However, this changed in a big way during the Trump era. After breaking for Barack Obama in 2012 by four points, non-college voters supported Donald Trump by six points in 2016—a swing that, importantly, occurred across both white and non-white voters.2 Since then, these voters have shifted even further right. In 2024, Trump carried them by 13 points, the largest margin for a Republican presidential candidate in at least the last 30 years.

Today, the Democratic Party is defined less by its support for the working class and more by its affiliation with the Brahmin left. As a result, it has become harder for the party to build an electoral coalition capable of consistently winning all over the country. For example, states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were a core part of the party’s “Blue Wall” from 1992 to 2012. However, Trump won all three in both of his victories, buoyed by working-class voters who are overrepresented in these states.

So, how can Democrats win back at least a meaningful share of these voters—and keep them? It’s a topic we regularly covered at The Liberal Patriot and plan to dig into more at The Long View. Helpfully, there are several new survey studies that offer additional insights into this question.

Understanding what really divides the social classes

Back in July, Jared Abbott, director of the Center for Working Class Politics (and friend of TLV), and Joan C. Williams, professor emerita at the University of California Law San Francisco, published a report called “The Left’s Coalition Crisis.” Though they did not explicitly say this, their intended audience appeared to be a group they referred to several times: liberal college graduates.

Designed to help the political left “develop the cultural competence to bridge the diploma divide between college grads and voters without degrees,” the report offered some tough love to middle- and upper-class liberals. For starters, the authors note that many liberal college grads live in a class bubble where most everyone around them shares their views on culture and climate issues—views that are often not held by working-class Americans.

Each cohort has different priorities as well. Among the 12 issues that working-class respondents prioritized, ten are economic in nature (the other two are corruption and crime). By contrast, college-educated liberals are much more likely to prioritize cultural and social issues. In contrast to the working class, they care far more about resisting authoritarianism, protecting LGBT rights, addressing climate change, and protecting abortion access.

In particular, “defending democracy” is a top priority for liberal college grads, but for working-class Americans it ranks 19th out of 30 possible priorities. In fact, resisting authoritarianism is a far higher priority for college liberals than for working-class respondents across every racial sub-group.

As the authors write, “This helps explain why Kamala Harris lost noncollege voters by 14 points. She centered two issues—defense of democracy and abortion rights—that liberal college grads prioritize but most working-class Americans don’t.”

Even when there appear to be agreements on the surface, there remain meaningful differences. This includes economic priorities: whereas working-class people typically focus on raising wages and creating more jobs and economic growth, liberal college grads, perhaps feeling more secure in their jobs, tend to care more about prices (though many in the working class also care about this). Another key contrast relates to whom each population directs its anti-elitist anger toward. College liberals often focus on the top 1% and business elites but rarely political elites, who receive much of the working class’s ire.

These disconnects can make it hard for liberal college grads to understand that their views reflect a particular class bias, and that people from other walks of life may approach those topics from a very different place. It can also be difficult to understand why others sometimes hold very different values from them. The authors also note:

Upper-middle-class language and priorities that make perfect sense among liberal college graduates often lack the cultural resonance to win working-class votes. Working-class voters’ principal concerns are paychecks, prices, and personal security. And their values tend to run in the opposite direction from those of the college-educated left: loyalty to community and country over globalism, family and self-discipline over self-actualization, tradition over sophistication, physical safety, and a distrust of credentialed experts. These are values the Right has learned to channel effectively; the Left, less so.

Finally, they note that liberal college grads’ class bubble can engender scorn toward people who disagree with them—and fuel the political right. While most liberal candidates steer clear of rhetoric like “deplorables” to describe more conservative-leaning working-class people, many ordinary liberals still view them as deplorable. This reality is reflected in the lawn signs pervading many liberal neighborhoods, which Abbott and Williams say signal that “if your priorities aren’t race, gender, and immigration, you’re so beyond the pale that you don’t even understand the importance of love or kindness.”

The authors offer several pieces of advice to the left for how to break this toxic cycle and build bridges with working-class Americans, including:

• Respect working-class priorities, especially economic and personal security;

• Replace a politics of scorn with genuine cross-class respect, which requires leaving one’s bubble and approaching those outside of it with curiosity; and

• Better understand how working-class values reflect working-class lives, including deep loyalty to community and country, the high value of self-discipline, the prioritization of personal security, resentment of experts, and the role of traditional institutions in their lives such as the military, religion, and the traditional family.

Without these steps, it will likely be very difficult for the left to break through to many working-class people and convince them to hear its perspective.

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Understanding the value of moderation

Democrats who are interested in reaching working-class voters would also do well to acknowledge that many such voters do not support seismic changes to America’s institutions. Though they aren’t uniformly against left-leaning ideas or reforms, many working-class people are less ideological and simply want a stable and effective government.

Two reports out this month buttress this idea. The first, also from Abbott and Williams, is called “The Working-Class Win-O-Meter.” This study, which surveyed more than 40,000 respondents, examines strategies to help Democrats win back working-class voters (more on those strategies in a minute). The authors find that “moving to the most progressive position significantly costs working-class votes” on four specific issues:

• Defunding the police. This carried the biggest penalty across all positions they tested. Candidates who support it ran 5.7 points behind those who advocate for less severe reforms like body cameras and de-escalation training.

• Women’s sports. The lowest-scoring proposition in the survey was male participation in women’s sports, which received just 38% working-class support. Candidates who supported this position ran 5.6 points behind those who took a more moderate stance.

• Assault rifle bans. Candidates who support this position ran four points behind those who support universal background checks.

• Abolishing ICE. Candidates who support this position ran two points behind those who support reforming the agency.

The authors also note that candidates who hold “working-class resonant or moderate” positions on cultural issues, specifically, run ahead of those who stay silent. By contrast, candidates who run on progressive or “non-resonant” positions tend to do worse than those who say nothing at all about culture. The penalty for this is, perhaps unsurprisingly, even steeper in red or purple districts.

Welcome Democracy Institute—an arm of our friends at Welcome—echoed many of these findings in a new report out this week titled, “The Industrial Heartland Swing.” WDI conducted focus groups with working-class swing voters in Obama-Trump communities across Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. They found that many of these voters feel cross-pressured by the two parties, which they believe are captured by their respective extremes.

Many focus group participants identified themselves as moderate or “middle of the road” and made explicit—often unprompted—appeals for more moderation and bipartisanship. Said one Pennsylvania woman, “They’re not working together. They’re working against each other, which is making all of us suffer.” Democratic politicians like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Iowa governor candidate Rob Sand, and Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez received high marks from several participants.

Meanwhile, candidates like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and California Governor Gavin Newsom were viewed less favorably:

Voters often agreed with their words about inequality but perceived Newsom as a polished multimillionaire from another culture and Ocasio-Cortez as demagogic, performative, and short on solutions. Her line that “what they call radical, I call common sense” backfired: several participants heard it as confirmation that her “normal” is not theirs.

Members of the focus groups also rejected extremism on a policy level. Several fringe positions on the left tested negatively across every group, including abolishing ICE, banning fracking and natural gas, and abolishing the police. If a candidate took positions like this, many participants believed it signaled that he or she was “pandering to the loudest crowd.” They similarly looked unfavorably upon the “socialist” label.

The report’s authors take care to note that this doesn’t mean these voters do not support institutional reform. But they prefer to fix what’s broken—not do away with it entirely.

What does—and does not—resonate with the working class

For Democrats to repair their relationship with working-class Americans, they must first become reacquainted with their values and priorities, especially where those things substantially differ from those of the party’s college-educated, liberal base. So what, exactly, might a pro-working-class message and agenda look like?

Abbott’s and Williams’ Working-Class Win-O-Meter used survey data to identify six “dials” candidates can turn to boost their support among working-class voters and outperform a “Kamala Harris-style 2024 Democrat.” Here’s what they found moved the needle:

• Lead with working-class economics (+2.8 points). Prioritizing economic issues—especially over non-resonant culture, climate, or democracy issues—is a more effective way of increasing working-class support. The most appealing ideas overall are defending existing popular programs (e.g., Social Security), finding ways to reduce costs, and “taking bold action” on skills-building and unions. By contrast, failing to prioritize any economic issues is especially costly, particularly when replaced by social issues. Candidates who do this underperform with working-class voters overall (-4) and especially working-class independents (-5.3) and Trump 2024 voters (-5.1).

• Adopt culture and climate policies resonant with the working class (+2.9 points). Taking positions on hot-button cultural issues that please the Democrats’ progressive base is a surefire way to turn off many working-class voters, which can make the difference in swing districts and states. This does not mean candidates can’t embrace liberal goals, such as a more humane immigration system or actions to forestall climate change, but working-class voters want to see policies that account for their interests and values. For example, advocating for “clean energy that protects workers’ jobs” is far preferable to “100% clean energy by 2050.”

• Explicitly prioritize working-class people (+1.9 points). Candidates who say that they will listen to working-class Americans boost their support by nearly two points, more than appeals to any other group, including the middle class, business leaders, policy experts, or specific demographic groups. This held true across several different populations, especially women and racial minorities.

• Combine working-class policies with an explicit statement of working-class values (+1.6 points). Appeals rooted in working-class values—self-discipline, self-reliance, prioritizing family and community—are unsurprisingly more effective than those couched in middle- or upper-class sentiments like “life is about finding your own path and personal fulfillment” or “our institutions need to be updated to keep up with social change.” Notably, messaging around “defending democracy” and holding Trump accountable plays with the party’s base but not many working-class voters—in fact, it backfires with the Trump-curious right and does nothing to increase support with independents.

• Lean into populist rhetoric, but pick the right enemy (+1.7 points). There are three types of populist language that perform better than “establishment” messages: people-centric, anti-political elite, and anti-economic elite. Establishment messages aren’t all viewed unfavorably. For example, candidates who say they want to “work with both parties to get things done” barely see any penalty at all. However, saying they will “listen to more experts and evidence” actually has a negative effect (-3.1). Moreover, left-populist messaging against the establishment often omits political elites, but including them resonates with independent and right-leaning respondents.

• Run candidates with non-elite backgrounds (+1.0 points). The study also finds that while having a working-class job doesn’t necessarily move the needle for candidates, those who have elite backgrounds are likely to pay a penalty. In other words, it is more important for working-class voters that a candidate not come from an elite sphere than that they come from a working-class one. Interestingly, many respondents view small business owners as working class, not because they make a working-class salary but because “they occupy a distinctive place in working-class life. The owner of the local garage, salon, or diner is someone working-class voters meet as a neighbor and a self-made worker, not as a distant professional or executive. […] It appears working-class voters appraise small-business owners as peers who build things—a livelihood earned through one’s own work rather than through credentials…”

The authors find that when a candidate turns all six dials, it increases their support with working-class voters by 10.9 points, and that boost is even greater among the core groups Democrats need to win in competitive states and districts.

One other recent report, “Kitchen Table Messaging for the Populist Era,” came from CWCP and the Rural Urban Bridge Institute (or RUBI). The authors tested several common, economically populist messages to see how they actually landed with Americans. Though they found that some economically populist rhetoric does have resonance, they also caution that not all such rhetoric is created equally and that it must be employed thoughtfully.3

The report’s main takeaway is that addressing the pocketbook issues that affect voters’ daily lives is virtually always a winning proposition. The seven messages they tested that did this included three key components: they addressed people’s cost-of-living woes, pointed to a culprit, and offered a solution.

Their best-testing message, dubbed “The American Way,” focused on broadly shared values like hard work and fairness:

Most people just want to work hard, get ahead, and give their kids a better shot—and they should be able to. But the cost of rent, groceries, and health care keeps going up faster than working families can keep up, and paychecks just aren’t stretching the way they used to. I’m going to bring those costs down for working people, make sure the biggest corporations pay their fair share, and crack down on corruption and the people who game the system for themselves. Hard work should pay off again – that’s the American way.

They also tested a more confrontational variation of this message, which took a harder line against the wealthy and corporations. Though there wasn’t much drop-off among working-class voters (-3 points versus the original message), it fared far worse with many other core groups whose support Democrats need if they want to consistently compete in difficult terrain, such as independents (-11), rural voters (-16), Trump waverers (-13), and undecided 2026 voters (-20 points).

Meanwhile, “divide-and-conquer” messaging—often employed by progressives—was among the least effective ways to break through on these issues, including rhetoric about “fighting the oligarchy.” Interestingly, messaging taken from James Talarico’s Senate campaign website, which argues that billionaires are pushing divisive cultural issues to distract from the fact that they are “defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends,” underperformed all seven economic-focused messages.

Among the worst-performing messages were those centered on the “race-class narrative,” for which the authors pulled language straight from ASO Communications, a progressive firm known for recommending Democrats tack left to win elections (and for often engaging in histrionics). By far, the least popular of these three was the one that leaned heavily into racial rhetoric:

Every family, of every color and background, deserves to have what we need. But today, Republicans spread lies to keep us divided while they abduct our neighbors, start wars abroad and jack up prices. If you want to know who took your money, it’s the people with all the money. And if billionaires and Republicans can talk you into thinking Black people and new immigrants are to blame for your hard times, they will keep getting away with it. The many—white, Black, and brown—can take on the money by voting for leaders who will fund our futures and respect our freedoms.

The report’s authors conclude that these “divide-and-conquer” strategies are far less resonant with many voters—especially working-class voters—than simply acknowledging their economic pain and pledging to do something about it. They also add that attacking Trump or MAGA accomplishes little at this juncture. Messaging that included this similarly performed poorly, and “bringing Trump into the picture muddies the story and triggers defensiveness on the part of anyone who has ever supported him.”

What should Democrats make of all this? The overarching lessons from these reports echo many of the things we at The Long View have said for some time. First, Democrats must become more aware of the fact that a big reason for their struggles with working-class voters is the growing influence of their professional-class base. Middle- and upper-class liberals with college degrees have far different priorities and sometimes very different values from working-class voters, and the party’s growing reliance on the former has made it more difficult to connect with the latter. Though it’s hardly advisable for the party to actively antagonize its current voters, it needs to be more open to running candidates who have credibility with working-class voters, including those who are more conservative-leaning.

Second (and relatedly), most voters are not down-the-line partisans, and many are desperate for candidates who are either moderate or who espouse a desire to be problem-solvers and embrace bipartisanship. This is especially true for the kinds of voters who will help Democrats win difficult races and be competitive over the long run in the Electoral College and Senate.

Finally, working-class appeals rooted in addressing Americans’ day-to-day economic struggles are more effective than anything else. Most people aren’t left-activists looking for a populist revolution, nor are they moved by antagonism toward “the oligarchy” or warnings about “threats to democracy.”

The formula for making inroads with America’s working class isn’t difficult to comprehend, and there are a handful of Democrats who have heeded the above advice. But if the party hopes to rebound to its supermajority glory days—to grow its appeal in parts of the country that have fled it since the start of the Trump era—it will take a concerted effort from more than a few of its members to change course.

Since the Democrats’ defeat to Donald Trump in 2024, many people in and around the party—including us—have been engaged in robust debates about how they should move forward. This month, longtime Democratic operative (and friend of TLV) Adam Jentleson made his own contribution to that debate with a new book, Supermajority: How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power.

In the book, Jentleson argues that his party cannot build a large, durable majority—or a supermajority—in Congress if it insists on imposing purity tests for its candidates. Jentleson says the Democrats need to reject that approach in favor of one that embraces “heterodoxy,” or allowing candidates to deviate from party orthodoxy to better fit their state or district to give themselves a better chance of winning.

Recently, Long View co-founder Ruy Teixeira penned a review of Jentleson’s book for the Wall Street Journal. While Ruy agrees with much of its arguments, he also believes that it comes up short in key ways. Below are some excerpts from that piece, which you can find here.

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On “heterodoxy”

The theory running through the book…is quite simple. For purposes of political success and governance, Democrats can attain supermajorities—which Mr. Jentleson defines as 370 electoral votes, plus 55 to 60 senators, though there is some definitional slippage in the book—by practicing what he calls “heterodox” politics: that is, taking a mix of positions that don’t fit neatly into party orthodoxy but align with the way ordinary Americans think about the world. If that produces conflict within the party, so be it. In fact, so much the better, he thinks: If they want to win, the party’s leading figures have to disassociate themselves from Democratic positions that thrill some party faithful but alienate large numbers of persuadable voters.

Mr. Jentleson illustrates his argument with a tour through Democratic politics in the 21st century, seeking to explain how Democrats managed only one supermajority: the one ushered in by Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. He emphasizes the heterodoxy practiced by Mr. Obama, who highlighted the importance of personal responsibility and lauded the two-parent family, saying his daughters shouldn’t benefit from affirmative action. Democratic politics since then, Mr. Jentleson argues, has evolved ever further from that model. Party leaders now consistently ignore the legitimate concerns at the core of Donald Trump’s appeal and anathematize all attempts to win back his voters. Party politics has hardened into “progressive orthodoxy” on race, gender, immigration, climate, policing, transgender issues and much else. As Mr. Jentleson notes, this orthodoxy was largely the creation of college-educated activists and party staffers, reinforced by the vast constellation of nonprofits and advocacy organizations that orbits the party.

He contrasts this rejection of heterodoxy with Mr. Trump’s fearless willingness to buck his party’s orthodoxy on a variety of issues—Iraq, trade, immigration, entitlement spending and (in his most recent campaign) abortion. Mr. Jentleson argues that Mr. Trump’s heterodoxy was crucial to his success, putting him on the 80% side of many 80-20 issues where Republicans had often found themselves on the 20% side. Many in Mr. Trump’s party accused him of saying things Democrats would say, but he didn’t care. Nor did the voters he was trying to reach.

The limits of Jentleson’s approach

Start with his signature supermajority concept. Mr. Obama’s supermajority, as Mr. Jentleson concedes, only lasted two years (generously defining it as a supermajority since he actually got only 365 electoral votes to go with his 58 to 60 Democratic senators). Similarly, Mr. Clinton’s supermajority, ushered in by the 1992 election, lasted only until it hit the buzzsaw of 1994. The decay rate of heterodoxy-based Democratic supermajorities seems extraordinarily fast. It seems there is much going on here that doesn’t fit into Mr. Jentleson’s argument.

Mr. Jentleson also fails to explain the glaring mismatch between many of the heterodox practices he describes and what today’s Democratic Party is capable of doing. For a book that aspires to give contemporary strategic advice, this is a flaw.

How Trump actually practiced heterodoxy

Consider Mr. Trump. As Mr. Jentleson argues, the 45th and 47th president directly and unapologetically broke from GOP orthodoxy on a range of issues. That ostentatious heterodoxy, the author contends, led to two presidential victories and enabled Mr. Trump to alter the center of gravity of the Republican Party. That success has Mr. Jentleson green with envy.

It’s worth noting, however, that Mr. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 and, though he won in ’24, didn’t achieve an electoral landslide against Kamala Harris, among the worst presidential candidates in modern memory. And although Mr. Trump has remade the GOP in significant ways, Republicans have emphatically not achieved supermajority status. Even so, Mr. Jentleson has a point: Democrats would profit by imitating Mr. Trump.

Why Democrats struggle to emulate Trump

The trouble is, no Democratic politician…seems prepared to challenge Democratic orthodoxy on issues such as climate, trans rights, immigration enforcement, diversity mandates and affirmative action. Heterodoxy in the Trump model means picking fights within the party—lots of them—and unapologetically embracing some positions associated with the opposing party. Today’s Democrats would seemingly rather lose an election than adopt any position deemed conservative—the horror!—even if that position is popular and correct on the merits.

Which Democrats have actually practiced heterodoxy?

Mr. Jentleson rightly points to Mr. Clinton. Speaking at a meeting of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition a month after the Los Angeles riots of 1992, Mr. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas and likely Democratic presidential nominee, criticized the rapper-activist Sister Souljah for her incendiary remarks about the riots. […]

At the time, Democrats had earned a reputation for being soft on crime and public disorder. The public had also soured on their embrace of racial double standards. (Sound familiar?) Given what Mr. Clinton said and where he said it, his message was clear: Democrats under his leadership would not tolerate violence and inflammatory rhetoric, including any that came from members of his coalition.

