The note of skepticism toward a "big tent" philosophy in favor of a "parliamentary" notion of everybody towing the same median voter line is I think both substantively incorrect (inauthentic, feeds into the perception of the party as a monolith, closes off political entrepreneurship) and also completely toxic for managing the intra-coalition tensions that are the subject of the piece.
I agree with most of Matt's opinions, but I do have very hard time accepting his view of refugees. People fleeing war or political and religious persecution should always have a safe haven in a liberal democracy, in my opinion. Comparing accepting refugees to banning plastic straws is upsetting to me.
The decline in patriotism among rank-and-file Dems is only a problem if you assume the same decline won’t be seen in independents, like it was for the decline in religion or support for gay marriage or Israel. I think it is more likely that independents do follow suit, just a bit later, and it stops being an electoral liability. There are many great things about this country but we also like started a war against a country that was weak and appeasing us (our own leaders called it hitting them when down) and then triple-tapped bombed a school on the first day. Lots of people just can’t love a country that does stuff like that, at least not unconditionally.
We know that left-wingers are not inherently anti-patriotism: just see their position in Canada. We just have to have a country that doesn’t do evil stuff and left-wingers would love to be patriotic.
I had some issues with the writing in this piece, and I hope the Slow Boring team can take some constructive feedback.
The central framing of the piece was a reaction to Teixeira and his “feud” with Jentleson.
Yet instead of summarizing the main thrust of their disagreement in a few sentences, the piece said it was over the role of “heterodoxy” (presumably against the progressive orthodoxy, though not explicitly stated) and then linked to Teixeira’s piece. This article didn’t actually explain what the conflict was, or summarize what their core disagreement was. External links are great, but it doesn’t really replace a summary of the main thrust of the argument that you are engaging with. And this summary could have been done in 1 or 2 sentences.
The same thing happened with respect to the reference to “reality” based climate policy. The piece linked to a piece from 2 years ago, but didn’t give a 1 sentence summary of what reality based climate policy means and the point you are trying to make.
There are advantages of technology to allow us to link all the sources we are referring to and make them easily accessible. But the expectation of a subscriber should not be to have to read every article linked. Technology isn’t a replacement for good writing.
The audience here is a lay audience who are engaged with policy and politics, but not someone necessarily who is caught up with the contours of Teixeira’s and Jentleson’s writing, or remembers Yglesias’s articles from 2 years ago, or knows that “heterodoxy” is lingo used in certain circles to refer to moderate opposition to a progressive orthodoxy. Articles should be understood standing alone, without needed the reader to read multiple other articles to understand the main points.
>It is universally acknowledged that the Biden border situation was fucked up and unacceptable. ... I think what most Democrats want, subjectively, is for the border to become an impermeable force field such that it’s literally impossible for anyone to cross without proper authorization.
I am quite sure that most Democrats want people with legitimate asylum claims to be able to make them, and I am pretty sure that most Democrats are fine with letting people with colorable claims, esp families with children, to enter while claims are adjudicated.
The real issue is delays in adjudication in immigration court, which has a relatively easy fix, though it is one that will cost money: More immigration judges (immigration judges should also be made independent, unlike currently, but that is another issue)
Very useful note, re Teixeira, I stopped reading him even though I probably am of a more sympathetic mind-set than Democrats (being "not a Democrat") but found as MY has written he seemed to be obsessed with a mode that if 100% of what he wants is not achieved, nothing is achieved (glass basically empty) and mind-set that his opponents just volubly drink their bitter medicine (never mind I think on some substance items in energy he's just plain wrong but voila).... not very helpful for his stated goals
While he may be now in opposition to "Activist Progressive Faction" honestly large parts of his mentality seem disturbingly similar to theirs, only flipped around.
Now if you're me, just a non-Democrat (mega-hater of MAGA) rando-internet blitherer being sour is one thing, but since he actually in theory wants to influence Democrats, an MY approach strikes me as rather more plausible (one can be tougher more critical but throw some bones out there).
"And it’s worth taking seriously a recent Project 270 finding that of 2024 Trump voters who currently have an unfavorable view of the president, a large majority say they still plan to vote Republican in 2028."
This point is meaningless without more context. In 2008, George W. Bush's approval rating basically hovered in the mid to high 30s; actually pretty close to where Trump is now. On election day John McCain got 45.7% of the vote. It doesn't take an advanced degree in statistics to figure out that its likely a majority of 2004 Bush voters who disapproved of the President in 2008 ended up voting for John McCain. Which based on basic understanding of how partisanship works makes a ton of sense. In summer of 2024 after the disastrous Biden debate performance where Biden seemed to be dug in regarding staying in the race, if a polling firm called me and asked if I approved of the President's job performance, decent chance I would have said no. Does that mean Trump had any chance whatsoever of getting my vote or would any 3rd party candidate have any chance of getting my vote? Also no. I tried clicking the link to see if maybe the article you linked to addressed this point and unfortunately nothing loads so no way of knowing if maybe there's a good riposte. And I'm also willing to believe that if say 80% of Bush voters who disapproved of his presidency also voted for McCain, but the numbers today are more like 90% of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove plan on voting for generic "R", then that's a problem. But absent that detail, this is not a very helpful point.
