The first thing to note is that the progressive failure you describe (breaking things, creating chaos) creates strong support for right wing extremism.
And right wing extremism, at least as ineptly practiced by Trump's administration, creates similar support for left wing extremism.
And in each case, moderates pretty much have to follow their extremists. Those anti-ICE protesters might be standing for vastly more extreme positions than I would ever support, but hey, fuck masked government agents shooting protesters and ignoring all manner of the law.
For me, it is a little unclear what your piece is implying. That both extremes are failing, so moderates will inherit the earth? Or that both extremes are failing, so America is pretty much screwed?
At the moment, I lean very much towards the latter. I am quite sure that the majority of Americans actually prefer moderation, but contrary to myth, majority doesn't rule.
In large part, it's the technological shift in mass communications. It's not just that social media "provides these extremists a platform in which their emotionally charged messages are more likely to go viral than messages of positivity and reason." It's that almost everyone is more drawn to the sensational, the outrageous, the enraging. Which is why The Washington Post did fine under Bezos during Trump I but fell apart during Biden -- extreme, attention-grabbing crap is the lifeblood of media and politics in this era.
But yeah, at this point, power positions like congressional staffers and legacy media writers and influencers are filled with people committed to various forms of extremism. Once the print era got into high gear, illiterate people simply didn't matter much, regardless of fine words about all being created equal. Now it's a different era and a different set of people do (and do not) matter. And it's hard for print people to wrap their heads around, because they (we) analyze in terms of policies and majorities and rationality and so on.
The issue comes down to incentives. Professional journalists and congressional staffers are both positions that pay peanuts (with a few outliers making a lot). If you want to make a lot of money, you don't go into these careers. This means the people who do are going to be primarily ideologically motivated. And once you get there the incentives are even more skewed in favor of extremism. If you are a polarizing person who annoys 90% of people and the other 10% love you, that's a death sentence in most businesses. But if you are a writer for the NYT it's exactly the opposite. That 10% is now your audience and revenue source.
Another big disappointment from Noah. In his quest for both-siderism, he conflates left, liberal, and progressive once again. For example, he says "Liberals built the public libraries", but that is just wrong: the push for libraries was progressive, and I don't know how he would explain Andrew Carnegie (for example) as a liberal. Nor is there a counterpart to the billionaire-supported, coordinated, organized, right-wing movement that created Reaganism, the Tea Party, and MAGA.
A better way to write articles would be to focus on problems of one thing at a time, conservative, liberal, left or progressive, rather than this sort of messy, combined pseudo-analysis.
In that respect, Noah's analysis of self-destructiveness in the MAGA coalition is much better, though I think he misses two big ideas. The first is that the core of MAGA is white supremacist and Christian Dominionist. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. can delude themselves that they can join in if they are in the middle or upper classes, but they are really being exploited for their support by a core that despises them. The second is that this is a strategy by the ultra wealthy to keep the lower classes divided and controllable by giving them reasons to despise each other for race, religion, culture, class, and other excuses. It is simply appeal to a natural desire to feel superior to others in some way. The way poor white trash can say "at least I'm not a n-word". And now all those minority groups are in the FAFO stage with MAGA.
TL;DR: "Progressives are fine! It's THEM REPUBLICANS that are evil! Also political parties never change; a 'progressive' that helped push for a public library in 1990 is exactly the same as a progressive in 2026, and it would be ridiculous to think that anything at all might have changed in the interim! But also democrats are actually fine and it's all MAGA's fault."
What a nice bunch of strawmen and puttting words in my mouth. Let me do the same for you: "I'm an asshole who can't address a single point clearly and have to misrepresent other people to try to ridicule them."
You made a huge ahistorical mistake by deliberately trying to confuse the "Progressive Era" of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bob LaFollette, Ida Wells, WJ Bryan, etc. with the loons arguing for de-funding the police, "canceling" Abraham Lincoln and returning occupied Turtle Island to ... somebody, which is clearly what Noah was talking about. We need to disambiguate the term "Progressive" (that's what Bill Clinton and the DLC called themselves too!) so that we can use it properly, if at all. Comments like yours increase the confusion. I happen to think Noah does a disservice to generally left-of-moderate Democrats who don't subscribe to all the crazy shit (say, Elizabeth Warren) by calling everybody left of center "Progressive" as a pejorative, but still...
If the term progressive is unclear, Noah is the one who continually uses it vaguely. If I may quote from Wikipedia, "While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, all eras of the movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism and a call for a more active democratic government to safeguard human rights, promote cultural development, and serve as a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies."
