Seven Principles for a 21st Century Left

Their mission, should they choose to accept it.

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.

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