I'll also say that I think you're being a bit too kind to Ruy Teixeira. His greatest skill is clearly writing the exact story and narrative that who every pays him wants to hear. 10-15 years ago when he was being paid by CAP it was all about the emerging Democratic majority. Now that he's paid by AEI he writes posts that almost perfectly align what typical AEI employees or readers want to read. Funny how that works.
I'm actually glad for this post as I've been a bit critical of you since November, 2024 on this topic and I think the thread the needle here pretty well as far as what Democrats of done right, what issues still remain and that basically none of this is resolved without knowing who the nominee is in 2028. Just noting that you may want to find other sources besides Texeira for this conversation.
Indeed on first meaningless: Eating away on the margins is the game, not a magical goal of Mass Conversion of the Heathen.
What one really needs to understand as you write is that the % eaten away is: is it 20% lost (the 80% still voting for) or is it 10% lost; the habit of political writers also of reifying categories (Republican, Democrat) despite us all having seen in our lifetime partisan alignments (over it must be said multi-year cycles) shifting leads to fallacious presentation treating the categories themselves as fixed.
Yeah I feel like there is two weird related tendencies from pundits when it comes to polling and predicting political outcomes.
One, wildly overreading the results of one election as somehow indicative of big longer term electoral trends. Its like every pundits wants to be the guy who predicted the new 1932 or new 1980; never mind that the lasting coalitional changes that occurred were very contingent on what happened in those presidencies. I know, because I made this error in November/December 2008; thinking Obama's victory was part of a more permanent electoral shift. Clearly not. And you know who was one of the people who led me astray? Ding ding that would be Ruy "emerging Democratic majority" Teixeira. To maybe check my own biases, this may be one of the reasons I have my own antagonistic feelings towards this guy.
Two is exactly what you said. Seeing some shift in voting patterns from one group and just assuming this shift will just continue on some linear trajectory. Like anyone else, I can get a lot of stuff wrong. But boy oh boy, was I ever confident in December, 2024 that the Trump administration would do everything it's power to screw up permanently capturing the rightward shift in Hispanic voting. I remember saying at the time "guys, there's no guardrails anymore. He's putting the most extreme bigots in charge of immigration enforcement; they are clearly going to use tactics almost designed in a lab to alienate a bunch of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump in 2024". But no instead it was a bunch of dorm room pontificating about the dare I say "emerging Republican Hispanic majority".
Now does this mean Hispanic vote or any other vote can't shift back right in 2028*? Or maybe because of the dumb tariffs and diesel fuel, rural voters may shift a bit left in 2028? Who knows. But I feel like too many people who should know better can't handle two facts being true a) the single best predictor of how you will vote is how you voted the last election b) voting coalitions shift faster and more suddenly than pundits realize
* If there was one group that I think is pretty likely to be voting more rightward in 2026 and possibly 2028 (as Matt pointed out, really depends on who the nominee is) it's Jewish voters. We'll know for sure on election day, but I feel like there is a weird reticence to say the likely reason Kathy Hochul is likely to win by a smaller margin than one might expect in November.
I think the democrats are starting to really learn from their failures in 2024 and run candidates that appeal to independents and are more socially moderate and even religious. Talarico is a great example and so is Adam Hamilton in Kansas who is a preacher. I share Nate Silvers optimism for the democrats not Teixeiras pessimism 😎
The real test of whether they've learned anything will come if they get back in power again. They'd learned the campaign lesson in by 2024 when Harris attempted to appear to be a moderate, but 4 years of progressive governance had already rendered that futile.
The Democratic Party has a long history of religious candidates.
You write your comment as if religious is on the same axis as socially moderate. They’re not. There are religious conservatives, religious progressives and everything in between.
Only one Democrat Ro Khanna seems to have commented on the French riots and he seems be in favour with caveats. I feel moderates don't understand how crazy their party has become and it won't retain discipline after the midterms.
??? Yes. I think zero candidates should be comenting on the Frenc riots, unless you want to go all patriotic and say we Americans can just vote agiast Trumpisn; [waves flag] we don't have to riot.
He’s in a safe seat and thirsty for attention. Not an error at all from his perspective, which is part of the problem. We have a real lack of alignment in interests among politicians at the national level
On the question of whether Democrats have learned anything from the Biden debacle: It depends.
There are election tactics, like grabbing onto the populist position of “affordability" that have no meaning. It just sounds good. To a voter group that is thirsty for help easing their daily lives, the promise Democrats are making sounds good to the uninformed voter. The reality is different.
What Democrats are saying to someone like me is that we will just spend more money and give you subsidies to pay for things. We’ll expand SNAP, put more money toward subsidies, and expand government programs.
Democrats have seized on “Medicare for All” as a panacea for health care. The fact is that credible cost estimates for that populist promise are around $32 trillion over 10 years. But that is politics: making promises that sound good that are rarely based in reality.
