So what stood out to me is that the ‘hard sell’ proposals are approved by a majority of ‘moderates’ as well, with the one exception being abolish ICE.
This tells me what I’ve felt for awhile … the Democratic Party has ,as a whole, moved further to the left. It is what it is, but I’m not interested in that.
Just remember that the left has been moving farther and the farther to the left:
- They're to the left of Bill Clinton
- They're to the left of term 1 Obama
- They're to the left of term 2 Obama
- They're to the left of Biden's actual policies
- They're to the the of where they were in November 2024
So I don't think its a matter of "resisting" the Siren call of the Left so much as doing a giant swan dive into the middle of it, like Scrooge McDuck into his swimming pool of gold.
Excellent research, but Talarico's Nov success in Texas, or lack thereof, is going to determine much for Dems in 2028. If Dems can sell a Democratic Socialist as a moderate, in Texas, and win, Dems will continue to move ever more Left. Why wouldn't they, if they can win with different packaging, rather than different policies?
Dems successfully sold Spanberger as a moderate last November. It took a day for Spanberger to declare VA a Sanctuary State. Dozens of new tax proposals followed.
It took another month or two for an undocumented man to brutally murder a VA Mother at a bus stop. The murderer, with 30 previous charges and various convictions, some violent, was never deported, despite repeated crimes spanning more than a decade.
At that point, even Reps expected a Spangerber speech, promising to hunt down any other predators dwelling illegally and preying on VA women. Many expected the new Governor to promise the harshest punishment allowed by law, followed by swift deportation.
Instead Spanberger felt compelled to announce a judicial warrant would be required to release the predator to ICE. In other words, if a technicality released the monster from jail, the VA Gov would refuse to hand over the violent repeat offender to ICE, as normally transferred. Without the extra step of a judicial warrant, the predator would walk out of jail, free of incarceration and deportation, to kill yet again.
Spanberger's declaration amounted to a new Dem Immigration White Paper. As long as Dems are running the show, all are welcome and all can stay forever, including those who stab to death 40 year old American Mothers, for kicks. The most disturbing aspect is, if Talarico wins in Texas in Nov, we haven't seen anything yet.
"Common sense" is becoming a politial epithet. To use it is to imply that whoever disagrees with you does not even have common sense. Ideas which Teixeira calls "common sense" include widening the Affordable Care Act, subsidies for energy production of all types, and amnesty for most illegal aliens. The people he implies lack common sense will answer in kind, saying that it is only common sense not to widen the Affordable Care Act in view of the failures of the original. They will say that it is not only common sense but common experience that subsidies for renewable energy have not made energy cheaper. Since the last amnesty for illegal aliens encouraged millions more illegal immigrants, it is only common sense that another amnesty will attract millions more. It's simply common sense!
Ah the old “let’s stop arguing about right versus left and come together as Americans who support common sense policies like open borders and climate justice!”
According to the New Democrat Coalition, "We believe common-sense tax reform can drive economic growth, create good, well-paying jobs, expand American innovation, and help address national priorities such as lowering child care costs, making quality health care more affordable, and tackling our national housing shortage. "
That's quite a return on common sense. And, don't forget "common sense gun control laws."
Much useful data here. Boil it down to a conclusion: there is no hope for a genuine moderate to win the Democratic nomination for President in 2028. The highest propensity voters in Democratic primaries - the hardcore Left - will comprise a large majority of the actual voters in those contests. Once a clearcut favorite from the Left emerges after a few primaries, that candidate will quickly overwhelm any genuine moderate and become the nominee for the general election.
Here is the most revealing statistic: "...abolishing ICE and ending interior immigration enforcement has 79 percent support among the very liberal, 80 percent among socialists, 79 percent among progressives but is actually net negative among moderates (47 percent support vs. 53 percent opposition)." Almost half of moderates favor allowing anyone who enters the country to stay forever - no interior immigration enforcement. The missing question goes something like this: "The current Trump administration has almost totally closed the southern border to illegal entry and to people who claim asylum. Do you favor or oppose that policy?"
