I hear you on the role of luck, but we cannot keep chalking the court’s right-wing dominance up to bad breaks. The Federalist Society did not win just by chance. They spent decades cultivating a pipeline of judges, clerks, and legal theory. Yes, they caught some lucky breaks, but they were ready when those breaks came. That is the whole point. We were not.
My comment about Democrats folding under pressure was not meant as a cheap shot. It is about how structurally constrained the party is. Even the best-intentioned Democrats often end up governing from a defensive crouch because they are surrounded by institutions like media, think tanks, and donors that punish confrontation and reward managerialism. That is not about individual character, it is about political architecture. We need to build something different.
We do not need a left-wing version of MAGA’s hatred. What we need is MAGA’s discipline. Its ability to centralize message, reward loyalty, and punish defectors. Its willingness to actually wield power, not just hold office. The left’s base is different, sure. But if young people want affordable housing, healthcare, and security, then we better start organizing politics around delivering that, not just managing expectations. That is class politics. We do not have to smash everything. We just have to stop deferring to a status quo that has already failed.
No one is saying we should toss out competence. But competence without vision is how we got Obamacare instead of a public option. It is how we got climate policy carved up by Joe Manchin. It is how we got a student debt plan that fell to the court because it was structured through executive memo rather than legislation. Ideology is not the opposite of competence. It is what makes competence matter. Without it, you just end up making the machine run a little smoother while inequality grows.
I am not saying this is easy. But if we do not build a bench of people who know what they believe and have the skills to govern on those beliefs, we will keep losing the long game even when we win the election.
1. The student debt plan was structured with legislation. The Court chose to ignore it by making up doctrines. Just like they ignored the 2007 renewal of the Voting Rights Act by a margin of [checks notes] 98-0 in the Senate.
2. What you're calling discipline, I would call unmoored fascism. We are going to have trouble competing with that "discipline" because of personalities. Authoritarian personalities -- i.e. the types of people who gladly submit to that sort of discipline -- gravitate to the right wing. Liberals are, by personality, less conflict-oriented, more open to experience, less willing to sacrifice personal beliefs for organizational standing. Liberals are skeptical by nature, due to some combination of education, experience and personality.
3. I don't agree that the status quo failed. It partly failed, but there are also a lot of institutions that are taken for granted, in part because they are not visible. For instance: the small business administration has helped tens of thousands of American start and run businesses. Fannie and Freddie and the CRA have helped millions buy new homes. There's plenty of good stuff that exists -- and hopefully it still will exist in a couple of years -- and the danger of running against the status quo in its entirety is that we will fuck up the good things that we have instead of improving them.
Now, I admit that "make things incrementally better" is not an exciting political slogan. We also agree that principled losers are still losers, and winning has to be priority #1. So yeah, that's our messaging challenge.
4. I'm not sure if you remember this or studied it, but it wasn't that long ago that old people were a Dem constituency -- largely because of SS and Medicare and the GOPs incessant efforts to cut those programs. They became Republican in the 00s because of cultural factors (being old, they were old-fashioned), but there have been signs in recent elections that they are turning on the GOP. These are people who actually remember the old days, rather than only myths. They grew up hating fascism and they are more capable overall, I think, of seeing through Trump's bullshit than their Gen X kids.
Well, those voters aren't likely to be receptive to the type of class politics that you're talking about. You're young; your world is mostly defined by young person things; and you have young person energy. You also have a long time horizon. If it takes a decade of realigning politics to get to a just society, you'll sign up for that in a hurry. I would too. But someone who is 75 maybe just wants to make sure they get their Medicare and SS.
Which brings us back to our other weakness: young people don't vote. This is such a frustrating political reality. I keep wanting it to be untrue. We keep seeing bursts of organizing energy among young people, issues that you'd think they would be super passionate about and . . . it never gets reflected in the numbers. Because young people have better things to do than vote, which for any individual person is an irrational activity.
5. I mean, if it were that simple to do what you are calling for, we would have done it already. I think you have the causality backwards. We don't eschew class politics because we rely on donors. We rely on donors because the non-donor stuff doesn't work. That it didn't work before doesn't mean it can't work in the future. It does mean we have to grapple with these problems, and they are tough. As I always say, being a liberal is about rejecting the easy way out. We're liberal because the world is complex, because it's hard.
