Until the Democrats start appealing to normal Americans I don't foresee lasting supermajorities. I live in CA, and I used to vote democrat. Even here, most people agree that Newson was too authortarian on covid . Parents are angry that their kids missed so much school and had to wear masks. Most people think taxes are too high. Most people don't want transgender curriculum materials in elementary school. The list goes on...
—Which Democrats have actually practiced heterodoxy?
If Bill Clinton in 1992 and RFK in 1968 are the best examples here, then this answer speaks for itself.
But closer to our moment, the best examples I can think of are Dean Phillips (who made the mistake of admitting Biden was too old to run but before the rest of the Party had given permission) and Seth Moulton, who made one comment about keeping boys out of girls' sports and essentially ended his career. They were publicly destroyed to set an example for anyone who might have considered doing something similar.
The Dems will not be moderating as long as Trump still roams the land, as his presence has driven them mad and made so many of their voters willing to burn down the whole country if it burns down Trump too. And then there's the total ideological capture of American liberalism and its surrender to Social Justice ideology, which is dogmatic, intolerant and intent on rooting out all dissent. Social Justice ideology is founded on the post-Marxist idea that Western liberal democracy and free markets are ipso facto evil and bigoted and need to be dismantled, with exile, cancellation or re-education the punishment for those who still support them.
What this means is that Social Justice ideology, which is a mandatory belief system for everyone on the Left side of the aisle, posits white male Christians and the country and institutions they created as enemies to be demonized and eradicated—and you can either actively hate people or campaign for their support and votes, but you can't do both.
> And then there's the total ideological capture of American liberalism and its surrender to Social Justice ideology
That capture happened in academia first, then spread to the journalists, the activists and finally PMCs. It began when radical leftists intellectuals fled for the US during WW2 when their post-Enlightenment world produced horrors.
I don't see how it's going to play out, but leftism as a moral and intellectual movement is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. The only question is how it will die, how long it will take, and how much harm it will cause as it dies.
I'm not sure this thing we call Leftism ever dies, but only mutates—Christian egalitarianism being the root leading to Protestant reformers like Thomas Müntzer then to Levellers and Diggers to Jacobins and Bolsheviks to the campus-based New Left etc—but even if the current Social Justice iteration is a spent force, it still has the strength of having its priests and disciples currently controlling and making up a critical mass in our education and cultural institutions (not to mention activism, NGOs, and much of the Dem Party).
Marxism-Leninism had been pretty much discredited and revealed to be a recipe for totalitarianism by say the 1950s-60s, yet it still held on another generation or so in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, spreading its lies and misery. Sometimes when revolutions curdle, their true believers only double down and try to revive the corpse of their utopian ideology.
Concur, I believe this protestant initiated holier than thou virtue signaling will just morph into another type set up. We had many protestant minded and driven peoples coming here to the USA and this evolutionary mind set is with us and in many of us for good and bad. Probably will morph into something else or is now doing so? Wait and see where it goes? (Seems most people want to feel they are better than the others???).
> Christian egalitarianism being the root leading to Protestant reformers like Thomas Müntzer then to Levellers and Diggers to Jacobins and Bolsheviks to the campus-based New Left etc
I realize that modern leftists will want to claim the Levellers, but they are a distinctly Christian movement that foreshadowed Enlightenment ideals, not post-Enlightenment leftism.
Leftism is predicated on a Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the perfectibility of man. These are all false and invariably lead to authoritarianism.
Christian movements like the Levellers are based on original sin and the imago Dei. They are what made the anglosphere exceptional and gave rise to the Enlightenment view of freedom and human rights.
—Leftism is predicated on a Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the perfectibility of man. These are all false and invariably lead to authoritarianism.
No doubt.
But there is undoubtedly some overlap, as Leftists also have their beloved prophet (St Karl of Misanthropy), universalist egalitarian dogma, priests and disciples etc and their millenarian apocalypse where the Evil (rich whites) are at last vanquished and the Good enthroned. And with this also having a Christian flavor, as it's based on "the last shall be first, and the first last."
Maybe we can meet in the middle and call it a Christian heresy.
I think this conversation between Clever Pseudonym and Jman 2819 is very interesting. For me (a vanilla liberal -- the New Deal / Great Society type) what it points to is not the bankruptcy of the Left but dangers of theory and the type of extremism it can promote.
Normal politics, like ordinary life, is a dynamic of compromises. It is a dynamic that works with large constituencies of actual people to achieve limited ends, guided by a general vision of very long term outcomes. JMan points to a major difference at the further points of the political spectrum on the Left, which is the belief in the perfectibility of all people, who are intrinsically born as "blank slates." This idea of people being limitlessly malleable can lead to a political program aimed at radical change, to which people will rapidly adapt to create a different kind of society, one in which social justice is an instinctive guiding norm.
I think this is a valid reading of the impact of figures like Marx and (particularly) Mao, along with some more facile interpretations of academic critical theory. But I also think it's important to recognize that a similar phenomenon is visible at the extreme Right edge of the political spectrum, which reduces people to individual genetic predispositions and frames traditional structures that control them -- the patriarchal family, Christian religion, the illiberal State -- as a static ideal from which the liberal state has strayed. (Some "influencers" who have successfully shaped this movement politically would include Jared Taylor, Curtis Yarvin, and other members of the "intellectual dark web.")
I don't think either political party has actually been captured by these extreme ideologies, but they reflect highly visible constituencies within each that are easy to mistake for the parties themselves. This is particularly true on the Left, where the primary mode of political action is political theater, increasing its visibility. Extremism on the Right, which is more transgressive of ordinary public ethics, the agenda has been carried by think tanks, the dark web, and rural based "patriot" groups of various kinds, inspired by foundational texts like "The Camp of the Saints" and "The Turner Diaries" (the unreadable Raspell and the very readable Pierce, preachers of "The Great Replacement" and "White Genocide" respectively).