However, I agree that Noah does a disservice with a pejorative use of the term "progressive".
Reaganism and the Tea Party and MAGA are very different. I’m not sure why billionaire supported is highlighted as a thing here when Trump hasn’t out raised the Democrat in any of his elections? I think if billionaires had had their way Trump would never have sniffed the nomination.
"Reaganism and the Tea Party and MAGA are very different." In a few respects. Where they overlap is that their ideas were built by billionaire-funded think tanks (in large part those of the Kochs), and opposition to their candidates was primaried by massive donations. Not to mention an enormous right-wing media apparatus.
"I think if billionaires had had their way Trump would never have sniffed the nomination." I agree, and they did oppose him at first. Better to have a candidate that is dependent on you financially and your media. But once they recognized how venal he was, they knew they could work with him.
Two key questions this otherwise excellent citation doesn't address:
(1) Numbers of donors is not the same as quantity of money. Which got more money from the very rich, and by how much? Here's a more recent report that shows: "The ATF analysis found most of the support was thrown behind GOP causes and candidates, with 70% of the funds coming from the top 100 contributing billionaire families going to Republicans."
(2) Direct backing as in this article is only part of the story: what about the indirect backing by supporting other candidates endorsing the presidential candidates? And the support from media? And the support to think tanks and the like who help guide the campaigns? And the donations to third parties that promote the candidates and their policies? There is an enormous system of wingnut welfare that goes unaccounted. There is a much smaller system behind Democratic candidates.
Why don't you check OpenSecrets for that. But I'd think so, since pretty much all the richest people in the US lean conservative/Republican/neoliberal.
There’s plenty of democratic, liberal, progressive, or social democratic billionaires pouring money into politics. Try Soros, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Mackenzie Scott Bezos. Billionaires have ideologies like the rest of us. That shouldn’t delegitimize those ideas.
If donors buy elections, explain the past decade. Jeb raised and spent 100x more than Trump and lost the primary. Then Clinton outspent Trump by 2x. No sale. Then Harris outspent Trump by 70%. Doesn’t matter, money doesn’t vote.
And while money doesn't vote, it does put its finger on the scales.
As for the argument in your first paragraph, it is as stupid as saying "two piles of money are the same amount because they are both piles".
And of course the problem with billionaire contributions is that they outweigh the contributions of ordinary people. That does not sit well with the ideal of democratic equality.
"Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House despite raising half as much campaign cash as his Democratic opponent and benefiting from $162 million less in outside spending by groups devoted solely to helping him win." He also relied on small donors more than Clinton: "27 percent of Trump’s entire campaign chest came from small donors (checks of $200 or less), compared with Clinton’s 18 percent"
Jeb Bush spent $156 million https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00037006. I was wrong about Trump's primary spending. (You're right that 100x doesn't pass the sniff test, and I should've looked harder than take the first google result I saw). But I was correct that Trump spent far less than Bush: Trump spent $50 million total on the nomination race per https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/trump-wrapped-gop-nomination-cheap-n567791 (I'm not using Opensecrets because they combine his primary and general election spending). Rubio and Cruz each spent ~$150 million total per opensecrets.
A million dollars from billionaires or from small donors is a million dollars, but the money from small donors goes FURTHER, because it doesn't need to be funneled through PACs which can't explicitly coordinate with the campaign.
I agree that money can put a finger on the scales, but you're overrating how important it is. You can advertise to voters as much as you want but if they prefer some other candidate it's all for naught.
I think this is generally correct, though I’d say the “core of MAGA” is whatever Trump says at that exact moment; we’ll need to see how it reconstitutes around Vance or someone else.
The critique of extremism on the Left needs work (“policing” may need to be readopted in blue cities, but I get wary of an HOA approach to public spaces), but the comparisons of staffers from both Right and Left were useful.
Yep, I've been disappointed at Noah's political takes of yet. We have the most brazen administration in modern times, but he comes up with both sides takes, which absolves the administration and right wing extremism from a lot blame.
I have mixed feelings on the both sides as well. Though I think there can be value in constructive criticism of the Democrats, in efforts to make them a more viable political alternative to Republicans/MAGA.
You conflate the rankest elements of MAGA with the whole, and then extend your statements to identify a huge conspiracy theory that encompasses conservatives and plausibly moderates, who don’t share your worldview. I’m curious whether you hold to the unicause theory of the far left and/or excuse left liberals who when challenged respecting the more egregious positions of the far left say that they, of course, didn’t hold those positions, even though they did hold their silence.
