald Reagan picked off parts of the fading New Deal coalition to back a program that combined sweeping deregulation with not-so-tacit government support for the burgeoning tech revolution and finance-led urban renewal.

Trump lacks a similarly cohesive developmental coalition despite his strong performance with working-class voters. In fact, there is a widening divergence between Trump’s blue-collar and wealthier supporters over what he should prioritize beyond controlling the border. To an unusual degree, Trump’s ostensible mandate was contingent on “fixing” the missteps of the incumbent administration, which itself had promised to fix Trump’s first-term chaos. Joe Biden’s self-inflicted wounds on immigration, his administration’s perceived “DEI” overreach, and his passivity on inflation created a deeply ironic hunger among embittered swing voters and irregular voters for Trumpian “confidence” and “decisiveness.” In essence, these voters gave Trump a second chance because they were motivated to punish Democrats for failing to “return to normalcy.”

The shallowness of Trump’s mandate is underscored by how little Trump has done to convert it into something more lasting for his party. As a supplemental campaign strategy, Trump’s lofty outline of a new industrial “golden age” worked, just barely. There was a strange willingness in parts of the electorate previously averse to Trump to entertain the possibility that he could successfully amalgamate the prescriptions that helped propel McKinley and Reagan to office. Ignoring Biden’s own “post-neoliberal” experiments, they wagered that a revision of the global trade order and Trump’s rapprochement with Big Tech, combined with his hazy but alluring promise to simultaneously lower prices and cut interest rates, would somehow yield the dynamic, noninflationary growth that eluded Biden.

Since taking office, however, Trump has yet to pursue a program likely to create a harmony of normally disparate interests. His sweeping protective tariffs, premised on replicating the industrial expansion of McKinley’s era, have spiked costs for small businesses and many domestic manufacturers, thereby stifling the reinvestment necessary to repair and re-diversify the industrial base. The tariffs have also inhibited a more dovish turn at the Federal Reserve, thus undermining whatever incentives businesses might have had to borrow and commit to major fixed investments. Meanwhile, Trump’s push for “energy dominance,” purportedly meant to lower costs across supply chains, has been recklessly diverted to meet the vast energy needs of the AI bubble. The results so far disprove Trump’s far-fetched claim he would rapidly bring down essential costs for businesses and consumers, draining the public’s already low confidence in the post-Covid recovery.

The more neo-Reaganite aspects of Trump’s agenda are similarly failing to do the trick. Unsurprisingly, the GOP tax cuts have stoked a frenzy of stock buybacks, further boosting the assets of higher earners. Yet, more so than in previous bubbles, soaring valuations and the exorbitant spending power of the very wealthy are increasingly divorced from how regular working families experience the real-world economy.

This gulf, while reminiscent of the Reagan-era economy, lacks precedent due to how much the wealthiest account for—and thus shape—new consumer spending. Arguably, that spending power, previously confined to how luxuries were priced, now contributes to price increases for basic goods and services and the elevated interest rates meant to tame said inflation. This perpetuates a nasty spiral in which major players across supply chains ignore signs of household financial distress. Conglomerates and oligopolies, sensing they can mop up yet more earnings in an otherwise sputtering business cycle, behave as if paycheck-to-paycheck America can absorb the prices the very wealthy are willing to pay. Consequently, the norms that used to restrain pricing power have withered—and probably won’t see a revival until a recession (or an epiphany) compels business leaders to reevaluate what the average consumer can bear.

Trump’s critics would say the public’s souring mood (along with his crony capitalism) was all-too predictable. Still, it is notable that Trump’s economic agenda, including the federal government’s highly atypical equity stakes in nine companies, has done little to inspire hope about the future. The sole sector demonstrating serious growth this year, which has commanded billions in venture capital at the expense of other kinds of startups, is feared by many for its potential to vaporize middle-class incomes, while the tariff regime threatens to make smaller enterprises that had adapted to globalization uncompetitive.