Tactically, Democrat candidates that move to the center-left and stop spouting wacky culture war stuff that scares red-state Republicans are tactically smart. Telerico is not the ideal candidate; he has a background of saying wacky culture war stuff. Pelota is a great candidate in a year when the GOP is discredited as a party because it supports an equally wacky President.
None of the above is a change of heart. This is why Democrats are still held in low esteem. This year you have the perfect storm. A President destroying the GOP along with himself with unforced errors and decisions that have made life more expensive for everyone.
You have a wing of the party that is loud, obnoxious, and moving further to the left. Some are embracing socialism and even communism. They do well in urban coastal settings and some large urban places in the Midwest, like Chicago.
A philosophical change would represent the current reality. Presidents cannot direct the economy. Congress cannot lower gasoline prices or the price of beef. Congress can mess up a market, but it can’t change market forces. More spending will just exacerbate our economic problems.
Notice neither Party has adjusted to the looming predicament that will involve the next President. Congress will need to address the looming insolvency of both Social Security and Medicare. Our current budget deficit is $2.1 trillion, if Democrats just assume that they can borrow more money and increase it by a trillion or so interest rates will move higher.
They know they cannot do so, increasing spending will come at a cost and that cost is higher taxes. Currently their plan is to “tax the rich” another populist lie is born. Taxing the rich will not solve the annual deficit or our debt problem. Taxing those who make over $400,000 at 49.9%, as Bernie's Medicare for All bill suggests, will only raise about $400,000 billion.
Where are you going to find the money to solve the insolvency of SS and Medicare and increase your promises of more spending? The philosophical changes I am looking for are politicians who tell the truth instead of serving pablum to the populace.
So, changing tactics in order to win an election is a short-term fix for what ails America. Somebody is going to have to tell the American public that the punchbowl is going to have to be taken away. Your next President will be responsible for that. I see nothing different from the Democrats.
I hope Democrats destroy the GOP; is it corrupt, empty and led by the most destructive politician in my lifetime. My wish is for MAGA to die a horrid death. But I weep for the country that is about to be born.
Most, but not all, of what is needed to close the deficits (not _just_ the social insurance deficit) will need to come from above median consumers' consumption.
So, realize figures are different, but CBO estimates are on top of current expenditures. So that is the assumption of $32.6 trillion. Currently, estimates of private insurance and patient co-pays and deductibles are estimated at 2.2 trillion. The Feds spend about $1.7 trillion; what studies are showing is that the Government will need $3.26 trillion more than it currently spends; however, spending will have to increase. Medicaid only pays for 85% of costs, Medicare pays 95% of costs, private health care makes up the difference so hospitals and doctors can get their costs reimbursed. If that difference is lost, hospitals will go under and doctors will either have to accept less money or our doctor shortage will get worse.
Usually when you compare proposed policy costs you take current policies as the baseline and compare the relative difference in cost/savings across alternatives.
Of course M4A is a poorly defined and half of it is a motte and bailey for single payer via nationalization of private healthcare. I haven’t seen any proponents discuss how much it would cost to buy out private practices (I think they want expropriation). They also don’t really address how many medical professional would opt to quit rather than work for lower pay.
I don’t understand how you still like Ruy. He couldn’t care any less about making a better party. He has a rightwing audience to pease and that’s all he’s interested in anymore. He refuses to take for an answer because then he’d have to acknowledge people are doing what he wants. His rightwing audience doesn’t want to hear that and he’s lose them if he said it.
Thank you. Summed up better my thoughts better than I tried to in my own post.
He's basically made a career of flattering the biases of who ever pays him.
I'm pretty sure Ruy and Matt worked at CAP at the same time.. My guess is Matt pulled his punches a bit so as not to antagonize someone he got to know personally.
Its funny, pre 2016, I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that elite journalists all knowing each other in NYC or DC and hanging out with various politicians significantly shaped news stories. Now, I've sort of gone in the opposite direction of saying that I think we underrate how much the fact that various elite mainstream journos (right wing, left wing, centrist etc) as well as politicians all end up at the same Upper East Side/Georgetown cocktail parties ends up shaping news coverage; the White House Correspondents dinner is really just a very obvious "brown M&M".
The only important thing for Democrats will be the trajectory of the economy and inflation. If things were getting better for J Average American, they would forgive a lot of soft on immigration or culture war stuff, I do believe.
What more could he do? Make Iranian control of Hormuz permanent and add Bab al Mandab? Restrict high skilled immigration even more? Find more countries to have trade wars with? Pass another multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich? Reduce science and technology investment even more? Fire all the Fed Governors except Marsh? Ban vaccinations?
Pieces like this reaffirm my view that while leftists are complete morons, there’s something empirically unsatisfactory about popularism as well. There’s a bit of a “Heads I win, tails you lose” phenomenon.
1. This piece attributes part of Democrats’ success to moderation on key issues. Examples are Mamdani moderating on crime (because he no longer wants to defund the police I guess?) and politicians slapping the abundance label on several initiatives.
2. On the other hand, if Democrats were doing poorly, it would be easy to argue that it’s because they are becoming more extreme. (Mamdani, everyone campaigning with Piker, etc.) So popularism wins again.
