Tomasky: They truly do. I don’t think they have to make a series of awful choices between: “Do we go left, or do we go center?” And I think I talk a little bit about that debate in the piece, too. I think there are genuine differences between progressives and centrists, but I think they can sometimes be overstated.
What I tried to do in the piece is sketch out an agenda that I think both sides can rally around. Now, what I’m calling for is, on paper, economic populism—and that’s identified with the progressive left. Centrists might be wary of that. But I really tried not to write about it in a way that codes as left-wing. I talk about how Democrats need to talk to farmers more; that’s not left-wing. I talk about how Democrats need to talk to people who go to vocational school and trade school and community college, instead of just talking all the time about college debt and college.
That’s very important—I’m not saying it’s not—but what about the 60 percent of people who don’t go to college? What are they getting out of that? They go to trade school; they go to vocational school; they go to community college. They’re dental hygienists; they’re electricians. Democrats need to talk to those people. And I think by doing that, they can build a durable majority. They can get more than Joe Biden’s 48 percent of working-class votes. And they can do it without really having made many compromises.
I mean, we haven’t talked much about cultural issues, and there’s some thorny stuff there. I don’t think—again, your average American doesn’t want to be cruel to transgender people and doesn’t want to erase transgender people from society. They don’t want that. That’s not who people are. Democrats can give voice to that and represent that while still representing mainstream America.
Sargent: So I think what I’m hearing from you, Mike, is that there’s actually some cause for optimism in this moment. And there’s real opportunity out there, sort of tucked among all the horror that we’re living through. And our special issue is about that. It has a number of other pieces that try to lay out ways for Democrats to take charge of these big debates in the ways we’re talking about. Do you want to just close by telling us what else is in the issue?
Tomasky: Sure. There’s a piece by Alex Shephard called “Not Your Father’s Democrats.” It’s built around figures like Graham Platner and Zoran Mamdani, who are on the left. But it also nods toward other figures like Spanberger, who you would not call “on the left,” but it says of these people, what unifies them is that they’re throwing some elbows—that they’re fighting, and that they’re fighting based on beliefs, and that they don’t come across like they’re just reading polls. So that’s one.
Perry Bacon Jr. has a wonderful piece about how the Democrats should not just study the electorate to death; they should change it. They can do things to make the electorate more liberal and to grow more liberals in this country. Republicans did that. They made more conservatives than used to exist, and Democrats can do that too. And Perry has, I think, a handful of smart ideas about how they can and should do that.
And then the last piece is about immigration… What was his name? What was his name?
Sargent: I thought you’d never get to that one, Mike.
Tomasky: By Greg Sargent! It talks about how Democrats can take control of the immigration debate. It points to J.B. Pritzker and Gavin Newsom as showing the way here and goes into some very smart things the two of them have done.
But also, it argues that: Democrats, don’t be shy about this. Play offense; don’t spend your life responding to Republican charges. Get out there and play offense and give your vision of the country. Like—one of the bad things—I’ll conclude here, but I understand why Bill Clinton was the kind of politician he was, because back in those days the number of Americans who identified as “liberal” was in the teens and the Democratic Party had been walloped. I mean walloped in three consecutive elections.
Some change was needed. I get that. And he did win two elections and he did grow the economy and he did a number of progressive things. But one of the things that was bad overall about that Third Way-ism was the tendency to say, Well, the Republicans are extreme and we’re not that extreme, but we do sort of agree about this—sort of accepting Republican presumptions and saying, Well, we’re the reasonable people.
But that’s over. The world has changed, the country has changed, the electorate has changed, the issues have changed. It’s time for the Democrats to assert their beliefs, seize the moral high ground, play offense, and just offer a completely different vision for our society than the one the Republicans are offering.
Sargent: Elbow-throwing patriots—in other words, right, Mike?
Tomasky: That’s it.
Greg Sargent: Well folks, our special issue is really, really good. If we do say so ourselves, it’s at TNR.com. It’s got pieces by a bunch of different writers—you’ve heard a rundown of them—and the poll is also really interesting. Please check it out at TNR.com. Michael Tomasky, really wonderful to talk to you.
Tomasky: Pleasure’s mine, Greg.