Jackson and others attacked Mr. Clinton relentlessly for his apostasy. But ordinary voters, Mr. Jentleson reminds us, got the message and liked it. […]

Or take Robert Kennedy. Kennedy strenuously supported the civil-rights movement but opposed racial preferences. He saw no contradiction between those stances and publicly made the case for both. Kennedy stressed law and order so ardently, Mr. Jentleson relates, that Richard Nixon complained that people thought “Bobby is more of a law-and-order man than I am!” And Kennedy strongly disliked welfare that asked nothing of recipients; he believed in the overriding value of work and talked frequently of a “hand up” rather than a “handout.”

Dog-whistle heterodoxy

It’s surpassing difficult to imagine a prominent Democratic politician today challenging his party’s dogmas… The revealed preference of these politicians is to talk incessantly about “affordability” and that old standby, “kitchen-table issues.” About the closest they’ll come to heterodoxy is keeping silent about various unpopular stances associated with the party. Very occasionally, one will say something anodyne—border security is important, police are necessary—that implicitly criticizes the party’s wildest excesses. What they won’t do is pick fights with the party’s radicals and nutjobs. As for taking a position someone might reasonably call conservative, forget about it.

Call it dog-whistle heterodoxy. It’s so subtle that only the politically attuned, especially in the media, pick up the signals. Ordinary voters don’t hear it, and wouldn’t care if they did.

You can read the full review here, and you can also check out Ruy’s recent TLV piece that expands on this topic, “What This Country Needs Is More Conservative Democrats!”

We know that in today’s oversaturated media environment, good journalism is often hard to find. So each Friday, our team highlights five pieces—analysis, interviews, editorials, and more—that caught our attention from both the past week and weeks prior. We may not always agree with every writer’s arguments, but we nonetheless think they are worth sharing.

We also want to thank you for being a reader of The Long View. And if you like what we’re doing here and are willing to do a little more than simply read, we’d greatly appreciate your becoming a paid subscriber today.

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3 things from this week

• Karl Rove: Why I’m Voting for a Texas Democrat

…how did Bo French—a UT grad and Republican statewide candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry—mark this special moment [Texas late comeback win over Ohio State]?

He posted a picture of screaming, joyous, celebrating burnt-orange-clad students. Referring to students who appeared to be South Asian or Hispanic in the photo’s foreground, he declared, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Mr. French’s not-so-subtle claim that UT has too many Hispanics and South Asians—he later said his issue is too many “foreigners”—is raw, uncut bigotry. UT admissions are based on merit, not race, and 90% of each class comes from Texas.

Some Republican leaders immediately denounced Mr. French. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn condemned his “intolerance and racism,” warning “this is how great political parties self-destruct.” State House Speaker Dustin Burrows said Mr. French’s post “crossed the line” by “demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity.” Other GOP state legislators called the post “racism, plain and simple,” “disgusting” and “well below the standard set by Christ.” One said it made him “sick.” […]

The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas. Conservatism and the party it dominates have an increasing number of bigoted advocates of a “heritage America” composed of white descendants of the original European settlers. There are “just asking questions” Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.

These people are diminishing the Republican Party, not building it. I’ll have no part of it. This November, I’ll vote for only the second Democrat in my life. The first was Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994, because I thought he would work with Republicans. The second will be Mr. French’s opponent, Jon Rosenthal. The GOP’s stables need a cleaning.

• Jeff Maurer (former writer for John Oliver): What, Exactly, Did Macklemore Say and Do?

Surely the most controversial part of Macklemore’s statement was name-checking CUAD (Columbia University Apartheid Divest) and Students for Justice in Palestine. Those groups hold extreme positions — I’ve written about them before, and so have people who actually know stuff. […]

Following Macklemore’s remarks in New Jersey, Sheeran got a call from New England Patriots owner…Robert Kraft. Kraft informed Sheeran that Macklemore was not welcome to perform at Gillette Stadium, which Kraft owns. […]

I don’t like this…I’m not convinced that a person’s problem is with “apartheid” or “genocide” when they see the very founding of Israel as illegitimate. But I’m also not comfortable with powerful venue owners throwing their weight around because they don’t like a guy’s politics. It’s one thing for someone to decide that Macklemore is too big of a douchebag to support — you don’t need to twist my arm to get me to not buy a ticket to this concert! And Kraft can book or not book anyone for any reason — his stadium, his rules. But I’ve long felt that we’re better off letting people say just about any intensely stupid thing that they believe. I didn’t like it when social media companies were aggressively in declaring things “hate speech”, and I don’t like Robert Kraft doing it now.

• Lucy Biggers: Chris Wright on Energy Abundance [paywalled]

Lucy Biggers: For people who aren’t familiar with your worldview, how do you think about energy differently from the way it is often presented in the mainstream media?

Chris Wright: If you’re not in the energy business, I understand why you wouldn’t know much about it. It’s complicated. And if your energy system works, why would you even worry about it?

I’ve always looked at how energy affects the quality of people’s lives. Energy is the transformative agent that created the modern world. Human life expectancy at birth was around 30 years 20,000 years ago, and it was still around 30 years 200 years ago. It was really the large-scale arrival of coal—which provided vastly more energy and made agriculture more efficient—and ultimately the arrival of oil that enabled the development of modern medicine.

Today, average life expectancy at birth is over 70 years. That’s energy. Delivering energy produces public-health benefits that spread to everyone.

But not everyone lives a highly energized life. Only about a billion people live like you and I do, with climate-controlled rooms, lights, running water, buses, trains, and planes. About 7 billion people do not. I’ve met many of them, and I haven’t met one who doesn’t want the kind of lifestyle you and I enjoy. The only road from where they are today to that life requires massively more energy. I’ve been all in on more energy my whole life.

1 thing from the archive

• Jerry Coyne: Jason Arday and the Corruption of Science

One of the more distressing changes in science is its infection by politics and ideology, a change visible in what I call “journal creep.” Until recently, the primary function of scientific journals was to disseminate research. Now, however, many journals have adopted an additional mission: promoting ideological, moral, or political positions. This newer mission, which endangers not only the reputation but also the practice of science, is seen clearly in a recent editorial in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, Nature.

The Nature editorial centers on the tragic story of Jason Arday, a sociologist who at 37 became the youngest Black full professor ever appointed at the University of Cambridge. In July, it was revealed that Arday had plagiarized significant portions of his Ph.D. thesis at Liverpool John Moores University. This in turn prompted extensive investigations by the press. What they found was not pretty: more evidence of plagiarism, falsified research, fabricated claims on his curriculum vitae, and, most striking, a breathtaking record of biographical fabulism… On August 14, he was found dead in his flat, an apparent suicide. […]

Nature’s editorial is titled “The Death of Jason Arday Must Prompt Deep Reflection.” Unfortunately, the reflection Nature demands does not involve asking how someone with such a thin academic record and a history of exaggeration and lying managed to secure such a prestigious position. Rather, Nature is concerned with assigning blame for Arday’s downfall and death, and the blame falls on everyone but Arday himself. […]

Oddly absent from Nature’s editorial is any serious acknowledgement of Arday’s apparent fabulism, plagiarism, errors, and lies. Nor is there any attempt to grapple with the fact that Arday’s decision to publish a memoir with a major commercial publisher further drew the media’s spotlight.

It’s tragic that Arday killed himself. But the frenzy to blame every person and institution for Arday’s death save Arday himself is bizarre. That Nature should join this frenzy lays bare the extent to which even the most prestigious journals have prioritized political sloganeering over truth seeking.

1 data visualization

• New York Times: This Is Why So Many Voters Hate Both Parties

American politics is often described as a battle between liberals and conservatives, but most voters have much messier views than those partisan labels suggest. They aren’t reliably liberal. They aren’t reliably conservative. They have a mix of opinions that are almost impossible to find in any one politician. […]

To see the disconnect, let’s start with two hot-button issues that divide along conservative and liberal lines: whether to allow organized prayer in public schools and whether to allow homeless people to camp in public spaces. In a world of ideological purity, a Democratic voter would always oppose the first and support the second, while a Republican voter would do the reverse.

But it doesn’t work that way. In reality, people often have heterodox views that defy strict partisanship. […]

[O]ver the past several decades, the parties have become more polarized and rigid in their views. Anti-abortion Democrats and pro-choice Republicans in Congress once numbered in the dozens, but no longer. As a result, the country’s heterodox population is constantly forced to compromise between two options that can never fully satisfy them.

Heterodoxy comes up in issue polling again and again. Most people are comfortable simultaneously having liberal views on some issues and conservative positions on others.

Fast-forward to today, and the liberal share has more than doubled to 59 percent while the moderate/conservative share has declined drastically. It’s the liberals’ party now. Moderates are just along for the ride. And as for conservatives, well, they’re on the verge of disappearing entirely.

In 2000, nearly as many Democrats identified as conservative (24 percent) as liberal. Today, that number is only eight percent—and dropping. That’s a ratio of over 7-to-1 between liberals and conservatives, a stark change from the beginning of the century when those groups were almost at parity.

Now, many Democrats might look at these data and see this development as a feature, not a bug. At last, we’re rid of those pesky conservatives!

But in reality, this development has unbalanced the party and enabled cultural radicalism to dominate it and its supporting institutions. As liberals moved to the left on these (and other) issues, there were fewer and fewer voices in the party that could be relied upon to push back because they were, in fact, conservative on many of these issues. Instead, liberals have largely pushed through an open door, embracing one radical position after another on immigration, race, gender, crime, climate, and more.

This has been terrible for the party and estranged it ever further from America’s working class, once the backbone of the party. If there had been more conservative Democrats, more party members might have been willing to say—because they were conservatives and believed it—that there are only two sexes, trans women are not literally women, and medicalizing children because they are supposedly “trapped in the wrong body” is an appalling practice.

Conservative Democrats would have insisted that illegal immigrants are in fact illegal, not “undocumented,” as if they had inadvertently forgotten their paperwork. They would have forcefully reminded the party’s liberals that a nation’s borders should be rigorously enforced and that, no, simply making it across the border does not entitle a migrant to stay here forever. And they would have been shocked by their party’s acquiescence to abuse of the asylum system and profligate use of irregular immigration pathways (parole, etc.).

Conservative Democrats also could have provided a bulwark against the frenzied embrace of radical ideology around race that took hold of the party. No, America is not a white supremacist society, and Democrats did not need to interpret all racial disparities as evidence of continued white racism. And they did not need to push a neo-racism that sought to institutionalize countervailing racial preferences across society. Conservative Democrats would have been perfectly happy to stick to the mantra of equal opportunity and a color-blind society, in the sense associated with MLK, where merit, not skin color, determines outcomes.

And conservative Democrats would have been fast out of the gate to call out the bizarre vogue among Democrats for denigrating the role of the police in fighting crime. Laws should have been vigorously enforced and criminals sent to jail regardless of “disparate impact.” And there should have been zero tolerance for public disorder, which was exacerbated by “housing first” and “harm reduction” policies combined with lax law enforcement. Conservative Democrats would have called for law and order—and meant it, as many did in the 1990s.

As for climate, conservative Democrats would have tenaciously resisted the rise of climate doomerism, with the consequent demonization of fossil fuels and embrace of an extremely rapid renewable energy transition. They would have challenged the idea of a “climate emergency” that must override other Democratic economic goals. And they would have regarded the claim that a renewable energy transition was the key to rapid economic growth and would deliver a cornucopia of good jobs with the deep skepticism it deserved.

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That’s a lot of would-haves and should-haves that generally did not happen. To be fair, some conservative Democrats did try to raise the alarm, but they were increasingly outnumbered. More importantly, Democratic politicians whose views were genuinely conservative in at least some of these areas were essentially wiped out over the course of the 21st century. The decks were cleared for cultural radicalism.

Many contemporary Democrats would look at the positions above with horror. Aren’t these conservative positions? To which I say: so what? Conservative positions aren’t intrinsically wrong simply because they’re conservative. That makes no sense. They should be judged on their merits, not by ideology. Besides, these are all views that many, many Democrats, especially prior to the 21st century, would have been quite comfortable espousing. They have simply become so right-coded over time that very few Democrats in today’s liberal-dominated party dare to be identified with them.

The consequent dearth of Democrats—especially politicians—who are authentically conservative in some ways is a severe handicap for the party. They are completely uncompetitive in wide areas of the country where they used to have a strong presence, such as in many southern states, the Dakotas, West Virginia, and Montana. Even in conservative states where they have a shot, such as Texas, the best they can do is a liberal Democrat like James Talarico, who offers some slight dissents from party orthodoxy but is largely relying on a terrible national environment for Republicans and an exceptionally weak opponent to carry him over the line (and he still may not make it). Democrats would have been much better off running a more conservative candidate—but such candidates are scarce, even in Texas, and intra-party dynamics simply do not permit it.

The handicap is deepened by population trends: liberal states, especially large ones, have weak or negative growth, while conservative states are gaining population. That has big political implications.

Estimates from the American Redistricting Project show that California is projected to lose four House seats (and thus four electoral votes) in the 2030 reapportionment. Five other Democratic states—New York, Minnesota, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Illinois—may lose one each as well. Meanwhile, ruby-red Texas is projected to gain a stunning four seats and increasingly Republican Florida is set to gain two. Conservative Idaho and Utah could each add another seat, too.

The pattern is clear. The states projected to gain representation—and an Electoral College boost—are more conservative; the states projected to lose representation are more liberal. If we exclude the battlegrounds of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, conservative states are on track to add ten electoral votes while liberal states are projected to lose nine electoral votes ahead of the 2032 presidential election.

This should concentrate Democrats’ minds, even as they are likely to enjoy a very good midterm election this fall. To meet long-term challenges, they need genuinely conservative Democrats, and they really don’t have any.

Instead, they have chosen to ignore this problem and concentrate on promoting candidates whose underlying views are in sync with current orthodoxy but who attempt to limit the damage from these views by signaling “heterodoxy” in some very circumscribed ways. This does not mean such candidates have sincerely conservative views on immigration, race, gender, crime, or climate—far from it. Rather, they are titrating their liberal views with the Minimum Necessary Heterodoxy (MNH) to get through the election, after which the MNH is likely to be discarded and their underlying views will dominate once again.

Another way Democrats seek to avoid the distasteful idea that authentic conservatism might be desirable on some issues and in some areas is finding candidates who “look the part.” As former Democratic fundraiser Evan Barker (whose new book, Nothing Left, I strongly recommend) explains:

For the better part of a decade, progressive Democrats have desperately sought to recruit working-class candidates able to win back a crucial constituency: blue-collar voters, particularly men. Such potential leaders aren’t that hard to find. The trouble is that the Left — more specifically, a complex of donors, media outlets, consultants, and organizations — can’t actually tolerate working-class values when it comes to cultural questions like immigration, race, and gender.

Call it Progress, Inc.: a machine for advancing full-spectrum progressivism, using working-class aesthetics as a sort of skinsuit, if need be. What the party — and the nation — end up with are politicians who certainly look the part — sometimes connected to the traditional labor movement, comfortable in plaid, tossing a football or drinking beer — but whose substantive views are indistinguishable from those that prevail in places like Brooklyn and San Francisco…

These behind-the-scenes operatives want to find people with “working-class costumes,” and “masculine images” — not leaders with actual working-class views. Graham Platner was the most obvious example. Before he was #MeToo’d out of the Maine Senate race, the scion of a prominent family checked all the right “image” boxes: bearded, tattooed, with a stint in the Marines under his belt. Another is El-Sayed, whose “bro energy,” his backers believe, is enough to attract disaffected men who’ve left the Democratic Party, with no need to change position on the actual issues that alienate men. Both, however, hold standard-issue ultra-progressive views when it comes to divisive identity politics, among other hot-button issues.

Neither of these dodges is likely to work over the long term. In the end, there is no substitute for conservative Democrats except conservative Democrats. That’s what this country—and the Democrats—need. Unfortunately, they are dying out as the party zooms in the opposite direction and embraces the DSA. This is unlikely to end well.

It is hardly an overstatement to say that the late Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank was one of America’s most influential national political figures during his time in office. From 1981 to 2013, he helped the Democratic Party secure several consequential policy wins, the most prominent of which was a generational overhaul of financial regulations following the Great Recession. Frank was known by many political observers for his unrivaled command of the legislative process, his often acerbic communication style (including a quick wit), and his strong convictions—all of which engendered admiration not just by members of his own party but even by many Republicans.

But perhaps more than anything else, Frank was viewed by allies and foes alike as a liberal lion. A gay-rights pioneer, he was the first member of Congress to voluntarily come out while serving in office and helped lead the push for policies promoting same-sex equality. He was a fierce critic of the Bush administration’s war in Iraq—before the war even began. He supported a strong social safety net, robust workplace protections, and more affordable housing.

So it is especially noteworthy that, in the final months of his life, Frank offered this stark message to his party: beware the growing influence of the left flank. In an April Politico interview, he said that progressive Democrats have a place in the party, but that they had “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable,” adding, “Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win.”

Frank spelled out his argument about the future of the Democratic Party in a posthumous book that is out today, The Hard Path to Unity: Why We Must Reform the Left to Rescue Democracy. We are pleased to share an exclusive excerpt from his book below.

Many—especially on the Left—have an unshakable faith in the basic decency of the common man and woman that excludes the possibility that they will fail to do the right thing. Others suffer from the effect of living in an environment in which they rarely interact with people with whom they disagree—an echo-chamber effect that is significantly magnified by the algorithms of social media. Finally, some fail to trust their own judgment that their ideological allies are greatly overestimating the strength of their support, or are intimidated by the fear of being accused by true believers of being faint of heart.

Whatever combination of reasons produces this capacity to believe what is most comfortable, it is widespread among the strongest partisans. After losing by two of the most decisive margins in American history, many Goldwaterites in 1964 and McGovernites in 1972 blamed their favorite’s defeat on a lack of ideological zeal, rather than on the clearly evident excess of it. Similarly, after the 2024 US elections, the Justice Democrats attributed Democratic losses to our candidates’ refusal to support abolishing private medical insurance (Medicare for All), impose a ban on fracking in Pennsylvania (the Green New Deal), tolerate unconstrained looting in retail stores (ending mass incarceration), and pay sufficient inattention to the offensive nature of gendered words by instructing their interlocutors on the bias-free employment of pronouns.

While this form of self-hypnosis exists across the ideological spectrum, it is most problematic when practiced by those on the Left. More than their counterparts on the Right and center, they make the case for their agenda not just on its substance but also on the claim that it represents the true wishes of “the people.” (Among non-populist conservatives who follow the tradition of Edmund Burke, being in the minority on an important issue can be a sign of one’s intellectual and moral integrity.)

Where important variables can be measured with reasonable precision, the inclination of partisans to see what they want to see may not significantly distort their strategic choices. But as the questions that must be answered in order to decide on a course of action become more subjective, the likelihood increases that the judgment of those involved will be clouded by passion. And because this phenomenon affects the effort to assemble a sufficiently large coalition of defenders of liberal democracy, it has both first- and second-order negative impacts.

Directly, absent a massive, wholly unforeseeable shift in the ways that non-college-educated, non-professional, ethnic-majority workers in the developed world view immigration, race, and the urgency of countering climate change, the commitment to forging an all-encompassing coalition to demand far-reaching social and economic restructuring will continue to be a doomed distraction from the hard work of assembling a sustainable anti-populist majority.

No skill is more important to a political strategist than the ability to count votes without being swayed by either hopes or fears. Allowing false optimism about your position’s popularity to shape your approach leads to failure, in legislative bodies and elections alike. Conversely, underestimating your strength can result in your aiming too low, leaving achievable gains unrealized. (Nancy Pelosi’s ability consistently to avoid both of these errors is a major reason for her great success as Speaker of the House.)

Since in the kaleidoscopic circumstances of the real world you have a finite number of opportunities to achieve major social change, making a flawed choice substantially diminishes your chance to make a good one. Reclaiming a place on the necessarily limited list of measures that can be put to a vote; rallying troops who have been through one losing battle to refight a similar one; repositioning candidates who have become identified with an unpopular set of issues so they will be electable—difficult as each of these tasks is individually, trying to achieve all of them in a fraught political context is a recipe for failure.

And failure in this case means much more than merely a tautological lack of success in restoring liberal democratic rule. It increases the difficulty of doing so in the future. The damage inflicted by the militant left’s refusal to accept less than complete victory for their ideals goes beyond the loss of support for a more achievable rollback of populism’s gains. When this emotionally powerful vision of a united front of society’s victims is rejected by a mainstream skeptical of its viability, the angry reaction of those who share that vision deepens the conflict between the two factions—even though a successful democratic counterattack against populism will require their unity.