Next time you criticize communism, should I say "you conflate the rankest elements of the Communist Party with the whole"? It is a simple fact that the core of MAGA which is in power is white supremacist and Christian Dominionist. And I should hope that I don't share those world views. Their conspiracies have been well-documented by numerous historians for centuries. I haven't said anything about the left: you're just another pretend mind reader there.
I asked about your opinion of the left given your opinion of MAGA, thinking it would be interesting. But nowhere did I suggest you hold any position other than what you’ve stated.
All good. Has been going on since before the Civil War. See W.J.Cash, The Mind of the South, now almost a century old. Karl Rove putting gay marriage on the ballot in Ohio in 2004 to give "cultural" red meat to the base while supporting an elite economic agenda.
I think the 1960s terminology ("liberals" and "radicals") was better (and nobody launched yet a "Review of Progressive Political Economics").
Probably with "progressives" Noah was talking about the heirs of 1960s/70s "radicals", not about the heirs of the technocratic pro-big government/big-business alliance, eugenicists, pro-imperialists "progressives" of the beginning of the 20th century
If this is a "strategy by the ultra wealthy to keep the lower classes divided and controllable" as you put it, the why were the ultra wealthy nearly universally opposed to Trump in 2016? What is it? Is it a populist mob or a billionaires club? You seem to want to have it both ways here but you have to pick a lane.
As wrote earlier, "I agree, and they did oppose him at first. Better to have a candidate that is dependent on you financially and your media. But once they recognized how venal he was, they knew they could work with him."
I think it is not just social media but also digital media and what we used to call “cable news” (MSNow, Fox). They all cater to the engaged due to their revenue model, and all the better if they can help keep the engaged enraged,
I have also observed (from meeting with regulators and congressional staffers myself and being tangentially involved in corporate lobbying efforts) that it is not the staffers who write legislation.
The lobbyists/activists/special interests write the legislation (using their law firms) and hand it to the staffers who slip it into bills.
The progressive groups/NGOs are much better organized and focused than the right. Over a few decades they’ve changed our government so that pols give grants to these groups to provide “services” and in turn these groups (and their tycoon backers) donate to the pols/parties giving the grants and provide ground level support for the pols (and there is a revolving door between employees of the groups and political staffers).
While not every local pol or congressperson is leftist, their money and their engaged supported mostly come from the “groups”.
This is why an ostensible “moderate” like Biden, gets in office and his staff effectively roll out the agenda of leftist groups. Look at what is happening in Virgina- a faux moderate wins and then rolls out the leftist agenda.
The right is a little less monolithic. There isn’t necessarily a natural affinity or shared agenda amongst, say, banks
, pharma companies and oil companies in the way that greens, open borders and teachers union groups might align and ally. Even within an industry, individual companies have their own agenda a s own legislative desires that might conflict with a competitor in the same industry.
“MAGA” doesn’t really have government funded NGOs working at the local and state levels- it is associated more with Trump and his supporters. It strikes fear in the hearts of non-MAGA Repubs, who worry about getting primaried, but it is not a well-oiled, well-funded grift like we have on the left. It is unclear in what form it will survive after Trump’s term is over, particularly (as NS notes) when he alienates many of his supporters.
As someone who is not particularly political - I have policy ideas but I have no party allegiance, have never donated to a pol or party and also celebrity-worship of pols turns my stomach- I don’t see the extreme left or right giving way to the more moderate objectives of the disinterested populace
I see MaGA eroding after Trump and a battle between populist and corporatist Repubs , which will be won by corporatist Repubs pretending to be populist.
On the left, they will put forward moderate sounding candidates who will be entirely in hock to the groups and enact leftist agendas. See also Biden, Virginia, NJ, Gavin, etc
Your choice will be between a conservative cosplaying as a populist or a radical cosplaying as a moderate.
Yes, most staffers are too clueless to write something as complicated as legislation. That said, they gatekeep access to their boss and so can certainly impact which lobbyist or academic gets to push their ideas to the Member.
At lot of the “work” is also done at the agency/regulator level. Why bother with messy stuff like legislation and votes when you just appoint activists and lobbyists as regulators who then write rules (coordinating closely with activists/lobbyists/donors on the outside.
There is not a country in the world where laws are stand alone -it's really unrealistic and impossible in the modern economy to write the needed level of detail - it is equally unwise as when it happens it tends to code in detail that rapidly becomes outdated, inappropriate. Thus the global phenomena that laws tend to be best as principal rule sets and allow execution detail to be in regulatoin that can be more easily modified on detial.