One big problem with this view is that the parties are very different. Trump could successfully buck the GOPe because he is clearly a patriot who loves his country. He takes clear stances on big issues that appeal to majorities: deport illegals, two sexes, punish criminals, MAGA. In many ways he is to the right of his party establishment, and that appeals to lots of Republicans (and many swing voters and even some Democrats).
On the other hand, the Democrats have become an explicitly left-wing party. Being heterodox among them now means bucking the committed leftist ideologues, the entire “coalition of the fringes.” It means angering and alienating the trans lobby, the BLM types, the DSA, the no borders/no police groups, the SEIU, and other core groups. That would put the hypothetical heterodox Democrat closer to the political center, but it would fracture their party in much larger ways than Trump has fractured the GOP, and I doubt they’d pick up enough support from moderates to compensate for the loss of their left wing.
How many Republicans have forthrightly criticized Trump for his corruption, or bucked party orthodoxy, and not been excommunicated? They are invariably called 'RINOS' and run out of town. Look at what happened to Thomas Massie, or Tom Tillis. Note that not one member of the party has been willing to call out the way Trump has mixed his personal finances with the government to enrich his family by over 4 billion dollars since January 2025--despite that being a prime example of 'the swamp' at work.
The GOP is hampered by the cult of Trump in the same way the Democrats have been hampered by the cult of woke. I suspect the former is about to spend some time in the wilderness as it comes to realize basing its entire identity around Trump has left it with nothing it can carry past the ignoble expiration of his time in office. It is of a piece of the Democrats learning that basing the party's identity around woke alienates it from big swathes of the voting populace.
"On the other hand, the Democrats have become an explicitly left-wing party."
Not so; it is a highly diverse party now, actually. Guys like Talarico, Rob Sand, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, Andy Beshear, are all squarely in the moderate camp, not the left-wing camp, and they are all very popular. They exist alongside the party's lefties, who range from your average 'Massachussets liberal' to full-on DSA. It has grown its tent considerably.
That growth could easily reverse, no doubt. But for now it must be acknowledged.
Sure Trump has intraparty opposition. I’m just saying it’s small potatoes compared to a hypothetical Democrats rejecting the whole woke left. Massie and Tillis are not representative of large fractions of Republicans. I also don’t think Talarico counts as a moderate… at all.
He doesn't, though. Republicans do not tolerate any. That's the point--it is a mirror image of the cult-like behavior of woke. Except the cult revolves around Trump.
***"I also don’t think Talarico counts as a moderate… at all"***
I disagree, (ex: he was on Fox News a week ago explicitly rejecting the idea of men in women's sports--and his support went *up* in the latest rounds of polls) but even if I were to grant you that, without him the point still stands--why are the rest of the politicians on that list so popular with Democrats? They are not 'explicitly left-wing' and you're claiming the Democratic party is an 'explicitly left-wing' party.
There are the Lincoln Project types, Massie, and others who count as internal opposition. Trump’s struggles with the GOP in Congress are well known.
We’re going to have to disagree on Talarico. As for the others you listed, they do seem to be popular among their local constituents, but how many voters see them as representative of the national party? They are minor figures compared to the Squad, Mamdani, and the others who (e.g.) do not explicitly reject men in women’s sports. The supposedly moderate Spanberger just changed Virginia’s policies on that in the opposite way.
I think Democrats are seen as explicitly left-wing by the median voter. They have all the abolish ICE types, Newsom giving Medicaid to illegals, transing kids, and stopping fraud investigations. Mayor Johnson in Chicago letting criminals roam free and bowing to the CTA, all the Soros DAs, the gun controllers, the DSA, and the rest. Currently Democrats as a party oppose deporting even violent criminals. It’s fair to call those positions left-wing.
> The GOP is hampered by the cult of Trump in the same way the Democrats have been hampered by the cult of woke.
100% false.
1. The Republicans are normal but the Democrats are insane. Trump's policy positions are basically "Average 90s conservative Democrat". By contrast, the left's policies are "women have penises", "defund the police" and "blood libel."
2. MAGA controls Trump, but the intellectuals control the Democrats.
- Example 1: It used to be that the Democrats secured the border to protect the working class and the Republicans opened the border to get cheap labor. But the Republican base always wanted strict border enforcement. Trump is responding to the base, not the other way around.
- Example 2: The H1B dustup in early 2025. Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy all forcefully advocated for high rates of skilled immigration and MAGA pushed back and they all dropped it.
By contrast, a leftist intellectual says "by the way, women have penises now" and leftists all repeat "some women have penises" like a mantra and then focus their 2 minutes of hate on anyone who dares disagree.
Trump's second term has shown quite clearly that MAGA defers to, and enables, Trump, over and above any ideological commitments. Trump has committed some of the most insane acts of corruption in presidential history and the GOP has done absolutely nothing in response. Nor have any of these acts dented his poll numbers with the MAGA base. That is not what a 'normal' political party does--it is what a political party does when it is in thrall to a cult of personality.
...to give just a minute sampling of the larger list.
One of the prevailing claims of both MAGA and the GOP is that they are in the process of 'cleaning the swamp'. Yet they haven't just tolerated 'routine' corruption; they have enabled, and dismissed, corruption on an unprecedented scale. It is an irrefutable demonstration that any ideological commitments they claim to have are completely subordinate to loyalty to Trump.
That is textbook cult of personality behavior--like I said, a mirror image of the cult of woke. Whether these cults' existence is sui generis or the results of larger underlying techno-social trends can be debated--what can't really be debated is that they both place constraints and burdens on rational governance by the two political parties that govern the United States.
Make the case that Trump is getting Republicans to support policy that conservative Republicans haven't historically supported.
You can't.
You can find isolated examples where Republican do disagree with Trump, such as the war in Iran. They are also vocal about it! Podcasts are filled with complaints about Iran. That falsifies your cult of Trump theory. But you won't find Ezra Klein saying, "no, actually women don't have penises." The entire left is a bunch of lemmings.