There are, in intra-party dialogue, two arguably acceptable reasons why one faction may dissociate itself from the issues advocated by another. One is disagreement on the merits. The other is a judgment that the policies in question are not only unpopular but also so repugnant to a critical mass of voters that association with them means defeat at the polls.

To zealous advocates who believe that their agenda is not just substantively correct but morally compelled, and are led by their fervor to believe that the majority of voters agree, neither explanation is valid. Many of these zealots are convinced that the source of their abandonment is some form of corruption, usually the influence of lavish campaign contributions from those who, having profited from the status quo, spend freely to preserve it. Intra-party debates about the merits of various policy proposals or the mood of the electorate get displaced by attacks on each other’s motives, intensified by the familiar human propensity to react more angrily to heresy than to outright disbelief.

The blame for this vitriolic tone in the argument about how to counter populism is not equally borne. It begins with the dissidents accusing the mainstreamers of selling out their professed principles and often progresses to those dissidents instructing the party faithful to punish the “sell-outs” at the polls. The response of those pursuing a less complete but more achievable victory is then muted by the fear that escalating the intra-party invective will make it harder to secure cooperation from their leftist detractors in the fight against the Right.

Editor’s note: This article has been excerpted from The Hard Path to Unity, by Barney Frank, new from Yale University Press. Copyright © 2026 by Barney Frank. Published by permission. All rights reserved.

Happy Friday! If you missed this post last week, a reminder that we are launching a new feature on The Long View called Friday Five, where we aim to help you weed through an oversaturated media environment by highlighting five perspectives or pieces of analysis that caught our eye. This includes two pieces from the past week, two from further back, and one data visualization to take you into the weekend.

We would be remiss if we didn’t also take a moment to acknowledge the somberness of today, which marks 25 years since the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. For those of us old enough to remember that day, it remains one of those rare moments that still divides our lives into a “before” and an “after.” Life in America has irreversibly changed since then in ways that are sometimes difficult to fully appreciate. Whatever today holds for you, we hope you’ll find a moment to pause, reflect, and spend some time with those closest to you.

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2 things from this week

• Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib: For Gaza to Recover, Hamas Must Be Expelled

Despite its posturing as an elite club, Hamas, from its inception, behaved like a mob of gangsters, brutalizing Palestinian women who violated its fanatic sense of morality, torturing and killing those who were suspected of opposing them and carrying out grisly suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, which weakened the Palestinian Authority and empowered the extremist right in Israel, which seized the opportunity to destroy hopes of a new Palestinian horizon or future.

Now, in the ruins of my once beautiful homeland, we are witnessing the coda of the group’s two decades of horrific rule. By agreeing in principle to a disarmament plan after its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and slaughter of hundreds of civilians led to over two years of Israeli bombardment that killed tens of thousands of Gazans, including much of my family, Hamas is acknowledging what Palestinian leadership knew 30 years ago: that only peace could lead to freedom and armed struggle was a disastrous strategy.

Hamas should have no role in Gaza’s future but, appallingly, so many in the West who consider themselves allies of the Palestinian people still see the group as honorable resistance fighters. Their support for, or failure to denounce, the group only helps perpetuate the degradation of Gaza.

• Roger Pielke, Jr.: Is the New HIGH Climate Scenario Plausible?

In 1995, Jesse Ausubel published “Technical Progress and Climatic Change” which was perhaps the very first paper to identify the flawed assumptions that would more than 30 years later lead to the retirement of the RCP8.5 scenario.

Ausubel wrote about technological trajectories — computing speed, aircraft engines, corn yields, lamp efficiency — and argued that these evolve at rates steady enough over many decades that we can say useful things about the technological world of 2100.

For projecting future energy trajectories, Ausubel chose decarbonization1 — which he defined as the long decline in the carbon intensity of primary energy since 1900, which occurred “without gloomy climate forecasts or dirty taxes.”

Ausubel compared historical decarbonization to the IPCC 1990 “Business as Usual” (BAU) scenario, which halted that decline and reversed it. He wrote: “‘Business as Usual’ was a scenario of technical regression. It essentially ignored the scientific and technical achievement of the past 300 years.”

Ausubel had already made this objection as a reviewer of the first IPCC report, where he called the scenario “Brezhnevite.” The IPCC did not accept Ausubel’s 1990 critique, but in 2026 it seems that climate research has finally caught up to Jesse.

2 things from the archive

• Marty Manley: Democrats Change the Subject

A party reveals its priorities not in its slogans but in its spending and actions. Democrats still favor redistribution, but the party’s attention has drifted elsewhere. Political scientists tracking Democratic platform language since 2012 find that references to “growth” have dropped 32%, while “climate,” “LGBT/LGBTQI+,” “equity,” and “environmental justice” each rose by triple-digit percentages.

Modern Democrats have a different relationship to redistribution than their predecessors. The wealth of many college-educated professionals lie in credentials, skills, experiences, and networks of professional relationships. These assets are largely insulated from the threat of income redistribution because it is portable across state lines, industries, and national borders. No state can easily seize, tax, or redistribute what is inside a software engineer or an attorney’s head. […]

…the modern Democratic Party has found a way to avoid the challenge of redistribution completely: it simply changes the subject from class conflict to cultural progressivism. This enables the high-earning coalition to protect its economic privilege, neutralize the threat of redistribution, and maintain the moral high ground.

• Chris Arnade: In praise of the Midwest

What strikes me this trip is besides being polite, people here are not performative. They aren’t navel-gazing self-aware, playing up a role, a stereotype they saw online, like Southerners and Hillbillies more and more do, as social media osmosis has made everyone influencer aligned. I’m not even sure what the Midwest stereotype is, beyond being polite and naively sincere, which is not really something you can play up.

There is no cloyingly saccharine politeness here, no nosy time-wasting grilling, rather it is a genuine hold the door, say hello, and then move on politeness, that only goes deeper if both want it, or if you are clearly in need of help.

Between jobs that ground them, and with few aspirations to act a part, people here are consequently comfortable in their own skin, and that makes for a very relaxing time. I’ve spent more evenings here in dive bars than I want to admit, and I’ve never yet seen anything close to a fight. No spats, no arguments over anything more intense than sports, and that is always done with humor. […]

Labeling a people as “real” is abused to a point of meaninglessness, but if it is to have any value, it’s about a genuineness divorced from promotion, and bounded by proximity to the logistical necessities of life, and by that measure, the Midwest is the most “real” place in America, and why I would suggest to any foreigner wanting to “see the real America” they should focus on the Midwest first. It’s not that they are more American than any other region, but that you can view America more easily, more inexpensively, and comfortably.

1 data visualization

• Patrick Ruffini’s 2026 Swingometer

Pollster and friend of TLV recently built a new tool to help political analysts and observers better understand the 2026 midterm environment. His “2026 Swingometer” uses an array of factors—the generic ballot, demographics, candidate quality, etc.—to game out how the House of Representatives might swing this November.

Paying subscribers of Patrick’s Substack can access the Swingometer to see how the national winds are likely to impact specific races, but he has offered some early insights for all readers, too:

The Intersection’s 2026 Swingometer starts with Democrats winning a 224-211 majority in the House based on today’s D+6.0 generic ballot polling average. […]

The Swingometer shows electoral tipping points a few different ways. With randomness turned off, it expects Marcy Kaptur’s OH-9 to be the tipping point and also the reddest seat a Democrat in Congress will hold after the election. Only one Republican would survive in a Harris district, and you can guess who that is: Brian Fitzpatrick in PA-1.

The closest seat in the country is expected to be David Valadao in the redrawn CA-22, with the swingometer more bullish on him than his primary results because of his past overperformance and his drawing a progressive opponent. Other extremely close seats feature controversial candidates we’ve accounted for with 2026-specific adjustments. These include Tom Barrett, who survives in a Trump +1.3 due to his past performance and the 4-point penalty applied to his leftist challenger Will Lawrence, and Max Miller in OH-7, who squeaks by in a Trump +11.5 even with a 5-point penalty.

This is great a great tool if you’re into wonky analysis of American politics and elections. Consider supporting Patrick’s work to access it!

Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.

James Hohmann: Ruy Teixeira, great to have you here. You wrote one of the most influential political science books of the 21st century, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Here we are, a quarter century later. I guess just to start our conversation, have socialists taken over the Democratic Party? Are socialists hijacking the Democratic Party?

Ruy Teixeira: I wouldn’t say they’re hijacking it or really taking it over. I actually just wrote a piece on this…which was titled, “DSA: Vanguard of the Radical Professionals.” I think that’s what they are. Professional-class people have been taking over the Democratic Party for a long time—they’ve been hegemonizing it.

They’ve also become more radical as they become more influential, and I think the DSA is a logical terminus of that. I think these radical professionals have been further radicalized by the Trump administration, by their view of the Democratic establishment as feckless and failing to stand up to Trump, failing to do what they were supposed to do.

That puts the DSA in a good position to absorb all these people, which they are. Obviously, they are having some success. They may have as many as ten House members, by my count, in the next Congress. And as people endlessly say, they’ve got the energy. Whether they actually have the votes in the big, big country sense of America is another question, a very different question. But clearly, they’ve got energy within the Democratic ranks.

So my view is that is true, and it’s going to continue for a while. They’ve caught the imagination of a lot of these young, radical professionals who loom large in a lot of blue areas of the country. I think the main thing that will do is not so much that they’ll take over—run the DNC, be the arbiters of what rolls forward in the Democratic Party—but they are going to make it even harder for the Democrats to correct some of their brand problems that we saw emerging in a big way in the 2024 election.

How does a party lose two out of three times to Donald Trump? Well, start with the idea that they’re out of step with big sections of the American voting population, particularly working-class voters, who just don’t share the cultural priorities and some other things that the Democratic Party stands for. How easy is it going to be now to backtrack on those or to move to the center? Because the DSA people—famously, they’re for whatever they mean by “socialism”—they also deeply believe in every single culturally radical stance that the Democratic Party has become associated with in the last 10 or 15 years.

Defund the police, trans rights, open borders, abolish ICE.

Right. Race, immigration, climate, you name it. Famously, their ridiculous program calls for not only eliminating the Electoral College but eliminating the Senate.

And the presidency.

And the presidency. And the Supreme Court [will be] subservient to Congress. I think this is maybe a little bit unconstitutional, James, but it doesn’t seem to stop them. So they are pretty radical.

Now, I think some of them try to pass themselves off, like Mamdani does, as, “I just want to fix the potholes. I’m a sewer socialist.” Famously, I think it was Milat Kiros in Colorado who was asked about some of this—you know, “Socialism just means you’re for garbage collection, and we just care about healthcare.” So this is an attempt to sane-wash their fundamentally very radical positions, both in economics and on cultural issues.

Let’s hypothesize that the Democratic Party needs to move to the center to do better over the medium to long term with working-class voters and [vanquish] a right-populist Republican Party. Obviously, [the DSA] now stands in the way. Instead, politicians are being crowded to the left to not be totally outflanked by the DSA and to respond to the so-called energy in the party.

We already see it happening with some relatively moderate Democratic politicians who refuse to denounce the DSA. They just say, “Well, you know, kids will be kids. They’re just for healthcare in a different way. We’re a big tent.” But these people are nuts, many of them. And they stand for a number of things that are anathema to the median voter in America.

So if you aspire to be the working majority in American politics, you don’t want the DSA identified with your party. You want it disidentified as much as possible. As Karl Rove correctly argued today in the Wall Street Journal, you need a Sister Souljah moment where you disassociate the Democrats from the kinds of things the DSA stands for. Just say it loud and say it proud. But it’s the reverse. People are walking on eggshells when they’re asked about the DSA today.

I think that’s quite remarkable, and frankly I don’t expect it to change for a while.

So, we have the governing test that’s ongoing. You mentioned Zohran Mamdani in New York. We have a big [one] coming up in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, who doesn’t identify as a democratic socialist but is of that ilk and is of that wing of the party…

Yeah, he’s cheating them out of their dues.

It is interesting. I want to talk about Michigan, but Francesca Hong in Wisconsin and Zohran Mamdani, who is DSA, have both in recent interviews I’ve listened to tried to distance themselves a little bit from the national brand, especially because this latest program does just call for a list of insane ideas. But on Michigan, if Abdul El-Sayed wins the primary on Tuesday, then I think it will be a much more competitive race in the fall than it would be if Haley Stevens wins the primary. But it’s going to be a very big Democratic year. I was talking to a Republican senator recently who thinks they’re going to lose the Senate. It does feel like it’s just going to be a Democratic wave.

So it’s easy to imagine someone like El-Sayed, despite his considerable baggage and flaws, who wouldn’t be able to win in many other environments, potentially winning in this environment. And then you’re going to have progressives, if that happens—this is a bunch of ifs—in 2027 saying, “Look, Abdul El-Sayed could win in Michigan, and that’s one of the presidential battlegrounds. Trump won it twice. Why can’t we put up a socialist? Why can’t we nominate AOC?”

So I do feel that no matter what the results are—even if Abdul El-Sayed wins the primary and loses the general—they’ll still somehow blame the establishment for not being supportive enough. It feels like this is going to take a while longer to play out.

Absolutely. Look, the good news for the Democrats is, yes, Abdul El-Sayed may be a flawed candidate, but given the right political environment, which we may very well have this November, he could still win. He could still beat the Republican candidate. That’s the good news.

The bad news is, yeah, he could win! And when he does that, it will have a really big effect on the discourse, discussion, and strategic analyses that become prevalent in the Democratic Party. Yes, the left of the party will absolutely claim, “This proves socialists can win anytime, anywhere, including as a national candidate for the Democratic Party.”

That will put the wind in their sails, and all the people in the party who are already cowed trying to stand up to the DSA and the more radical people in the party and saying, “We actually need to change the party brand so it’s more moderate, particularly on cultural issues,” they’ll be on the back foot. I think that’s bad news for the Democratic Party because it will not be the probability-maximizing approach for them to take the presidency in 2028 and build on that.

So I think they’re walking into a world of trouble. But it’s easy to see in the short term—the long term is made up of many short-term decisions, and the short-term decision now is, “We’ll just play it as it lays; the energy is with the left of the party; at least they’re Democrats; they just want more healthcare; maybe the guy will win anyway, and if he wins then we might get the majority in the Senate. We’ll figure it out after that.”

But that is short-term thinking that’s going to interfere with the long term in terms of repositioning the Democratic Party to be the default governing party of America, and particularly to do something about their continuing hemorrhaging of working-class voters.

And when people say “working class,” I think some people think “working-class whites” because that gets a lot of attention in a state like Maine where we had the Graham Platner stuff. But really, working-class voters includes a lot of Hispanics and a lot of African Americans.

And a lot of working-class Hispanics and African Americans voted for Donald Trump, including in 2020 when he lost the election, which is one of the reasons the battlegrounds were as close as they were. Historically, working-class voters don’t really show up in midterm elections.

So it will be interesting to see, do they feel like there’s someone for them if Trump’s not on the ballot? But I do think, whenever you see pictures of these DSA meetings, I’m always blown away by how white they are. A lot of times it’s a candidate who is a racial minority, and then there’s a pan shot of the crowd and virtually everyone is this kind of Brahmin left, as you call them—college degrees or post-graduate degrees, and they get behind these candidates.

Yeah, they’re the educated precariat. They’re mostly white, and they love, in many places, candidates like [Darializa Avila] Chevalier and Mamdani and so on. But actually non-college, working-class people of all races tend to be conspicuously absent, certainly from DSA activism.

But even if you look where their voting strength is, where DSA candidates have run in primaries and also in general elections, typically their greatest strength is among white, professional-class areas, not among working-class Hispanic or black areas, who tend to be more moderate or traditional in their Democratic loyalty.

It is interesting that they try to pass themselves off as the new party of America’s working class, and of course anybody who’s even remotely familiar with the organization—has looked at a few photos—these are not working-class people! These are educated people; these are mostly white people; these are mostly very left-wing people on a variety of cultural issues from which many working-class voters run screaming in the other direction.

And as you pointed out, a lot of these working-class people, hey, it ain’t just white people anymore. It’s Hispanics and blacks and so on. We saw that in 2024, where the movement from 2020 just accentuated in terms of moving toward Trump.

That said, it’s probably going to be the case in this election—both because of how poorly the Trump administration is doing in the public eye, the whole issue of affordability, the fact that the electorate that shows up in 2026 is going to be somewhat different and more Democratic-leaning than in 2024—if you compare the working-class Hispanic Democratic support in this coming election (probably) to what it was in 2024, [Democrats] will make gains. I just have no question about that.

But will that presage a real shift back toward working-class Hispanics to shore up all the weaknesses they’ve been developing in the last ten years? I don’t think so. I think a lot of these voters will still be up for grabs in 2028. Moreover, there are a lot of peripheral, working-class Hispanic voters who aren’t going to show up this time, but who are the most susceptible to moving in another direction other than toward the Democrats—whose loyalty toward the Democrats, such as it is, is very, very light at this point and getting lighter all the time.

So I still worry a lot about that as someone who has generally been supportive of the Democrats and tried to diagnose their problems and urged them to think a little bit about some of these problems and move in another direction. I’m very worried because I think they’ve basically already concluded that it’s not a problem.

You could see that in the first couple of months after 2024. There was a brief, shining period when it seemed like Democrats might be open to a real, serious rethink. But that vanished so fast under the press of resistance to Trump. The generic congressional [ballot] moved so quickly in the direction of Democrats. And as we’re talking in 2026, they’re going to do much better among the voters who do show up. And I think that’s just going to tank whatever interest people had in rethinking their approach.

It is interesting, you look at someone like Seth Moulton, who’s running in the primary against Ed Markey in Massachusetts, who made some pretty mild comments about transgender women in sports.

Yeah, he’s taken it all back, basically.

He’s taken it all back, and he got killed for it.

He didn’t vote for the Laken Riley Act. He now doesn’t talk about it at all. This is what happens to anyone in the Democratic Party…

Angie Craig would be in a similar spot in Minnesota.

Yeah, it’s interesting. A standard line from the Democrats right now, including a lot of Democrats on the left and others who aren’t that far left—[they] think the Democrats need to be more heterodox or more welcoming to certain people who don’t share all the Democratic Party commitments.

It’s still the case that that openness, that “big tent-ism,” seems to apply more to the DSA than it applies to someone who would question the whole “trans rights agenda.” That’s still verboten. You still can’t get away with it.

But you can get away with calling for nationalizing the means of production, having open borders, defunding the police, abolishing the police and prisons—this is much worse! Or it should be considered much worse than apostasy on the issue of trans rights.

It is interesting because society has changed. The Democratic Party looked like it might be moving, but then, I was struck recently when Sophie Cunningham, the star WNBA player for the Indiana Fever, was critical—this is like an 85/15 issue—so it was a pretty mainstream position of trans women in women’s sports.

And there were days of backlash. A lot of anger, a lot of demands for apologies. She did not apologize, and the story moved on. And that does feel different…

Well, did it move on?

…from six years ago, [when] she would have felt compelled to apologize.

I think that’s right.

So you have the country moving one direction and the Democratic Party the other direction.

Right, and refusing to back down, even if they don’t prosecute the dissenters as vigorously as they once did. But is it really going away?

There was an Indiana Fever game in Seattle, where two girls were courtside with signs that indicated their support for Sophie Cunningham and for protecting girls’ sports, and they were screamed at—not only by patrons, because they’re probably all Democrats in Seattle—but the co-owner of the club came up to them, and they’re sitting there with their signs, watching [the game].

And one of the girls was quoted as saying, well, I thought she was going to come up and say hello. Instead she starts screaming at them, like, “How dare you say this? This is the worst thing in the world. This is garbage. Jesus should forgive you for your sins.” And [the girls] were like, “What?”

This is an example of how hardcore a lot of these cultural issues are for partisan Democrats. They’re still not interested in backing down. They’re still not interested in moving to a more moderate stance.

And right now they don’t have to go down with the ship, which is one of the things that makes this so dangerous: they can probably get away with this in the short term. But in the medium to long term it’s a big liability for the party, and those kinds of professional-class, cultural radicals are really going to prevent the Democrats from doing anything much different from what they’re currently doing.