The anxiety that pervades the economy illustrates the fundamental difference between Trump and the GOP statesmen his sympathizers invoke. Unlike McKinley and Reagan, who convinced ordinary Americans they had a material stake in the evolution of corporate capitalism, innovation, and advanced technology more generally, Trump can offer no such assurances about the surge in AI adoption and AI data centers. Instead, his de facto industrial strategy, now overwhelmingly oriented to accelerating the AI “arms race,” has no broad-based constituency anchored in expectations of high-wage jobs and new opportunities and is even more ad hoc than Biden’s patchwork incentives to spur the clean energy transition. In fact, the reasons for non-college-educated Americans to embrace AI development have become increasingly dubious the more events on the ground belie sanguine predictions that the industry would be a boon to long-neglected districts.

The paucity of public optimism about Trump’s agenda raises the question of whether the developmental coalitions of previous magnitude are still feasible. The GOP of McKinley’s time and Reagan’s, respectively, succeeded because its leaders were aware that building a durable cross-class coalition hinged on establishing a clear buy-in for different constituencies. They appealed baldly to voters’ aspirations for national greatness while minimizing the social costs of rising inequality, occupational displacement, and greed. Yet the sense of opportunity, of new frontiers being reached, was sufficiently palpable to persuade enough Americans that the middle class would continue to expand—and that the fruits of technological progress would dwarf the prosperity known to previous generations.

That spirit of possibility and momentum is unmistakably crumpling under the weight of Trump’s unfathomable strategy. Democrats thus have a chance to tell a different story about America’s future—one that speaks to the dreams of all who wish not for ostentatious wealth, but the freedom and resources to live a life of meaning, connection, and belonging. Should Democrats at last recover their true register, the makings of a transformative developmental coalition based on collective progress may yet gather force.

Subscribe now

Share

It is a common assumption of the Trump era that America is undergoing a turbulent and protracted political realignment that could reverberate for decades. In the wake of the 2024 election, it seemed as though Trump’s GOP had gained a decisive advantage. Over three presidential elections, Trump flipped a preponderance of former Democratic strongholds and swing counties, and demographic trends suggest the GOP could have a firm advantage in the Electoral College by 2032. This turn of events, despite several omens, continues to stun the progressive mind: only a few years prior, it was an article of faith that a hegemonic Democratic coalition was a demographic inevitability.

And yet, it is far from certain the Trumpian realignment could last, much less deepen, beyond Trump’s second administration. For one thing, there is little evidence to suggest Vice President JD Vance or any other Trump loyalist could command support equal in passion to Trump’s. And that passion itself could be dissipating. Almost a year into his administration, Trump has not so much struggled but punted on delivering remotely “populist” wins on jobs and prices; unlike in 2017 and 2018, when the impact of the China shock was rawer and concerns over supply-chain inflation were subdued, his flailing tariff regime lacks the power of challenging stale orthodoxies. Relentless speculation about the lurid Epstein files and Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein also threatens MAGA’s unity to a degree previous Trump scandals hadn’t.

There are signs, too, that the Trumpian realignment is stalling for rather conventional reasons. Trump’s extraordinary comeback was made possible in part due to “nostalgia” for the pre-Covid Trump economy (an indictment, one might say, of the pace and scope of the recovery from the Great Recession under Barack Obama). But Trump’s approval ratings on inflation and the economy overall have plunged, several consumer and business trends augur recession, and Democrats, fresh off their recent election victories, exude, at last, a determination to win back party defectors and populist-leaning independents.

Trump’s steady disengagement from any positive ideas resembling “America First” gives Democrats a fresh opportunity to reframe the terrain of conflict. Some intuit it is better to paint Trump not as a strongman—an image he enjoys—but as weak, afraid, and miserly. Although they didn’t wring any big concessions from the Republican Congress during the government shutdown standoff, Democrats arguably succeeded in painting Trump as callous and indifferent to Americans unable to pay for food and health care. For the moment, politics in these jarring times has reverted to a familiar dynamic in which Democrats are once again summoning the discipline to reclaim the upper hand on “kitchen table” issues.

After a year of brutal autopsies, factional squabbles, and demoralizing polls, Democrats do seem remarkably energized for the midterms. To actually broaden their coalition and expand the map in 2028, however, Democrats must do much more than throw down the gauntlet over “affordability.” They must tend to their vulnerabilities on cultural issues, but more importantly, they must finally accept that Trump, an inveterate disruptor, displaced the fading conflict between “liberalism” and “conservatism” by co-opting the issues and resentments that mainstream leaders from both parties had neglected for years.