On corruption, the left has turned Tammany Hall into a national phenomenon. Trumps corruption is a one-off. Just one random example of the left's Tammany Hall v2: the Power Forward Committee was given a $2 billion grant by Biden despite only having a hundred bucks in total donations in its short history as an organization. That's pure graft baked into the system.
It also harkens back to a political climate that existed between about 1955 through 1995, and just isn't coming back. I was kinda surprised that Ruy seemed to think a two year supermajority was unusual. I linked a graphic below that illustrates the swings in the House, Senate, and Presidency since 1857. The period I called out above is an extreme anomaly in the regular swings in which party controls the majority of the Federal government every 8 to 12 years. What we've been seeing in swings of control since the GOP broke the Democrat hold on the House in 1994 was the norm prior to 1955.
"What they won’t do is pick fights with the party’s radicals and nutjobs." Why won't they? Because the radicals and nutjobs wield identity politics as a powerful weapon in that fight.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesomalia) accused the United States of "unthinkable atrocities". When some Democrats objected to her remarks, she replied, "The islamophobic tropes in this statement are offensive. The constant harassment [and] silencing from the signers of this letter is unbearable." Her fellow nutjob Rashida Tlaib (D-Michiganistan) accused them of "stoking anti-Muslim hate."
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) rang a false fire alarm to try to prevent the House from voting on a bill. This was not only a crime, it was a deliberate attempt to thwart the legislative process. Only three Democrats voted to censure him for it. Rep. Tlaib played the race card: “This censure of Representative Bowman is yet another attempt to silence a person of color in this chamber. They are obsessed with attacking Black and brown members of Congress."
Democratic politicians are never going to "pick fights with the party's radicals and nutjobs" as long as the party's radicals and nutjobs have an effective racial politics weapon.
What I find most disturbing of all is the failure of Democrats in or running for office to embrace positions that have been clearly shown, in poll after poll, to be held by the majority of Democratic voters, such as protecting female sport and rejecting medicalization of minors who are confused about their sex. A party that is unable to align itself with the majority of its voters, let alone be able to allow individual electeds and candidates to hold so-called “heterodox” positions, is a party in serious need of repair. (A side note: I am confused about the use of the word “gender” here: “Party politics has hardened into “progressive orthodoxy” on race, gender, immigration, climate, policing, transgender issues and much else.” It appears that by “gender” the writer means “sex”; if so, I recommend, for accuracy and clarity, using the word “sex.”)
Going against orthodoxy carries an enormous price and no one the left wants to pay it.
Suppose Trump had said "Immigration built this country. We are a nation of immigrants. But we also need to secure the border and take illegal immigration more seriously." Then every Republican voter would know the deal: he's just another shill who will open the borders so Big Business can have their cheap labor.
Instead Trump descended an escalator and said "they're not sending their best."
He challenged orthodoxy and got called a racist (every left of center commentator here will agree it was racist). But that reaction also meant that Republicans could trust him on immigration.
No one on the left is going to do this. I've been waiting for Ezra Klein's very conspicuous silence on (trans)gender ideology to turn into a strongly-voiced criticism. I'm still waiting.
Well said, Ruy. So far a lot of the heterodoxy on hot-button issues is quite tentative. I’ll go even further in the number of issues on which Democrats need to welcome non-progressive stances: the party needs to be okay with candidates who oppose assault weapons bans and favor parental consent laws for minors seeking abortion, if those candidates are the Dems’ best shot at winning in red places.
It's really refreshing to see someone comment on this blog about strategies for Democrats who actually addresses strategies for Democrats, Mr. Purzycki. Mr. Teixeira is a big-tent voice for the Party, but for reasons I can't fathom his blog seems almost solely to attract commenters who advocate opposing the Party's left wing and becoming MAGA-adjacent. I can't see how this helps create a community of Democrats or Independents focused on realistic ways to reconstruct the Democrats' big tent.
I agree with your point. The Democratic Party needs to be a place within which debates about hot-button issues can happen in good faith among members who share a vision that has identified the Party since the late 19th century, emphasizing the regulation of capitalism to preserve its energy, ensure it benefits society broadly, and guard against its tolerance of creating harm; working towards a true equal opportunity society (not equal results, but meaningful effort to sustain some level playing field standards); safeguarding the rights of individuals against both discrimination and government intrusion, recognizing that in practice this involves negotiating numerous conflicting forces; and securing American interests abroad through skillful diplomacy that allows us the luxury of preventing military entanglements through alliances and soft power.
I'm a liberal and my positions on guns and abortions are what you'd expect from someone on the Left. But I understand the complexity of Americans' attitude towards guns and I respect the sincerity of those who take a principled stand on the personhood of the unborn from conception on. And, of course, to pursue the central mission of the Party it has to win elections, and recognizing that in a big-tent party that means including members whose views represent constituents who do not agree with specific policies Party members generally support, but who share the larger vision. So I see your comment as completely constructive.
Part of my frustration, perhaps sometimes overly angering frustration, with the modern left is just how terribly far off course they are, without acknowledgement. This guy's talking about a big tent coalition to create a supermajority for a dead political movement. Like what?
I don't want to be in the tent with crazy people. I don't want to have to fight with crazy people every inch of the way just to get my own side to support sane policies. Where is the acknowledgement of this?
If you treat Islam different than you treat Protestantism, like you hold them to two wildly different standards, you're insane. If Catholic priests started teaching what imams do in the Middle East, and you'd react differently, you're insane. If you would talk differently about crime rates among rural white Alabamans and black Chicagoans, if they were equal, you're insane. If you think men and women act the same are and equally capable of the same jobs both physically and mentally, you're insane. If you think mass immigration is a good thing, and if you think there's no difference between a native citizen whose family has been here since the Revolution and somebody who slips across the border from Mexico, you're insane. If you think modern corporate hiring and promoting practices are okay, you're insane. If you think the way we've allowed divorce to become easy and pain free for women, you're insane. If you think sexual degeneracy and no rules sexual culture to the point where your average liberal doesn't know how many days after sex a woman can change her mind and it becomes rape is a good thing, you're insane.
