Why Left-Populism Lacks Momentum

Progressives were convinced they could build a mass politics around fighting climate change. It turns out they were badly mistaken.

For decades, it has been a truism of American politics—and politics in liberal democracies more generally—that electorates lean left on economics but are moderate or conservative on cultural and social issues. Ordinary voters enjoy the quotidian liberties that come with having “market choice,” but they also want laws that inhibit predation and policies that prevent destitution. Likewise, they are fairly pluralistic but recoil from arguments and paradigms that take public order for granted or seem divorced from common sense.

This pattern could be observed even during the high tide of neoliberal globalization, when electorates were rather optimistic about its outcomes and center-left parties mostly adopted the right’s prescriptions for more limited social benefits, fewer business regulations, and greater international trade. Significant numbers of middle- and working-class voters moved in the direction of classical (i.e., market-oriented) liberalism. They also became perceptibly more liberal, or “tolerant,” on sociocultural questions like gay rights, abortion, and the contributions of newer immigrants. Yet there were periodic rebellions in favor of preserving the postwar “nation-state” and social contract that caught both hardline activists and complacent leaders by surprise.

In key elections, voters punished conservatives if they overstepped by trying to gut popular programs like Social Security or raise the retirement age. Outside very religious districts, conservatives were similarly rebuffed if they pushed a restrictive cultural agenda that baldly contradicted their preaching of individual liberty. Voters, however, also grumbled (and eventually roared) when the political establishment ignored or dismissed concerns about widespread offshoring, new drug epidemics, escalating migration, public safety, and the extension of doctrinaire identity politics into everyday life.

As in the early 1970s, this backlash has caught the left flat-footed. After a brief window in which the left-populism of Bernie Sanders might have gathered cross-regional support, progressivism veered away from its original socioeconomic principles. While the pendulum may once more swing against Trump’s disruptive policies, working-class voters still charge progressives and the Democratic establishment with embracing too much undesirable change.

The “secret sauce” for thinkers, activists, and politicians committed to social democracy is seemingly quite obvious. Democrats and their counterparts in Europe need to distance themselves from—and, in some cases, visibly reject—positions that have proven unpopular and undercut the appeal of their economic message. A few have nodded cautiously to the Danish Social Democrats, Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht, and Mexico’s ruling Morena party as potential models. By the same token, it is taken as a given that the agenda needs to be more substantial and interventionist than “Bidenism” was—more combative toward entrenched interests and more focused on solving the root causes of economic pessimism.

On the face of it, this is the basis for a necessary course correction, particularly if Democrats want to reach voters outside their urban, coastal bubbles. The dilemma for reformers and insurgents on the broad left, however, is that the pillars of a seemingly popular, left-leaning economic agenda are well known but haven’t yet challenged Trumpism’s political dominance.

Consider what resonates with working-class voters. Social Security and universal health care are popular. So are higher wages and stronger collective bargaining rights. So is more affordable housing. So is “making more stuff” in America. Grassroots demand for tougher enforcement of the nation’s antitrust laws continues to gain traction (including in deep-red states). This is terrain that almost axiomatically favors economic populists and progressives. So why aren’t independents and working-class voters who have defected to the right instantly buying what progressives have to offer?

Some partisans will rehash the argument that these voters, polarized by the culture wars, have become blind to the right’s nefarious motives and deaf to the left’s entreaties. But the reason the left’s economic pitch lacks momentum isn’t because millions of ordinary voters are apathetic about an epochal surge in inequality or “duped” into voting against their interests. It is because globalization, technological change, and other issues that affect the distribution of decent work and opportunity have injected more complexity into the lives of households struggling to maintain a foothold and plan for the future. And the left, weighed down by its own agnostic views of development and national progress, has grown divided over how to best respond to this complexity.