And to break his spell over Americans who are at turns angry and striving, Democrats must grasp that the new juxtaposition is not, in essence, between Trumpism and anti-Trumpism—an erroneous framing that magnifies the Democrats’ own ideological baggage while muzzling the politics of solidarity and shared progress. It is the choice between lies and boasts, which nevertheless speak to legitimate feelings of national decline and disenfranchisement, and a civic nationalism that measurably empowers ordinary Americans to build more rewarding and purposeful lives. Anything else is unapt to deal with how Trump has repeatedly defied his own historical unpopularity and transformed the party system over the last decade.

To understand the task before them, Democrats must trace how the terms “liberalism” and “conservatism” have diminished profoundly in their capacity to reflect the preferences, aspirations, and fears shaping the post-Great Recession electorate. Not long ago the contours of party competition—the ideas, goals, problems, and constituencies over which the Democratic and Republican parties typically fought—were thought to correspond to this basic ideological conflict, forged between the Progressive Era and Great Depression.

Potent continuities within the parties with respect to the tendencies and values they stood for reinforced the strength of these organizing paradigms in the face of new challenges. Although the 1960s civil rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests had placed enormous pressure on New Deal-style liberals to adapt and consequentially mobilized new or previously repressed interests while pushing out Dixiecrats and others opposed to that era’s rebellions against authority and social conformity, liberalism as a fairly cohesive philosophy of active government oriented to material concerns and social uplift, like its “limited government” counterpart, remained legible. Notwithstanding new cultural “wedge” issues, an international crisis or economic shock, or other major world-historical event, the salience of class and the established cleavages over the state’s role in the economy and society were expected by most politicians, experts, and laypeople to endure.

A related source of continuity was liberalism’s dominance of American life even in times of electoral defeat. Politics revolved around its strengths and vulnerabilities, as reflected in the opposition it inspired: moralistic “movement conservatism” and neoliberal-libertarian economic thought. After setting the tempo of national politics for the better part of four decades, liberalism fell into a defensive posture amid the drift and stagnation of the Seventies. Neither political coalition, however, was able to fully dominate the party system between 1968 and 2014, a period of hastening technological and cultural change and “silent” revolutions in the labor market.

Despite the landslide presidential elections of 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988—all won by the Republican nominee—divided government was more common than not. Even during the high tide of the Reagan Revolution, split-ticket voting was significant, as demonstrated by the “Reagan Democrat” phenomenon. In addition, the rise of a Sun Belt-oriented Republican Party powered by white evangelicals did not result in regional polarization as we understand it today. In key elections, the battleground states numbered between 10 and 15, and the South continued to elect liberal-leaning Democrats, not just post-Dixiecrat “Boll Weevil” types, until the mid-1990s.

Underlying this era of supposed reaction was a hunger for pragmatism and rejuvenation. It seems laughably facile now, but the country responded best to leaders like Reagan and Bill Clinton, who painted the 21st century as one of imminent great leaps. Though industrial decline, offshoring, and corporate raiding were recurring themes, the electorate was far less pessimistic than it is today. Accordingly, the parties competed over suburban moderates who were generally pro-trade (including gainfully employed but price-sensitive “soccer moms”), entrepreneurial immigrants, and college-educated professionals poised to thrive in the ascendant knowledge economy.

This zone of competition had a “moderating” effect on both parties, but it was one that ultimately accelerated globalization and diluted class issues, to liberalism’s detriment. Democrats became ambivalent about their past achievements and uncertain over what to prioritize. The growing infatuation with Silicon Valley and global trade attenuated, in particular, their party’s pursuit of traditional social-democratic demands like full employment and national health insurance, while curtailing support for the economic nationalism of voices such as Richard Gephardt, David Bonior, Marcy Kaptur, Fritz Hollings, and Sherrod Brown—Democrats who understood the implications of outsourcing the industrial base and sundering ties with blue-collar workers.

