In the semipermanent aftermath of another electoral defeat at the hands of Donald Trump, Democratic pundits and elected officials have appropriated Harris’s loss as a justification for rejecting “positions opposed by the electoral majority essential to win, whether that’s big corporations, rich donors, nonprofits, whoever.” Or so they occasionally say! That specific wording came from Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, who has since somewhat walked back the statement after lots of pushback from leftists. (His call for nuance is a reasonable one!) Still, his formulation is a concise version of the common refrain: Democrats need to be more like Republicans—at least in terms of policy: “It’s about what’s required to win.”
The idea of two vaguely Trumpy political parties racing one another to the bottom of a gutter forever doesn’t appeal to me. As someone who wants the party to stick with some of the policies “opposed by the electoral majority” (whatever that means; we live in a world where people are voting for minimum wage increases and Donald Trump), I’m probably one of the lumpen “whoever” that Democrats should be ignoring. Still, I think the “move to the center” folks have a point! Democrats and those on the left should start acting more like Republicans, the MAGA movement especially.
The operative word here is “acting.” There’s no real point to Democrats retreating to their consultant salons to figure out how to do their own versions of the reactionary policies whose real-world contradictions can be glossed over on the campaign trail with a sufficient amount of lies and vibes. Besides, any effort expended trying to craft policies that might attract conservative (or “moderate”) voters will be met by their preference for those policies’ full-fat variety. No, what the Democrats need to do is ape the tactics and the artifice that bring the extremist right to power.
So, fuck it: Let’s indeed go more extreme.
Here’s a dirty little secret: Very few MAGA policy prescriptions are genuinely popular. Some of them—banning in vitro fertilization and contraception—are quite unpopular! They are now on the table because a bunch of once-obscure right-wing activists worked around the margins of our politics to build institutional consent for their ideas and, most significantly, build a federal judiciary willing to countenance some of the wilder notions being kicked around the conservative think tank industrial complex. All the while, as these pieces on the chessboard were being aligned, more mainstream Republicans lied about their willingness to stand up to the extremists in their midst. (Looking at you, Susan Collins!)
Trumpism owes its success less to populist goals than to fringe conservatives’ willingness to put in the time and effort necessary to push through the setbacks to pull off their grand designs in the end. Overturning Roe was the uphill work of decades!
Over the course of many years, the right built out a well-funded media machine to carry and massage their message into the cracks of mainstream channels. They invented a whole parallel economy based on working the refs of traditional journalism, weaponizing bothsidesism into the deadly form it takes today.
On the ground, they used what means were at their disposal to engineer favorable districts, gerrymandering themselves into electoral cocoons that preserved their power even against majorities of voters who wanted to go another way. These are some durable changes to our political superstructure that will take time to unwind.
But the unwinding has to start somewhere; perhaps it should begin here: Let’s stop pretending that the polite norms that appeal to the permanent residents of cable news greenrooms but don’t lead toward a sustainable politics are important. Let’s not fret about changing positions if doing so has broader appeal: The public is not going to punish you for changing directions in their direction—look at the right’s flip-flop on foreign wars. Admittedly, these doves of the right might morph again; all the more reason to be less concerned with consistency on the left!
To begin with, let’s reappropriate some of MAGA Nation’s popular aesthetics: not their words and ideas themselves, but specifically their tone of outrage. These guys are so angry about what they see in the world, and they’re not only not afraid to say so, they present righting these fancied wrongs as justice! In a world where the status quo seems to be rigged against ordinary people, voters seem drawn to those willing to spar and shake things up—they may not always literally agree with what’s being said, but they admire what looks to them like the courage necessary to smash a rigged system.
Democrats should ape this fighting spirit, and flip the script on the reactionaries. What do you mean I can’t say “BIPOC” anymore, bro? Are you policing my language? Hey, pal, you’re coming after MY RIGHT to take care of my children as I see best? What’s next? You gonna try to stop me from sending my kids to the same public schools my parents sent me to? WTF, my dude, ARE YOU SAYING YOU WANT MY CHILDREN TO DROWN IN A RISING OCEAN? As you might surmise, I think emphasizing the tried and true “What about the children?” really helps. But I’d also emphasize the need to attack the GOP at the precise points they present as their strongest.