3. Meanwhile, it’s extremely unclear that Democrats are now viewed as having moved to the center. See the time series of approval ratings, for example, which just moves along a downwards trend. https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx
4. I think the Yglesias view of the world misses something important: many instances of “moderation” that he cites are, instead, lurches from one form of extremism to another.
Eg, Trump is less extreme on entitlements than Romney, but more extreme on trade/immigration/rule of law. If asked what the difference between Trump and Romney is, most voters would say the latter rather than the former.
Similarly, Democrats have gone from climate, to MeToo, to BLM, to trans issues, to Israel, and now maybe to AI. Dems’ “moderation” on crime is purely a result of the fact that they’re now obsessed with other things.
So perhaps, instead of counseling “moderation,” the better advice is “Find an obsession that will please your base without alienating everyone else.”
There are two highly polarized voting bases who won't switch parties regardless of content. And, a small number of low-information swing voters who vote based on how the economy is doing. There is no great mass of moderate swing voters in the middle, I'm sorry. The guy who won the 2024 presidential election specifically ran on a platform of arresting his political opponents!! Is that 'moderate'?
Matt's signature concept is simply wrong, I'm sorry. The 2028 election will be determined by inflation and a small number of scandals
"Moderation' is incoherent in that people use it mean multiple things, most of which overlap to some degree with other things but are not all really the same thing:
- Takes policy positions close to the national median voter
- Takes some policy positions consistent with the other party (e.g., the pro-gun Bernie of yesteryear)
- Periodically votes with the other party [when most of their party doesn't]
- Takes an incrementalist/pragmatic approach and is willing to make deals across party lines
- Is an institutionalist w.r.t. party institutions (e.g., votes with party leadership all the time)
- Is an institutionalist w.r.t. national institutions (e.g., supports the filibuster, hates debt ceiling brinksmanship)
(I think Silver Bulletin did a post along these lines some time back, but I couldn't find it.)
Anyhow, some of these behaviors tend to be helpful at winning votes while others aren't. Some are useful traits for leaders to have when it comes to governing. All are referred to at one point or another as traits of moderates.
It would certainly be helpful to have a more precise language around such things; I imagine it would defuse half the arguments about such things.
Trump is moderate on trade because voters and politicians are economically illiterate and for quite a while sensible but far from the centre people steered both parties on trade.
Popular, yes, but moderate? I view him as outside the bounds of the early 2010s political conversation in the us on trade. Instead, this seems to me more like “find a brand with some salient elements that works with voters.”
Bit of a weird chimera article, part standalone "don't change horses in the middle of the stream", part "reaction piece to Teixeira" (who I don't like enough to click through and read his thing, no offense), part "things genuinely are looking not so bad, buck up lads".
I do worry a bit more about the refusing to take the W possibility. You expect that with activists, of course, but I'd be happier if everyone else around me irl was also happy due to a genuine Blue Wave. (In Soviet Russia, wood knocks on you.) Optimism is infectious, just like doom, and even if I personally know panic and depression are not the answer, fighting against that impulse from without is still draining. Let's all practice positivity, no billionaires required.
I don't know -- Ruy Teixeira may be negative but in so many ways, he's been absolutely spot on. Your response seems a lot of blue sky thinking: "What Democrats need to do is try hard to win, and then if they do win, follow up on their wins by governing in line with the best versions of themselves." The best version of themselves? Really? Where's that 'best version' precisely? Have you seen what has been happening on the progressive left? How different DSA is from centrist Democrats on things like transgender issues, handling crime, solving immigration , or on Russia, or on Israel? My concern is that instead of using the power of the House to curb Trump, use the power of the purse to constrain him, to support Ukraine, to extend health care to people who need it, etc., they'll try to impeach Trump again, giving MAGA new life. We know Trump's corrupt, but half the country voted him in, so work on what you can do to support a wise, useful, people-empowering agenda. Focus. Focus. While I'll be thrilled that Trump and the GOP take a thumping (they deserve it), like Ruy, I'm concerned about the aftermath and 2028. Heck, I'm just too moderate, too average American, for this political climate. I appreciate your attempt at optimism; I wish I shared it.
Exactly my concern too, that we just get a different mask over the same dysfunctional Democratic politics we had in the last administration. I seem to know more far left Democrats who are still singing the same song than I do moderates but maybe that's because their yard signs and buttons are more noticeable.
The note of skepticism toward a "big tent" philosophy in favor of a "parliamentary" notion of everybody towing the same median voter line is I think both substantively incorrect (inauthentic, feeds into the perception of the party as a monolith, closes off political entrepreneurship) and also completely toxic for managing the intra-coalition tensions that are the subject of the piece.
Big Tent is the way.
I agree with most of Matt's opinions, but I do have very hard time accepting his view of refugees. People fleeing war or political and religious persecution should always have a safe haven in a liberal democracy, in my opinion. Comparing accepting refugees to banning plastic straws is upsetting to me.
The decline in patriotism among rank-and-file Dems is only a problem if you assume the same decline won’t be seen in independents, like it was for the decline in religion or support for gay marriage or Israel. I think it is more likely that independents do follow suit, just a bit later, and it stops being an electoral liability. There are many great things about this country but we also like started a war against a country that was weak and appeasing us (our own leaders called it hitting them when down) and then triple-tapped bombed a school on the first day. Lots of people just can’t love a country that does stuff like that, at least not unconditionally.