A big tent? A circus tent more like. The current Democratic Party, its current professed beliefs and policy proposals, are a road to an insane hellscape. Imagine a society where Ivy League humanities professors and activist grifters' word is law... it's a future of terror. And that's why it will never win. And Democrats are talking about trying to paper over just the most crazy fringe elements in their party, the whole neoliberal experiment was a failure. It went nowhere but a ditch everyone now hates living in. What supermajority can you build praising the problem and doing nothing? Let me tell people, if Democrats win the White House in 2028, the counterblow in 2032 will wipe them out that much harder. There is no future here for this ideological take on liberalism. It's busted.
Libertarian here, glad Ruy is back. I feel most normal people would like governance to be based on the 80% stuff, which is just common sense. The activist class, who makes their living from politics, has hijacked the discourse in a really harmful way, so both sides do this stupid kabuki dance of virtue signaling, instead of making sure the damn TRASH GETS PICKED UP lol
The expected win for Democrats in this year's election seems all but likely to cement their Woke-Green Israel-obsessed myopia in place good and hard. Setting them up for a sharp correction in 2028. Following the interesting two-year phenomenon this article notes. After all, who have they got who is not a George McGovern (AOC) or Michael Dukakis (Gavin Newsome)? Fetterman, maybe? But he's likely to be a Republican by then.
The Democrats have plenty of alternatives to AOC and Newsom. They have Andy Beshear, John Ossoff, Josh Shapiro, and Pete Buttigieg, for starters, each based in a Red or Purple state, and each with a rising trajectory, as opposed to AOC and Newsom, who have not added significantly to their momentum. Others include Kamala Harris and JB Pritzker towards the party's left, Mark Kelley and Wes Moore nearer the center, and Rahm Emmanuel towards the party's right. In light of the dynamics of presidential politics when there is no clear front-runner, it would be very unwise to assume that there are only two possible people who could prevail. (I think there is about a 0% chance for AOC in 2028 -- further down the line her odds are likely to improve; Newsom is a viable candidate, though I think [and hope] he has crested far too early.)
There is one bone I have to pick with this article. Why no factoring in of the rise among the Democrats especially of profoundly anti-Israel anger bordering on or being pure antisemitism? This is a monumentally destructive force, destructive in the end for those who enable it.
this is a much better approach than your previous statement about the need for more conservative Democrats. You’re right, Trump wins because he isn’t a conservative, which is easy for him because he doesn’t have any principles at all. The Democrats need to start thinking for themselves, and violate party orthodoxy whenever their conscience tells them to. I think that this is already happening to some degree. Talarico has already taken a very nuanced stance on the trans issue, which avoids the extremes of both sides. I read Medium, which is one of the main places that focuses on pro-trans perspectives, and there were some trans voices that were willing to accept his position on this. and he is doing better against the Republican than any de Democrat has done in decades.
As to the "extremes on both sides," I think you misstate things. One "extreme" is that boys are boys and girls are girls. This "extreme" was unquestioned common sense until a few years ago. The issue for Democrats is not whether, as you put it, "there were some trans voices that were willing to accept his position." The issue is whether there is a majority of ordinary voters who are willing to accept his position.
The two extremes are not positions on the ontological question of what is a man and what is a woman. in each case it’s an unwillingness to tolerate the beliefs on the other side. One extreme wants to fire trans people and close down all gender clinics, and place armed inspectors in front of every restroom.The other extreme wants to rebuild the language and fire people who say trans people aren’t women, and let anyone play on women’s sports and inhabit women’s private spaces who says they are a woman. Both of these extremes require the other side to accept their position. I think the majority of ordinary voters would be willing to accept that we should agree to disagree about this, and neither side should be forced to accept the beliefs of the other. The Devils in the details, of course, but here is my attempt to mark out such a moderate position. https://teedrockwell.substack.com/p/a-moderate-gender-manifesto?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios
The Democrat party's problem is actually quite simple to define.
They have become rapaciously illiberal.
Fifty years ago, I routinely sat down at table with everyday liberals and conservatives, having conversations that could become mildly heated about disagreements, but generally free of ad hominem and rarely did anyone walk away or refuse to talk things out.
Try that now, and see who hurls character assassinating insult, and who either changes the subject or walks away.
I really don't like the idea of a supermajority and I think the idea is counter to American values. I want a supermajority of politicians who work in the middle with the other party and have courage to reject authoritarianism and extreme view points from the Right and the Left. People who debate and work to solve real issues, not just try to win. When a supermajority exists, the rest of us are left behind. I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican. If you pursue my interest and core values, I will support you. Cynical rhetoric I see in Congress just turns me off. If all you have is hating Donald Trump, it is hard for me to divorce that from your opinion on his policies, some of which work in spite of his artless way to deal. If we had more Bill Clintons, even with his faults, we would be better off. But Democrats are not the answer if all we want to do is win. That is not enough.
Until the Democrats start appealing to normal Americans I don't foresee lasting supermajorities. I live in CA, and I used to vote democrat. Even here, most people agree that Newson was too authortarian on covid . Parents are angry that their kids missed so much school and had to wear masks. Most people think taxes are too high. Most people don't want transgender curriculum materials in elementary school. The list goes on...
—Which Democrats have actually practiced heterodoxy?
If Bill Clinton in 1992 and RFK in 1968 are the best examples here, then this answer speaks for itself.