Voters reeling from high costs are similarly uncertain about which political program can deliver clear benefits without difficult trade-offs. Convinced that elites have rigged the economy, working Americans across the ideological spectrum are in a burn-it-all-down mood. Many, though, are also wary of major interventions, from high tariffs to bold climate targets, that might make affording a decent life more burdensome. Accordingly, their political decision-making—to the extent they even have time for politics beyond the latest headlines—is arguably guided by a simple but reasonable question: Which political party is, on net, going to make my life easier?

If only the choice were as unambiguous as today’s progressives imagine it to be. Progressives sincerely believe they have the policies to slash poverty and rebuild a large, thriving, and stable middle class—from the last factory towns of upper New England to Starr County, Texas, a once-solidly Democratic Latino hub that flipped to Trump last November. In many respects, they do. Growing numbers of voters nonetheless suspect the current Democratic Party has different priorities and isn’t uniformly behind improving living standards for the vast majority. Fairly or not, some even perceive the party’s agenda as effectively stymieing, and thus penalizing, segments of the working class, especially those working in extractive industries who have few other opportunities to get ahead. Correspondingly, when “populist” Republicans promise to reshore lost jobs, make it easier to build, and unfetter production, the ears of struggling voters perk up.

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The recent disassociation of progressivism from worker power and shared prosperity profoundly deviates from the course of history. For most of the twentieth century, the democratic left was the driver of popular and broadly successful change. It advanced policies to reduce imbalances in power and life chances and create public goods untethered to the profit motive. As they grew adept at market governance, liberals and social democrats also became far-sighted about public investments in science, health, education, and technology, and the role these investments played in generating advanced industries, new sources of growth, and higher living standards.

Though technological progress and international trade inevitably precipitated new and unexpected challenges, the left strove to meet such challenges by listening to workers and businesses in fading industries. Indeed, lifting up the left behind and integrating the left out remained a cornerstone of progressive politics, as demonstrated by figures as different as Robert F. Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and Paul Wellstone.

The indisputable improvements generated by the mixed economy were such that the liberal-left “won” the argument even when they lost elections. Political scientists and historians such as Sheri Berman and Gary Gerstle have remarked that Eisenhower-era Republicans and European Christian Democrats acquiesced to a model of development that managed, in broad strokes, to combine open markets, consumer protection, collective bargaining, innovation, and some degree of indicative planning by the state. This was no small feat. And it demonstrated something momentous in the history of modern politics. Against its extremist rivals on the world stage, this egalitarian iteration of liberal democracy proved it could build, distribute, and, yes, correct grave injustices—all at an impressive clip.

Contemporary progressives are the ostensible heirs to this legacy. Yet new social cleavages—captured by, but not limited to, polarization by education and region—have made it harder to reinvigorate a politics of collective progress and fair distribution of opportunities and resources. The left is hardly blameless on this front. These cleavages have arisen not simply because the right has exploited resentment toward “wokeness” and emboldened their most passionate supporters to flaunt retrograde attitudes. They exist, in part, due to profound political disagreements over how—and even whether—to harness the tools of development as progressives did last century.

Take climate policy and environmental regulations. As someone who believes climate change needs a robust, international response and thinks industrial policy is integral to mitigating it, I concede that the issue has been dragged down by several negative assumptions about what the energy transition might bring. These fears aren’t entirely unfounded. Particularly in stagnant regions that have lost countless industrial jobs, blue-collar voters equate federal regulation with stifling fixed investment. They don’t see it as a mechanism that, when paired with public-private initiatives, can also stimulate new sectors with fewer negative externalities.

This skepticism of regulation wouldn’t be so deep-seated if Democrats hadn’t given up on competing in rural counties and districts convulsed by industrial decline. Still, there is another factor at play here that has to do with the incoherence of contemporary progressivism. Most progressives maintain they want to enhance workers’ economic well-being through equitable growth. But the fact is that progressives themselves are torn over what “national redevelopment” should look like and if it’s even desirable. One explanation is that the more absolutist strains of climate activism have made it difficult for the democratic left to reclaim its historical mission. In the same breath that progressives assail austerity, they are compelled to preach a politics that heavily romanticizes thrift. That has made Americans in hollowed-out communities and neglected urban precincts less receptive to progressive economics, as they hear conflicting messages about the merits of growth, consumption, and upward mobility.