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When you think of the medium term, I think next year. I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but stipulating Democrats win the House and maybe the Senate, you’re going to have Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, both from New York, where you had all these socialist victories. Schumer, I don’t know if he runs again, but in theory is up for re-election in 2028.

It’s very hard to see the Democratic leaders—they’ll be against Trump so they’ll have Trump as a foil to sort of rally their party against—but it’s hard to see Schumer or Jeffries showing leadership because they’re going to be afraid of their own.

Yeah, I think they’re going to be walking on eggshells. I think they’ll probably both survive.

Partly by winning over the left.

Yeah, because they’re going to cave. They’re going to basically accommodate themselves to the energy in the party, the fact that “we’re a big tent, and we include communists and people who believe in open borders, and that’s cool. So long as they’re Democrats!”

I think that is going to be the dominant response. I think there will be some House representatives who will dissent from this, but they’re going to be the exception. The leadership is going to try to keep the big tent from falling down around their ears. It’s all going to be coalition management. There’s not going to be much leadership shown.

That’s going to have a big effect on the race for the nomination as well because the candidates who throw their hat into the ring are going to have to negotiate that mood in the party. In a way, it could oddly enough wind up being more like the lead-up to 2020 than one might have guessed a while ago. Everybody’s going to try to out-left each other and speak to that mood in the party.

Will there be a Joe Biden waiting in the wings to stand up and say, “Hey, I’m a moderate, and moderation actually isn’t such a terrible idea”? It’s hard to see a figure looming over that race who would be able to move in and even try to do that. I guess you could say Rahm Emanuel. But he doesn’t have the juice of someone like Biden [or] the reputation.

It’s also not clear it would work at this point. The first time around, “Okay, this is how we’re going to beat Trump. This is going to be a game-changer.” But it didn’t work; he came right back. So I think the mood in a lot of the party is, we can’t afford to trim our sails. We should just barge straight ahead.

Do you think AOC has a realistic shot at being the presidential nominee?

Absolutely. I would hesitate to put a point estimate on it. But I think she’s got a serious shot. She hasn’t committed yet to doing it—most people haven’t at this point. But yeah, if I’m her, I’m thinking about it. And if not now, when?

Right, there’s not going to be a better environment.

Probably not. An open primary, the DSA’s on a roll.

No clear leader. There’s not an obvious establishment candidate.

Right, and one thing—this was a point made by Astead Herndon in Vox—is that it’s not just that the DSA is rising, it’s that the center is falling. They’re so disorganized. They’re like a deer in the headlights: they don’t know what to do, they don’t know how to adjust, everybody hates them. And if you’re someone like AOC, you say, well, we’re on the ascendancy. The establishment is completely disorganized and on the verge of panic.

And in that way it’s like 2016. It is like the Republican establishment was sort of wheezy by 2016. And they wanted to stop Trump but they couldn’t.

I think if you’re someone on the left, you say, hey, that’s optimistic, right? Because Trump won. Why can’t AOC or someone like that play a similar role—and we’re going to, against all odds, against all the conventional wisdom, we will win.

The average Democratic favorable/unfavorable view right now is 38 percent of Americans have a favorable view…55 percent have an unfavorable view. Republicans basically exactly the same: 39/56. And some of that is people being angry at Democrats about Joe Biden. Some of it is the left being mad at the establishment. A lot of it is the working class looking and seeing these radical left figures and thinking that’s the Democratic Party, that the Democratic brand is the DSA.

So the 55 percent isn’t all one side or the other. But it’s amazing because—I do think Democrats are going to have a huge midterm, but that’s a very bad brand. So you think about 2028, and, like, is Barack Obama really going to come out and try to stop AOC? No.

It’s like a badly played baseball game: someone has to win. It could be the Democrats, could be the Republicans again, but it’s not going to be because they’re riding a wave of popular support. It’s going to be a lot of negative partisanship.

My colleague at AEI, Yuval Levin, and I wrote a piece before 2024 called “Politics Without Winners.” And our basic argument was that this is an unusual period in American politics in the sense that neither party is conducting itself, or is maybe even interested in building a dominant majority and trying to occupy the center of the country. So we toggle back and forth between different, short-lived partisan regimes, and nobody really likes either one of them. Democrats aren’t really thinking, “How can we be the party of the center?” And Republicans are doing the same.

We wrote it before 2024. Obviously, the Democrats were in bad shape, as we predicted, and Trump won. But what does he do once he gets into office? Does he act—do Republicans act—like they’re going to realign American politics and take over the center of American politics and really dominate for a while? Not really, no. They basically responded to their base and to their own idiosyncratic priorities.

And probably, not to be too cynical about this, but if the Democrats get back in in 2028—very possible, obviously, even the betting markets at this point favor them—it’s going to be the same damn thing. They’re going to overreach their so-called mandate, which won’t be much of a mandate. The same political actors and tendencies and factions will still mostly be in control of the party with the same priorities. And they’ll very quickly run out of goodwill.

And then a rough midterms in 2030.

Yeah, and then back to the future, right?

It does feel so circular and cyclical.

You’re just wondering, where is the entrepreneur who can break through this? A political entrepreneur.

Where is he or she?

It’s hard to see at this point. Just in a practical sense, how do you break through in either party with that kind of politics? And who’s even willing to try? You can look at Rahm Emanuel and say, “Well, maybe he…”

He’s playing an important role. He’s helping move the Overton window toward the middle.

One hopes. I mean, he could be in the debates. Somehow he could occupy so much attention and challenge the other candidates, and maybe that would be, in a mild sense, a game-changer.

You mentioned the Sister Souljah moment. I went and rewatched not just the clip, but the whole speech. It really is something to watch. Jesse Jackson just being so angry—it was incredible content. And I was like, what would a Sister Souljah moment look like today?

We hear it, it is cliché, we say it all the time. But I do wonder what that would be in 2026—and the extent to which it could or would work. Does the moment change? Do the coalitions change? As you said, “coalition management.” But 1992 feels so far away.

A long ways away. At that point the DLC was on the rise and had already prepared the ground. There was also a significant base among electeds for that kind of politics. They had a lot of politicians in the Midwest and South who were on their side.

And they had lost in 1980, 1984…

Right, but it’s a different situation now. It’s hard to see where the political juice for a candidate who’s willing to have a Sister Souljah moment, and evidence and push forward that kind of politics—where is it? I think if you’re going to do it, though, it would be a target-rich environment. There’d be a lot of lines that could be drawn. I’ve been urging Democrats to do this (to no avail) for quite a while now.

But there’s a new opportunity to do it: the DSA! And the crazy things they’ve done and said. Why not?

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I think Josh Shapiro should be doing that. You’re the governor of Pennsylvania, critical battleground, the left already doesn’t like you—some of it because of Israel. Shapiro is being interesting in some ways. He’s trying to claim the moderate lane, but he’s also more supportive of data centers than any other Democrat, even though that doesn’t poll well. His Republican challenger, Stacy Garitty, is attacking him for being pro-data center. Which, I understand…

The politics of AI are so weird.

It is really weird. In Michigan, we’ve been talking about the Senate race, but one of the most interesting House races is MI-07. Mike Rogers held that seat, the Republican Senate candidate, and then Elissa Slotkin. It’s now held by Tom Barrett, a Republican who won two years ago. And there’s a Democratic primary where you have the union guy who has all the labor groups—he’s pro-data center because he’s a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. And then you have the lefty candidate who’s anti-data center. It’s a weird coalition.

Is he a DSA guy?

I think he is DSA-adjacent. I think in the internal polls, obviously the national Democrats prefer the union guy, but the lefty may win. And that means Barrett is going to get re-elected. That’s leaving a seat on the table. He’ll have plenty of resources. If El-Sayed is at the top of the ticket—we’ll see what happens. It’s going to be a big Democratic year, but you can see it having a down-ballot impact.

Absolutely. There’s a lot of moving parts, and a lot of the moving parts aren’t going to move in the direction that’s most salubrious for the Democrats. But if I’m a DSA member, I’m very happy.

What should Democrats be doing—putting aside Sister Souljah moments—to win over the working class?

I think you would start out with some attempts to move to the center on cultural issues. There are some obvious ways you could do that. We’re talking about one: biological boys in girls’ sports, biological men in women’s sports. People really don’t like that. And the fact that it’s so difficult to do that in the Democratic Party means that it would get huge coverage—everybody would hear about it. Working-class people would hear about it. And as we know from 2024, it was one of the main issues that convinced working-class swing voters that the Democrats were kind of nuts.

Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you.

Incredibly effective. So that would be a big deal.

There are other things you could do and say around the immigration issue, for example—a Democrat who said, actually, I don’t think we should be unkind to immigrants, but on the other hand, illegal immigration is illegal. And if you’re here, and you’re not supposed to be here, you’re susceptible to deportation. And maybe people who have been here for five years or less should be considered for deportation, whether they’ve been an axe murderer or not.

That would really be breaking from the Democratic consensus, and that would send a message you’re a different kind of Democrat. To me, that’s the general theme: do and say some things that are breaks from Democratic Party orthodoxy, that would indicate to the median working-class voter that you are a different kind of Democrat.

That was the theme of the DLC way back in the day. They argued, using people like Bill Clinton, that we need to send a message to the American people: we are different kinds of Democrats.

The way you do that at this point is in some of the issues I’ve just mentioned. I think climate’s another issue. People really—for years and years and years, climate change is a third-tier issue for most Americans, particularly working-class Americans. And Democrats have placed a huge bet on it. But people don’t want to be told to drive an electric car. They don’t care that much about solar and wind. They just want cheap electricity bills. They want abundant energy, and they’re not that concerned about how “clean” it is.

So I think breaking from that consensus is saying that we really want “all of the above.” We don’t think we should penalize wind and solar, but we don’t think we should reward them, either. We just want America to be an energy superpower.

Unfortunately, you end up saying a lot of stuff that sounds like Chris Wright and the Trump administration, but that’s the problem. You have to be willing to say some things and take some positions that actually significantly overlap with things that Trump and people around him have said because they’re actually extremely popular. And I think they’re correct in policy terms.

So you have to be willing to do that, and it’s another way you show you’re a different kind of Democrat: you’re willing to be generally heterodox in your positions. Take things that are conservative, take things that are liberal, and put them together in a commonsense program.

And on economics, the AI thing they’re definitely going to have to think about because AI is a big deal. And if all you’re associated with is “I hate data centers,” and “I think we should stop AI,” and it’s all because of the billionaires, I think that’s not really responsive to the way the world’s changing and the potential job implications of AI. It’s the most mindless sort of populism.

There are definitely things that can and should be said about how AI should be regulated that are quite popular. But the idea that you’re going to lay down on the railroad tracks to stop data centers and stop AI is neither a responsible position nor, I think, in the end will it be that popular. Because people live in the real world, they know this is changing their world, and they probably don’t think it can really be stopped, but “how can I find my place in it?” How can me and my kids make our way in this new world—have jobs that are decent-paying and all that stuff.

I think that’s part of the problem. The economic program at this point Democrats are pushing boils down to “down with the billionaire class” and “we should make things affordable.” Okay, great! But how are you going to do that? It’s fundamentally empty. It’s a slogan. And yes, it’s a popular slogan and a smart slogan, but it’s just a political slogan. It’s not an economic program.

It’s fascinating because you mentioned talking about immigration and illegal immigrants. There’s this perception among Democratic elites and among the college-educated base of the party that that’s something you can’t say, and that that’s offensive to Hispanics. And then you go talk to Hispanic working-class Democrats, and they have no qualms referring to illegal immigrants.

The same thing with energy. I was really struck by the new Democratic calendar for 2028. One of the early states is New Mexico, which has become the second-biggest oil and gas state after Texas. And the biggest employer is oil and natural gas. Most of the workers are Hispanic. And it is going to be fascinating because two of the first four states are majority-Hispanic-electorate Democratic states: Nevada and New Mexico.

But in both cases, they’re not “AOC voters.” And I don’t think they’re going to be as tied to identity politics as a lot of the elites in the DNC Rules Committee might think. So it will be interesting if that plays any kind of moderating role, or if that does give an opening for someone to compete in a place like New Mexico as a Democrat in 2028 by saying, look—they won’t say “drill, baby, drill,” but drill, baby, drill!

The association of the Democrats with being against resource-extraction industries has been a terrible liability for the party for many years. And it has just been accentuated by being associated with being against fossil fuels and [for] the so-called clean energy transition.

It hurt them in Texas—there’s a ton of oil and gas in Texas, and a lot of Hispanics involved in that. Of course, they were also hurt by the open-borders stuff because a lot of them were Border Patrol agents.

So as a Democrat, being associated with being against the jobs and the economic growth that helps Hispanic people in a given area of the country is not a good look. But is there a candidate who’s going to be willing to take advantage of that, or are we just going to leave these voters to Trump’s successor?

Ruben Gallego is an interesting example. He’s obviously been tarnished by some of these recent developments in terms of the company he kept, so to speak.

Eric Swalwell.

But he has been more willing than a lot of the other potential Democratic candidates to say things that are actually more or less sensible. Not only on the border but on resource extraction. I could see him trying to occupy that lane. And as a Hispanic guy, you’d have increased credibility with Hispanic voters.

But I do worry that they’re all just going to be herded in the same direction, and that’s going to include the Ruben Gallegos of the world.

We talked about Josh Shapiro. I’ve always had a soft spot for Shapiro, as I think he’s a good, smart politician who has good instincts. But he’s also a very cautious politician. For example, didn’t he recently say, “Democrats haven’t had a real debate about who they are since 1992”? Okay, and Josh, what is that debate? Are you going to tell us now?

He tiptoes up to the line, but he doesn’t really go over it. Now, he’s got plenty of time to go over it between now and when things really start getting going in this presidential cycle, but I worry he’s just a bit—I’ve heard him speak a number of times…I don’t know. He’s very carefully calibrated, let me put it that way.

The power and influence of this faction is limited for now. Explicitly socialist candidates—members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—have only won primaries in deep-blue, urban districts. However, Francesca Hong came within about 3,300 votes of winning the party’s nomination for governor in Wisconsin. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the U.S. Senate primary. While he is not a member of the DSA, his rhetoric, campaign surrogates, and policy positions all align with its priorities.

Moreover, it is clear that the energy behind the far left didn’t come from nowhere. It is in some ways the Democratic Party’s response to MAGA on the right. Both movements arose as a backlash to declining trust in America’s institutions—political, financial, civic, and otherwise.

So why must non-progressives push back against the shifting winds? Because while it’s true that our system doesn’t work for most people right now, socialism is plainly not the answer.

The DSA platform operates on the assumption that every institution causes inequality and seeks to fundamentally restructure American government and society. Among other things, it advocates:

• Abolishing the U.S. Senate

• Abolishing the current presidency and Supreme Court and creating new institutions subservient to a now-unicameral Congress

• Eliminating the Department of War

• Allowing for completely open borders

• Abolishing prisons and police

• Nationalizing healthcare, utilities, and all major corporations

They also pay lip service to democracy, but they then praise left-wing authoritarians like Fidel Castro and Nicolas Maduro. And on the home front, they have affiliated themselves with toxic figures like Hasan Piker and embraced his Mao Zedong fanboy leftism.1

Even El-Sayed, who is not a DSA member, has said things like, “Democrats should really be afraid of what I mean for their system of politics. When I say I’m coming for it, I’m coming for all of it.”

This is not a faction that wants to be part of the party. This is a religious group on a crusade.

Meanwhile, many mainstream Democrats have treated these developments as a run-of-the-mill political battle of ideas that primary voters will decide—may the best candidate win, and then vote blue no matter who. They don’t want to anger the left wing and risk losing power to Republicans. After all, the left has a lot of energy, and voters are clamoring for change.

But this isn’t the progressive left of 2016, or even 2024; the DSA offers a secular religion built around socialism. It attracts True Believers. And yet the Democratic Party establishment and moderates who oppose the DSA keep bringing knives to a gunfight.

How politics becomes secular religion

Politics can only become a belief system on the level of religion if one does not already subscribe to a religious belief system. Religion fills basic human needs for community and a deeply held personal belief system. People might eschew religion, but many will still feel that need and look for it in non-religious places—such as politics.

Notably, the share of Americans who do not affiliate with religion has been on the rise. Over the last 20 years, the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans increased from around 16 percent to about three in ten.2 This cohort is disproportionately young and overwhelmingly liberal. Moreover, many do not have strong ties to the country’s political system: about a third (34 percent) are Democrats and 14 percent are Republicans, while a majority (51 percent) are independents, another party, or no party.

These young, disaffected, unaffiliated liberals are exactly the demographic that has flocked to the insurgent left, as we have seen in both polls and election returns from places like New York City and Michigan. Young people show all the signs of disconnection from and low trust in institutions that can lead people to engage with more extreme ideologies to fill that need to belong—something to ground them and provide meaning and order to life.

Scholars have studied how SoulCycle and other fitness communities resemble secular religions. If fitness can fill the religion gap, it’s not hard to imagine politics doing the same: political beliefs become moral values that develop into a deeper belief system, and organizing provides a community of like-minded people who want to save the world in the same way.

The first implication of leftism as a secular religion is that political differences are not confined to the political realm; they become direct challenges to spreading the message that will save the world.

Activist left language around policy disputes is often existential, and many insist that their way is the only correct path. For example, El-Sayed told the New York Times’s Michelle Goldberg that he thinks “there are really quite few” people whose opposition to his ideas is sincere and not driven by “lies being put on TV.” In other words: some other force is lying to people to drive disagreement with him. Without that force, such people would recognize the obvious right path—which is to say, his path.

If that sounds a lot like Christian evangelism, which says the world’s evil forces pull people away from God and the right path, that’s because it’s the other side of the same coin. The religious right folded its religious morality into the Republican Party, while the progressive left started with politics, turned it into religion, and is now trying to wrest control of the Democratic Party.

Religion requires accepting some things as a matter of faith because logic won’t make it make sense. For the religious right, that is taking the Apostles’ Creed literally: believing in God and Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was crucified, dead, and buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father almighty.

On the progressive left, that faith is the belief that their policies would save the world. For the DSA, this belief is particularly important. Interviews make clear that members of their national leadership often lack basic historical knowledge about parts of their platform and struggle to answer straightforward questions, like how “taxing the hell out of” billionaires would work, or how more diplomacy would have ended the war in Ukraine by now. Faith in the project does not waver in the absence of rational answers.

However, one substantial difference between the religious right and the activist left is what happens when their side is out of power. Many on the right believe that God is still working toward the ultimate goals. Their trust in God supersedes political setbacks, and they look toward future wins.3 Yes, they will spend lots of time arguing about how much Democrats are ruining the country, but they also turn to God as their source of hope and promise for the future.

On the left, there is no larger force moving on their behalf if they are not in power. Politics and policy are their sources of hope for the future. That’s why many view compromise as abhorrent and consider the Democratic establishment to be as great an enemy as Republicans. They firmly believe that if the establishment would get on board with their ideas, Republicans would not be a problem.

Using shame to bring (and keep) people in line

Though many politicos may find it somewhat counterintuitive, the activist left relies on shame, rather than persuasion, to bring people into the fold. It’s the same playbook many evangelical Christians use:

• Offer people an explanation for what is wrong in the world and in people’s lives: people do not obey God, and the world’s evil forces pull humans further away from God;

• Then offer the savior mechanism: Jesus and repentance;

• Then use shame to enforce beliefs. Evangelical Christianity has a long history of fire-and-brimstone preaching—frightening people with the specter of Hell—to shame people into believing. Without God, people are wretched sinners who will spend their time on Earth and eternity in misery. Shame!

The quasi-religiosity of the secular left is eerily similar. Their explanation for what is wrong in the world is that those evil billionaires and the people in power don’t care about you and are responsible for all of our problems. Their savior mechanism is a set of policy beliefs that gives power back to the people. If you don’t buy in, they label you a bad person. You are fascist; you are racist; you are a Republican (in some quarters, the ultimate insult). Disagreement is unacceptable. The only path forward is to follow what they believe—just like Jesus is the only way to avoid Hell.

The hope on the left is to shame or scare people into siding with them. Online leftists form mobs to pile shame on people who aren’t in line with their beliefs. Recently, Piker, an ally of El-Sayed, said that those who think El-Sayed has fences to mend after the bruising Democratic primary are “Islamophobic pieces of shit.” In essence, he hopes to shame Democratic voters reluctant to back El-Sayed into thinking, “I don’t want to believe lies or be Islamophobic! I need to support him unquestioningly!”