Within Republican ranks the effect similarly weakened conservatism’s coherence. It is true, of course, that Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution” pushed the party in a radically libertarian direction. But the imperative to remain viable with voters who benefitted from globalization, and had thus adopted a more “global” and culturally liberal outlook, also tempered the influence of the religious right and “paleoconservative” opponents of globalization. And it initially worked to the GOP’s advantage. In fact, it was the secret ingredient to a very different Republican majority envisioned at the start of this century, before the wreckage of Iraq, the foreclosure crisis, and the financial meltdown destroyed the GOP establishment’s credibility. Though George W. Bush was often derided for failing to live up to his promise to be a “uniter, not a divider,” his brand of “compassionate conservatism,” overtures to Latinos, and invocations of Harry Truman, FDR’s successor, to support his administration’s “War on Terror” and global trade agenda all reflected the conviction that modern conservatism had to deepen its appeal to voters’ aspirations, rather than exalt the past.

The pressure on both parties to court proverbial swing voters did not entirely suppress the old class divide, however. While the culture wars, D.C. scandals, and foreign policy debates routinely dominated the new 24-hour news cycle, the conflict between liberalism and conservatism could not be understood without its class basis. National Democrats who did not share Bill Clinton’s folksy charm were frequently lampooned for listless rhetoric, the byproduct of futile efforts to decipher the exact preferences of swing voters in a rapidly changing world. But members from all regions continued to cast the main choice in politics as one between help and opportunity for working families and the further enrichment of the country’s elites. Nearly forgotten now, the strength of the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterms was due to populist candidates who took a stand against offshoring, shareholder primacy, and the explosion in tax-sheltered global conglomerates.

That outcome reaffirmed a general rule of politics. Even though the age of globalization had succeeded the New Deal order, Democrats still needed to mobilize a large share of non-college-educated industrial and manual workers in order to win. To simply be a Democrat required this affinity, regardless of whether one identified as a “liberal,” “new,” “progressive,” or “independent” Democrat.

Democrats nevertheless took it for granted that, with a little effort, they could preserve their reduced but still vital share of the blue-collar vote. As the electorate diversified, manufacturing jobs disappeared, and social conservatism lost its appeal, it seemed that Democrats were favored to win by embracing economic openness, advance-degree holders, and multiculturalism—just as long as they continued to defend Social Security and other flagship anti-poverty programs against the anti-government zealots gaining force in the congressional GOP.

In hindsight, Barack Obama was the ultimate bridge candidate. His election in 2008 thrust young and college-educated millennials, then the country’s most ethnically diverse generation, into the political arena. But he depended on rallying enough of the old New Deal-Great Society coalition in counties and regions Democrats have since ceded to the GOP. Obama then famously won reelection amid a sour economy by tarring his opponent, Mitt Romney, as an unfeeling plutocrat. Still, most Democrats refused the populist “rebuild America” path that the 2006 results pointed to and that the 2008 global financial crisis and Wall Street bailouts had seemingly made urgent. Instead, they succumbed to the fatal habit of acting as the custodians of both government and globalization, an outwardly “progressive” but fundamentally conservative posture marked by a still more conservative suspicion of the neo-Jacksonian contempt for “crony capitalism” that was spreading across the political spectrum.

The changes since catalyzed by Trump underscore that the parties no longer resemble the fundamental coalitions of yesteryear. Indeed, Trump’s arrival scrambled a number of battle lines while amplifying the party system shifts that were underway a generation ago. His 2016 campaign was laden with chauvinistic and reactionary rhetoric, yet he won the Electoral College by attacking globalization and the GOP establishment in ways that recalled the unheeded warnings of liberal and populist Democrats.

In substance, that victory did not overturn every tenet of neoconservative globalism, which had justified preemptive military action against “rogue states” hostile to American interests and pruning the last pillars of the New Deal-era regulation. But Trump either leveled or refashioned the policy networks that had cultivated the foot soldiers of the Reagan revolution and exiled many of the families and personnel who had dominated the party since then. Most significantly, he polarized the electorate over immigration in ways that forced Democrats to erase or renounce their past support for reforms anchored by tougher enforcement. Together, these moves forged a Republican base that was more blue-collar, populist, and isolationist in spirit, even as most Republican officeholders remained subservient to corporate lobbies.

