It’s significant that very little of the social moderation of 2026 involved “hippie punching”- candidates didn’t go out of their way to pick fights with progressive activists in order to burnish their centrist credentials.
Terrific analysis! I think the simplification of the left is a good development, even if I disagree with the lack of nuance at times. People need to hang their hat on something with this party, it has been plagued by vacuousness in the decade since Obama.
Talarico ran on “fewer billionaires, more millionaires.” Not exactly Bernie’s standard railing against “millionahrrres and billionahrrres.” With the exception of AES, who is himself a wealthy physician, all our red state candidates ran on “Big Ass Truck” liberalism. It acknowledges that people want to be rich, or at least rich enough to buy a $65k gas guzzler.
I appreciate what the author is trying to do, but it elides the fact that the left wing of the party lost. Bernie ran on M4A and GND. ONE candidate, AES ran on that, and as acknowledged above, it’s not even what Bernie wants.
Furthermore, while I hate Manchin as much as any self-respecting liberal, he correctly flagged inflation as a wage crusher when he pushed back against Build Back Better. We couldn’t have avoided inflation during Biden’s term, but pumping a ton of cash into the economy via the American Rescue Plan didn’t help. Manchin, for all his sins, saved us from ourselves.
I would add in the Bulwarkers as the third leg of the stool.
It’s significant that very little of the social moderation of 2026 involved “hippie punching”- candidates didn’t go out of their way to pick fights with progressive activists in order to burnish their centrist credentials.
So economically left and culturally center-left with a lot of localism. I like that.
As long as the localism is “be popular locally”, not “be a NIMBY”.
Terrific analysis! I think the simplification of the left is a good development, even if I disagree with the lack of nuance at times. People need to hang their hat on something with this party, it has been plagued by vacuousness in the decade since Obama.
Talarico ran on “fewer billionaires, more millionaires.” Not exactly Bernie’s standard railing against “millionahrrres and billionahrrres.” With the exception of AES, who is himself a wealthy physician, all our red state candidates ran on “Big Ass Truck” liberalism. It acknowledges that people want to be rich, or at least rich enough to buy a $65k gas guzzler.
I appreciate what the author is trying to do, but it elides the fact that the left wing of the party lost. Bernie ran on M4A and GND. ONE candidate, AES ran on that, and as acknowledged above, it’s not even what Bernie wants.
Furthermore, while I hate Manchin as much as any self-respecting liberal, he correctly flagged inflation as a wage crusher when he pushed back against Build Back Better. We couldn’t have avoided inflation during Biden’s term, but pumping a ton of cash into the economy via the American Rescue Plan didn’t help. Manchin, for all his sins, saved us from ourselves.