We know that left-wingers are not inherently anti-patriotism: just see their position in Canada. We just have to have a country that doesn’t do evil stuff and left-wingers would love to be patriotic.
I had some issues with the writing in this piece, and I hope the Slow Boring team can take some constructive feedback.
The central framing of the piece was a reaction to Teixeira and his “feud” with Jentleson.
Yet instead of summarizing the main thrust of their disagreement in a few sentences, the piece said it was over the role of “heterodoxy” (presumably against the progressive orthodoxy, though not explicitly stated) and then linked to Teixeira’s piece. This article didn’t actually explain what the conflict was, or summarize what their core disagreement was. External links are great, but it doesn’t really replace a summary of the main thrust of the argument that you are engaging with. And this summary could have been done in 1 or 2 sentences.
The same thing happened with respect to the reference to “reality” based climate policy. The piece linked to a piece from 2 years ago, but didn’t give a 1 sentence summary of what reality based climate policy means and the point you are trying to make.
There are advantages of technology to allow us to link all the sources we are referring to and make them easily accessible. But the expectation of a subscriber should not be to have to read every article linked. Technology isn’t a replacement for good writing.
The audience here is a lay audience who are engaged with policy and politics, but not someone necessarily who is caught up with the contours of Teixeira’s and Jentleson’s writing, or remembers Yglesias’s articles from 2 years ago, or knows that “heterodoxy” is lingo used in certain circles to refer to moderate opposition to a progressive orthodoxy. Articles should be understood standing alone, without needed the reader to read multiple other articles to understand the main points.
>It is universally acknowledged that the Biden border situation was fucked up and unacceptable. ... I think what most Democrats want, subjectively, is for the border to become an impermeable force field such that it’s literally impossible for anyone to cross without proper authorization.
This is not entirely coherent, because the vast majority of people who entered did so with proper authorization: They were sent into deportation proceedings and permitted to enter until their cases were heard. https://support.iraplegalinfo.org/hc/en-us/articles/36668725368980-Important-Information-for-People-Who-Got-Parole-Using-CBP-One
I am quite sure that most Democrats want people with legitimate asylum claims to be able to make them, and I am pretty sure that most Democrats are fine with letting people with colorable claims, esp families with children, to enter while claims are adjudicated.
https://www.refugeeadvocacylab.org/resources/majority-of-us-likely-voters-support-access-to-asylum
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/17/americans-have-mixed-to-negative-views-of-trump-administration-immigration-actions/
The real issue is delays in adjudication in immigration court, which has a relatively easy fix, though it is one that will cost money: More immigration judges (immigration judges should also be made independent, unlike currently, but that is another issue)
What if we had presidential primaries with or leading up to the Mid-terms so the Presidential candidates and congressional were more aligned?
Very useful note, re Teixeira, I stopped reading him even though I probably am of a more sympathetic mind-set than Democrats (being "not a Democrat") but found as MY has written he seemed to be obsessed with a mode that if 100% of what he wants is not achieved, nothing is achieved (glass basically empty) and mind-set that his opponents just volubly drink their bitter medicine (never mind I think on some substance items in energy he's just plain wrong but voila).... not very helpful for his stated goals
While he may be now in opposition to "Activist Progressive Faction" honestly large parts of his mentality seem disturbingly similar to theirs, only flipped around.
Now if you're me, just a non-Democrat (mega-hater of MAGA) rando-internet blitherer being sour is one thing, but since he actually in theory wants to influence Democrats, an MY approach strikes me as rather more plausible (one can be tougher more critical but throw some bones out there).
"And it’s worth taking seriously a recent Project 270 finding that of 2024 Trump voters who currently have an unfavorable view of the president, a large majority say they still plan to vote Republican in 2028."
This point is meaningless without more context. In 2008, George W. Bush's approval rating basically hovered in the mid to high 30s; actually pretty close to where Trump is now. On election day John McCain got 45.7% of the vote. It doesn't take an advanced degree in statistics to figure out that its likely a majority of 2004 Bush voters who disapproved of the President in 2008 ended up voting for John McCain. Which based on basic understanding of how partisanship works makes a ton of sense. In summer of 2024 after the disastrous Biden debate performance where Biden seemed to be dug in regarding staying in the race, if a polling firm called me and asked if I approved of the President's job performance, decent chance I would have said no. Does that mean Trump had any chance whatsoever of getting my vote or would any 3rd party candidate have any chance of getting my vote? Also no. I tried clicking the link to see if maybe the article you linked to addressed this point and unfortunately nothing loads so no way of knowing if maybe there's a good riposte. And I'm also willing to believe that if say 80% of Bush voters who disapproved of his presidency also voted for McCain, but the numbers today are more like 90% of 2024 Trump voters who disapprove plan on voting for generic "R", then that's a problem. But absent that detail, this is not a very helpful point.