The Democratic coalition, still roiled by the 2016 primary fight between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, underwent a conflicted transformation in response. Trump’s first-term priorities—his regressive tax cuts, attempts to repeal Obamacare, and aggressive curbs on immigration—galvanized strong opposition, linking older liberals and younger progressives taken to represent the Democrats’ “rising American electorate.” But Trump’s “America First” agenda also provoked Democrats to mistakenly try to combine two disparate approaches. One was to double down on the cultural and economic benefits of higher rates of immigration and free trade, as well as the inherent value of keeping the “liberal international order” intact (rather than reforming its architecture); the other was to get revenge on Trump by pursuing industrial and competition policies that might actually win back working-class voters drawn to his combative, anti-establishment message.

The results seemed to only intensify the fault lines in the electorate. Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, likely aided by the pandemic, yielded an administration that struggled to accommodate and synthesize different ideas of progressive change. Some may argue the problem lay more with an aging Biden and his inept handling of inflation than the policy mix on offer. But neither Biden’s scattered overtures to economic nationalists and anti-monopolists, nor his climate agenda, nor his forgiveness of five million Americans’ student debt, nor his elevation of identity politics and permissive border policy seemed to satisfy base Democrats, much less improve his party’s competitiveness in the swing states. Trump, without curbing his demagoguery and authoritarian instincts, then capitalized on the backlash to inflation, the border crisis, and the most militant demands of “woke” activists. The 2024 election produced the most diverse Republican coalition in decades, to the dismay of Democrats who thought demographics and ideology were on their side.

The last year has consequently seen many Democrats and liberal-leaning pundits agonize over what the party stands for. It is implicitly acknowledged that identity-driven progressivism, or “neo-progressivism,” gradually superseded liberalism on the false promise that it would mobilize untapped minorities and dramatically expand the Democratic fold. That strategy may have had a good intent, premised in part on continuing Obama’s original grassroots vote drive. But for all their professed concern over injustice, the neo-progressives were hamstrung by their dismissal of Rust Belt hardship. Despite their own justified fears of downward mobility, they struggled to fathom the strange despair of being a citizen without agency, idle in a world of change without hope.

Some party reformers wager liberalism can be reconstructed through a return to first principles. Others, though, have wondered if a return to traditional American liberalism is truly possible, or if it has entered its final throes, rendered impotent by its own betrayals and inconsistencies. Liberalism’s persistent challenge following the end of the New Deal order was to “conserve” its most popular programs while retaking the lead in being the primary political force of development and modernization. For a time, the path taken to manage globalization gave Democrats the impression they could reconcile these imperatives. Yet it was that very tendency to manage and contain expectations that belied their pretense of a greater vision at work. When that was no longer tenable, the belated answer to working-class voters who had left the tent was to serve up, under Biden, some version of liberalism’s greatest hits, with little of the political infrastructure required to make it stick and improve people’s lives.

Shaken from their stupor, Democrats are beginning to admit that to do great things, they must have a pulse in left-behind communities. But if there is one thing Democrats must do first to turn the tide, it is to abandon the politics of fear, which so evidently dictates their navigation of the Trump era. This fear is putatively about Trump’s threat to democracy, but it betrays a disbelief about the country as it is, a country that Democrats, in their characteristically self-defeating way, are reluctant to win. This peculiar form of arrogance helps explain why the party has grown so insular. Democrats are paralyzed by the thought they do not recognize the society they had hoped to shepherd into the 21st century, failing to realize that, for too many Americans, liberalism itself has become unrecognizable.

It will take more than a few happy warriors to restore the people’s goodwill. Democrats, still vexed over how to fight without alienating powerful interests, are haunted by their need for a Rooseveltian savior. And need one they may. Yet the leadership the party needs most is not a hidden force waiting to be discovered. It is something to be built in the hardest places, cultivated in the belief that there is a civic life and national purpose worth saving.

Subscribe now

Share

Dutch conservative populist Geert Wilders’ defeat in the recent general election seems superficially to be good news for the European center-left. It is in fact nothing of the sort—indeed, far from it.

The fact is that conservative populism’s appeal shows every sign of growth in most nations. That, not the occasional center-left victories or polling leads, is the primary lesson from 2025’s global political elections and trends.

Holland’s late October vote is a case in point. Yes, Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV) lost 11 seats, declining from 37 to 26 in the 150-seat lower house. But most of those were picked up by two other conservative populist parties, JA21 and the Forum for Democracy (FvD). In fact, the four right-populist parties won 46 seats between them, only two fewer than in the 2023 vote that elevated Wilders.