That thought process may sound silly, but psychological shame games are tailor-made for a core demographic group in the Democratic Party: liberal white women. We saw this on display during “woke 1,” when many of them became aware of the long-time critiques of feminism as inherently racist and benefiting only white women. Afraid of being labeled racist or exuding “white fragility,” they started “doing the work” to become more racially aware. Some even paid thousands of dollars to be told how they are racist. By 2019, Democrats had shifted overwhelmingly left on race issues—driven by white liberals.

The activist left is pulling the same empathy and shame levers as the religious right, and it shows: their candidates get more support from predominantly white areas than from areas with larger minority populations.

Fighting with the right weapons

Despite the media focus on socialist candidates, the activist left is not in control yet. Michigan and Wisconsin both showed that high polling numbers for activist-left candidates were a mirage. Normie Democratic voters turned out at a high rate, including black and working-class voters—long the backbone of the party.

There are two scenarios for where things go from here. One is that the activist left becomes an enduring faction within the Democratic Party that pushes its policy agenda and wins some elections but is part of a larger, more powerful machine, somewhat akin to the religious right in Trump’s Republican Party. This scenario becomes likelier if the Democratic establishment stops coddling the DSA and allowing it—an entirely separate party with its own platform—to leech off of the Democratic Party.

The second scenario is that Democratic Party leaders accept the DSA into the party, including its platform and takeover goals. This would be a mistake. The DSA platform is unhelpful to the Democrats’ agenda, and accepting it puts the “big tent” at risk of collapsing when moderates flee.

One way to neuter the activist left’s momentum and push back on its existential framing is for non-progressives to answer voters’ anger better and offer a clear, long-term vision for the country. They would also do well to stop arguing about incrementalism versus overhauling the system because that is fighting a political battle—even worse, a political process battle—rather than facing the religious fervor of the left head-on.

Moderates have some very popular policy positions! These include:

• Adopting a public health insurance option (rather than throwing the current system out the window for $30 trillion);

• Overhauling the tax code to simplify it and closing loopholes so that billionaires and corporations pay their fair share;

• Replacing ICE with a border enforcement agency that focuses on security and deporting dangerous criminals; and

• Investing in education at all levels, including addressing higher education costs and promoting trades and technology training needed for jobs that exist now.

Stick to these policies and talk about them as if they are what will save the party and the country. This isn’t a matter of mere politics or policy nuances when socialists are on an existential crusade. Amp it up—or lose more ground.

Editor’s note: this piece first appeared on Stuck in the Middle.

Natalie Jackson is founder and principal of Centerline Research and Strategy. Read more of her work at National Journal and on her Substack, Stuck in the Middle.

We are launching a new recurring segment today called the Friday Five. The premise is simple: many of you likely have a surfeit of content to consume on a daily basis, and we want to help you weed through it by showcasing some of our favorite work from others. In each edition of the Friday Five, we will highlight two pieces from the past week, two pieces from further back, and one piece of data that we found interesting and worth sharing—something you can take into the weekend.

Additionally, we want to thank all of you who have joined us at The Long View. We are thrilled to have a new home for our writing and appreciate that you have chosen to be a part of this new endeavor. As we have mentioned, we know all too well that this work truly cannot happen without your support. If you like our work and are willing to do a little more than simply read, we’d greatly appreciate your becoming a paid subscriber today.

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Paid subscriptions are what will allow us to keep investing the time and effort required to do this work well—to dig into the data, follow arguments and trends beyond the daily news cycle, and build something that can last.

And even if you’re not ready to pay, please keep reading and sharing the free posts. We’re grateful to have you with us either way.

-Ruy & Michael

2 things from this week

• Bill Galston: Josh Shapiro Shows Democrats How to Win

The persuaders’ flag is being carried by Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, the largest and most important swing state. Except for George W. Bush, every winning presidential candidate since 1972 has carried the Keystone State, and in the past 10 presidential elections the winning candidate’s share of the state’s vote has deviated from his national share by an average of only 1.6 points. With its mix of bright blue big cities, purple suburbs and dark red rural towns, Pennsylvania has become a microcosm of the country.

Mr. Shapiro’s standing in his race for re-election is remarkable. According to polls conducted in the past two months, he leads his Republican challenger by more than 20 points. His job approval stands at 60%, including 56% of white voters without college degrees. Along with near-unanimous support from Democrats and from 58% of independents, 31% percent of Republicans approve of his performance in office, as do 30% of Trump supporters. Seventeen percent of Republicans say that they will vote for him.

In our polarized times, these results are unusual. But they are explicable. Fifty percent of Pennsylvania’s electorate sees the Democratic Party as having moved too far left, compared with only 33% who think that the party hasn’t moved too far in either direction. For Mr. Shapiro, it’s the reverse: Just 29% see him as having moved too far left, while twice as many—58%—see him as neither too far left nor too far right. Only 11% of Republicans think that the Democratic Party has found this sweet spot on the ideological spectrum, but 37% think Mr. Shapiro has. This is a good operational definition of moderation, and he is reaping its rewards. […]

…if Mr. Shapiro wins the smashing victory that current polls project, backed by a unified Democratic Party, a majority of independents and a substantial crossover vote from Republicans, his strategy of persuasion through moderation will be vindicated in a state that serves as a dry run for the 2028 election.

• Congressman Tom Suozzi (NY-03): Democrats Must Reject the DSA

Millions of Americans are losing faith in their government, their institutions, and an economic system that no longer seems to reward hard work. They struggle to afford housing, healthcare, and education while watching wealth become increasingly concentrated at the top. They’re mad as hell, in other words, and they’re not going to take it anymore.

But if Democrats are going to earn the confidence of these Americans this November and beyond, the answer will not be found in the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) platform. Although relatively small in number—the organization counts 120,000 members in a country of some 330 million people—the DSA is aggressive and disciplined. Candidates affiliated with the group are winning Democratic primaries. But we cannot allow them to drag our party to the far left. […]

Capitalism and democracy helped make America prosperous, innovative, and powerful, but neither is self-correcting. Unchecked capitalism can concentrate wealth and crush market competition. A hostile and paralyzed government can destroy confidence in democracy. We must repair both systems, not abandon one or surrender the other.

The DSA is not proposing that we become more like Denmark or Norway, two liberal democracies with universal healthcare and a more robust social safety net. Instead, they propose something much more radical.

2 things from the archive

• Tyler Austin Harper: Confessions of a Token Black Professor

I had spent my entire adult life at college, in grad school, and now working as a professor, and I had never before been self-conscious about being a beneficiary of affirmative action. I had always assumed that if I simply worked harder than the people around me—if I read more, went to more conferences, published more and in better venues—then nobody would question whether I deserved to be there. My experience on that search committee, though, disabused me of the notion that any of this mattered at Bates. The school’s culture encouraged us to see professors of color as vehicles for achieving the college’s diversity goals. The inescapable conclusion I arrived at was that I had been hired to be visibly Black first and a scholar second, if at all. […]

I never stopped believing in affirmative action in principle, but I slowly stopped believing in it in practice. I’d understood the spirit of affirmative action to be about recognizing that people from historically underrepresented groups often face additional barriers, about affirming that talented minorities who may be less connected and superficially less refined can nonetheless rise to the occasion if given the opportunity. It seemed to me that the Bates administration’s push to diversify at all costs had led some of my colleagues on the faculty to internalize the opposite idea: that it is not especially important to find minority candidates who are capable of being held to traditional academic norms. Justice and anti-racism required a two-tiered system, a sort of woke Jim Crow, in which radically separate standards were applied to white and nonwhite candidates. In short, I came to see Bates College, self-styled beacon of progress, as an institution that was deeply, incorrigibly racist.

• Aaron Renn: The End of the Interregnum

What comes next after the Trump era in American politics? And will it be a durable governing majority, or just another oscillation in a deeply polarized, nearly 50/50 nation?

The durability question is an important one. We are in a period of transition in America. The old arrangements of the 80s and 90s no longer seem fit for purpose to many. We have a long list of challenges to address: demographic transitions, China competition, social atomization and associated dysfunctions, etc. for which the old answers no longer seem as relevant.

Part of how that transition has manifested is in our political instability, and the gradual decline of our old political order. That decline is shown, for example, in the progressive rejection of old political norms and arrangements, such as how the filibuster has been weakened over successive administrations and the growth of party line voting on Senate confirmations for presidential appointments.

One part of moving beyond the transition period is the development of a governing majority that can implement the institutional changes needed to get America fit for the challenges of both today and tomorrow. I would define a durable governing majority as one that is able to hold the presidency for 12 years, have enough support in Congress to pass more than one or two significant pieces of legislation, and in which the minority party accommodates itself to a significant part of the new agenda.

I would define the Reagan-Bush era as a durable governing coalition. It wasn’t Republican hegemony and didn’t get everything it wanted, but it did get things done - and set the tone for another decade or more of similar approaches. The Democratic Leadership Council and Bill Clinton largely kept the economic playbook, and even embraced Reaganesque ideas like welfare reform and tough on crime measures. We haven’t had another period like this in about 35 years. (I should not, however, that various parts of Trumpism like China skepticism are being more broadly absorbed even by people who don’t like him generally).

So what are the possible 2028 outcomes, and are they potentially durable ones? If we use the standard left-right spectrum as one axis, and a populist-institutionalist as the other, this produces a 2x2 matrix of basic outcomes. We will examine each in turn.

1 data visualization

• Matt Yglesias: The Great Awokening started in 2014, not 2020

The whole “Woke 1” discourse is a good joke, but it obviously lacks a certain kind of precision.

I wrote a big feature for Vox about what I called the Great Awokening back in March of 2019, which obviously was before Covid and before George Floyd. So while the social phenomenon I was talking about clearly reached its apogee 12 or 24 months after I published the piece, the underlying shifts were visible before that. There are a bunch of different ways to characterize what these shifts were, but I think if you want a single clear data point to focus on, I would look at the share of the non-Black population that says “yes” to the question “On the average Black people have worse jobs, income, and housing than white people. Do you think these differences are mainly due to discrimination?”

While 2014 feels like a long time ago now, when I wrote my Great Awokening piece in 2019, it was only five years in the past. And you can see that as recently as 2014, a majority of non-Black Democrats said “no” to this question. The numbers then surged among non-Black Democrats and non-Black independents in the 2016, 2018, and 2022 surveys while Republicans had small increases in 2016 and 2018.

[…] I think the Great Awokening is almost by definition about shifts outside the African American community. You can, though, see that Black opinion has not really moved all that much — the key thing is that white Democrats’ views have shifted considerably.

A remarkable feature of modern American politics is that large majorities of people in both political parties believe their side is the one losing. More strikingly: Republicans tend to believe this when they don’t control Washington, while Democrats in recent years have come to believe it regardless of which party holds power.

Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear Democrats today argue that the country’s political and electoral institutions are structurally biased against them, and that this is the reason they have had such a difficult time consistently winning elections in recent years. Many believe that they represent a majority of the country, and before 2024, they often pointed to the fact that they had won the national popular vote in six of the previous seven elections as evidence of this. And in two of those elections, they lost the Electoral College, allowing conservatives to build a durable majority on the Supreme Court that included five justices who were appointed by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. Democrats also lament that Republicans successfully gerrymandered themselves into an eight-year majority in the House of Representatives during the 2010s, and that their advantage in the Senate is growing.

Viewed through this lens, it’s easy to see why Democrats believe there needs to be major change. Where the party may be getting itself into some trouble, though, is on the question of what, exactly, should change. Throughout American history, parties that have lost elections—especially over a long period of time—have eventually acknowledged that winning back power required reforming themselves. For Democrats today, this might mean making the party more palatable to working-class and rural voters, who are overrepresented in states that often determine control of the Senate and White House, and at least some of whom supported Democrats not long ago.

But repairing their coalition will likely take time—and because many Democrats think Trump poses an existential threat to the republic, they have become less willing to wait. Rather than taking the long view and working to rebuild a coalition capable of regularly winning under the existing rules, they have become convinced that what needs changing is the system itself.

Of course, reform isn’t always a bad thing. Moreover, some of Democrats’ proposed reforms are more nonpartisan in nature and would not give either party a clear edge, such as banning partisan gerrymandering, expanding the size of the House of Representatives, and reducing barriers to voting. However, several of them appear designed to boost their political power and make it easier for them to enact their agenda, such as making DC a state, scrapping the Senate filibuster, and abolishing the Electoral College.

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Perhaps the most controversial—and revealing—proposal targets the institution Democrats increasingly see as the biggest obstacle to their policy goals: the Supreme Court. Recent polling shows just 12 percent of Democrats approve of the Court, while 67% say justices decide cases based on their political views (rather than the law) and 77% believe they regularly side with Trump. Many Democrats simply see the Court as a biased political actor and fear that it could take a generation or more before it has a liberal majority that will more consistently uphold the party’s preferred policies.

Because of this, a growing chorus of voices in the party, including prominent figures, is now openly advocating for expanding (or “packing”) the Court. Calls for this kind of change are particularly noteworthy because they represent a marked shift in thinking from the last time Democrats won a majority in Congress. In 2019, they introduced as their very first bill the “For the People Act,” which included a litany of reforms to the nation’s political system but conspicuously left out expanding the Court. When Joe Biden later controlled the presidency, the furthest he went was to establish a commission to study court reforms and eventually endorse term limits—but not expansion.

However, Democrats’ appetite for a more combative approach to the Court has become much stronger, as many now believe that their leaders have been played for fools by Republicans and that this has cost them dearly. One of the most common expansion proposals would add four more seats, bringing the total to 13. Some Democrats have argued that this is a commonsense measure designed to align the number of seats on the Court with the number of federal appellate courts. Of course, the four additional seats could then be filled while Democrats still controlled the White House and Congress, creating a 7–6 liberal majority.

Whatever the stated rationale, proposals like court-packing would do more than just remove existing biases from the political system. And even if Democrats are convinced that this effort is merely aimed at righting past wrongs, the public overwhelmingly views the proposal as a raw power grab and opposes it.

There’s a reason why the parties have viewed court expansion as such a risky endeavor that they have historically been reluctant to pursue it. In fact, it has been nearly 90 years since the last time a party seriously attempted to expand the court for partisan purposes, and that’s because it ended extremely poorly for that party—the Democrats.

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt, having just won re-election in a landslide, attempted a court-packing scheme of his own to overpower a conservative bloc that had helped strike down a series of his New Deal initiatives. Despite FDR’s broad popularity, his plan proved politically disastrous. By summer 1938, the public had begun souring on his economic plans, with a Gallup poll showing that two-thirds of Americans wanted him to pursue more conservative policies. In the midterms that fall, Republicans made gains in both the House and Senate for the first time in a decade, and many historians point to Roosevelt’s overreach as a key factor.

But the pitfalls of court-packing go beyond imperiling Democrats’ political standing. Hardball tactics like this are guaranteed to perpetuate America’s endless cycle of escalating polarization: one party makes a play for more power, and the other responds in kind—or worse—the next time they hold the reins. In fact, Democrats have been down this road before with the Supreme Court. After they scrapped the Senate filibuster for lower-court appointments in 2013, Republicans finished the job four years later, ending the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees to confirm Neil Gorsuch.

In this case, there’s no reason to think that Democrats could expand the court to 13 and that would be the end of the fight. What is to stop Republicans from adding an additional four seats and reclaiming a conservative majority the next time they have power?

This is the problem at the heart of reforms that are motivated by the pursuit of a partisan advantage: they almost always provoke an equal and opposite reaction and erode Americans’ trust in their government even further. What the country desperately needs is to have its faith restored in important institutions, which includes the Supreme Court. Confirmation hearings for new justices carry extremely high stakes and aggravate tensions between the parties. The increasingly political nature of Court appointments also makes it harder for partisans to regard decisions they dislike as legitimate.

But reforming the Court in a way that doesn’t give either side a clear advantage could help repair its image. One idea is to institute 18-year term limits, which would give every president the chance to appoint two justices in their term. This is one of the more straightforward proposed changes and has substantial backing from the public, though it still keeps control of the confirmation process in the political realm, which is less ideal. More ambitious proposals would seek to significantly depoliticize the Court, such as a “lottery” system that would randomly elevate appellate judges to help decide cases. Both ideas carry trade-offs as well, but they maintain the more constructive goals of trying to reduce the stakes of appointments to the Court and remove partisan influence over it.

The other option for Democrats is to simply do the hard work of persuading more voters to support them and building a large, durable coalition that can eventually reform the court through the current process. Unlike court-packing, this does not offer a shortcut to winning back power. It takes time and isn’t always easy, especially in the current political environment. But it would allow Democrats to pursue their policy goals through Congress with some consistency rather than turning the courts into another arena for partisan combat—as it should be.

Editor’s note: this is a significantly updated and expanded version of a piece that first appeared in Commonplace.

What was social democracy?

Social democracy was the most successful product of a working-class movement that had long contained both revolutionary and reformist elements. Two world wars, an interwar period of political chaos and economic meltdown, and the authoritarian degeneration of the Soviet Union decisively tilted the working-class movement toward the political management of capitalism to deliver a better deal for workers. Social democrats came to believe it was both possible and necessary to harness the capitalism’s dynamic growth potential to raise workers’ wages, with unions helping them capture a larger share of the gains, and a wide array of social programs that could guard against sickness, old age, and unemployment—the so-called welfare state. Instead of a revolution, they put their sights on boosting working-class prosperity and security.

The social democrats were right about the potential of a politically managed capitalism to deliver these benefits for workers while avoiding serious economic crises and authoritarianism. And, while remaining anchored in the working class, especially unions, they successfully built cross-class coalitions that could support a managed capitalism and the welfare state. In this, they were helped immensely by the rise and decades-long hegemony of Keynesian economics, which provided a coherent economic philosophy for managing capitalism to achieve their goals.

As practiced by the labor and socialist parties of Europe—and, in a milder form, by the labor-backed mainstream of the American Democratic Party—the results were impressive. In the 30 years after World War II, growth was strong, crises were held in check, and living standards rocketed upwards, providing much of the working class with a middle-class lifestyle. In the United States, the GDP growth rate was 3.8 percent per year between 1946 and 1973, and the per capita GDP growth rate was 2.4 percent over the same period. Unemployment, though considered high compared to booming Europe, averaged 4.8 percent over these years. And the growth in living standards was phenomenal: real median family income rose at a rate of 2.8 percent per year, more than doubling over the period. What’s more, this growth was even stronger at the bottom and a little weaker at the top, so income inequality actually fell substantially.

For three decades, the Keynesian consensus in industrial democracies produced strong economic growth, low unemployment, rapidly rising living standards, and government actions to provide more protection and security for the average citizen. This produced a virtuous feedback loop between the political fortunes of social democrats and the economic fortunes of their countries.

Reflecting this feedback loop, until almost the very end of this period, the social democratic-oriented Democratic Party received high levels of electoral support. As far as voters were concerned, Democrats had delivered a better and ever-richer society and deserved their support. In the six elections between 1932 and 1948, Democratic presidential support averaged 55 percent. After the liberal Republican Dwight Eisenhower won two terms in 1952 and 1956, the Democrats again averaged 55 percent presidential support in 1960 and 1964. And during almost all of this period, the party also controlled both houses of Congress.

But as the 1970s dawned, three factors converged and reinforced one another to undermine social democracy. The social democratic economic model lost its effectiveness; the social democratic base got smaller; and the social democratic influence within the left got weaker.

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Let’s start with the economic model. In the 1970s, the complications of a globalizing economy started to bite, undermining the stable international economic relationships of the postwar Bretton Woods system, including fixed exchange rates. The coup de grâce was administered by the OPEC oil price shock of 1973. Inflationary pressures that had been building up inside the U.S. and other advanced countries could no longer be contained, producing high inflation rates that could not be brought down even by high unemployment. This toxic combination of high unemployment and high inflation was termed “stagflation.” Social democrats at that time did not have an alternative to the postwar Keynesian system to fix this problem, nor a plan for extending the life of the system, which led to the end of the Keynesian consensus.