But closer to our moment, the best examples I can think of are Dean Phillips (who made the mistake of admitting Biden was too old to run but before the rest of the Party had given permission) and Seth Moulton, who made one comment about keeping boys out of girls' sports and essentially ended his career. They were publicly destroyed to set an example for anyone who might have considered doing something similar.
The Dems will not be moderating as long as Trump still roams the land, as his presence has driven them mad and made so many of their voters willing to burn down the whole country if it burns down Trump too. And then there's the total ideological capture of American liberalism and its surrender to Social Justice ideology, which is dogmatic, intolerant and intent on rooting out all dissent. Social Justice ideology is founded on the post-Marxist idea that Western liberal democracy and free markets are ipso facto evil and bigoted and need to be dismantled, with exile, cancellation or re-education the punishment for those who still support them.
What this means is that Social Justice ideology, which is a mandatory belief system for everyone on the Left side of the aisle, posits white male Christians and the country and institutions they created as enemies to be demonized and eradicated—and you can either actively hate people or campaign for their support and votes, but you can't do both.
> And then there's the total ideological capture of American liberalism and its surrender to Social Justice ideology
That capture happened in academia first, then spread to the journalists, the activists and finally PMCs. It began when radical leftists intellectuals fled for the US during WW2 when their post-Enlightenment world produced horrors.
I don't see how it's going to play out, but leftism as a moral and intellectual movement is already dead, it just doesn't know it yet. The only question is how it will die, how long it will take, and how much harm it will cause as it dies.
I'm not sure this thing we call Leftism ever dies, but only mutates—Christian egalitarianism being the root leading to Protestant reformers like Thomas Müntzer then to Levellers and Diggers to Jacobins and Bolsheviks to the campus-based New Left etc—but even if the current Social Justice iteration is a spent force, it still has the strength of having its priests and disciples currently controlling and making up a critical mass in our education and cultural institutions (not to mention activism, NGOs, and much of the Dem Party).
Marxism-Leninism had been pretty much discredited and revealed to be a recipe for totalitarianism by say the 1950s-60s, yet it still held on another generation or so in the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc, spreading its lies and misery. Sometimes when revolutions curdle, their true believers only double down and try to revive the corpse of their utopian ideology.
We shall see...
Concur, I believe this protestant initiated holier than thou virtue signaling will just morph into another type set up. We had many protestant minded and driven peoples coming here to the USA and this evolutionary mind set is with us and in many of us for good and bad. Probably will morph into something else or is now doing so? Wait and see where it goes? (Seems most people want to feel they are better than the others???).
> Christian egalitarianism being the root leading to Protestant reformers like Thomas Müntzer then to Levellers and Diggers to Jacobins and Bolsheviks to the campus-based New Left etc
I realize that modern leftists will want to claim the Levellers, but they are a distinctly Christian movement that foreshadowed Enlightenment ideals, not post-Enlightenment leftism.
Leftism is predicated on a Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the perfectibility of man. These are all false and invariably lead to authoritarianism.
Christian movements like the Levellers are based on original sin and the imago Dei. They are what made the anglosphere exceptional and gave rise to the Enlightenment view of freedom and human rights.
—Leftism is predicated on a Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the perfectibility of man. These are all false and invariably lead to authoritarianism.
No doubt.
But there is undoubtedly some overlap, as Leftists also have their beloved prophet (St Karl of Misanthropy), universalist egalitarian dogma, priests and disciples etc and their millenarian apocalypse where the Evil (rich whites) are at last vanquished and the Good enthroned. And with this also having a Christian flavor, as it's based on "the last shall be first, and the first last."
Maybe we can meet in the middle and call it a Christian heresy.
Thanks
Spot on.
I think this conversation between Clever Pseudonym and Jman 2819 is very interesting. For me (a vanilla liberal -- the New Deal / Great Society type) what it points to is not the bankruptcy of the Left but dangers of theory and the type of extremism it can promote.
Normal politics, like ordinary life, is a dynamic of compromises. It is a dynamic that works with large constituencies of actual people to achieve limited ends, guided by a general vision of very long term outcomes. JMan points to a major difference at the further points of the political spectrum on the Left, which is the belief in the perfectibility of all people, who are intrinsically born as "blank slates." This idea of people being limitlessly malleable can lead to a political program aimed at radical change, to which people will rapidly adapt to create a different kind of society, one in which social justice is an instinctive guiding norm.
I think this is a valid reading of the impact of figures like Marx and (particularly) Mao, along with some more facile interpretations of academic critical theory. But I also think it's important to recognize that a similar phenomenon is visible at the extreme Right edge of the political spectrum, which reduces people to individual genetic predispositions and frames traditional structures that control them -- the patriarchal family, Christian religion, the illiberal State -- as a static ideal from which the liberal state has strayed. (Some "influencers" who have successfully shaped this movement politically would include Jared Taylor, Curtis Yarvin, and other members of the "intellectual dark web.")
I don't think either political party has actually been captured by these extreme ideologies, but they reflect highly visible constituencies within each that are easy to mistake for the parties themselves. This is particularly true on the Left, where the primary mode of political action is political theater, increasing its visibility. Extremism on the Right, which is more transgressive of ordinary public ethics, the agenda has been carried by think tanks, the dark web, and rural based "patriot" groups of various kinds, inspired by foundational texts like "The Camp of the Saints" and "The Turner Diaries" (the unreadable Raspell and the very readable Pierce, preachers of "The Great Replacement" and "White Genocide" respectively).
One big problem with this view is that the parties are very different. Trump could successfully buck the GOPe because he is clearly a patriot who loves his country. He takes clear stances on big issues that appeal to majorities: deport illegals, two sexes, punish criminals, MAGA. In many ways he is to the right of his party establishment, and that appeals to lots of Republicans (and many swing voters and even some Democrats).