Elections in the Czech Republic and Poland were further examples that establishment coalitions combining non-populist parties from the center-left to the center-right are losing ground. The European Union’s bete noire, the Law and Justice party, won this June’s presidential election, while former prime minister Andrej Babis’ Yes (ANO) party will form a government combining three right-populist parties following that coalition’s decisive win in early October.

Grand coalitions are faring no better in Western Europe. Denmark’s three-party government is polling under 35 percent with elections coming next year. Conservative populist parties, once thought to have been extinguished by the Social Democrats’ adoption of their migration policies, are on the rise in polls. The three right-populist parties are getting around 20 percent in recent polls, up from about 14 percent in 2022’s election.

Germany, France, and Austria’s centrist governments are also falling fast in the polls. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) now leads in many polls, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and allies to its right have gained 6 points just since last July’s vote. Austria’s three-party government is in free fall, dropping from a combined 56 percent in last September’s election to 49 percent. The right-populist Freedom Party (FPÖ) has soared 8 points in that span and now easily leads all polls.

Even apparent victories haven’t curbed populism’s appeal. Romanian establishment parties rallied to beat populist George Simion in this year’s rescheduled presidential election, but Simion won a massive 46 percent, and his party easily leads in polls for parliament. Portugal’s center-right Democracy Alliance (AD) won this summer’s snap election, but the populist Chega surpassed the center-left Socialists to become that nation’s second-strongest party. Polling in recent months shows Chega is even stronger today.

The result is clear. Conservative populists have received nearly a quarter of the vote in the most recent national elections in thirty European countries, according to recent data. These data understate the true level of populist backing, as they exclude the polling surges mentioned earlier as well as those found in countries like Great Britain, where polls show support for Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has more than doubled since last year’s election.

The populist trend isn’t just found in Europe. Chile’s election polls show that two conservative populists, Jose Kast and Johannes Kaiser, are getting around 35 percent between them, more than all left-leaning candidates combined. A massive surge in illegal immigration, as elsewhere, is one reason for this surge.

Even nations with low levels of illegal migration, however, are seeing strong populist gains. Australia’s Labor Party won an historic victory in May but is already slightly behind its first preference support in recent polls. Populist right icon Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, meanwhile, has more than doubled in support.

One country is a point, two might be a coincidence, but thirty-two is as clear a trend as you’re going to see. One could name even more, but the point is clear: conservative populism’s support is rising.

The reason why isn’t difficult to discern. No major country has solved the problems stemming from slow economic growth and its unequal distribution among citizens. Neither has any stopped the culture wars that the combination of woke social policy and mass immigration has created. Throw in the unstable international situation, and it’s easy to see why people are looking at radical alternatives.

It’s much harder to think about how establishment parties can counteract the trend. Adopting tough asylum policies can help, but Denmark proves it’s not a panacea. Restoring widely shared economic growth and cultural stability seems also to be important, but those are challenges that might be beyond establishment thinking.

Center-left and center-right still support climate policies that, on the margin, impose heavy costs on people who drive or whose jobs use a lot of fossil fuels (think farmers and heavy industry). It’s not coincidental that the party that gave Babis his majority is named Motorists for Themselves.

They also still shy away from implementing the mass deportation policies that many voters favor. Center-left parties in particular may be willing to stop the immigrant inflow but have thus far balked at pushing out the millions of recent migrants whose asylum claims are often dubious. American progressive resistance to President Trump’s ICE raids is just one example of this phenomenon.

Cultural issues also matter to many populist voters. Those concerns differ from country to country: abortion is an issue for the right in America and Poland but not in most of Western Europe, for example. It’s not uncommon, however, for conservative populists to talk proudly about their national heritage and push back against woke narratives about colonization and race.

Conservative populists also tend to vociferously oppose the trans agenda even as they normally back gay and lesbian rights. AfD leader Alice Weidel is an example of this. A lesbian married mother, she nonetheless shares her party’s opposition to gender ideology and supports the traditional family as a social bedrock.

These trends are posing serious challenges to the global center-right, too. While many populist voters are former adherents to the left, perhaps more are defecting from more establishment-focused center-right parties. They, too, are burdened by their roles in creating the neoliberal, global, socially progressive order against which conservative populists rebel.