I'll also say that I think you're being a bit too kind to Ruy Teixeira. His greatest skill is clearly writing the exact story and narrative that who every pays him wants to hear. 10-15 years ago when he was being paid by CAP it was all about the emerging Democratic majority. Now that he's paid by AEI he writes posts that almost perfectly align what typical AEI employees or readers want to read. Funny how that works.
I'm actually glad for this post as I've been a bit critical of you since November, 2024 on this topic and I think the thread the needle here pretty well as far as what Democrats of done right, what issues still remain and that basically none of this is resolved without knowing who the nominee is in 2028. Just noting that you may want to find other sources besides Texeira for this conversation.
Indeed on first meaningless: Eating away on the margins is the game, not a magical goal of Mass Conversion of the Heathen.
What one really needs to understand as you write is that the % eaten away is: is it 20% lost (the 80% still voting for) or is it 10% lost; the habit of political writers also of reifying categories (Republican, Democrat) despite us all having seen in our lifetime partisan alignments (over it must be said multi-year cycles) shifting leads to fallacious presentation treating the categories themselves as fixed.
Yeah I feel like there is two weird related tendencies from pundits when it comes to polling and predicting political outcomes.
One, wildly overreading the results of one election as somehow indicative of big longer term electoral trends. Its like every pundits wants to be the guy who predicted the new 1932 or new 1980; never mind that the lasting coalitional changes that occurred were very contingent on what happened in those presidencies. I know, because I made this error in November/December 2008; thinking Obama's victory was part of a more permanent electoral shift. Clearly not. And you know who was one of the people who led me astray? Ding ding that would be Ruy "emerging Democratic majority" Teixeira. To maybe check my own biases, this may be one of the reasons I have my own antagonistic feelings towards this guy.
Two is exactly what you said. Seeing some shift in voting patterns from one group and just assuming this shift will just continue on some linear trajectory. Like anyone else, I can get a lot of stuff wrong. But boy oh boy, was I ever confident in December, 2024 that the Trump administration would do everything it's power to screw up permanently capturing the rightward shift in Hispanic voting. I remember saying at the time "guys, there's no guardrails anymore. He's putting the most extreme bigots in charge of immigration enforcement; they are clearly going to use tactics almost designed in a lab to alienate a bunch of Hispanic voters who voted for Trump in 2024". But no instead it was a bunch of dorm room pontificating about the dare I say "emerging Republican Hispanic majority".
Now does this mean Hispanic vote or any other vote can't shift back right in 2028*? Or maybe because of the dumb tariffs and diesel fuel, rural voters may shift a bit left in 2028? Who knows. But I feel like too many people who should know better can't handle two facts being true a) the single best predictor of how you will vote is how you voted the last election b) voting coalitions shift faster and more suddenly than pundits realize
* If there was one group that I think is pretty likely to be voting more rightward in 2026 and possibly 2028 (as Matt pointed out, really depends on who the nominee is) it's Jewish voters. We'll know for sure on election day, but I feel like there is a weird reticence to say the likely reason Kathy Hochul is likely to win by a smaller margin than one might expect in November.
I think the democrats are starting to really learn from their failures in 2024 and run candidates that appeal to independents and are more socially moderate and even religious. Talarico is a great example and so is Adam Hamilton in Kansas who is a preacher. I share Nate Silvers optimism for the democrats not Teixeiras pessimism 😎
The real test of whether they've learned anything will come if they get back in power again. They'd learned the campaign lesson in by 2024 when Harris attempted to appear to be a moderate, but 4 years of progressive governance had already rendered that futile.
The Democratic Party has a long history of religious candidates.
You write your comment as if religious is on the same axis as socially moderate. They’re not. There are religious conservatives, religious progressives and everything in between.
Only one Democrat Ro Khanna seems to have commented on the French riots and he seems be in favour with caveats. I feel moderates don't understand how crazy their party has become and it won't retain discipline after the midterms.
https://x.com/RoKhanna/status/2111982959276478703
??? Yes. I think zero candidates should be comenting on the Frenc riots, unless you want to go all patriotic and say we Americans can just vote agiast Trumpisn; [waves flag] we don't have to riot.
This kind of unforced error just baffles me.
He’s in a safe seat and thirsty for attention. Not an error at all from his perspective, which is part of the problem. We have a real lack of alignment in interests among politicians at the national level
Good points.
On the question of whether Democrats have learned anything from the Biden debacle: It depends.
There are election tactics, like grabbing onto the populist position of “affordability" that have no meaning. It just sounds good. To a voter group that is thirsty for help easing their daily lives, the promise Democrats are making sounds good to the uninformed voter. The reality is different.
What Democrats are saying to someone like me is that we will just spend more money and give you subsidies to pay for things. We’ll expand SNAP, put more money toward subsidies, and expand government programs.
Democrats have seized on “Medicare for All” as a panacea for health care. The fact is that credible cost estimates for that populist promise are around $32 trillion over 10 years. But that is politics: making promises that sound good that are rarely based in reality.
Tactically, Democrat candidates that move to the center-left and stop spouting wacky culture war stuff that scares red-state Republicans are tactically smart. Telerico is not the ideal candidate; he has a background of saying wacky culture war stuff. Pelota is a great candidate in a year when the GOP is discredited as a party because it supports an equally wacky President.