On the other hand, the Democrats have become an explicitly left-wing party. Being heterodox among them now means bucking the committed leftist ideologues, the entire “coalition of the fringes.” It means angering and alienating the trans lobby, the BLM types, the DSA, the no borders/no police groups, the SEIU, and other core groups. That would put the hypothetical heterodox Democrat closer to the political center, but it would fracture their party in much larger ways than Trump has fractured the GOP, and I doubt they’d pick up enough support from moderates to compensate for the loss of their left wing.
There is more commonality than you're letting on.
How many Republicans have forthrightly criticized Trump for his corruption, or bucked party orthodoxy, and not been excommunicated? They are invariably called 'RINOS' and run out of town. Look at what happened to Thomas Massie, or Tom Tillis. Note that not one member of the party has been willing to call out the way Trump has mixed his personal finances with the government to enrich his family by over 4 billion dollars since January 2025--despite that being a prime example of 'the swamp' at work.
The GOP is hampered by the cult of Trump in the same way the Democrats have been hampered by the cult of woke. I suspect the former is about to spend some time in the wilderness as it comes to realize basing its entire identity around Trump has left it with nothing it can carry past the ignoble expiration of his time in office. It is of a piece of the Democrats learning that basing the party's identity around woke alienates it from big swathes of the voting populace.
"On the other hand, the Democrats have become an explicitly left-wing party."
Not so; it is a highly diverse party now, actually. Guys like Talarico, Rob Sand, Jon Ossoff, Roy Cooper, Andy Beshear, are all squarely in the moderate camp, not the left-wing camp, and they are all very popular. They exist alongside the party's lefties, who range from your average 'Massachussets liberal' to full-on DSA. It has grown its tent considerably.
That growth could easily reverse, no doubt. But for now it must be acknowledged.
Sure Trump has intraparty opposition. I’m just saying it’s small potatoes compared to a hypothetical Democrats rejecting the whole woke left. Massie and Tillis are not representative of large fractions of Republicans. I also don’t think Talarico counts as a moderate… at all.
***"Sure Trump has intraparty opposition."***
He doesn't, though. Republicans do not tolerate any. That's the point--it is a mirror image of the cult-like behavior of woke. Except the cult revolves around Trump.
***"I also don’t think Talarico counts as a moderate… at all"***
I disagree, (ex: he was on Fox News a week ago explicitly rejecting the idea of men in women's sports--and his support went *up* in the latest rounds of polls) but even if I were to grant you that, without him the point still stands--why are the rest of the politicians on that list so popular with Democrats? They are not 'explicitly left-wing' and you're claiming the Democratic party is an 'explicitly left-wing' party.
There are the Lincoln Project types, Massie, and others who count as internal opposition. Trump’s struggles with the GOP in Congress are well known.
We’re going to have to disagree on Talarico. As for the others you listed, they do seem to be popular among their local constituents, but how many voters see them as representative of the national party? They are minor figures compared to the Squad, Mamdani, and the others who (e.g.) do not explicitly reject men in women’s sports. The supposedly moderate Spanberger just changed Virginia’s policies on that in the opposite way.
I think Democrats are seen as explicitly left-wing by the median voter. They have all the abolish ICE types, Newsom giving Medicaid to illegals, transing kids, and stopping fraud investigations. Mayor Johnson in Chicago letting criminals roam free and bowing to the CTA, all the Soros DAs, the gun controllers, the DSA, and the rest. Currently Democrats as a party oppose deporting even violent criminals. It’s fair to call those positions left-wing.
> The GOP is hampered by the cult of Trump in the same way the Democrats have been hampered by the cult of woke.
100% false.
1. The Republicans are normal but the Democrats are insane. Trump's policy positions are basically "Average 90s conservative Democrat". By contrast, the left's policies are "women have penises", "defund the police" and "blood libel."
2. MAGA controls Trump, but the intellectuals control the Democrats.
- Example 1: It used to be that the Democrats secured the border to protect the working class and the Republicans opened the border to get cheap labor. But the Republican base always wanted strict border enforcement. Trump is responding to the base, not the other way around.
- Example 2: The H1B dustup in early 2025. Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy all forcefully advocated for high rates of skilled immigration and MAGA pushed back and they all dropped it.
By contrast, a leftist intellectual says "by the way, women have penises now" and leftists all repeat "some women have penises" like a mantra and then focus their 2 minutes of hate on anyone who dares disagree.
Trump's second term has shown quite clearly that MAGA defers to, and enables, Trump, over and above any ideological commitments. Trump has committed some of the most insane acts of corruption in presidential history and the GOP has done absolutely nothing in response. Nor have any of these acts dented his poll numbers with the MAGA base. That is not what a 'normal' political party does--it is what a political party does when it is in thrall to a cult of personality.
Consider the following acts:
-selling seats at a dinner with the president in exchange for billion-dollar investments in his private memecoin (https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-draws-global-crypto-investors-with-148-million-meme-coin-dinner-2025-05-22/)
-pardoning financial criminals that then immediately invest billions in his stablecoin holdings (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly1qrl9l1qo)
-having his family launch and expand major business projects in the Gulf and rake in hundreds of millions of dollars as he is setting Gulf foreign policy and dealing with its political leaders (https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-family-rakes-in-cash-from-middle-east-deals-b91a9927)
-monetizing access to market-making Truth Social posts, e.g. formalizing insider trading (https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2026-08-13/trump-selling-early-access-posts-truth-social)
...to give just a minute sampling of the larger list.
One of the prevailing claims of both MAGA and the GOP is that they are in the process of 'cleaning the swamp'. Yet they haven't just tolerated 'routine' corruption; they have enabled, and dismissed, corruption on an unprecedented scale. It is an irrefutable demonstration that any ideological commitments they claim to have are completely subordinate to loyalty to Trump.
That is textbook cult of personality behavior--like I said, a mirror image of the cult of woke. Whether these cults' existence is sui generis or the results of larger underlying techno-social trends can be debated--what can't really be debated is that they both place constraints and burdens on rational governance by the two political parties that govern the United States.