More competence internally in agencies is certainly potentially desirable, but it is not desireable to adopt the populist and progressive's shared incoherent mefiance of engagement with market actors
If you think it is “wrong” to claim that activists and donors achieve much of their “work” via the administrative/regulatory state in the US then you may not know much about how politics works in the US (nor at the EU).
On the left, it is much easier to use regulators and judges to reward activists and donors as some of their legislative policy objectives would never get through Congress. This exercise is only tangentially connected to codifying the laws and intent of Congress.
CO2 regulation wasn’t envisaged in the original EPA acts but Congress follows the news and has had decades to update the law. It has chosen not to- not even when Dems controlled Congress- because it is not a winner politically. Why stand up and be accountable to the people when you can appoint regulators to do the work for you? Similarly, the Dems never passed immigration reform when they controlled Congress. Much easier to change asylum rules by fiat and use executive decrees. This isn’t about filling in blanks in vague laws, it is about exercising power and rewarding donors without political accountability or transparent debate.
If we ever want to have more representative democracy we need to find a way to roll back the administrative state AND reduce the executive power of the presidency when it comes to domestic policy.
Unfortunately, SCOTUS wants to do the former but not the latter and both progressives and MAGA like authoritarian decrees.
You are dead right that there can be hostility to market players amongst regulators from the right and left , but it is not consistently. Trump has plenty of corporate hack appointees in the agencies (along with hostile nut jobs like RFK Jr). The Dems bent over backwards to help Google and Netflix (vs Comcast et al) in net neutrality - tech tycoons are an important constituency, and plenty of EV companies and unions and Chinese battery manufacturers were happy with Green regs promulgated by the Biden admin. Sometimes it is more about helping one market player (a donor) over another rather than being hostile to all players.
Given what my work is, I am quite the actual applied, not political partisan whinger (banging on about either Leftists or Billionnaires or other pet bugbears) connaisseur of the regulatory agencies.
What I was objecting to, but on re-reading I believe I may have misread was what I thought was a statement about the legislatures and building in law. I understood the comment to be one of legislatures have more detialed law, this may have misread
That the administrative state and regulation can and are exploited by interests, whether NGOs - activists (more but not only a Left phenom) or large corporates lobby (more right certainly) is evident and it is entirely the case indeed the green Lefties tried to exploit using rule and reg manipuation rather than doing hard work of convincing - which of course failed spectacularly.
However I don't see this as being rooted in any way in the structure, it is rather that the Lefty proggy Groups have been more taken over by a college campus Activist mindset where protest and pressuring college administrations, where screaming and targeted pressure rather than broad convincing (I don't recall where I read it, but the contrast I read that spoke to me was "campus activist" righteously pressuring an Administration versus the Labor Union organiser (or similar organiser) whose work has to be about convincing skeptical workers (etc) to vote for organising or an idea - pressuring versus convincing, administration versus broad audience.
That's the source of the Lefty progressive's actions rather than the admin state itself
I am entirely in favor of regulatory streamlining / red-tape cutting as the Lefty / Progressive proceduralist approach is strangling (and contrary to the NGO class understanding of the world more advantageous to the very Big X players [X whatever subject they're obsessed with] that they ostentasiously hate.
Yes- there is nothing inherently bad about a regulator or a judge. What is bad is relying on them to invent new law because your proposed laws couldn’t get majority support in Congress, and putting in place regulators and judges backed by special interests and donors.
I don’t like executive decress from the President, either, but at least they are gone in 4 years and there is some visibility about what they are doing.
I was with you until your comment about SCOTUS. SCOTUS is not the constitutionally designated brake on the Executive. Congress is, and for decades it shifted policy and power to the Executive, finding reelection easier if it dodged hard choices.
Unless you hold to the living constitution idea, which many do, in my opinion that changes judges to legislators with our representative democracy reduced to the level of the opinions of five of nine. SCOTUS presently is deferring multiple decisions on Trump’s norm breaking choices, causing them to be fully argued in lower courts. This is often reported as a win for Trump, when factually it is normal and proper judicial procedure.
Agree Congress has abdicated responsibility willingly, hoping to achieve their polticial aims without accountability. I said that already.
Of course, this has been assisted by the judiciary (Chevron et al) when it comes to the administrative state.
As for Executive decress, the constitution lays out the powers and separation of powers between the executive and Congress, so SCOTUS is very much involved in enforcing boundaries. The current SCOTUS configuration is deferential to the President but less so to the administrative state when it comes to going beyond the letter of the laws passed by Congress.
