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.
John, this is a thoughtful piece, and I agree with your core concern that Democrats lack a coherent framework people can see and trust.
One thing I’d add is that political philosophy alone isn’t enough. Governing parties also need a way to think about how systems actually work when they’re functioning well. Two thinkers who helped me with that, outside of politics, are David Hanna and W. Edwards Deming.
Hanna’s point is straightforward but demanding: systems only work when their objectives are clear, legitimate, and accepted by the people they affect. If Democrats believe in an interventionist government, then they have to be especially disciplined about objectives, not just good intentions, but goals people can understand and recognize as reasonable.
Deming adds another lens that I think cuts across ideology. He taught that rework is a signal that something upstream in the system isn’t working. In that sense, large or growing social welfare spending can be read not as a moral failure or success, but as evidence that other systems (work, housing, education, healthcare) aren’t doing what they should.
A current example is the ongoing fight in Congress over additional healthcare subsidies. Regardless of where one comes down, the very persistence of this debate is a form of rework. It tells us something important about the broader healthcare system and about the structure of Obamacare, that continues to require downstream fixes. Yet the debate is almost always framed as a moral one, when at root it is a system design problem.
Many people react negatively to what feels like endless rework. They may not use that language, but they sense the system isn’t fixing root problems. Until Democrats get better at recognizing what rework is telling them, and then redesigning systems to reduce it, they’re going to continue to struggle with legitimacy across a broad part of the electorate.
Rawls provides a strong moral framework. Hanna and Deming help explain how to make any framework actually work in practice.
Today's GOP just happens to be nearer to the center of a political continuum that has pulled center-Left, courtesy of self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists and very Left-leaning 80/20 policy pronouncements more mocked than serious.
The Democratic Left in its 20s during the campus radical protests and urban unrest late 1960s and early 1970s are -- at least those who have not crossed over to the other side -- today's geriatric retirees, older but hardly wiser; of shallow thought and even weaker energy.
A political void, to be sure, and precious little "free stuff" to fill it with for free.