Another key to the GOP’s success over the years is their willingness to fight in the trenches and put real effort into winning the unsexy, down-ticket races that rarely make national news but are more front and center in the lives of ordinary people. Democrats need to learn to be maximal in their approach to local politics—it is here, and not on Twitter, where “the public square” can be found.
So when you think about it, a “Joe Rogan of the left” isn’t nearly as important as a “Moms for Liberty” of the left or, perhaps, a “Nutjobs of TikTok.” Democrats need fierce, loud, righteous occupiers of the public square, asserting and celebrating our values. People who will go to school board and city council meetings—and run for seats on them, elections where with such low turnout just a small expenditure could make a huge difference. Without any institutional support, some on the left are already making inroads. Members and endorsees of the Democratic Socialists of America have been running for these small offices and winning in increasing numbers since 2017. These folks often lose when the Democratic apparatus turns against them. Why crush them, though? Young leftists can learn a lot about political temperance working on nuts and bolts issues—filling potholes, funding schools, resolving development and zoning disputes. By developing a reputation for delivering the goods, they’ll earn public trust and find an electorate more receptive to their ideas. And an electorate that trusts the left helps everyone with responsible politics.
Honestly, Democrats should take the leashes off the economic populists in their ranks, and give them the same latitude that the right gives Marjorie Taylor Greene—with the key distinction that socialist policies can be way more appealing than raging against Jewish space lasers. Our Marjorie Taylor Greenes can push more popular envelopes: “Expand Medicare!” “Housing is a human right!” “Subsidize childcare!” “Forgive medical debt!” “Eat the rich!”
There is one key structural issue that would keep this approach from working the way it did on the right. The left doesn’t have large corporations or uberwealthy individuals willing to foot the bill for their elections if it means that winning puts them on the hook for higher taxes.
Deep-pocketed players will always bail if the left asks for anything that’s not mostly performative. Until we have publicly funded elections and a level electoral field—which seems to be popular with voters, by the way!—avoiding “positions opposed by the electoral majority essential to win” is an unfair fight. There is no universe in which Democrats make all the weird policy changes the punditocracy have pulled from their mayfly brains and then go and do whatever “real work” (on climate change, or trans rights, or housing, or anything) they’re supposed to do once they are in charge.
We know that because “centrist” policy compromises are what the Democrats have been doing for decades; this is a party that’s been suckered into means-testing their own existence. “Safe, legal, and rare”—a phrase that screams “developed in committee”—gave away so much ground on abortion rights that it was hard for many people to access them long before the Dobbs decision drove a stake through the heart of reproductive care. The “major” progressive policy victory of the last 30 years—the Affordable Care Act—was a halfway measure that was partially designed to stem the rising tide of Americans demanding even better solutions.
I genuinely believe that some of these ideas about swerving to the left, loud and proud, could work. (“Bernie,” she whispers.) What’s more, ground-level organizing and candidate training at the local level trickles up almost every time. Look at the right, sure. But also look at Minnesota, where the activist bootcamp of “Camp Wellstone” turned out Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan.
Which reminds me of a remaining strategy the left can lift from those MAGA assholes: Never stop accusing them of being out of step from the mainstream. Never stop calling them weird. Never stop reminding the public of the out-of-touch billionaires Trump is bringing to Washington to rule over us. And never stop pointing out the harms done by this gang’s policies—and by the rulings of their pet Supreme Court. This means that Democrats will have to develop the stomach for surfacing derogatory information about Republicans; they will have to get used to getting Big Mad on a more regular basis—and discharging this emotion in the direction of every microphone, every television camera, and every reporter standing by with a pen and pad.
This is going to feel “extreme” to Washington Democrats, who’d clearly rather remain above the fray instead of getting down in the mud. Well, it’s time to get low and dirty—and you don’t have to sacrifice the principles of democracy, humanity, and social justice along the way.
The Democrats who talk about winning at the cost of sacrificing “interest groups” should examine the fruits of that strategy. Here at the end of an election, Democrats need to look further back than the Harris race. Concerns about moving policy more to the center are foolish—anyone pointing to Bill Clinton’s election should be hit in the face with Hillary Clinton’s loss. Democrats must stop worrying about erasing race or class or gender. They would be better off creating divides. There is a red and a blue America; blue America is a better place to live. There is an “us” and a “them.” Democrats need to get in the conflict and be an opposition party again.