I have no issue with SCOTUS actions in regard to lower court deliberations on executive orders.
What is the leftist agenda, transformed into law, that you are talking about? Tax rates, regulation, green new deal, more funding for education, whatever? Please let's have some specifics, especially the issues that the wealthy left funders have endorsed.
I have one criticism of this piece. It ignores the asymmetry between the parties. Going back to the Ornstein Mann article from 2012, the Republicans in Congress had already moved much further to the right extreme than the Democrats had to the left extreme. The asymmetry still holds. MAGA is in the White House and Congress. The left is in Portland.
In 2024, the Democrats in the Senate had worked out an immigration bill with Senator Lankford, a conservative Republican. Trump nixed it to keep immigration as an issue. That episode is of a piece with the other asymmetrical facts. Which right wing Republicans are complaining that Mike Johnson, who adjourned the House for months to avoid the Epstein issue from surfacing, is not sufficiently MAGA? Schumer and Jeffries, on the other hand, are attacked daily from the left in the Democratic party and yet there they still.
Noah knows his audience. As can be seen from the comments. He's going to always equate a small minority of powerless Democratic House members with the Republican trifecta that has total control of the Federal government since Jan. 2025 and the support of the partisan Roberts Court. It's just the way it is.
2012 is fundamentally a different political era from today. Maybe that was true before you had progressives advocating for nonsense like basically open borders, all but legalizing petty theft, and defunding the police, but not today. This was the democrat position on immigration back then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuuzTJBE5Y
As for the immigration bill you mention there is some important context there. Biden said for 3 years he couldn't act without legislation, and then after the legislation failed he acted unilaterally to close the border in a much stricter way than his own legislation would have permitted him too. Why would any Republican want to vote for that when they can get more than they asked for just by doing nothing at all?
"Liberals built trains, but now people don’t want to ride the train because of crime and disorder, requiring big bailouts from the state of California."
This is an overstatement. People aren't riding because of work from home. Crime/disorder is a secondary factor, and one that pales in comparison to changing commute patterns. BART has the same number of unique riders now as it did pre-pandemic, but ridership is only at about 50% (though it's increasing 10%+ per year) because they're going into the office at a much lower rate. The crime/disorder situation on BART has changed dramatically over the past year or two as well, with crime dropping over 40% year over year, as the system installed improved fare gates and ramped up patrols from its police force. Source: I work for this transit agency.
I noticed a HUGE difference since the new fare gates were installed. Not just menacing or scary type behavior, but annoying and inconsiderate things like leaving McDonald’s wrappers and stray fries on the seats. It’s a lot nicer, and cleaner, to ride the trains now.
The broken window theory strikes again. Asocial behavior tends to cluster in a relatively small number of individuals who victimize their surroundings in all sorts of ways, from reckless littering to assault.
It makes sense to try to suppress "small" crime such as fare evasion, because there are more pronounced effects downstream from that.
The problem is that Democrats are so concerned with not excluding anybody that they end up building a system where most people exclude themselves to stay away from the people that the Democrats won't exclude.
Alternatively, most people are more interested in restricting freedom than allowing it, because freedom causes social friction, and progressives got on the wrong side advocating for too much freedom.
I think your analysis of the structural weaknesses in both movements is very good, but it misses an asymmetry. Yes, progressives are failing at governance - their naive idealism undermines the liberal institutions they inherited - as you say. Fine. I don’t vote for them either. But the Right fails differently. They’re enacting policies of deliberate cruelty and vengeance. Intentional - not a side effect. And there’s another difference: The right invokes conspiracy theories to rationalize violating their principles - like overturning elections, even through political violence. The mainstream moderate right doesn’t turn away in disgust. Progressives don’t do that. They still have moral boundaries. Unfortunately - Vote Democrat.
"Always discriminate against a young white man in a hiring/admission process because diversity is sacred" is quite cruel in practice and fueled a lot of the current right wing backlash.
If progressives want to reclaim moral superiority, they should start by dropping the entire concept of "whiteness" as something evil that should be extirpated.
At a certain scale, does intent matter? To make an extreme example, I'm no less dead if I starve to death in a famine caused by incompetence rather than malice. As a voter, why should I care what the intent was if the outcome is the same?