80+% of the hardcore Left opposes even that kind of border security, and it's likely that 25+% of so-called moderates do, too. That's open borders - no restriction on immigration - which is what a large majority of Democratic primary voters now favors. If Republicans restrain the excesses of ICE, immigration will likely be a major issue in 2028 in their favor.
This data is a useful window into the primary electorate, but I’m not sure the key failure mode is that voters accidentally pick a non-electable progressive. I think the deeper issue is that Democrats often cannot credibly commit to the kind of governing identity they present during the general election.
Even when nominees run as pragmatic and focused on normal governance, once elected voters often perceive the administration shifting in a more progressive direction. Part of that perception comes from the party infrastructure that helped elect them, including activist groups, donors, staff networks, and policy advocates who expect their priorities to shape governing decisions. As a result, voters frequently perceive the administration as dominated by progressive cultural priorities. Issues like the reach of DEI programs, immigration enforcement credibility, youth gender debates, and climate policy framed as an elite project all feed that perception. Whether every detail of that perception is fair almost becomes secondary. Those signals tend to stack together into one story for voters: “Democrats are too liberal,” and that erodes trust.
Because of that, the challenge for 2028 is bigger than simply choosing someone who polls well against Republicans. The nominee has to show that they can actually govern with visible restraint, accept tradeoffs, and set boundaries when necessary.
That challenge may be even harder because the 2028 election is unlikely to revolve only around cultural issues. Foreign policy, AI, immigration, and Social Security financing are likely to be central. Those are big, complicated governing questions. The party will need a candidate who can talk about those tradeoffs clearly and credibly, and who can occasionally disappoint parts of their own coalition without being destroyed in the primary process.
You wrote a great ending sentence: "The party will need a candidate who can talk about those tradeoffs clearly and credibly, and who can occasionally disappoint parts of their own coalition without being destroyed in the primary process."
Both parties need such candidates, and even more important, the country needs lots of elected leaders who educate voters that there are ALWAYS tradeoffs in every public policy, in every part of life. We've had decades of politicians promising all kinds of stuff, rarely/never accompanied by the tradeoffs involved. Santa and the Tooth Fairy are always popular.
"Naturally, liberals are to the left of moderates on most questions..."
Ruy, another excellent article. However, I would nitpick the use of the term "liberal." A true liberal, a.k.a. classical liberal, does not believe in government interfering in people's lives and enforcing their edicts at gunpoint.
Ruy has been beating that dead horse till it’s a thin paste.
The only way the democrats will refocus on the real world is to get gift wrapped in November. Their socialist leadership has nothing to lose and they control the money flow…which is really all the professionals care about. That’s why they structure marketing campaigns, not policies.
I think this is a very useful analysis, such as I'd hope for from Mr. Teixeira.
It's historically normal for a party to run on a platform that leans towards the center and then to try to govern more from the direction, Left or Right, that inspired the vision of the party's base. When the system is healthy, Congress is the critical institution for enactment of policy through legislation, and the institution of the filibuster super-majority requirement slows the degree to which the expected extra lean to the Left or Right can occur. Those on the Right can complain as they want about the likelihood that a Democratic administration will lean more to the Left than its presidential candidate (as was true of the early Biden administration), the same will be true of a GOP administration -- even one that campaigns as far to the right as the current president did.
The greatest insurance that true conservatives have against overreach by a Democratic administration in 2029-2033 is the strength of any GOP delegation in the Senate, the continued existence of the filibuster, and the Democratic record calling for the restoration of Congress's role in constraining the executive. I think that long-term that last will require a Constitutional amendment reversing some of the SCOTUS decisions friendly to the "Unified Executive" theory, and such an amendment is *far* more likely to succeed in our political culture if there is a Democrat in the White House representing the Executive being constrained.