None of the above is a change of heart. This is why Democrats are still held in low esteem. This year you have the perfect storm. A President destroying the GOP along with himself with unforced errors and decisions that have made life more expensive for everyone.
You have a wing of the party that is loud, obnoxious, and moving further to the left. Some are embracing socialism and even communism. They do well in urban coastal settings and some large urban places in the Midwest, like Chicago.
A philosophical change would represent the current reality. Presidents cannot direct the economy. Congress cannot lower gasoline prices or the price of beef. Congress can mess up a market, but it can’t change market forces. More spending will just exacerbate our economic problems.
Notice neither Party has adjusted to the looming predicament that will involve the next President. Congress will need to address the looming insolvency of both Social Security and Medicare. Our current budget deficit is $2.1 trillion, if Democrats just assume that they can borrow more money and increase it by a trillion or so interest rates will move higher.
They know they cannot do so, increasing spending will come at a cost and that cost is higher taxes. Currently their plan is to “tax the rich” another populist lie is born. Taxing the rich will not solve the annual deficit or our debt problem. Taxing those who make over $400,000 at 49.9%, as Bernie's Medicare for All bill suggests, will only raise about $400,000 billion.
Where are you going to find the money to solve the insolvency of SS and Medicare and increase your promises of more spending? The philosophical changes I am looking for are politicians who tell the truth instead of serving pablum to the populace.
So, changing tactics in order to win an election is a short-term fix for what ails America. Somebody is going to have to tell the American public that the punchbowl is going to have to be taken away. Your next President will be responsible for that. I see nothing different from the Democrats.
I hope Democrats destroy the GOP; is it corrupt, empty and led by the most destructive politician in my lifetime. My wish is for MAGA to die a horrid death. But I weep for the country that is about to be born.
Most, but not all, of what is needed to close the deficits (not _just_ the social insurance deficit) will need to come from above median consumers' consumption.
> credible cost estimates for that populist promise are around $32 trillion over 10 years.
Cost estimates for the existing system are $8 trillion per year by 2032, so $32T over ten years sounds like it saves a lot of money.
So, realize figures are different, but CBO estimates are on top of current expenditures. So that is the assumption of $32.6 trillion. Currently, estimates of private insurance and patient co-pays and deductibles are estimated at 2.2 trillion. The Feds spend about $1.7 trillion; what studies are showing is that the Government will need $3.26 trillion more than it currently spends; however, spending will have to increase. Medicaid only pays for 85% of costs, Medicare pays 95% of costs, private health care makes up the difference so hospitals and doctors can get their costs reimbursed. If that difference is lost, hospitals will go under and doctors will either have to accept less money or our doctor shortage will get worse.
I think the CBO estimates are additional costs
How could that possibly be the case?
Usually when you compare proposed policy costs you take current policies as the baseline and compare the relative difference in cost/savings across alternatives.
Of course M4A is a poorly defined and half of it is a motte and bailey for single payer via nationalization of private healthcare. I haven’t seen any proponents discuss how much it would cost to buy out private practices (I think they want expropriation). They also don’t really address how many medical professional would opt to quit rather than work for lower pay.
I don’t understand how you still like Ruy. He couldn’t care any less about making a better party. He has a rightwing audience to pease and that’s all he’s interested in anymore. He refuses to take for an answer because then he’d have to acknowledge people are doing what he wants. His rightwing audience doesn’t want to hear that and he’s lose them if he said it.
Thank you. Summed up better my thoughts better than I tried to in my own post.
He's basically made a career of flattering the biases of who ever pays him.
I'm pretty sure Ruy and Matt worked at CAP at the same time.. My guess is Matt pulled his punches a bit so as not to antagonize someone he got to know personally.
Its funny, pre 2016, I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea that elite journalists all knowing each other in NYC or DC and hanging out with various politicians significantly shaped news stories. Now, I've sort of gone in the opposite direction of saying that I think we underrate how much the fact that various elite mainstream journos (right wing, left wing, centrist etc) as well as politicians all end up at the same Upper East Side/Georgetown cocktail parties ends up shaping news coverage; the White House Correspondents dinner is really just a very obvious "brown M&M".
Correct he works for a conservative think tank !
The only important thing for Democrats will be the trajectory of the economy and inflation. If things were getting better for J Average American, they would forgive a lot of soft on immigration or culture war stuff, I do believe.
I am fairly certain Trump will actively try to make things worse for the American people and economy after the midterms.
What more could he do? Make Iranian control of Hormuz permanent and add Bab al Mandab? Restrict high skilled immigration even more? Find more countries to have trade wars with? Pass another multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the rich? Reduce science and technology investment even more? Fire all the Fed Governors except Marsh? Ban vaccinations?
Which will lead to the ascendancy of Leftist al-Gaib - the chosen one.
Pieces like this reaffirm my view that while leftists are complete morons, there’s something empirically unsatisfactory about popularism as well. There’s a bit of a “Heads I win, tails you lose” phenomenon.
