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.
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 left 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.
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.
The problem with all of this from an oh so slightly right of center independent's point of view is that everything that the Dems do is anti-common sense...add to that the fact that their policies make things twice as expensive and half as good. Then there is the constant gaslighting over things like "being moderate", voter ID, DEI and illegal immigration. Toss in a bunch of authoritarian overreach (see Covid lockdowns and policies). Frankly, I can't understand how a rational person could vote for them.
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.
For me what matter the most is the product and not the advertising - please, no more joy, no more brat, just plain normal.
Two thoughts:
Release the autopsy. How can you make an accurate diagnosis without the lab tests?
Make the Democratic Party democratic again. Respect the decision of your voters even if it makes you nervous. No more advantaging insiders by constraining the primaries (Hillary) and no more short circuiting voter preferences by installing candidates (Biden/Harris). If electability and progressive dogma are immiscible then the immutable law of FAFO applies. Which brings us back to point one - release the autopsy.
One thing I've noticed about primaries is that the person who leads in the polls at the beginning is often a name that we have heard before. George W. Bush started with a lead because people recognized his father's name. This lead produced a rush of funding, which eventually led to his presidency. The same thing happened with Jeb Bush, although his lead petered out quickly because of the phenomenon that is Trump. I think that's because at the beginning of the primary most voters have never heard of 90% of the candidates who are running. They feel stupid voting for somebody they've never heard of so they choose a name they have heard of. There were some psychological experiments in which subjects were shown some Chinese characters subliminally. Then they were shown some Chinese characters consciously, and asked to choose which ones they like. A high percentage of people said they like the ones they've been exposed to subliminally. I think that's the only reason that Harris is at the top of the polls now. Gavin is up there because of his actions against Trump. That put him in the headlines. Neither of these factors indicate actual electability.
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.
Rent seeking usually comes after the great idea. Electric cars or reusable spaceships. Selling things on the internet and delivering them to your house the next day. Designing chips that think. In fairness to billionaires most would be fine paying higher taxes. At that level they are less interested in money and more into the next great idea.
Seems like a rich country like ours shouldn't have people begging on the streets.
I'm in total accord with the spirit of your comment, ban nock. We should never regulate in ways that actually discourage innovation, and I do believe there are many very wealthy people who don't approve (in theory) of the low rate they are taxed. (I don't think anyone ever really *likes* paying taxes, but there can be a satisfaction in knowing that you're disproportionately strong contributor to social welfare.)
There are so many paths to rent-seeking that the "after" in "after a great idea" can be many times removed. And sometimes rent-seeking involves squelching great ideas (one reason monopolies and semi-monopolies are so dangerous). I'm thinking right now of instances I've been made aware of where pharmaceutical companies have bought out innovative start-ups for the specific purpose of burying an innovative drug improvement that would compete with their existing drug rather than competing with it or investing in the high cost of completing the processes necessary for FDA approval.
That's because it's easy to point to those with tons more money and make it all about them. In reality, in pure money terms but also in terms of power and influence over society and government, the well to do call the shots. The 20%, the 10%. There are millions and millions of us, we all go to the good schools, have parents that make sure we get ahead in life. We all start out on third base and are angry at those with yachts.
Musa al Gharabi wrote extensively on this very subject yesterday.
I completely understand MG's intent that it is very frustrating to see money wasted on fraud and lazy grifters thinking of ways to be very carefree with the money we work to make. At the same time we need to realize that things do cost money, we can't simply borrow to pay for wars, or anything else. We need billionaires to pay, and we too need to pay, even though every wealthy person now considers themselves middle class and yachts to be "unaffordable". We also need to fund the folks who are supposed to be keeping an eye on things to prevent stealing, the SEC and the IRS who generate far more than they cost.
I don't think it's progressive to allow biological men to compete in women's sports. I see it as misogynistic.
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.
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.
Nice breakdown. You left out the part where the party leadership will pick the candidate.
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 left 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.
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.