A lot of elected Democrats, of course, protest that they stand for a conscientious balance between environmental stewardship and smart, welfare-enhancing growth. Although they have pivoted in recent months, most notably in California, Democrats generally consider anxiety over carbon mandates and similar measures to be misplaced or overblown. Many insist, too, that the Biden administration bent over backwards to catalyze fresh opportunities in left-behind regions through investments in green manufacturing and infrastructure, forgetting that a lot of these investments were slow to work their way through the plumbing of federal-local administration. Progressives, meanwhile, assume esoteric concepts like “degrowth” are isolated to academia and have little to no bearing on how ordinary workers weigh the impact of regulations on their livelihoods.

All this ignores a longstanding pattern of stalling support for climate solutions that the fervent activism of recent years hasn’t changed. Since Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, Democrats have struggled to offset perceptions they have no convincing answer for workers displaced by trade, decarbonization, and sectoral trends that have largely favored superstar cities. From the perspective of forgotten Americans, these trends are interconnected. Trade competition and corporate consolidation have wiped out high-wage manufacturing jobs and small businesses. “Onerous” regulations, meanwhile, have indeed sometimes curbed expansion in resource extraction, cutting off other avenues for growth in micropolitan and rural areas that have few other ways to attract investment. (Set aside for a moment that the Biden administration actually followed an “all of the above” energy strategy at the macro level.) This deficit of viable economic activity is acutely felt by disadvantaged Americans, as it seems to have no end in sight. And it has reinforced the concentration of wealth, opportunity, social capital, and R&D in major metros whose professional class constituencies have benefited the most from globalization and who are better positioned to adopt green technologies.

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An unavoidable contradiction thus emerges from the standpoint of blue-collar descendants of the New Deal coalition. Progressives proudly declare they want a more egalitarian system that emulates (if not surpasses) the achievements of the New Deal. They believe their policy ideas take dead aim at oligarchy and empower everyday workers. A “just transition” is repeatedly proffered to workers in traditional heavy industries. But progressives aren’t winning the grand argument the way their predecessors did. Instead, they appear ambivalent about the politics necessary to advance bold reform—not only with regard to culture, but also in terms of which pre-distributive policies are ideologically acceptable and consistent with other goals.

This makes progressives’ theoretical commitment to “inclusive development” seem much more tenuous in practice. Not even the most laudable social policies can compensate for the impression that other progressive concerns are at odds with deconcentrating economic opportunity. Democrats promise that once they regain power, they will provide universal child care and retrieve other items from the original “Build Back Better” plan. But such goals are unlikely to assuage voters who believe that regulations favored by Democrats will ultimately make it harder to find remunerative employment and live comfortably.

Is there a quick way to change this perception? I wish I could say yes. Between roughly 2017 and 2023, progressives were convinced they could build a mass politics around fighting climate change. It turns out they were badly mistaken. However noble their aims, the takeaway for Americans already struggling to make ends meet was that aggressive climate action would interfere with, not aid, the creation of new domestic supply chains and high-wage jobs—that it would exacerbate inflation and fuel scarcity.

None of this is to suggest climate politics is dead or that clean energy sectors won’t continue to expand. Despite Trump’s vendetta against renewables, there are reasons to think their adoption will spread, including in Republican-leaning states. (See Georgia under Governor Brian Kemp.) In the meantime, progressives must reckon with the dissonance in their agenda. That, however, will require more than “disabusing” skeptical workers of their misconceptions. If Democrats truly want to turn around their fortunes, they will have to prove beyond a doubt they are determined to end the crisis of development that plagues countless communities.