I am unconvinced that these moral boundaries on the left exist. They want to restrict freedom of speech and put in place a racial quota system. They want to restrict 2nd amendment rights and self defense, and at the same time cut police enforcement leading to chaos and disorder. There is no limit to how much money they will take from my paycheck and funnel into their grift network. They talk about paying a fair share but it seems like their answer to "how much is fair?" is "more." They are better at cloaking this in moralistic language, but there is no more morality here. You are correct in your assessment of the right. You are also correct that there is an asymmetry, but wrong about its nature. It is a simple matter that I am a target for the left, but not for the right, and so I must think of my self interest.
whether taxes are higher are lower, gun restrictions are tighter or looser, how much preferential treatment in admissions/hiring, etc, it sounds like you and I have the same views. Where we disagree: positions on either side of those debates are not political violence or democracy-threatening. It’s not the same as trying to overturn elections. It’s not targeting individuals and groups with cruelty so as to punish or even to affect policy. Only Republicans are doing that - using state power to separate families at the border as deterrence, threatening prosecutors investigating them, preparing lists of political enemies for retribution, refusing to accept election results. They’ve allowed their political passions to take them into what is properly moral terrain and engage in Machiavellian political reasoning where moral reasoning is required.
What does "democracy" really mean here, though? I elect representatives to act in my interest. Those representatives pass civil rights laws to protect me from discrimination. And then a bunch of left wing judges and bureaucrats decide that those laws actually mean the opposite of what they say and they actually mean that I can be discriminated against freely. What good did democracy do me here, exactly? The right to vote for representatives doesn't really do me any good when the laws they pass are completely ignored. Is it really democracy if I'm not voting for the people who actually make the rules?
There's always a conservative option in Chicago races. It's just harder to pretend progressive policy is the issue and not 'cities are hard to govern' when you might end up in charge. Rahm *hated* progressives. That didn't make him a better mayor.
It's not just the staffers that are extremely online. A lot of elected officials are, too. Look at JD Vance. It would be good for elected officials themselves to log off and prohibit anyone on their staff from using social media. It would be hard to enforce, but if it became a norm and spread it would make a big difference. Think tanks and other groups should have the same rule for their employees. They would also be wise to hire from a more diverse pool in terms of education. Way too many come from a small number of elite schools. Campaigns have had that same problem.
The cluster of colleges/universities from which staffers are drawn is so small and insular. DC types should do outreach to the College of Mines or Appalachia U - it would take them into interesting policy considerations.
That's entirely plausible. I think people from schools like that would be happy to work for elected officials and would be aware that not many people from their schools have been able to do it. One problem with elite schools is so many of their graduates get to do it that it becomes an entitlement. A lot of staffers these days have it in their heads that they're in charge and it's a real problem. Just hiring more people from flagship universities would be a big improvement, but certainly less known places like those two would be good.
I think one has to qualify this further re Closed Primary system: " The well-known one is the closed-primary party system. Republicans win primaries not by aligning with the median voter, but by aligning with the median Republican voter — usually in an area that’s already right-leaning to begin with. The same is true of Democrats."
Starting in the 1970s as I understand "progressives" refomrs removed dejure control of the Parties over primaries, candidate, niavely thinking the proverbial and literal smoke filled room would be replaced by "more democracy"
As Parties can't control access to their brand - and primaries are structurally now mini-pseudo elections which are naturally structurally dominated by the motivated fringes - i.e. the ideological extremes - we are set-up for take-over episodes.
the fundamental post 70s "reforms" were naive and very wrong headed structurally. how to fix that requires better electoral mechanics design understanding than I have by far, but I think this is fundamentally a profound problem that is quite neglected.
Yes- I think a party should choose a candidate however they like - whether smoke filled room, or member vote (eg in UK) or in a primary election. And we’d have more parties as a result.
Of course, primary elections generate a lot of publicity (often free) so that is hard for parties to pass up, which gives the states regulating elections a lot of leverage.
The biggest abomination is the California system, which actually prohibits parties from putting forth candidates to stand in a real election.
Imagine you start a party and your candidate legally cannot be on the ballot for the actual position unless they come on top 2 in a jungle primary that elects nobody and is mostly paid attention to by partisans of the major party?
Oh yes, such an abomination that’s modeled after pretty much every sporting tournament. CA Democrats suck but Republicans suck even more for not putting up moderate candidates.
Sure but that’s not the only way to decide a winner, as I explained to you with the sporting analogy. People don’t vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They vote for the candidate. That’s why independents can run even though they don’t belong to a party. The reason Republicans don’t win very often in CA is not because of the structure of the elections but because their candidates suck more than the other candidates. Arnold was a Republican governor only 15 years ago. So, it’s possible for moderate Republicans to win in CA but they seem hell bent on nominating idiots like Larry Elder.