The problem with all of this from an oh so slightly right of center independent's point of view is that everything that the Dems do is anti-common sense...add to that the fact that their policies make things twice as expensive and half as good. Then there is the constant gaslighting over things like "being moderate", voter ID, DEI and illegal immigration. Toss in a bunch of authoritarian overreach (see Covid lockdowns and policies). Frankly, I can't understand how a rational person could vote for them.
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.
"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.
Some great ideas that I'm sure will guarantee a Democrat wins all the Democratic primaries.
ha ha
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.
For me what matter the most is the product and not the advertising - please, no more joy, no more brat, just plain normal.
Two thoughts:
Release the autopsy. How can you make an accurate diagnosis without the lab tests?
Make the Democratic Party democratic again. Respect the decision of your voters even if it makes you nervous. No more advantaging insiders by constraining the primaries (Hillary) and no more short circuiting voter preferences by installing candidates (Biden/Harris). If electability and progressive dogma are immiscible then the immutable law of FAFO applies. Which brings us back to point one - release the autopsy.
One thing I've noticed about primaries is that the person who leads in the polls at the beginning is often a name that we have heard before. George W. Bush started with a lead because people recognized his father's name. This lead produced a rush of funding, which eventually led to his presidency. The same thing happened with Jeb Bush, although his lead petered out quickly because of the phenomenon that is Trump. I think that's because at the beginning of the primary most voters have never heard of 90% of the candidates who are running. They feel stupid voting for somebody they've never heard of so they choose a name they have heard of. There were some psychological experiments in which subjects were shown some Chinese characters subliminally. Then they were shown some Chinese characters consciously, and asked to choose which ones they like. A high percentage of people said they like the ones they've been exposed to subliminally. I think that's the only reason that Harris is at the top of the polls now. Gavin is up there because of his actions against Trump. That put him in the headlines. Neither of these factors indicate actual electability.
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).
Great piece! Unfortunately, this information gives me little confidence that Democrats will choose an electable nominee.
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.
Rent seeking usually comes after the great idea. Electric cars or reusable spaceships. Selling things on the internet and delivering them to your house the next day. Designing chips that think. In fairness to billionaires most would be fine paying higher taxes. At that level they are less interested in money and more into the next great idea.
Seems like a rich country like ours shouldn't have people begging on the streets.
What is your solution to people begging on the streets? Specifically?
I'm in total accord with the spirit of your comment, ban nock. We should never regulate in ways that actually discourage innovation, and I do believe there are many very wealthy people who don't approve (in theory) of the low rate they are taxed. (I don't think anyone ever really *likes* paying taxes, but there can be a satisfaction in knowing that you're disproportionately strong contributor to social welfare.)
There are so many paths to rent-seeking that the "after" in "after a great idea" can be many times removed. And sometimes rent-seeking involves squelching great ideas (one reason monopolies and semi-monopolies are so dangerous). I'm thinking right now of instances I've been made aware of where pharmaceutical companies have bought out innovative start-ups for the specific purpose of burying an innovative drug improvement that would compete with their existing drug rather than competing with it or investing in the high cost of completing the processes necessary for FDA approval.
That's because it's easy to point to those with tons more money and make it all about them. In reality, in pure money terms but also in terms of power and influence over society and government, the well to do call the shots. The 20%, the 10%. There are millions and millions of us, we all go to the good schools, have parents that make sure we get ahead in life. We all start out on third base and are angry at those with yachts.
Musa al Gharabi wrote extensively on this very subject yesterday.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-189580755
I completely understand MG's intent that it is very frustrating to see money wasted on fraud and lazy grifters thinking of ways to be very carefree with the money we work to make. At the same time we need to realize that things do cost money, we can't simply borrow to pay for wars, or anything else. We need billionaires to pay, and we too need to pay, even though every wealthy person now considers themselves middle class and yachts to be "unaffordable". We also need to fund the folks who are supposed to be keeping an eye on things to prevent stealing, the SEC and the IRS who generate far more than they cost.
Managed to read 3/4 of the article. It reinforced my belief that the government is not the solution to poverty.
"What sets America apart isn’t how little the wealthy and corporations pay; it’s how little the rest of society contributes to funding the state."