They need to moderate on immigration and trans issues (sports, prisons, locker rooms). There should be some breathing room between democrats and teachers unions (government worker unions). They can go left on foreign policy (Israel, war).
MG, The problem with this simple formulation is that the objection many liberals and progressives have to the extreme "winners" in the current economy is that their success comes largely from rent-seeking behavior: exploiting monopoly or semi-monopoly market positions to accrue astronomical profits to reap for themselves and their investors while decreasing value to those who have become dependent on their products. (In the US this is also associated with concentrated investments in political campaigns to ensure ongoing protected treatment.) This behavior used to be seen as "predatory" and was pretty effectively constrained by antitrust laws for close to a century.
Rent-seeking behavior is not free-market behavior. It's one way free markets are broken (the others are, obviously, communism and fascism). It is normal for markets to exhibit some degree of rent-seeking behavior -- after all, it emerges from profit-seeking behavior which is the driver of capitalist free markets -- but the purpose of regulatory discipline is to ensure that it does not shift the outcome of free markets from big-winners/society-wins to huge-winners/most-everyone-else-loses, which is the direction unregulated free market were taking economies in the US and Western Europe around the turn of the 20th century.
An ultra-conservative statesman, Otto von Bismarck, was among the first to recognize that the only certain way for a free-market state to prevent a communist or populist revolution in the long run was through some degree of regulation and redistribution. The rise in the percent of Americans calling for regulation and "wealth" taxation (which I don't support) reflects the very evident failure of current policies to produce the promise of "all boats rising," and the growing size and splendor of the "yachts" built on behavior that past generations would have recognized as predatory and a danger to the long-term success of capitalism.
I don't think it's progressive to allow biological men to compete in women's sports. I see it as misogynistic.
So what stood out to me is that the ‘hard sell’ proposals are approved by a majority of ‘moderates’ as well, with the one exception being abolish ICE.
This tells me what I’ve felt for awhile … the Democratic Party has ,as a whole, moved further to the left. It is what it is, but I’m not interested in that.
Just remember that the left has been moving farther and the farther to the left:
- They're to the left of Bill Clinton
- They're to the left of term 1 Obama
- They're to the left of term 2 Obama
- They're to the left of Biden's actual policies
- They're to the the of where they were in November 2024
So I don't think its a matter of "resisting" the Siren call of the Left so much as doing a giant swan dive into the middle of it, like Scrooge McDuck into his swimming pool of gold.
Nice breakdown. You left out the part where the party leadership will pick the candidate.
Excellent research, but Talarico's Nov success in Texas, or lack thereof, is going to determine much for Dems in 2028. If Dems can sell a Democratic Socialist as a moderate, in Texas, and win, Dems will continue to move ever more Left. Why wouldn't they, if they can win with different packaging, rather than different policies?
Dems successfully sold Spanberger as a moderate last November. It took a day for Spanberger to declare VA a Sanctuary State. Dozens of new tax proposals followed.
It took another month or two for an undocumented man to brutally murder a VA Mother at a bus stop. The murderer, with 30 previous charges and various convictions, some violent, was never deported, despite repeated crimes spanning more than a decade.
At that point, even Reps expected a Spangerber speech, promising to hunt down any other predators dwelling illegally and preying on VA women. Many expected the new Governor to promise the harshest punishment allowed by law, followed by swift deportation.
Instead Spanberger felt compelled to announce a judicial warrant would be required to release the predator to ICE. In other words, if a technicality released the monster from jail, the VA Gov would refuse to hand over the violent repeat offender to ICE, as normally transferred. Without the extra step of a judicial warrant, the predator would walk out of jail, free of incarceration and deportation, to kill yet again.
Spanberger's declaration amounted to a new Dem Immigration White Paper. As long as Dems are running the show, all are welcome and all can stay forever, including those who stab to death 40 year old American Mothers, for kicks. The most disturbing aspect is, if Talarico wins in Texas in Nov, we haven't seen anything yet.
