The Future of the Left in the 21st Century

Part one of three.

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!