A conservative counter-revolution in economic thinking filled the vacuum left by the collapse of the Keynesian consensus. Conservatives, of course, had never been happy with the Keynesian consensus. They were ideologically opposed to the idea that the unregulated market had intrinsic flaws that only government could correct, and many conservatives had economic interests that predisposed them to resist and resent government. So, when the Keynesian system appeared to break down, they seized the opportunity to reinstate their views and discredit government’s role. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Leading the charge was conservative economist Milton Friedman. In his academic work he showed how inflationary expectations could derail the Phillips curve favored by Keynesian economists. With his wife, Rose, he published the enormously influential Free to Choose, a no-holds-barred polemic in favor of self-interested individuals making “rational,” unregulated decisions and against anything that interfered with this process—especially government action. As far as Friedman was concerned, government’s economic role should be limited to little more than controlling the growth of the money supply.

This economic philosophy was obviously no mere reform or adjustment of the Keynesian system but a complete turnaround—a true counter-revolution. In short order, it came to dominate economic policymaking in the U.S. and other advanced countries. Deregulation, privatization, and rapid globalization of economic activity became the order of the day, while Keynesian fiscal policy, especially the central role of public investment, was shunted aside. In the U.S., this led to significant deregulation of the transportation, energy, telecommunications, and financial sectors.

This return to market-driven economy policy and the downgrading of the political management of capitalism came to be termed “neoliberalism.” While initially promulgated by the right, it came to be accepted on the left, including in the ranks of social democrats. They more or less accepted this turn in policymaking as inevitable and sought to focus their economic policy on defending welfare state programs and, where possible, extending them. The social democratic model of economic management was mothballed in favor of a softer form of neoliberalism, while the right promoted a harder variant.

Whether accepting neoliberalism was truly as necessary as social democrats came to believe—and whether they had more degrees of freedom to dissent from that approach than they thought—can be debated. But for purposes of understanding the long, slow death of social democracy, that is not terribly relevant. The point is that they assented to this economic regime change, thereby undercutting a key pillar of the social democratic project.

The second key factor in social democracy’s demise was the shrinking of the social democratic base. For perhaps 150 years—and most robustly in the century between 1870 and 1970—the left coalition was primarily based in the industrial working class, though additional support, especially for the non-socialist left, came from reformist elements of the white-collar middle class and the agrarian sector). This coalition ebbed and flowed in this period but reached its peak of power and influence in the 30 years after World War II—the social democratic moment.

But the industrial working class had typically peaked in size by 1970 (in some countries, even somewhat earlier), and after 1970 it experienced a precipitous decline. The general pattern has been a decline from 40 to 50 percent of the workforce to less than a quarter in a very short historical time span.

To put these changes in perspective, consider the United States. After rising for around 150 years, industrial employment is now roughly back to its 1820 level, when 70 percent of employment was in agriculture. Today, services account for well over three-quarters of employment. Agriculture and services have essentially swapped places since 1820, while industry’s share of employment has ended up roughly where it started nearly two centuries ago.

Other changes deepen the significance of this shift. Union membership, crucial to the social democratic formula, has dropped steadily across countries and, notably, its composition has shifted toward public-sector employees. In the United States, union membership peaked at 35 percent of the non-agricultural workforce in the mid-1950s and is now down to about ten percent (and an even lower six percent in the private sector).

Finally, as the industrial working class has shrunk, it has also become less supportive of the mainstream left parties that had promoted social democracy. Most of this support went to parties of the right and, especially lately, to right-populist parties.

So, in addition to a sharp decline in the viability of the Keynesian social democratic model of economic management, the very constituency that provided the bulwark of support for that model was declining in size and moving on politically. This brings us to the closely related third factor in the long, slow death of social democracy: the dramatic weakening of the influence of social democracy within the broad left.

This was the inevitable consequence of the replacement of traditional working-class voters—who reliably supported social democratic aims—within the left by other constituencies with other priorities. The key change here is the rise of educated and professional voters and the movement of these voters into the left.

The U.S. provides a particularly compelling example of rapidly rising educational levels. Incredible as it may seem today, in 1940, three-quarters of American adults aged 25 and over were high school dropouts (or never made it as far as high school), and just five percent had a four-year college degree or higher. But education credentials exploded in the postwar period. By 1960, the proportion of adults lacking a high school diploma was down to 59 percent; by 1980, it was less than a third; and by 2024, it was just six percent. Concomitantly, the proportion with a bachelor’s degree or higher rose steadily and reached 39 percent in 2024. This is quite a change: from a country where only one in twenty adults had a college degree to one where nearly two in five do.

As the educated class has become more numerous, it has realigned toward left parties, especially its professional segment. Indeed, in the United States of 60 years ago, professionals were actually the most conservative occupational group. Now, they overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and the college-educated more reliably support Democrats, while the broad working class (often defined as the non-college-educated) leans Republican.

Most strikingly, the working class—especially in former left strongholds—has swollen the ranks of right-populist parties, while the educated professionals have become increasingly loyal to the erstwhile social democratic parties (and, in some countries, parties even further left, like the Greens). And as they have become the foot soldiers and activists for these parties, their influence has grown apace, amplified by their vast influence in the commanding heights of cultural production, such as the media, the arts, academia, and NGOs. This has dramatically reduced the influence of the working class, formerly the beating heart of left parties.

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Put these three factors together—the declining effectiveness of the social democratic economic model, the diminution of the social democratic base, and the profound weakening of social democratic influence within the left—and you have the recipe for the long, slow death of social democracy. If social democracy has been on a long journey to oblivion, what has taken its place, given that the parties of the left continue to exist?

The best term for this transformation is the “Brahmin Left,” a concept coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and dominated by highly educated voters and social elites. The Brahmin Left character of these parties developed over many decades but accelerated in the 21st century. The chart below illustrates this trend for the United States.

The chart does not show the most recent election results, but survey studies agree that education polarization intensified further in both 2020 and 2024. Including those data would thus make the pattern in the chart even more striking.

Brahmin Left parties continue to favor redistribution more than the right, even as they have lost their working-class character and overriding commitment to a model of capitalism that could produce better market outcomes for workers (sometimes termed “predistribution”). An influential paper by economists Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet-Marx, and Suresh Naidu terms the redistributionist approach “compensate the losers.”

But what really defines the Brahmin Left parties and marks their decisive break with social democracy is the shift in priorities toward sociocultural issues of primary concern to their educated constituencies. These issues generally hark back to the movements of the sixties around racial and gender equality, the environment, and cultural tolerance. They increasingly came to define the core commitments of the Brahmin Left parties, thereby undercutting their ties to working-class voters who were generally far less interested in these issues.

The focus on sociocultural issues did two things that intensified the Brahminization of these parties. First, there were opportunity costs to such a focus, as the expenditure of energy and political capital on these issues necessarily reduced efforts to reach working-class voters and respond to their economic concerns. It was a much more zero-sum game than social democratic leaders were initially willing to admit, even if over time this fundamental fact became glaringly obvious.

The second—and most critical—effect of the sociocultural focus was that catering to professional class priorities bred ever more reliance on these voters, forcing left parties to accommodate them as their preferences changed and potentially became more extreme. And that is exactly what happened.

Consider the four biggest changes in left priorities in the 21st century, all of which were eagerly embraced by Brahmin Left parties: (1) neo-racialism; (2) mass immigration; (3) gender ideology and transgender “rights”; and (4) climate catastrophism and the rapid green transition. None of these were of, for, or supported by the working class, but rather they reflected the increasingly left-wing priorities of professional class voters.

Neo-racialism

Start with neo-racialism. A key moral commitment of the 20th-century left was to make societies colorblind. It was unfair that racial discrimination could limit the life chances of racial minorities. Therefore, the left strenuously advocated for ending discrimination and unequal opportunity. They won the argument, in the process pulling social democrats and social democratic-oriented parties in their direction.

In America, not only did the government pass legislation to make such discrimination illegal, but anti-discrimination and equal opportunity became close to consensus beliefs in the country.

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.

These broad sentiments were what social democratic parties initially endorsed, consistent with their historic commitment to social fairness. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: instead of treating a colorblind society as a noble ideal worth pursuing—even if perfect attainment was impossible—these increasingly Brahminized parties lost faith in the ideal because racial disparities did not immediately disappear. Instead, prodded by increasingly radical professional class activists, they began to favor color-conscious remedies like affirmative action that went far beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity and oppose colorblind policies if they did not produce desired outcomes by race.

Even worse, huge swaths of these parties, egged on by the professional class left, have become infected with an overarching ideology that judges actions or arguments not by their content but rather by the identity of those engaging in them. Those identities in turn are defined by an intersectional hierarchy of oppressed and oppressors, powerful and powerless, dominant and marginalized. With this “intersectional” approach, one judges an action not by whether it’s effective, or an argument by whether it’s true, but rather by whether the people involved are in the oppressed/powerless/marginalized category or not. If they are, the actions or arguments should be supported; if not, they should at minimum be viewed as suspect—or simply opposed.

This approach is in obvious contradiction to logic and common sense. It has also led Brahmin Left parties to take positions that have little purchase in social or political reality and are often offensive to the basic values most voters, especially working-class voters, hold.

Take the vogue for “anti-racist” posturing in America, which has had massive influence throughout the Western world. It emerged in the mid-2010s and gathered overwhelming force in 2020 with the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis and subsequent nationwide protests, which were echoed in many other countries. It became de rigueur in Brahmin Left circles to solemnly declare their societies to be systemically racist and shot through with white supremacy from top to bottom.

Nothing exemplifies this better in America than the lionization of Ibram X. Kendi, whose thoroughly ridiculous claims were treated as revealed truth by tens of millions of good Democrats, with professional class enforcers at the ready to make sure they stuck to the catechism. Kendi wrote, for instance:

There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy. Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or equity between racial groups…The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination…The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

Only those who had checked their capacity for critical thinking at the door could possibly have taken such arguments seriously. But millions of Democrats insisted these absurdities must be taken on board.

Bad ideas and arguments are bad ideas and arguments to most voters, especially working-class voters. It doesn’t matter who makes them. Working-class voters generally embrace universal principles of fairness, but they also believe that racial preferences—or any other preference based on identity characteristics—in rewards and decision-making are not fair and fairness is a fundamental part of their world outlook.

This inversion of consensual values of anti-discrimination and equal opportunity is still with us today, as the Brahmin Left tenaciously defends racial preferences and DEI programs that contradict these values. 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 traditional theory of the case on the pre-Brahmin left 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 where they stood in some hierarchy rather than what they accomplished.

This is something many of us take for granted today as an enlightened idea, but it is truly one of the most revolutionary concepts 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, many in the Brahmin Left have lost interest in the whole idea of merit. Merit and objective measures of achievement are now viewed with suspicion as the outcomes of a hopelessly corrupt system. Therefore, the thinking continues, rewards, positions, etc. should be allocated based on various criteria purportedly related to “social justice.” Instead of dismantling discrimination and providing assistance so that more people have the opportunity to acquire merit, the solution is to worry less about merit and more about equal outcomes—or “equity,” in parlance of our times.

This is deeply misguided. 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 determine the allocation of positions, promotions, and rewards in a fair system.

And this is what ordinary people—ordinary working-class voters—believe in. They believe in the idea of merit and 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 was done to social democratic and social democratic-oriented parties by their radical downgrading of the importance of merit. The 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 working-class voters believe is fair and facilitates their upward mobility. Departing from this beautiful idea, driven by neo-racialism and intersectionalism, was a tragic mistake that has contributed immensely to the long, slow death of social democracy.

Mass migration

Social democratic and social democratic-oriented parties were generally suspicious of uncontrolled immigration, even as they opposed xenophobia and supported moderate levels of legal immigration. But in the 21st century, immigration surges, abetted by the erstwhile social democratic parties, have contributed to results like these:

At the end of Milan’s M1 metro line you’ll find Sesto San Giovanni, a sizable blue-collar city. It was once called “Italy’s Stalingrad,” not only for its Brutalist concrete block apartment buildings and hulking steelworks, but also because Sesto San Giovanni was consistently one of the most left-wing towns in Italy…

That’s all over. In 2017 Sesto elected a right-wing mayor for the first time in 71 years. And in 2022, Sesto voted for Giorgia Meloni’s right-populist alliance by double-digit margins. Over the same period, Milan, rich as ever, has drifted to the left.

Immigration was the issue at the heart of these elections.

Such trends have been repeated in working-class areas in the rest of Italy and all over Europe. And, of course, we have witnessed many such equivalents in our own country, as working-class areas have moved to the right—with the immigration issue playing a starring role. But, as with the Brahmin Left parties in Europe, Democrats repeatedly refused to see anything wrong with a de facto policy of mass immigration, which is considered an unalloyed good contributing to a more diverse society. Therefore, to oppose mass immigration is to oppose diversity, which can only mean that you are racist and xenophobic. For many on the Brahmin Left, it’s that simple.

This attitude has been a huge mistake because there are in fact rational reasons for voters, especially working-class voters, to oppose mass immigration that cannot be reduced to racism or xenophobia. As Josh Barro writes about the American situation:

Democrats…need to get back in touch with the reasons that both uncontrolled migration and excessive volumes of migration really are problems—not just political problems, but substantive ones. That is, they need to get back in touch with the feeling that illegal 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 that 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. And this has been particularly noticeable because of the huge surge in three categories of migration over the last few years: old-fashioned illegal immigration; migrants abusing our asylum system to gain years of legal access to the U.S., even without claims that are likely to be judged valid in the end; and the Biden administration’s large-scale use of the Temporary Protected Status designation to admit about a million mostly low-skill, mostly non-English-speaking migrants into our communities, especially from Haiti and Venezuela.

The immigration issue has been a disaster for the erstwhile social democratic parties. They encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems that effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. Over time, the intense unpopularity of these policies has contributed hugely to tanking these parties’ working-class support. But to this day, few Brahmin Left politicians have been willing to unapologetically proclaim the following fundamentals of a realistic immigration policy:

1. Many more people want to come to rich countries than an orderly immigration system can allow.

2. Therefore, many people are willing to break the laws of these countries to gain entry.

3. If you do not enforce the law, you will get more lawbreakers and therefore more illegal immigrants.

4. If you provide procedural loopholes to gain entry into these countries (for example, by claiming asylum), many people will abuse these loopholes.

5. Once these illegal and irregular immigrants gain entry to these countries, 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 these countries via the same means.

7. If you provide benefits and dispensations to all immigrants in a country, regardless of their immigration status, this further incentivizes aspiring immigrants to gain entry to that 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.

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 voters—including working-class voters—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” inevitably creates backlash.

These are the realities of the immigration issue, and each and every one of them has been ignored by the Brahmin Left parties during the first quarter of the 21st century. The working class of these countries has duly punished these parties. The contribution of mass immigration to the long slow death of social democracy is difficult to overestimate. The wounds have been grievous and deep.

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Gender ideology and transgender “rights”

Social democratic and social democratic-oriented parties were able to absorb basic conceptions of women’s rights and sexual equality that came out of the 1960s. 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-nonconforming 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 or an unobservable “internal sex,” or the need for medical interventions. It was also consistent with basic conceptions of equality and fairness that these parties had historically identified with.

But then things changed. Perhaps nothing would surprise a time traveler from the 20th-century left as much as the adoption of transgender “rights” as a defining issue by the mass parties of the 21st-century left. Going far beyond basic civil rights in housing, employment, and marriage, Brahmin 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. Many therefore believe, for example, that trans women—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 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 (such as puberty blockers, hormones, and even surgery) to align their bodies with their “true” sex.

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.

Gender ideology now thoroughly dominates Brahmin Left parties. In these parties, certainly including 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 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 literally make them women. It makes them males who choose a different lifestyle.

As noted, the remarkably radical approach of many trans activists and gender ideologues has until very recently been met with little resistance within Brahmin Left parties. 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, the Brahmin Left’s association with gender ideology has become a massive political liability. Voters have stubbornly refused to endorse the idea that biological sex is just a technicality and more and more strongly oppose activists’ agenda.

Indeed, for many, many working-class voters, the Brahmin Left’s embrace of gender ideology and its associated policy agenda has become the most potent exemplar of these parties’ lack of connection to their real-world concerns. For these voters, Brahmin Left parties have strayed into “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes” territory. And, importantly, if they’re not realistic about something as fundamental as human biology, why should they be trusted about anything else?

The 2024 American presidential election illustrated this dynamic. In that election, the top reason among swing voters not to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris was the perception that she was “focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues…than on helping the middle class.” This, of course, was the theme of the Trump campaign’s most effective ad.

Additional polling found that almost three-quarters (72 percent) of swing voters who chose Trump thought it was extremely or very accurate to say that Democrats “want to promote transgender ideology.” These same voters believed Harris supported using taxpayer dollars to pay for transgender surgeries for undocumented immigrants (83 percent) and allowing children under 18 to transition genders without informing their parents (77 percent).

The contribution of gender ideology and trans “rights” to the long, slow death of social democracy is undeniable. And nowhere has it been clearer that the priorities of radical professional class activists and NGOs take precedence over those of the working class.

Climate catastrophism and the rapid green transition

At the end of the 20th century, climate change was an issue in historically social democratic and social democratic-oriented parties but generally a peripheral one. Our time-traveler from the year 2000 would be shocked to discover how the status of the issue evolved in the intervening decades. Far from peripheral, it became a core part of the Brahmin Left’s political identity in country after country, including the United States.

This was despite a thunderous lack of interest from these countries’ working classes. But for these parties’ burgeoning Brahmin Left constituencies, it became a non-negotiable commitment—after all, they were saving the world! As the 21st century unfolded, more and more of these parties’ economic policy plans centered around combating climate change and promoting a rapid clean energy transition. The claim was that this transition was not only a virtuous thing to do but would actually drive economies forward. Hence, the Democrats’ Green New Deal, a version of which was implemented by the Biden administration, and similar schemes in other countries.

The working class has not been impressed. In the United States, these voters view climate change as a third-tier issue and vastly prioritize the cost and reliability of energy over its effect on the climate. If action on climate change is to be taken, they are primarily concerned with the effect of such actions on consumer costs and economic growth. Making fast progress toward net-zero carbon emissions barely registers. The Democrats’ assurance that the clean energy transition will deliver prosperity has fallen on deaf ears. The working class just doesn’t believe it will. And it hasn’t.

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.

The working class—rightly—does not believe the green transition is delivering or will deliver prosperity or that the end of the world is nigh if the green transition doesn’t proceed really fast. Even Bill Gates thinks they’re right!

Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future…Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them 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. Putting further nails in the climate catastrophism coffin, the IPCC scenarios committee just recently admitted that the notorious RCP8.5 climate change scenario—always implausible—is now officially dead. As in: no more. “Passed on…no more…ceased to be! Expired and gone to meet [its] maker!...Bereft of life…rests in peace!…kicked the bucket…shuffled off [its] mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!” You get the idea: it is now an ex-scenario.

This is huge. This scenario had been treated as the “business as usual” trajectory of climate change and underpinned all the doom-laden predictions of our climate future without a radical and radically fast green energy transition. As Roger Pielke, Jr. observes:

[T]he group with official responsibility for developing climate scenarios for the IPCC and broader research community has now admitted that the scenarios that have dominated climate research, assessment, and policy during the past two cycles of the IPCC assessment process are implausible: They describe impossible futures.

Tens of thousands of research papers have been—and continue to be—published using these scenarios, a similar number of media headlines have amplified their findings, and governments and international organizations have built these implausible scenarios into policy and regulation.

We now know that all of this is built on a foundation of sand.

Indeed. Yet the Brahmin Left parties have bet the farm on this catastrophism and built their economic plans around it in obeisance to professional class priorities—and without buy-in from the working class. The contribution to the long, slow death of social democracy has been immense.

Could social democracy be resuscitated—rise Lazarus-like from its currently terminal condition? Is a working-class-oriented politics that aims to both promote a dynamic capitalism and channel the benefits of the growth it produces still possible?

In theory, perhaps. But current evidence suggests this is unlikely anytime soon. The Brahmin Left parties show no signs of giving up on the priorities of their professional class supporters, which define these parties today. They are still living off their historic reputations as advocates for the working class and make sure to talk endlessly about “working families” and “kitchen table issues.” The working class is not impressed, either in Europe or here in America.

These data are not surprising. Democrats’ big economic policy idea for the last decade has been some version of the clean energy transition, about which voters have demonstrated their lack of interest. Democrats remain committed to that vision, even as they seek to cover it up by “affordability-washing” their green economic plans.