"Common sense" is becoming a politial epithet. To use it is to imply that whoever disagrees with you does not even have common sense. Ideas which Teixeira calls "common sense" include widening the Affordable Care Act, subsidies for energy production of all types, and amnesty for most illegal aliens. The people he implies lack common sense will answer in kind, saying that it is only common sense not to widen the Affordable Care Act in view of the failures of the original. They will say that it is not only common sense but common experience that subsidies for renewable energy have not made energy cheaper. Since the last amnesty for illegal aliens encouraged millions more illegal immigrants, it is only common sense that another amnesty will attract millions more. It's simply common sense!
Ah the old “let’s stop arguing about right versus left and come together as Americans who support common sense policies like open borders and climate justice!”
According to the New Democrat Coalition, "We believe common-sense tax reform can drive economic growth, create good, well-paying jobs, expand American innovation, and help address national priorities such as lowering child care costs, making quality health care more affordable, and tackling our national housing shortage. "
That's quite a return on common sense. And, don't forget "common sense gun control laws."
Some great ideas that I'm sure will guarantee a Democrat wins all the Democratic primaries.
ha ha
Much useful data here. Boil it down to a conclusion: there is no hope for a genuine moderate to win the Democratic nomination for President in 2028. The highest propensity voters in Democratic primaries - the hardcore Left - will comprise a large majority of the actual voters in those contests. Once a clearcut favorite from the Left emerges after a few primaries, that candidate will quickly overwhelm any genuine moderate and become the nominee for the general election.
Here is the most revealing statistic: "...abolishing ICE and ending interior immigration enforcement has 79 percent support among the very liberal, 80 percent among socialists, 79 percent among progressives but is actually net negative among moderates (47 percent support vs. 53 percent opposition)." Almost half of moderates favor allowing anyone who enters the country to stay forever - no interior immigration enforcement. The missing question goes something like this: "The current Trump administration has almost totally closed the southern border to illegal entry and to people who claim asylum. Do you favor or oppose that policy?"
80+% of the hardcore Left opposes even that kind of border security, and it's likely that 25+% of so-called moderates do, too. That's open borders - no restriction on immigration - which is what a large majority of Democratic primary voters now favors. If Republicans restrain the excesses of ICE, immigration will likely be a major issue in 2028 in their favor.
Great comment.
This data is a useful window into the primary electorate, but I’m not sure the key failure mode is that voters accidentally pick a non-electable progressive. I think the deeper issue is that Democrats often cannot credibly commit to the kind of governing identity they present during the general election.
Even when nominees run as pragmatic and focused on normal governance, once elected voters often perceive the administration shifting in a more progressive direction. Part of that perception comes from the party infrastructure that helped elect them, including activist groups, donors, staff networks, and policy advocates who expect their priorities to shape governing decisions. As a result, voters frequently perceive the administration as dominated by progressive cultural priorities. Issues like the reach of DEI programs, immigration enforcement credibility, youth gender debates, and climate policy framed as an elite project all feed that perception. Whether every detail of that perception is fair almost becomes secondary. Those signals tend to stack together into one story for voters: “Democrats are too liberal,” and that erodes trust.
Because of that, the challenge for 2028 is bigger than simply choosing someone who polls well against Republicans. The nominee has to show that they can actually govern with visible restraint, accept tradeoffs, and set boundaries when necessary.
That challenge may be even harder because the 2028 election is unlikely to revolve only around cultural issues. Foreign policy, AI, immigration, and Social Security financing are likely to be central. Those are big, complicated governing questions. The party will need a candidate who can talk about those tradeoffs clearly and credibly, and who can occasionally disappoint parts of their own coalition without being destroyed in the primary process.
You wrote a great ending sentence: "The party will need a candidate who can talk about those tradeoffs clearly and credibly, and who can occasionally disappoint parts of their own coalition without being destroyed in the primary process."