I disagree. The California jungle primary is much better than party primaries for allowing a moderate candidate not aligned with a major party through. Currently this doesn't really work because CA is so far left, but it's also how they got Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In theory, perhaps, but the reality is that the states pushing these non traditional voting schemes tend to be dominated by one party….and they aren’t choosing the schemes to give the other party a better chance
In some elections in CA there are no Repubs to vote for except the presidency, and that’s a wasted vote in CA for a Repub. suppresses their turnout, including for the voter referendums, which is the whole point.
I think every party, including small ones, should have a chance to put their candidate forward in a real election for the position. A better model to help small parties would be a French style two rounder if nobody gets 50 % on the first go. Of course that would be impossible in CA and they cannot promptly count votes that are cast from one election.
That's not how they got Schwarzenegger. He was elected in the Gray Davis recall election, and he last ran in 2006, before the jungle primary was adopted.
Very interesting. I don't disagree about extremism. I understand what has happened on the Left. Part of Dem DNA gives us Portland, crazy environmentalists, the current type of antisemitism, etc. The Dem party is a coalition of competing interest groups united only by a sense that govt exists to make life a little less brutal, nasty, & short. I think they'll work it out; they always have. What I don't understand is what has happened to the GOP. Is Trump sui generis or is there something in GOP DNA which has produced him? Why do you believe Trump about that Obama post? He has a strong record of racism & antisemitism. Wither the GOP? You're right to say a racist party has no future.
How is the current conflict of extremes different from before the Civil War or during the 1930s? Yes, communication technology is different, but is that truly decisive? Are we looking at a world-wide phenomena--Brexit, Putinism, Xism, etc.--& if so, what drives it?
We’d have to go to Davos or Epstein’s island to find out, but I suspect it is that the elites have divorced the populace and live in their own bubble. Not an original thesis. See Lasch and onwards
I'm sure you're right, because I think we all live in a bubble of one kind or another, maybe in several bubbles. I'm acutely aware of the bubble(s) I'm in.
We made a national agreement in the 1960s that racial discrimination was no longer permitted, and this was written into the civil rights legislation of the time. But the Democrats did not hold to this agreement and engaged in a political strategy of fomenting racial tension and instituting racial quotas. Of course the Republicans are doing the same thing. What did you expect? The only thing that surprises me is how long it took. You can't expect one side to hold to an agreement while the other flagrantly violates it.
I think the case for progressive disorder is overstated. I want to point out that every liberal city is not Portland. In fact, almost every big city in America has a Democratic mayor, and on average, cities in red states have significantly more crime.
Noah's headline sounded optimistic, implying both extremes will fail to *get elected* so we'll finally have the moderate government we want. But the content so the article is far more depressing call it argued that both the extremes are going to fail at *governing* but also offers no hope that we are ever going to get a different kind of government---just an alternation of failing ones Is there any pathway to optimism at all?
Hi Noah. I appreciate your thinking and writing a lot. I’m sad that you re-posted Trump’s post about the Obamas. Just my take: reposting it adds more views. And it was particularly vile.
It was taken down before many people had seen it. We wondered what it looked like. Re-posting lets us see how stupid it was, in addition to being racist.
It's not informed. It was legit part of the video Trump posted though. You keep sidestepping that part. Noah clocked it right and even Trump tried to say a staffer posted it...
"Trump refused to apologize for the video, demonstrating how extremist staffers can essentially force the politicians who employ them to take more radical positions."
I think it's more that Trump refuses to apologize for anything, ever. One of the Roy Cohn lessons.
Agree with a lot of this, but a substantial counter to polarization would be to adopt mandatory voting (misleadingly called compulsory voting).
Having come from a system that has it, I find all talk about democratic mandates in the US really strange when about a third of the population doesn't vote. From 1980-2000 less than 60% voted. In 1988 (Bush v Dukakis) only 52% voted.
In 2016, Hilary got 48% of the popular vote and Trump only got 46% and yet Trump won. But then consider that Trump only got 46% of the 59% who voted, so only about 27% of the population actively voted for Trump. Then estimate what percentage of that vote was hard-core MAGA and how many were Republicans who did not like Trump, but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hilary - ie did not enthusiastically vote for Trump.
You then take the effect of gerrymandering and the primary system and then you probably need much less than 13% (half of the 27%) of the population to determine who is the Republican candidate who can win in 2016 with only 27% of the active endorsement of the US population.
Creating a radical 13% of the population is much easier than radicalizing more than 50% of the population, which is what democracy should require.
Even more than this, mandatory voting would dilute the effect of money and the role of special interest block-voting (gun-lobby, antiabortion vote, union vote, Cuban vote).