And speaking of affordability, Democrats are clearly hoping that their new party line about the issue will overwhelm suspicions and related uneasiness about a return to the Biden-era economy. But affordability is just a slogan, and so far the meager policy substance behind the slogan are a grab bag of price caps and controls, subsidies, and new regulations that may or may not do much to make everyday life more affordable. Their purpose is mostly, if not solely, to signal that Democrats want to do something about the problem. Even the most partisan Democrats, however, likely realize that as an economic program all this doesn’t amount to much.

It is interesting that affordability, as thin as it is, has mostly drowned out Democratic interest in “abundance,” which had a moment in the Democratic discourse. The concept was always somewhat compromised by its tight linkage to policy projects beloved by liberal professionals like a clean energy transition and urban infill housing, but at least there was a “there” there. However, the intrinsic deregulatory and anti-bureaucratic character of the abundance approach is just not that popular with the many Democratic professionals whose ox would be gored by that approach. So, affordability it is to keep peace within the coalition.

Rounding out the hit parade of Democratic economic policy ideas is that old favorite, “tax the rich.” There are now several versions in circulation whose policy defects are glaringly obvious. But, shockingly, this is what now passes for an innovative Democratic economic policy idea.

A good part of the problem here is that Democrats, broadly speaking, have lost interest in the general goal of economic growth and a richer country. That goal has taken a back seat to others deemed more important, like fighting climate change, reducing inequality, pursuing procedural justice, and advocating for migrants 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.” By contrast, there was 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.”

Getting from these priorities to a revival of social democracy will be very, very difficult. Of course, there is no law that says a working-class-oriented politics that aims to both promote a dynamic capitalism and channel the benefits of that growth to ordinary workers can only come from the left. But that’s a story for another day.

One name, however, has emerged this summer as a contender, offering a potential window into where many Democratic voters’ minds are: Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff.

Shortly after Trump took office for the second time, survey data showed that many Democrats were of two minds. They saw a need for their party to moderate on policy, but they also yearned for leaders who would stand up to Trump. This idea was best summed up as “moderate and fight,” or “combative centrism.” Many aspiring party leaders, such as Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have been eager to lean into the second part of that equation, but they have largely refused to embrace the first half of it.

Ossoff, however, has struck more of a balance. He holds a mix of views that offer both the left and more moderate Democrats something to like, and he has won favor with both groups through his ability to take the fight to Trump—and to do so effectively. Rather than resorting to the reactionary histrionics of the Resistance in his critiques, Ossoff has identified places where the president is most vulnerable, especially with the broader public, and applied pressure.

At a February campaign event, for example, he hit Trump over corruption, which many Americans believe has become a problem in the White House. Ossoff also framed these attacks in terms of their real-world consequences for ordinary people: “We were told that MAGA was for working-class Americans… But this is a government of, by, and for the ultra-rich. It’s the wealthiest Cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class… They are the elites they pretend to hate.” He added, “If you’re Steve Bannon…how do you sell any of this? [Trump] is literally closing rural clinics and hospitals to cut taxes for George Soros and Elon Musk.”

Additionally, Ossoff has struck at the absurdity of the president’s continued 2020 election denial. In a recent confirmation hearing for DNI nominee Jay Clayton, Ossoff pressed Clayton to say, under oath, which candidate won that election. After Clayton made clear he wouldn’t answer, Ossoff asked simply, “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question? To have to indulge the president’s delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?” In another hearing, he confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war in Iran with a similarly direct line of questioning.

Ossoff has also shown he can hit Trump close to home. At a recent rally, he delivered a critique of how Trump has handled the conflict with Iran. In the middle of it, he slipped in a personal jab at the president, saying, “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

The remark was a reference to Natalie Harp, a young, female, Trump aide who has frequently accompanied the president on trips to Mar-a-Lago and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Ossoff’s calculated quip generated swift backlash from Trump’s allies because it was clearly meant to revive speculation about his marital infidelity. And, as Semafor has reported, some of those allies are “unnerved” by Harp’s close proximity to Trump, with one acknowledging that the strong pushback was because “the first lady doesn’t like these types of things” and Trump gets “furious” about personal topics.

Of course, Trump’s personal transgressions have rarely affected his political standing over the past 10 years. But the response from Trump World suggests they recognize Ossoff’s ability to identify Trump’s weak spots and exploit them—something the president is usually known for doing to his opponents.

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All this has undoubtedly pleased many Democrats and contributed to their growing interest in Ossoff as a possible 2028 contender. He also has many of the attributes that have historically helped his party compete for the White House:

• He is a fairly popular, first-term senator from a swing state that Trump won two years ago. His penchant for bipartisanship, relatively moderate Senate record, and reputation for strong constituent services have helped him attract cross-partisan support. In a recent Fox News poll, Ossoff not only led his Republican opponent, Congressman Mike Collins, by 13 points, but he earned 10 percent from Republicans (including 23% from non-MAGA Republicans) and a whopping 68 percent from independents.1

• He has rejected pushes from the Democrats’ left flank to embrace policies that have limited support among the broader public, like Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, defunding the police, abolishing ICE, and expanding the Supreme Court. He also crossed party lines on immigration to support the Laken Riley Act.

• He fares relatively well with working-class voters, whom Democrats have struggled with throughout the Trump era. The same Fox News poll showed Ossoff leading Collins by 12 points with non-college voters (56% to 44%), including winning 37% of white non-college voters—far better than the 21% support Kamala Harris received from the same cohort in Georgia in 2024.

• He is young and charismatic, and it’s not just Democrats who see the value in this. One of his former Republican opponents, Congressman Buddy Carter, said of him, “Look, this guy’s no slouch. He’s pretty sharp, he’s articulate, he’s young, he’s handsome, he talks well. You better have somebody who can go toe to toe with him.” At just 39 years old, he’s also the youngest member of the Senate and can claim to represent generational change not just for his party but—if he does run for president—the White House, too.

Of course, Ossoff has some vulnerabilities as well. He has sided with Democrats on the 20% side of some high-profile “80–20” issues. Some have also noted that Ossoff’s viral moments have come in tightly scripted environments, such as campaign rallies or Senate hearings, and that it’s unclear whether his composure and carefully crafted lines of attack will carry over into less-structured settings such as a presidential debate.

Then there is the elephant in the room: it remains to be seen whether Ossoff’s Jewish identity will be a liability for him at a time when Democrats’ souring views toward Israel may be engendering greater levels of antisemitism. This isn’t theoretical, either. During the 2024 Democratic “veepstakes,” Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, faced significantly more opposition from progressive and pro-Palestinian activists than Tim Walz did—even though Shapiro had been vocally critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and held broadly similar positions on Israel as other contenders.

This could be a preview of what’s in store for Ossoff. Though he has been critical of Netanyahu and how Israel has conducted its war with Hamas, he has also expressed unequivocal support for Israel in the not-too-distant past and refused to support some efforts to restrict U.S. arms sales to them.

On paper, Ossoff possesses many of the attributes Democrats have historically valued in presidential candidates: he is young, charismatic, fairly moderate, and capable of pressing an effective case against the opposition. There’s a reason Republicans are taking his rise seriously. His approach to politics has served him well in Georgia.

The question now is whether he is capable of translating his success at home to the national stage. If he can help bridge Democrats’ intraparty divides and convince the growing number of Americans who seem ready to turn the page on the Trump era that he’s the guy to do it, he may be a formidable candidate in 2028.

Editor’s note: a version of this piece first appeared in UnHerd

Since pundits and politicians alike tend to mirror the public, can we deduce that Americans have simply lost interest in patriotism? We don’t think so. On the contrary, we believe that there is an unmet demand in this country for a revival of patriotism that politicians of both parties appear incapable of meeting.

The reasons our politics has been such a cold shower for Americans’ patriotism are not hard to discern. One of them is the president. Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016 by framing the U.S. as a nation in terminal decline, and he has frequently drawn a moral equivalence between the actions of foreign dictators and America’s own foreign policy. In the period since Trump overtook the Republican Party, right-wingers have become much more critical of America as it actually exists. And though Trump regularly expresses patriotism, his pageantry and truculent manner have been more polarizing than unifying. He seems to miss no opportunity to associate love of country with his own personal MAGA brand.

But it’s by no means just the fault of Trump and his party. Democrats have long practiced what we might call a “yes, but” approach to patriotism. The general idea is that patriotism is kind of okay but only if it’s immediately linked to the terrible things that America has done in the past and the injustices that still exist today. Simply being patriotic, full stop, is viewed with suspicion, if not outright hostility. And on the party’s ascendant far left, the Democratic Socialists of America—a number of whose members are likely to join Congress in November—recently released a platform that called for getting rid of the U.S. Constitution altogether.

But you don’t just need to look at the radical left to find Democratic objections to patriotism. Earlier this month, it was reported that Christina Bohannan, an Iowa Democrat trying to swing a critical House seat, called patriotism “sensitive and controversial” in a statement she issued in 2021. And last month, moderate Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi of New York bemoaned his party’s aversion to patriotism. “The choice Democrats face is clear,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal. “We can allow patriotism to become a partisan label, or we can reclaim a tradition that rightly belongs to every American.”

An allergy to patriotism is commonplace among grassroots Democratic activists and intellectuals. In a June piece for The Atlantic, liberal writer Yoni Appelbaum recounted this anecdote:

On a July afternoon in 2019, I found myself in a large, sun-dappled room within one of America’s great estates. An assemblage of distinguished jurists, Ivy League professors, nonprofit leaders, journalists, and theologians sat around me in a half circle. I was trying to be on my best behavior, but I blurted out a word dirty enough to make them blanch…

Our first exercise, the facilitator explained, was intended to build trust—listing words or concepts that all Americans could endorse, even if our definitions might vary…

“Patriotism,” I volunteered.

I had rolled a live grenade into the center of the room. One participant flinched, as if struck. Suddenly, everyone was talking at once, voices and tempers rising. One woman said the word made her feel excluded. Another said it connoted violence and racism. Still another participant was offended that anyone could be offended by the word. The facilitator declined to write patriotism on the easel.

And just before the Fourth of July, Chris Rabb, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Pennsylvania who is running unopposed in a deep-blue Philadelphia district, had this to say about the Declaration of Independence:

Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples… It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land and stolen labor.

Such rhetoric drags the Democrats away from any kind of unapologetic, unifying patriotism and ensures that voters always hear the “but” part of “yes, but.” The cost of admission for this version of Democratic patriotism seems to include agreeing with a critique of American history and contemporary American society that portrays the country as racist at its core and controlled by a club of self-interested billionaires. This conditional patriotism simply is not capable of meeting Americans’ underlying demand for an uplifting patriotism that would make them feel good about their country.

Just how conditional Democrats’ patriotism tends to be is exemplified by recent findings from Gallup. In 2001, the share of Democrats who said they were “very” or “extremely” proud to be American was quite high at about 88 percent, but it dipped during the George W. Bush years, rose again under Barack Obama, and has plummeted since Trump’s election to just 27 percent as of this year—the lowest level on record. In contrast, the Republican share hasn’t dropped below 85 percent during that same time, and it hit 93 percent this year. Clearly, Republicans’ pride in their country is much less conditional than that of Democrats, whose pride appears to respond strongly to their level of political power (or lack thereof).

But for all their pride in country, the fact remains that many Republicans are indelibly associated with a dark view of America, with their standard-bearer, Donald Trump, regularly calling it a “failing nation.” Trump’s vision of the country, in which baleful forces lurk within society, also imposes a high price of admission for the average voter. Trump’s version of patriotism is not so much about loving our country as it is about loving him.

The parties can—and, indeed, must—do better if we are to have any hope of reviving the broad, unifying spirit of American patriotism. The good news here is that Americans are ready for this revival. Survey data, including a recent poll conducted for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), clearly demonstrate that there is unmet demand for a capacious, generous-spirited patriotism among citizens, even if the parties seem reluctant to supply it.

First, Americans want to be hopeful and feel good about their country, though that aspect of polling is rarely covered. According to an Ipsos poll taken in the lead-up to July 4, 67 percent of Americans are willing to make sacrifices for the good of the country, and 66 percent wish there were more ways to contribute to the country’s success. Reflecting this hopefulness, 88 percent in the same poll agree that there’s an urgent need for greater unity among Americans, and 84 percent agree that there’s no limit to what Americans can achieve when united as a country.

Second, Americans don’t think of themselves primarily as partisan actors. In a recent AP-NORC poll, when asked about a series of things that were important to their personal identity, family came first (81 percent), followed by being an American (55 percent). “Political affiliation” was last of the eight choices at just 21 percent. This finding says it all. Partisans’ efforts to identify patriotism with their own party and priorities will do little to rekindle patriotic unity among Americans. The average American is looking for a very different route to patriotism.

This brings us to a very important point: Americans strongly believe in the active cultivation of positive patriotism and in teaching the rich history of our country—both failures and successes. Here are some examples from the AEI survey.

• Three-quarters believe that high school students should be required to study the Declaration of Independence as part of America’s 250th anniversary.

• About the same number (74 percent) believe too many of today’s young people fail to appreciate how good this country is.

• More than three-quarters (77 percent) think it’s important or absolutely essential for public schools to teach kids that the U.S. is a fundamentally good country. The same number believe it’s important or absolutely essential to teach kids to be patriotic and loyal toward the nation.

• Even larger numbers believe it’s important or absolutely essential that kids be taught to appreciate the freedoms they are guaranteed under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (93 percent), and that whatever their ethnic or racial background, they are all part of one nation (91 percent).

• Three-quarters agree that in order to understand the Founding Fathers’ impact on America today, we need to examine their tolerance of slavery alongside their many contributions, and even more (81 percent) agree that studying the political principles of the Founding Fathers can help inform our decisions today.

• Reflecting a hopeful outlook, three-quarters believe America is not perfect, but we have made substantial progress in addressing past wrongs such as slavery. And more than three-quarters (78 percent) believe the U.S. is a melting pot in which people of different countries combine into a unified American culture.

• Finally, this view from parents of school-age children sums up what Americans are really looking for: 74 percent believe schools should “focus on teaching kids to be proud of being part of this country and to learn the rights and responsibilities of citizenship,” while less than one-quarter think they should “focus on each student’s ethnic or racial identity and make sure they feel proud of their own heritage and group.”

Americans’ demand for a unifying, uplifting patriotism is clear. But neither party is doing a very good job supplying it, focusing instead on their partisan priorities and painting a dark picture of what has befallen the American project. Americans—and America—deserve better.

The irony is both parties have spent decades trying (and failing) to build an electoral majority that can endure for more than eight years and rally the American public to chart a steady course into the future. Yet neither party has tried, let alone succeeded, in building that platform on the simple patriotism that most Americans profess. The first side to figure it out may gain a leg up in 2028 and beyond.

Editor’s note: this piece first appeared in The Free Press.

To better understand these trends and find a path forward, I sat down with Mónica Guzmán, host of the podcast A Braver Way. Mónica and I both believe that for the country to endure, we have to find a way to once again meet people where they are—and even to talk to people we disagree with.

Because here’s the reality: the other “side” isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither political tribe will ever permanently vanquish the other—not in the culture war, nor in elections and government. We thus have to figure out a way to live alongside people who have different views from us, even views we may find offensive or detestable.

If you love America and are concerned about its future, I hope you’ll check out our conversation. We covered a vast amount of terrain in the span of an hour, including curiosity, perception gaps, fear vs. horror, audience capture, Daryl Davis, Jonathan Haidt, Seattle, Ted Lasso, Friends, Monica’s relationship with her parents, and talking to people when we have fundamentally different beliefs from them—or even when we have disagreements over basic matters of fact.

Also, be sure to check out Mónica’s other work, which includes a brand new season of the podcast as well as her 2022 book, I Never Thought of It That Way.

Welcome to The Long View. Most of you have likely heard by now about our new publication, which serves as an intellectual successor to the Liberal Patriot. If you are new to the project, we encourage you to read our inaugural post, which outlines our vision for what we hope to build here.

We want to thank our friends at Welcome who have graciously given us a home to continue our work. You can still expect us to bring the same independent voice and candid analysis you came to expect from us at TLP.

Finally, as we learned in March, this work truly cannot happen without your support. If you value what we’re doing, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today and helping us build The Long View.

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Many thanks,

-Ruy & Michael

In the wake of Democrats’ catastrophic defeat in the 2024 election, there was an obvious need for serious party-wide change. The yawning gap between the cultural and policy priorities of a Democratic Party dominated by liberal professionals and those of the median working-class voter had already become screamingly obvious and was ratified by the election results. The logical response to this would have been to close that gap by bringing the party closer to the views and values of the working-class voters they were losing.

There was indeed a brief shining moment right after the 2024 election when it did seem like the scale of the debacle would force a real reckoning within the party. But that trend quickly dissipated as #Resistance fever gripped the party, the usual suspects mounted stiff resistance to any revision of party positions, and momentum shifted to the energized progressive left within the party.

That trend has continued to the present day. That brings us to the remarkable spike in success for Democratic Socialists of America and DSA-backed candidates. First, there was the victory of DSA member Zohran Mamdani in the 2025 New York City mayoral race. This has been followed by a surge of DSA triumphs in the 2026 midterm primary elections. Perhaps most famously, Mamdani and the DSA backed three Democratic primary candidates in New York City House districts—Darializa Avila Chevalier, Brad Lander, and Claire Valdez—all of whom won. Notably, all the DSA victories came not against moderate but progressive Democrats, including Chevalier’s ouster of Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And given the nature of the electorates in these districts, all of the DSA candidates are sure to win in November and take their seats.

Other high-profile DSA victories include Chris Rabb’s securing of the Democratic nomination for a Philadelphia House seat and Milat Kiros getting the Democratic nomination for a Denver House seat (ousting a 30-year incumbent). Rabb will be unopposed in November—his future seat is rated the most Democratic in the entire nation—and Kiros is almost certain to win (her likely future seat is rated the most Democratic in the Mountain West), so the DSA can count on adding these seats as well. In addition, DSA member Donavan McKinney in Michigan (Detroit/Wayne County) garnered the party nomination for a heavily Democratic House seat and therefore is also likely to swell the DSA congressional delegation.

And it’s not just House seats! DSA member Francesca Hong mounted a strong primary campaign for the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial nomination and fell just short while DSA-backed (though not a DSA member) Abdul El-Sayed grabbed the Michigan Democratic nomination for U.S. senator. El-Sayed is generally favored to win the seat. Recently, DSA member Janeese Lewis George secured the Democratic nomination for Washington, DC, mayor. Given strong Democratic lean of DC’s voters, this assures her of victory in the general election. And there’s Nithya Raman, a DSA member who’s managed to advance to a runoff against incumbent Democrat Karen Bass for mayor of Los Angeles.

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These are remarkable developments. But what does it all mean? Does it mean that DSA is about to “take over” the Democratic Party? I don’t think so. But it does signify a big hit to Democrats’ ability to de-Brahminize their party and make it more attractive to working-class voters.

Start with the takeover question. Sure, the DSA has had significant successes and recently hit 120,000 members, making it the largest socialist membership organization in American history. But it’s a big country! As Kyle Saunders points out, to match the per capita membership of the Debs-era Socialist Party, the DSA would need more like 400,000 members.

Furthermore, DSA successes, such as they are, have been confined to very blue, urban areas of the country where securing the Democratic nomination is equivalent to winning the general election. Today’s Democratic Party, despite ongoing trends, includes many, many politicians and voters who do not hail from the most intensely blue parts of the country and are therefore far less likely to succumb to the blandishments of the DSA (as Hong’s recent defeat in Wisconsin suggests).

A better way to think about the DSA is not so much that they are taking over but rather that they are the vanguard of the radical professionals. In that sense, they are a continuation and expression of a long-standing trend in the Democratic Party: the party has become increasingly hegemonized by the professional class, and professionals themselves have become more radical, especially in the Trump era.

Thus, when we see poll findings like 66 percent of Democrats are favorable toward socialism but only 42 percent toward capitalism, this does not mean that two-thirds of Democrats are about to join the DSA or, indeed, that they have any idea what they mean by favoring “socialism.” Rather, it means that professionals are being further radicalized by their fervent opposition to Trump and Trumpism and are willing to pick a “brand” that expresses maximum opposition. This radicalization of course provides a fertile ground for DSA recruiting, even if the overwhelming majority of those professing a liking for socialism think it just means vague principles like “be kind” or “the government should do stuff.”