Both parties need such candidates, and even more important, the country needs lots of elected leaders who educate voters that there are ALWAYS tradeoffs in every public policy, in every part of life. We've had decades of politicians promising all kinds of stuff, rarely/never accompanied by the tradeoffs involved. Santa and the Tooth Fairy are always popular.
And pretending you can confiscate the wealth of other's in order to fund the government with all it's entitlements is another fairy tale.
Discouraging.
"Naturally, liberals are to the left of moderates on most questions..."
Ruy, another excellent article. However, I would nitpick the use of the term "liberal." A true liberal, a.k.a. classical liberal, does not believe in government interfering in people's lives and enforcing their edicts at gunpoint.
Ruy has been beating that dead horse till it’s a thin paste.
The only way the democrats will refocus on the real world is to get gift wrapped in November. Their socialist leadership has nothing to lose and they control the money flow…which is really all the professionals care about. That’s why they structure marketing campaigns, not policies.
I think this is a very useful analysis, such as I'd hope for from Mr. Teixeira.
It's historically normal for a party to run on a platform that leans towards the center and then to try to govern more from the direction, Left or Right, that inspired the vision of the party's base. When the system is healthy, Congress is the critical institution for enactment of policy through legislation, and the institution of the filibuster super-majority requirement slows the degree to which the expected extra lean to the Left or Right can occur. Those on the Right can complain as they want about the likelihood that a Democratic administration will lean more to the Left than its presidential candidate (as was true of the early Biden administration), the same will be true of a GOP administration -- even one that campaigns as far to the right as the current president did.
The greatest insurance that true conservatives have against overreach by a Democratic administration in 2029-2033 is the strength of any GOP delegation in the Senate, the continued existence of the filibuster, and the Democratic record calling for the restoration of Congress's role in constraining the executive. I think that long-term that last will require a Constitutional amendment reversing some of the SCOTUS decisions friendly to the "Unified Executive" theory, and such an amendment is *far* more likely to succeed in our political culture if there is a Democrat in the White House representing the Executive being constrained.
They need to moderate on immigration and trans issues (sports, prisons, locker rooms). There should be some breathing room between democrats and teachers unions (government worker unions). They can go left on foreign policy (Israel, war).
75% of Americans, including 69% of Independents, support a wealth tax. https://theharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Americans-and-Billionaires-Survey-October-2025-Year-3-November-2025.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com
75% of Americans support the government taking money away from successful people and giving it to them. Big surprise.
MG, The problem with this simple formulation is that the objection many liberals and progressives have to the extreme "winners" in the current economy is that their success comes largely from rent-seeking behavior: exploiting monopoly or semi-monopoly market positions to accrue astronomical profits to reap for themselves and their investors while decreasing value to those who have become dependent on their products. (In the US this is also associated with concentrated investments in political campaigns to ensure ongoing protected treatment.) This behavior used to be seen as "predatory" and was pretty effectively constrained by antitrust laws for close to a century.
Rent-seeking behavior is not free-market behavior. It's one way free markets are broken (the others are, obviously, communism and fascism). It is normal for markets to exhibit some degree of rent-seeking behavior -- after all, it emerges from profit-seeking behavior which is the driver of capitalist free markets -- but the purpose of regulatory discipline is to ensure that it does not shift the outcome of free markets from big-winners/society-wins to huge-winners/most-everyone-else-loses, which is the direction unregulated free market were taking economies in the US and Western Europe around the turn of the 20th century.
An ultra-conservative statesman, Otto von Bismarck, was among the first to recognize that the only certain way for a free-market state to prevent a communist or populist revolution in the long run was through some degree of regulation and redistribution. The rise in the percent of Americans calling for regulation and "wealth" taxation (which I don't support) reflects the very evident failure of current policies to produce the promise of "all boats rising," and the growing size and splendor of the "yachts" built on behavior that past generations would have recognized as predatory and a danger to the long-term success of capitalism.