Policy.
Make the case that Trump is getting Republicans to support policy that conservative Republicans haven't historically supported.
You can't.
You can find isolated examples where Republican do disagree with Trump, such as the war in Iran. They are also vocal about it! Podcasts are filled with complaints about Iran. That falsifies your cult of Trump theory. But you won't find Ezra Klein saying, "no, actually women don't have penises." The entire left is a bunch of lemmings.
On corruption, the left has turned Tammany Hall into a national phenomenon. Trumps corruption is a one-off. Just one random example of the left's Tammany Hall v2: the Power Forward Committee was given a $2 billion grant by Biden despite only having a hundred bucks in total donations in its short history as an organization. That's pure graft baked into the system.
The subtitle gives everything away. ALL democrats care about is POWER. Not policy, not improving the country. JUST POWER.
It also harkens back to a political climate that existed between about 1955 through 1995, and just isn't coming back. I was kinda surprised that Ruy seemed to think a two year supermajority was unusual. I linked a graphic below that illustrates the swings in the House, Senate, and Presidency since 1857. The period I called out above is an extreme anomaly in the regular swings in which party controls the majority of the Federal government every 8 to 12 years. What we've been seeing in swings of control since the GOP broke the Democrat hold on the House in 1994 was the norm prior to 1955.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses#/media/File:Combined--Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
"What they won’t do is pick fights with the party’s radicals and nutjobs." Why won't they? Because the radicals and nutjobs wield identity politics as a powerful weapon in that fight.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesomalia) accused the United States of "unthinkable atrocities". When some Democrats objected to her remarks, she replied, "The islamophobic tropes in this statement are offensive. The constant harassment [and] silencing from the signers of this letter is unbearable." Her fellow nutjob Rashida Tlaib (D-Michiganistan) accused them of "stoking anti-Muslim hate."
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) rang a false fire alarm to try to prevent the House from voting on a bill. This was not only a crime, it was a deliberate attempt to thwart the legislative process. Only three Democrats voted to censure him for it. Rep. Tlaib played the race card: “This censure of Representative Bowman is yet another attempt to silence a person of color in this chamber. They are obsessed with attacking Black and brown members of Congress."
Democratic politicians are never going to "pick fights with the party's radicals and nutjobs" as long as the party's radicals and nutjobs have an effective racial politics weapon.
What I find most disturbing of all is the failure of Democrats in or running for office to embrace positions that have been clearly shown, in poll after poll, to be held by the majority of Democratic voters, such as protecting female sport and rejecting medicalization of minors who are confused about their sex. A party that is unable to align itself with the majority of its voters, let alone be able to allow individual electeds and candidates to hold so-called “heterodox” positions, is a party in serious need of repair. (A side note: I am confused about the use of the word “gender” here: “Party politics has hardened into “progressive orthodoxy” on race, gender, immigration, climate, policing, transgender issues and much else.” It appears that by “gender” the writer means “sex”; if so, I recommend, for accuracy and clarity, using the word “sex.”)
Going against orthodoxy carries an enormous price and no one the left wants to pay it.
Suppose Trump had said "Immigration built this country. We are a nation of immigrants. But we also need to secure the border and take illegal immigration more seriously." Then every Republican voter would know the deal: he's just another shill who will open the borders so Big Business can have their cheap labor.
Instead Trump descended an escalator and said "they're not sending their best."
He challenged orthodoxy and got called a racist (every left of center commentator here will agree it was racist). But that reaction also meant that Republicans could trust him on immigration.
No one on the left is going to do this. I've been waiting for Ezra Klein's very conspicuous silence on (trans)gender ideology to turn into a strongly-voiced criticism. I'm still waiting.
Well said, Ruy. So far a lot of the heterodoxy on hot-button issues is quite tentative. I’ll go even further in the number of issues on which Democrats need to welcome non-progressive stances: the party needs to be okay with candidates who oppose assault weapons bans and favor parental consent laws for minors seeking abortion, if those candidates are the Dems’ best shot at winning in red places.
It's really refreshing to see someone comment on this blog about strategies for Democrats who actually addresses strategies for Democrats, Mr. Purzycki. Mr. Teixeira is a big-tent voice for the Party, but for reasons I can't fathom his blog seems almost solely to attract commenters who advocate opposing the Party's left wing and becoming MAGA-adjacent. I can't see how this helps create a community of Democrats or Independents focused on realistic ways to reconstruct the Democrats' big tent.
I agree with your point. The Democratic Party needs to be a place within which debates about hot-button issues can happen in good faith among members who share a vision that has identified the Party since the late 19th century, emphasizing the regulation of capitalism to preserve its energy, ensure it benefits society broadly, and guard against its tolerance of creating harm; working towards a true equal opportunity society (not equal results, but meaningful effort to sustain some level playing field standards); safeguarding the rights of individuals against both discrimination and government intrusion, recognizing that in practice this involves negotiating numerous conflicting forces; and securing American interests abroad through skillful diplomacy that allows us the luxury of preventing military entanglements through alliances and soft power.
I'm a liberal and my positions on guns and abortions are what you'd expect from someone on the Left. But I understand the complexity of Americans' attitude towards guns and I respect the sincerity of those who take a principled stand on the personhood of the unborn from conception on. And, of course, to pursue the central mission of the Party it has to win elections, and recognizing that in a big-tent party that means including members whose views represent constituents who do not agree with specific policies Party members generally support, but who share the larger vision. So I see your comment as completely constructive.
Part of my frustration, perhaps sometimes overly angering frustration, with the modern left is just how terribly far off course they are, without acknowledgement. This guy's talking about a big tent coalition to create a supermajority for a dead political movement. Like what?
I don't want to be in the tent with crazy people. I don't want to have to fight with crazy people every inch of the way just to get my own side to support sane policies. Where is the acknowledgement of this?