The appeal of DSA has been particularly strong among younger professionals, who have been heavily hit by this radicalization trend. Many of them reside in metropolitan areas where housing and overall living costs are high, and their preferred jobs are not compensated well enough to make up for the high costs. In their view, their upward mobility is frustrated and unjustly so. This bleeds into their extreme dislike of Trump and utter contempt for a Democratic establishment they believe has neither stood up to Trump nor the billionaire capitalists that supposedly enable him and rig the system.

The more political among these radicalized young professionals are naturally drawn to the DSA. They recognize it as their organization that crystallizes their grievances and functions as the leading edge—the vanguard, if you will—of their priorities, both economic and cultural.

Of course, the conceit of the DSA is that they’re a working-class organization and their rhetoric and program monotonously use the phrase “working class” over and over again, as if repeating that phrase would magically make them working class. But, of course, they’re not.

As anyone even vaguely familiar with the DSA in real life knows, blue-collar workers are as scarce as hen’s teeth among actual DSA members. They are overwhelmingly college-educated and have professional jobs or are students, unless they’re over-educated “skidders” who’ve wound up in low-level retail jobs or are slumming it to organize the proletariat. The culture of the organization is such that any normie non-college-educated worker who wandered into a DSA meeting would run screaming in the other direction, bewildered by the language used and frightened by the radical positions taken.

Consider some of these positions. One might think, given that the DSA has become more of an electoral force, that they would be tempted to soften some of their radical stances to appeal to more voters. Nah. Instead they are becoming more radical. They very recently (July 14) released their updated national platform. Among other things, it calls for abolishing the U.S. Senate and replacing the president and Supreme Court with “an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress”(!) Funding for police departments should be diverted to public services along the way to full abolition of the police and prison system. All illegal immigrants should be given amnesty, ICE should be abolished, and open borders established. Not to mention: reparations for slavery, a Green New Deal, universal rent control, defunding the Pentagon, a 32-hour work week, no restrictions on “gender-affirming care,” and public ownership of the largest corporations. It is difficult to find a radical, impractical, unpopular proposal that is not in this platform.

Of course, DSAers running for elected office frequently soft-pedal their support for these radical ideas, preferring instead to talk about “affordability” and how they’ll stand up to Trump and the billionaire class. Once elected, they may even, as in Mamdani’s case, try to portray themselves as simple problem-solvers and providers of effective public services—sewer socialists or, in Mamdani’s preferred phrase, practitioners of “pothole politics.”

But the fact remains that these aspiring and current electeds do, in fact, generally support these ideas and are on record as doing so. These are hard commitments to erase, even assuming these politicians wanted to. And they likely don’t want to because not only are these things they believe in but things they must promote as the vanguard of the radical professionals. Their activist base simply will not tolerate deviation.

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This ties the hands of DSA politicians who can’t escape the branding and dictates of DSA’s radical commitments. So, instead of hiring more cops, as initially promised, the Mamdani administration is ramping up support for “gender-affirming care,” immigration law services, a new Office of Community Safety, and countless other programs dear to the hearts of radical professionals. That doesn’t have much to do with sewer socialism. As for making the city more affordable, which might fit into sewer socialism, that is simply very hard to achieve in a large blue city, given the morass of bureaucracy, NGOs, and municipal unions that must be reckoned with—and that includes many of Mamdani’s strongest supporters, who will stoutly resist anything that encroaches on their interests. Far easier are gestures like rent freezes for already-regulated units—already done—which, ironically, are likely antithetical to the larger goal of increased housing supply and affordability.

Indeed, expecting DSA politicians to practice a politics that would genuinely appeal to working-class voters is a fool’s errand. They are what they are—creatures of a vanguard organization of radical professionals determined to pursue their own priorities. As such, they should be thought of as an even more Brahmin Left faction within the broader Brahmin Left formation of the Democratic Party.

Not only does it make no sense to think of the DSA as a group that could reacquaint the Democrats with the working class and help them de-Brahminize, but the reverse is true: the DSA is and will be a force for the continued and intensified Brahminization of the party. Any tendency within the party that resists this Brahminization and embraces positions more congenial to the working class will be ferociously resisted by an increasingly well-organized and powerful DSA. This is the real problem with the DSA: not that they will “take over,” but rather that they will be an aggressive force preventing the Democrats from the brand reinvention they need to reconnect with working-class voters.

Consider three recommendations from New York Times columnist Tom Edsall in his recent piece, “Three Things Democrats Have To Do If They Actually Want To Win”. These recommendations would go some way toward shoring up the weaknesses that tanked the Democrats in 2024. In each case, the DSA and its supporters can be counted on to lie down on the railroad tracks to prevent any of these recommendations from even being entertained by the party.

1. Democrats will firmly enforce laws on illegal immigration, including tough border enforcement and deportation of unauthorized immigrants who commit crimes. Unauthorized immigrants with no criminal record who have been in this country for at least five years, along with Dreamers, should be offered green cards with a path toward citizenship. More recent arrivals should be deported.

2. The Democratic Party supports aggressive prosecution of those accused of violent crime and those who engage in crowdsourced “teen takeovers” of stores, as well as for all forms of child abuse.

The party backs restoration of bail requirements in the case of felonies, lifetime sentences for offenders convicted of multiple violent crimes, tough enforcement of child support laws and the death penalty if supported by the voters in a state and endorsed by a jury.

3. There are two sexes: men and women.

A man can claim an identify [sic] as a woman, and the same in reverse for a woman. They have every right to do so. Their claim should be respected and they should be protected from any form of discrimination for their choice.

Their claim does not, however, alter their biological sex.

Consequently, it is legitimate in areas such as sports where a transgender person would have a competitive advantage over non-trans people to bar such participation. Similarly, a claim to a sexual identity does not give a trans woman the right to incarceration in a woman’s prison.

Finally, the debate over gender affirming surgery and hormone treatments is fraught with contradictory assertions. For now, because there are credible scientific claims of irreversible harms, such treatments for those under 18 should be barred pending further study.

This is the nub of the problem. The unchecked Brahminization of the Democrats, which has only been accelerated by the #Resistance and intense negative polarization against Trump, has encouraged the radicalization of the professional class. That, in turn, has fed the growth of the DSA, the vanguard of the radical professionals, who now stand in the way of a serious Democratic course correction like the one recommended by Edsall.

The road back to the working class for Democrats is likely long and difficult, and the growth of the DSA makes it even more difficult. Or, perhaps it will knock Democrats off the road entirely. I would not underestimate the peril this now presents for the Democrats.

Editor’s note: a version of this piece first appeared in Commonplace

Last night, Democratic primary voters in Wisconsin very narrowly nominated Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley in the race for governor. In the process, they rejected DSA-endorsed candidate Francesca Hong, whose trail of controversial social media posts revived debates about the “Woke 1.0” era.

A more “official” launch of our publication is coming Monday. However, as a thank-you to those who have already signed up for our newsletter, we wanted to share this timely analysis of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent reaction to Hong’s past comments from our editor-in-chief, Michael Baharaeen. Stay tuned for more next week!

-The Long View team

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Over the past weekend, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez appeared on ABC’s This Week with Jonathan Karl. During their discussion, Karl asked the congresswoman about Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s past controversial social media posts, including a tweet in which she supported “canceling” Thanksgiving. After initially sidestepping the question, saying that Hong had “moved away” from those past views, AOC added, with a chuckle, “I have a local city councilman who has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy!’”

Her comments reflect a recent development from some Democrats: now embarrassed by what are widely viewed as excesses of that era, they seem to believe it’s best to laugh at how silly some things were back then and move on. The problem with this type of response is that it demonstrates a lack of awareness of just how off-the-rails—and illiberal—much of that era became.

What began as a largely sincere effort to address long-simmering issues around police tactics and racial inequality gradually morphed into a moral panic in some corners. Many activists became more focused on identifying and punishing dissenters and perceived moral transgressors than on building a coalition big enough to achieve real policy change.

This created a real chilling effect on public discourse, making it harder to openly debate the complex issues facing the country. Some people even lost their jobs and had their social reputations irreparably marred for what were often innocuous comments or actions—some of which likely wouldn’t be given a second thought today. There was no grace extended to them, nor were most of them given the opportunity to defend themselves.1

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Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane. Circa 2020, when the “Great Awokening” period hit a fever pitch, some people on social media began searching for figures—both high-profile and normie—who had committed a “problematic” act and pressuring employers to fire them. Here are just a few fairly prominent individuals whose economic livelihoods took a hit around that time:

• David Shor, a Democratic data guru who warned that violent riots could backfire and help re-elect Donald Trump

• Roland Fryer, a (black) Harvard economist whose research challenged claims that policing is infected with systemic racial bias

• Donald McNeil Jr., a New York Times Covid reporter who mentioned a racial slur in the context of repeating a question a student had asked him for clarity

• Alexi McCammond, a reporter who had a job offer revoked after staffers at the new organization unearthed offensive tweets she made in high school

• Alison Roman, a New York Times food columnist who criticized two other prominent women who happened to be Asian

• Gina Carano, an actress who compared the treatment of conservatives in America with the treatment of Jews in the Holocaust

Regardless of what one thinks of the merits of their arguments or the wisdom of their statements, there was no time for anyone to weigh them or consider how to respond to them—the consequences in each case were swift, with verdicts largely rendered in the court of public opinion.

Then there were the everyday Americans who unwittingly found themselves on the wrong side of this era’s new rules. The Art Institute of Chicago fired the 82 retirees who volunteered as docents because the group was thought to be too white. A yoga studio in Denver was forced to close its doors after facing internal ruptures over its slow pace of culture change. Several others were the victims of social media mobs, including:

• A Middle Eastern grocery owner in Minneapolis (over posts his daughter had made on Twitter and Instagram years prior)

• A Hispanic electrical worker from San Diego whom a stranger saw making what they thought was the “OK” sign out of the window of his car, which some interpret as support for white supremacy (he had been cracking his knuckles)

• A high school cheerleader from Virginia, who posted a video of herself singing a rap song, which included a slur (a classmate kept the recording until she applied for college, and then made it public)

• A college professor from California who used a Mandarin word that sounded like a racial slur in the English language (one of many in his profession to face threats to their job security)

These seismic shifts also hit the Democratic Party. Many figures (including Ocasio-Cortez herself) began to embrace policies and ideas, often at the behest of activists, that even at the time were far out of step with most Americans—and sometimes even with Democratic voters.2 This included support for de facto open borders, defunding the police, reparations for slavery, and voting rights for incarcerated felons (to name a few).3

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The above is just a handful of examples from that era, but there was much, much, much more.4 Some may think these trade-offs were worth it in the context of addressing racial injustice. But they also engendered immense backlash that may have helped power Trump’s victory in 2024—and that likely provided him a template for pursuing his own version of “cancel culture.”

This raises the question: does AOC actually remember just how “crazy” things got during this period? It’s well and good for her and others to concede that there was real overreach. But it might be wise to also provide clearer answers to some reasonable questions: What, specifically, does she think was “crazy”? Was it simply, as she suggests in the interview, dumb rhetoric? Or were there problems with some of the actual ideas being proposed? Moreover, why, when so many people opposed these ideas at the time, were she and other progressives so susceptible to them? Did that demonstrate poor judgment?

Without offering answers to these questions, it remains unclear whether Ocasio-Cortez, who may be eyeing a 2028 presidential run, and others in her orbit actually understand what people were so upset about. And without an honest reckoning, she risks following in the footsteps of Democrats’ previous nominee, Kamala Harris, who tried but failed to leave her own controversial statements in the past while never fully accounting for why she adopted them in the first place. Future presidential aspirants would do well to find a better answer than simply saying, “Haha, wow, that was a crazy time, right guys?”

Editor’s note: a version of this piece first appeared in UnHerd

One of the defining features of modern American politics has been nonstop change. Across 12 federal elections since the turn of the century, ten have produced a change in party control of at least one of the House, Senate, or presidency. By comparison, just six of the prior 20 elections produced any change at all. And after three back-to-back, two-term presidencies between 1992 and 2016, each of the last three elections have ended with a new winner.

A series of major events and disruptions to daily life has further hastened the political instability of this era. The “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed the 9/11 attacks, along with the 2008 financial crisis, led trust in government to crater. Massive technological changes gave us new filters through which to see the world and others in it, helping to precipitate popular uprisings and social movements but also generating growing estrangement from our fellow citizens, worsening political and cultural polarization and tribalism, and a crisis of shared epistemology. The Covid pandemic exacerbated all of this.

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The consequences have been grim. Americans have grown less trusting of their institutions and each other. Politics, increasingly informed by cultural attitudes, has become a more salient part of many people’s identities. The two parties have each become more ideologically homogenous, more tribe-like. All this has put even greater pressure on the country’s political system. Fewer people trust election results or view their political opponents as legitimate. Meanwhile, growing numbers believe election outcomes matter “a great deal” and that the other “side” represents a threat to their values and way of life. (And dissent or criticism from one’s own side is rarely considered cause for self-reflection and instead often viewed as heresy.)

As the political stakes have risen, America’s two parties have become myopic, rarely looking more than two years ahead at any given time because the next election is always “the most important of our lifetime.” This has created bad incentives for them and their supporters. Republicans, who currently control both chambers of Congress and the presidency and have an ideological majority on the Supreme Court, have won the latest battles. Yet their embrace of Donald Trump and MAGA, who practice a deliberate politics of division rather than addition, has turned off a generation of young people—especially young women—who may never vote for them.

Democrats, meanwhile, made clear that they are okay with shedding the support of more culturally conservative (or even moderate) white working-class voters—many of whom had voted for Obama, twice—in exchange for a new base that is more affluent, educated, culturally progressive, and politically active, sometimes called the “Brahmin left.” While this exchange has brought them increased success in lower-turnout, off-year elections, it also contributed to the movement of both the Electoral College and Senate toward Republicans and enabled Trump’s comeback in 2024.

In this environment, it seems political actors are often incapable of seeing the bigger picture and making decisions that are strategically sound. Though some partisans on both sides still understand the wisdom and value of persuasion—of winning converts and meeting voters where they are—many others have concluded that they simply don’t want to build coalitions that include people who might be more sympathetic to some of the other side’s views or policies. They believe those people are suspect, and that closing ranks with other like-minded people will make “our side” stronger.

To be sure, one advantage of these changes is that both parties now have higher floors of support than they once did, as more voters today have been polarized into consistently supporting one camp or the other. But the trade-off has been a cap on how large their coalitions can ever really grow. Neither one enjoys landslide victories anymore, and national elections are increasingly decided by the thinnest of margins, raising the stakes of election outcomes. It’s an unstable system in which turnover is constant and majorities are rarely around long enough to affect lasting change.

In essence, we have a “politics without winners.” (In fact, the biggest winners in modern politics are the polarizing forces selling rage bait. To support our work to build something better, please fully join our community by becoming a paid subscriber today.)

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But we also know that most Americans disapprove of this type of politics and want a change. They’re exhausted by political tribalism and the two parties’ inability to work together on behalf of the country. As a sign of their displeasure, many have shed party affiliations together: the share of Americans identifying as independents sits today at its highest point ever. This suggests that, despite the highly polarized nature of our politics, there is fertile ground for either party to build a dominant, enduring electoral majority—if only they are willing to take a longer view.

Which brings us to the purpose of our new publication. Cards on the table: we lean more toward the left side of the spectrum, and much of our analysis and commentary will thus be focused on the Democratic Party and the liberal tradition. In that way this project will serve as something of an intellectual successor to The Liberal Patriot, where both of us previously wrote.

We will also dive into related themes that the two parties—and Americans more broadly—will hopefully find worthwhile, including:

• Politics without winners. The gist of this idea, mentioned above, is that neither Democrats nor Republicans appear at this juncture concerned with doing the hard work of building a broad, ideologically and demographically heterodox coalition capable of winning an era, not just the next election. They are instead more concerned with mollifying their respective bases, staying on the right side of interest groups, and winning with as few members of the “other side” as possible. If neither party is willing to forge a different path, the constant churn of political change will endure for the foreseeable future.

• Structure of the shadow parties. “The groups” (or the “shadow party”) and other forces have taken advantage of weak formal party structures, especially on the Democratic side. Though they are not well-understood, they have immense power in shaping the party’s policy agenda and messaging. Yet, their priorities and views are often at odds with not just the median American but with the very constituencies they purport to represent. If the Democrats hope to reclaim that power for themselves, they must first understand who these groups are and how they have come to play such an influential role in the party.

• The median voter. Though the term has been invoked often enough in some spaces that it has become a punch line, it’s still a good reminder to political elites not to lose sight of what ordinary Americans believe and care about—to be willing to meet them where they are and not get too far out of step with them or tell them that their views are “unacceptable.” We appreciate the sentiment expressed by our friends at Welcome, who say they “work for the center of the country, not the center of the [Democratic] party.”

• Political moderation. There is a great deal of misunderstanding in American politics surrounding the term “moderate.” Lately, some seem to think it’s simply a synonym for the “establishment.” Others believe it means “landing in the exact middle” or having no real convictions. But it’s actually a guiding framework for ensuring our politics are governed not by the extremes but in between them. The inclusion of political moderates in our parties is important because most Americans themselves are not strong partisans, and it remains vital to have effective guardrails against more extreme factions that would, if given the chance, lurch the country in a direction the overwhelming majority disagree with. Importantly, many moderates acknowledge that no group or ideological persuasion has a monopoly on wisdom or good ideas.

• (De-)polarization. Political divisions have existed in virtually every society ever, and we would never suggest it’s possible or even desirable to completely avoid them. But toxic political and cultural polarization clouds our judgment and makes us more tribal, which in turn stresses our experiment in self-government. The worse these trends grow, the harder it will be to build a healthier politics.

• Patriotism. America has its faults, just like every society throughout history. But it has also done an immense amount of good in the world and made great progress over time toward fulfilling its founding ideals, and it’s important to acknowledge this. However, there is a growing strain of anti-Americanism at home that is not only bad, per se, but unproductive as a way of improving life here. Reformers cannot fix a country they do not love. While reflexive or coerced patriotism is not healthy either, a strong national and civic identity can benefit all citizens.

• Prosperity and growth. Voters have lost faith in the ability of either party to deliver prosperity and growth, and for good reason. President Trump has pursued policies that are anathema to the goal of growth, such as steep tariffs and sweeping deportations. Meanwhile, some prominent figures, particularly on the political left, have questioned whether the goal of growth is even worthwhile. Yet, few things are more important to the average voter than strong economic growth and the opportunities it presents for upward mobility and a prosperous life. As we confront the momentous economic transformation driven by AI, this challenge to the parties will only grow in importance.

• Civic culture. An underrated factor behind America’s political malaise is the decline of shared activities, spaces, and culture. As technological advances have made it easier to live life on screens at home, Americans have been spending less time in groups and more time alone. There are fewer opportunities to truly know our neighbors, making it more likely that our understanding of them will be filtered through the distorted lens of social media. The country desperately needs a revival of its civic institutions to help bring people of different backgrounds together and break down superficial barriers.

• The working class. There has been much debate recently about what it means to be “working class” in America: is it tied to income, education, both, or something else entirely? No matter how one defines it, this cohort clearly has an immense amount of influence on the country’s politics. It is thus worth trying to better understand working-class Americans and their concerns, beliefs, and voting habits.

• The Democratic Party. We have previously written at length about our thoughts on the state of the Democrats, and that will continue in this publication, especially in the lead-up to the 2028 presidential primary. What will the party stand for in the post-Trump era? Who will lead it? Which factions will have the most influence? And are they setting themselves up for long-term success or succumbing to short-term thinking again?

As we write about these themes and more, we will be guided by old-school liberal values. We will maintain a commitment to ideological pluralism, free speech, and civil discourse, and no topic will be off-limits. We will strive to approach our analysis and commentary in a manner that is pragmatic, intellectually curious, and open to a good-faith exchange of ideas. At the same time, we will reject extremism, purity, dogma, and reflexive partisanship. We will also bring a data-driven approach to everything we do, and do our best to engage with information that may contradict or complicate our priors.

For now, The Long View will be a two-year project with Welcome that will go through the final night of the 2028 Democratic National Convention. We hope you will join us as we embark on this new venture.