Those parties, however, can often find it easier to accommodate—and therefore moderate—the populists’ concerns. Center-right parties in Sweden, Norway, Italy, and Finland have all allied with populists to their right in government, often to mutual benefit. Establishment Republicans are often unhappy with their subordinate role in the new GOP, but they retain influence because they have chosen to stay in the broad conservative tent. Trump’s two large tax cut bills should be thought of as gifts to the old guard to keep them in the coalition rather than any priority for Trump himself.

Center-left politicians, however, face potential rebellion from their base voters if they move to conciliate populist preferences. Britain’s Green Party and the nascent Your Party are essentially leftist rebellions against Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s unsteady and inconsistent efforts to combat Reform’s rise. Recent polls show the Greens soaring since the election of young ultra-progressive Zack Polanski as their new leader, even surpassing Labour in some surveys.

Nor is it clear that a left-populist approach melding left-wing economics with right-wing immigration policy will attract former voters. Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht tried that angle when she left the former-Communist Left Party to establish her own party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). Its support faded during this year’s campaign, and the party finished just below the five percent needed to gain parliamentary representation.

Meanwhile, the seemingly doomed Left Party revitalized itself by choosing a 36-year-old woman, Heidi Reichinnek, as its co-leader for the campaign. Her fiery opposition to AfD and sophisticated social media presence catapulted her party from 3 percent in January polls to nearly 9 percent of the vote on election day. Today the Left Party averages around 11 percent in polls, while Wagenknecht recently stepped down from leading her eponymous party.

The left won’t tolerate moving right, while moving right may not win back the voters the center-left needs. That’s the conundrum facing mainstream opponents to the right, and there’s no easy way out.

Resisting the rightward populist drift from the left probably requires some combination of ramping up economic growth, reversing immigration flows, and slowing down the steady drift toward progressive social and climate fighting goals. How leaders like Australia’s Anthony Albanese, Canada’s Mark Carney, and Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre fare in this effort in the coming years will provide a clear test of whether such a strategy is politically and economically feasible.

American Democrats who want to move in that direction, like the authors of the recent study “Deciding to Win,” must overcome an obstacle no other center-left movement faces: mass voter primary elections. Other parties select their leaders and platforms largely behind closed doors. America’s open primary process means over 36 million voters will decide what path its left will take.

Threading that needle in open, multi-candidate combat will be difficult for party centrists. The lure of the White House means they won’t have the clear primary field Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger had in Virginia. There will be a strong progressive challenger, someone who will emerge as the champion of what former Vermont Governor Howard Dean called in the 2004 primaries “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” That person will have a large and eager audience ready to hear their message.

More than 60 percent of 2020 Democratic presidential primary voters called themselves very or somewhat liberal, according to the exit polls, a sea change from 1992, when centrist Bill Clinton won the nomination. Those voters tend to hold strong views on climate change, immigration, democracy, and progressive social issues that many Democratic centrists believe hold the party back. It’s much likelier that the eventual nominee conciliates those voters to unite the party rather than breaks with them to appeal to swing voters.

A Republican candidate’s unpopularity will not save the Democratic nominee. Trump has won two elections because he was the overwhelming choice of voters who disliked both candidates. It seems that faced with a selection between someone who is viewed as too populist and one who is viewed as too progressive, the populist wins.

That may seem to be a bleak prognosis for some, but one cannot cure an illness that remains undiagnosed. It remains far more likely that the Western world is about to enter a populist era than it is to return to normalcy.

Henry Olsen is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and host of the weekly podcast, Beyond the Polls.

Subscribe now

Share

Last week, I wrote about the Democrats’ lack of a compelling vision for the country that goes beyond not being Trump. Even the nascent abundance movement, which has only modest buy-in from party actors, has shortcomings that undercut its ability to play that role. I noted that I would be attending the Progress 2025 Conference in Berkeley—a gathering of the tribes that make up the loosely-organized “progress movement”—to see what that movement might offer a party in search of a vision.

Here are my impressions:

1. There was more political diversity than among abundance advocates who tend to lean a bit left and mostly aspire to be a faction within the Democratic Party. The progress movement/studies umbrella includes such people but also many who lean right and/or libertarian and don’t have much use for the Democrats.