If you treat Islam different than you treat Protestantism, like you hold them to two wildly different standards, you're insane. If Catholic priests started teaching what imams do in the Middle East, and you'd react differently, you're insane. If you would talk differently about crime rates among rural white Alabamans and black Chicagoans, if they were equal, you're insane. If you think men and women act the same are and equally capable of the same jobs both physically and mentally, you're insane. If you think mass immigration is a good thing, and if you think there's no difference between a native citizen whose family has been here since the Revolution and somebody who slips across the border from Mexico, you're insane. If you think modern corporate hiring and promoting practices are okay, you're insane. If you think the way we've allowed divorce to become easy and pain free for women, you're insane. If you think sexual degeneracy and no rules sexual culture to the point where your average liberal doesn't know how many days after sex a woman can change her mind and it becomes rape is a good thing, you're insane.
A big tent? A circus tent more like. The current Democratic Party, its current professed beliefs and policy proposals, are a road to an insane hellscape. Imagine a society where Ivy League humanities professors and activist grifters' word is law... it's a future of terror. And that's why it will never win. And Democrats are talking about trying to paper over just the most crazy fringe elements in their party, the whole neoliberal experiment was a failure. It went nowhere but a ditch everyone now hates living in. What supermajority can you build praising the problem and doing nothing? Let me tell people, if Democrats win the White House in 2028, the counterblow in 2032 will wipe them out that much harder. There is no future here for this ideological take on liberalism. It's busted.
Libertarian here, glad Ruy is back. I feel most normal people would like governance to be based on the 80% stuff, which is just common sense. The activist class, who makes their living from politics, has hijacked the discourse in a really harmful way, so both sides do this stupid kabuki dance of virtue signaling, instead of making sure the damn TRASH GETS PICKED UP lol
The expected win for Democrats in this year's election seems all but likely to cement their Woke-Green Israel-obsessed myopia in place good and hard. Setting them up for a sharp correction in 2028. Following the interesting two-year phenomenon this article notes. After all, who have they got who is not a George McGovern (AOC) or Michael Dukakis (Gavin Newsome)? Fetterman, maybe? But he's likely to be a Republican by then.
The Democrats have plenty of alternatives to AOC and Newsom. They have Andy Beshear, John Ossoff, Josh Shapiro, and Pete Buttigieg, for starters, each based in a Red or Purple state, and each with a rising trajectory, as opposed to AOC and Newsom, who have not added significantly to their momentum. Others include Kamala Harris and JB Pritzker towards the party's left, Mark Kelley and Wes Moore nearer the center, and Rahm Emmanuel towards the party's right. In light of the dynamics of presidential politics when there is no clear front-runner, it would be very unwise to assume that there are only two possible people who could prevail. (I think there is about a 0% chance for AOC in 2028 -- further down the line her odds are likely to improve; Newsom is a viable candidate, though I think [and hope] he has crested far too early.)
There is one bone I have to pick with this article. Why no factoring in of the rise among the Democrats especially of profoundly anti-Israel anger bordering on or being pure antisemitism? This is a monumentally destructive force, destructive in the end for those who enable it.
this is a much better approach than your previous statement about the need for more conservative Democrats. You’re right, Trump wins because he isn’t a conservative, which is easy for him because he doesn’t have any principles at all. The Democrats need to start thinking for themselves, and violate party orthodoxy whenever their conscience tells them to. I think that this is already happening to some degree. Talarico has already taken a very nuanced stance on the trans issue, which avoids the extremes of both sides. I read Medium, which is one of the main places that focuses on pro-trans perspectives, and there were some trans voices that were willing to accept his position on this. and he is doing better against the Republican than any de Democrat has done in decades.
As to the "extremes on both sides," I think you misstate things. One "extreme" is that boys are boys and girls are girls. This "extreme" was unquestioned common sense until a few years ago. The issue for Democrats is not whether, as you put it, "there were some trans voices that were willing to accept his position." The issue is whether there is a majority of ordinary voters who are willing to accept his position.
The two extremes are not positions on the ontological question of what is a man and what is a woman. in each case it’s an unwillingness to tolerate the beliefs on the other side. One extreme wants to fire trans people and close down all gender clinics, and place armed inspectors in front of every restroom.The other extreme wants to rebuild the language and fire people who say trans people aren’t women, and let anyone play on women’s sports and inhabit women’s private spaces who says they are a woman. Both of these extremes require the other side to accept their position. I think the majority of ordinary voters would be willing to accept that we should agree to disagree about this, and neither side should be forced to accept the beliefs of the other. The Devils in the details, of course, but here is my attempt to mark out such a moderate position. https://teedrockwell.substack.com/p/a-moderate-gender-manifesto?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios
Representing the people you were elected to represent wins elections--News at 11.
Another 2 data points from Germany about trying to go down the middle. The Establishment lost to both Left and Right
The Democrat party's problem is actually quite simple to define.
They have become rapaciously illiberal.
Fifty years ago, I routinely sat down at table with everyday liberals and conservatives, having conversations that could become mildly heated about disagreements, but generally free of ad hominem and rarely did anyone walk away or refuse to talk things out.
Try that now, and see who hurls character assassinating insult, and who either changes the subject or walks away.
I really don't like the idea of a supermajority and I think the idea is counter to American values. I want a supermajority of politicians who work in the middle with the other party and have courage to reject authoritarianism and extreme view points from the Right and the Left. People who debate and work to solve real issues, not just try to win. When a supermajority exists, the rest of us are left behind. I don't care if you are a Democrat or a Republican. If you pursue my interest and core values, I will support you. Cynical rhetoric I see in Congress just turns me off. If all you have is hating Donald Trump, it is hard for me to divorce that from your opinion on his policies, some of which work in spite of his artless way to deal. If we had more Bill Clintons, even with his faults, we would be better off. But Democrats are not the answer if all we want to do is win. That is not enough.