1. This piece attributes part of Democrats’ success to moderation on key issues. Examples are Mamdani moderating on crime (because he no longer wants to defund the police I guess?) and politicians slapping the abundance label on several initiatives.
2. On the other hand, if Democrats were doing poorly, it would be easy to argue that it’s because they are becoming more extreme. (Mamdani, everyone campaigning with Piker, etc.) So popularism wins again.
3. Meanwhile, it’s extremely unclear that Democrats are now viewed as having moved to the center. See the time series of approval ratings, for example, which just moves along a downwards trend. https://news.gallup.com/poll/24655/party-images.aspx
4. I think the Yglesias view of the world misses something important: many instances of “moderation” that he cites are, instead, lurches from one form of extremism to another.
Eg, Trump is less extreme on entitlements than Romney, but more extreme on trade/immigration/rule of law. If asked what the difference between Trump and Romney is, most voters would say the latter rather than the former.
Similarly, Democrats have gone from climate, to MeToo, to BLM, to trans issues, to Israel, and now maybe to AI. Dems’ “moderation” on crime is purely a result of the fact that they’re now obsessed with other things.
So perhaps, instead of counseling “moderation,” the better advice is “Find an obsession that will please your base without alienating everyone else.”
“Find an obsession that will please your base without alienating everyone else.”
Israel/Palestine fits this bill, tbh
'Moderation' is an incoherently vague concept that doesn't mean anything, and changes definitions every 3-6 months. Example https://mattbruenig.com/2026/07/29/yglesias-israel-moderation/
There are two highly polarized voting bases who won't switch parties regardless of content. And, a small number of low-information swing voters who vote based on how the economy is doing. There is no great mass of moderate swing voters in the middle, I'm sorry. The guy who won the 2024 presidential election specifically ran on a platform of arresting his political opponents!! Is that 'moderate'?
Matt's signature concept is simply wrong, I'm sorry. The 2028 election will be determined by inflation and a small number of scandals
"Moderation' is incoherent in that people use it mean multiple things, most of which overlap to some degree with other things but are not all really the same thing:
- Takes policy positions close to the national median voter
- Takes some policy positions consistent with the other party (e.g., the pro-gun Bernie of yesteryear)
- Periodically votes with the other party [when most of their party doesn't]
- Takes an incrementalist/pragmatic approach and is willing to make deals across party lines
- Is an institutionalist w.r.t. party institutions (e.g., votes with party leadership all the time)
- Is an institutionalist w.r.t. national institutions (e.g., supports the filibuster, hates debt ceiling brinksmanship)
(I think Silver Bulletin did a post along these lines some time back, but I couldn't find it.)
Anyhow, some of these behaviors tend to be helpful at winning votes while others aren't. Some are useful traits for leaders to have when it comes to governing. All are referred to at one point or another as traits of moderates.
It would certainly be helpful to have a more precise language around such things; I imagine it would defuse half the arguments about such things.
That seems like great advice tbh.
Trump is moderate on trade because voters and politicians are economically illiterate and for quite a while sensible but far from the centre people steered both parties on trade.
Popular, yes, but moderate? I view him as outside the bounds of the early 2010s political conversation in the us on trade. Instead, this seems to me more like “find a brand with some salient elements that works with voters.”
Trump is the Attack of the 1980s Democrat on trade.
Bit of a weird chimera article, part standalone "don't change horses in the middle of the stream", part "reaction piece to Teixeira" (who I don't like enough to click through and read his thing, no offense), part "things genuinely are looking not so bad, buck up lads".
I do worry a bit more about the refusing to take the W possibility. You expect that with activists, of course, but I'd be happier if everyone else around me irl was also happy due to a genuine Blue Wave. (In Soviet Russia, wood knocks on you.) Optimism is infectious, just like doom, and even if I personally know panic and depression are not the answer, fighting against that impulse from without is still draining. Let's all practice positivity, no billionaires required.
I don't know -- Ruy Teixeira may be negative but in so many ways, he's been absolutely spot on. Your response seems a lot of blue sky thinking: "What Democrats need to do is try hard to win, and then if they do win, follow up on their wins by governing in line with the best versions of themselves." The best version of themselves? Really? Where's that 'best version' precisely? Have you seen what has been happening on the progressive left? How different DSA is from centrist Democrats on things like transgender issues, handling crime, solving immigration , or on Russia, or on Israel? My concern is that instead of using the power of the House to curb Trump, use the power of the purse to constrain him, to support Ukraine, to extend health care to people who need it, etc., they'll try to impeach Trump again, giving MAGA new life. We know Trump's corrupt, but half the country voted him in, so work on what you can do to support a wise, useful, people-empowering agenda. Focus. Focus. While I'll be thrilled that Trump and the GOP take a thumping (they deserve it), like Ruy, I'm concerned about the aftermath and 2028. Heck, I'm just too moderate, too average American, for this political climate. I appreciate your attempt at optimism; I wish I shared it.
Exactly my concern too, that we just get a different mask over the same dysfunctional Democratic politics we had in the last administration. I seem to know more far left Democrats who are still singing the same song than I do moderates but maybe that's because their yard signs and buttons are more noticeable.