2. There was an entrepreneurial, as opposed to technocratic, feel to the crowd and many of the discussions, not least because there were quite a few startup founders and VCs present. That’s not to say there weren’t quite a few policy wonks too, but the entrepreneurial vibe helped give a sense of people creating progress, rather than twisting policy dials to help it along.

3. There was a fierce and generalized techno-optimism to the crowd that far surpassed what you see in Democratic-oriented abundance circles where it tends to be focused on favored goals like clean energy. These are people who deeply believe in the potential of technological advance and the process of scientific discovery that leads to such advance—”the endless frontier” if you will.

4. There was a great deal of talk about AI and how it might fit into progress goals. Not surprising I suppose, given that the conference was in the Bay Area where AI research and companies are concentrated. Also not surprisingly there was also a considerable amount of dreamy hand-waving about all the wonderful transformations AI will bring to the economy and society. But they’re not wrong that the potential is immense if AI is, in fact, a new general purpose technology (GPT).

5. There was a notable proximity to economic power, in that a figure like Sam Altman came and spoke to the conference. Whatever one thinks of Altman and OpenAI, this added a certain heft to the proceedings. The tech sector is now regarded with suspicion in Democratic circles but it is enormously rich and powerful and must be reckoned with.

6. Very interestingly, there was a presence of “American Dynamism” figures and sympathizers at the conference. ChatGPT provides this summary:

“American Dynamism” is a relatively new term and movement/investment thesis championed by the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (often “a16z”) that calls for a renewed focus on large-scale technology and infrastructure development in the U.S., particularly in sectors tied to national interest.

Key points:

• It’s not just about software startups. It emphasizes “hard tech” (e.g., manufacturing, aerospace, defense, physical infrastructure) as essential.

• It frames this work as patriotic and foundational: “innovation, progress, and resilience that drives the United States forward.”

• The movement sees the U.S. as needing to rebuild its capacity to “make things,” be resilient in supply chains, and maintain technological leadership.

This unabashed patriotism, emphasis on the national interest, and commitment to hard, real world achievements harks back to the midcentury era of vast American accomplishment in competition with the Soviet Union.

Share

There is much Democrats can learn from these varied aspects of the progress movement and incorporate into their own vision for the country. I would include:

• Appeal across the political spectrum

• An emphasis on entrepreneurialism and creativity rather than technocracy

• A generalized techno-optimism and promotion of the endless frontier of scientific achievement

• Treating AI seriously as a GPT that could increase economy-wide productivity

• Positive engagement with, rather than simply trying to regulate, new loci of economic power

• Melding technical advance, infrastructural development and economic growth with the patriotic imperatives of geopolitical competition.

These points could help the Democrats move beyond a technocratic abundance framing to a broader vision of scientific achievement and national development that could capture the imagination of ordinary Americans in a way the space race did but current Democratic priorities do not. Consider the story of October Sky, aka Rocket Boys, for an example of the spirit Democrats need to cultivate:

It was 1957, the year Sputnik raced across the Appalachian sky, and the small town of Coalwood, West Virginia, was slowly dying. Faced with an uncertain future, Sonny Hickam (aka Homer Hickam, Jr.) nurtured a dream: to learn how to build a rocket so he could work in the space business. The introspective son of Homer Hickam, the mine superintendent, and Elsie Lavender Hickam, a woman determined to get her sons out of Coalwood forever, Sonny gathered in five other boys and convinced them to help him. Along the way, the boys learn not only how to turn scraps of metal into sophisticated rockets but manage to give the people of Coalwood hope that the future will be brighter, at least for their children. As Sonny’s parents fight in different ways to save their sons, and the people of Coalwood come together to help their Rocket Boys, Sonny and the Big Creek Missile Agency light up the sky with their flaming projectiles and dreams of glory.

I cannot recommend the book (and the movie based on it) too highly. If Democrats are to have a prayer of breaking the right-populist spell on American politics they need to leave their cultural obsessions and dead-end leftism behind and figure out how to kindle the entrepreneurial spirit and sense of mission from October Sky in tens of millions of Americans, especially young people. The alternative is continued stasis in American politics or, worse, that Republicans will do the same thing in their own way. Democrats discount this possibility at their peril.

Subscribe now

Share