I know the introduction of mandatory voting is pie-in-the sky, but I think any analysis of polarization has to start with the fact that more than a third of US voters do not vote regularly and very likely these are swing or moderate voters. It is like the center is missing altogether.
California has open primaries and those primaries have not had moderating effect on who gets elected. California’s state legislature and Congressional delegation remains well to left of California’s voters.
The law that makes less that $950 in theft a misdemeanor is not a pandemic era law. It was instituted in 2014 by Prop 47.
I dunno… it may diminish in later generations, but it is strong in immigrants. I live in Northern Virginia and grind culture is quite prevalent. It’s the academic version of traveling sports. Like club soccer, you need to put your kid in Kumon if they hope to get into the most elite math class.
The first thing to note is that the progressive failure you describe (breaking things, creating chaos) creates strong support for right wing extremism.
And right wing extremism, at least as ineptly practiced by Trump's administration, creates similar support for left wing extremism.
And in each case, moderates pretty much have to follow their extremists. Those anti-ICE protesters might be standing for vastly more extreme positions than I would ever support, but hey, fuck masked government agents shooting protesters and ignoring all manner of the law.
For me, it is a little unclear what your piece is implying. That both extremes are failing, so moderates will inherit the earth? Or that both extremes are failing, so America is pretty much screwed?
At the moment, I lean very much towards the latter. I am quite sure that the majority of Americans actually prefer moderation, but contrary to myth, majority doesn't rule.
In large part, it's the technological shift in mass communications. It's not just that social media "provides these extremists a platform in which their emotionally charged messages are more likely to go viral than messages of positivity and reason." It's that almost everyone is more drawn to the sensational, the outrageous, the enraging. Which is why The Washington Post did fine under Bezos during Trump I but fell apart during Biden -- extreme, attention-grabbing crap is the lifeblood of media and politics in this era.
But yeah, at this point, power positions like congressional staffers and legacy media writers and influencers are filled with people committed to various forms of extremism. Once the print era got into high gear, illiterate people simply didn't matter much, regardless of fine words about all being created equal. Now it's a different era and a different set of people do (and do not) matter. And it's hard for print people to wrap their heads around, because they (we) analyze in terms of policies and majorities and rationality and so on.
The issue comes down to incentives. Professional journalists and congressional staffers are both positions that pay peanuts (with a few outliers making a lot). If you want to make a lot of money, you don't go into these careers. This means the people who do are going to be primarily ideologically motivated. And once you get there the incentives are even more skewed in favor of extremism. If you are a polarizing person who annoys 90% of people and the other 10% love you, that's a death sentence in most businesses. But if you are a writer for the NYT it's exactly the opposite. That 10% is now your audience and revenue source.
“For me, it is a little unclear what your piece is implying.”
I think the subtle implication is “do something. Try stuff.”
Another big disappointment from Noah. In his quest for both-siderism, he conflates left, liberal, and progressive once again. For example, he says "Liberals built the public libraries", but that is just wrong: the push for libraries was progressive, and I don't know how he would explain Andrew Carnegie (for example) as a liberal. Nor is there a counterpart to the billionaire-supported, coordinated, organized, right-wing movement that created Reaganism, the Tea Party, and MAGA.
A better way to write articles would be to focus on problems of one thing at a time, conservative, liberal, left or progressive, rather than this sort of messy, combined pseudo-analysis.
In that respect, Noah's analysis of self-destructiveness in the MAGA coalition is much better, though I think he misses two big ideas. The first is that the core of MAGA is white supremacist and Christian Dominionist. Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, Jews, gays, etc. can delude themselves that they can join in if they are in the middle or upper classes, but they are really being exploited for their support by a core that despises them. The second is that this is a strategy by the ultra wealthy to keep the lower classes divided and controllable by giving them reasons to despise each other for race, religion, culture, class, and other excuses. It is simply appeal to a natural desire to feel superior to others in some way. The way poor white trash can say "at least I'm not a n-word". And now all those minority groups are in the FAFO stage with MAGA.
TL;DR: "Progressives are fine! It's THEM REPUBLICANS that are evil! Also political parties never change; a 'progressive' that helped push for a public library in 1990 is exactly the same as a progressive in 2026, and it would be ridiculous to think that anything at all might have changed in the interim! But also democrats are actually fine and it's all MAGA's fault."
What a nice bunch of strawmen and puttting words in my mouth. Let me do the same for you: "I'm an asshole who can't address a single point clearly and have to misrepresent other people to try to ridicule them."
You made a huge ahistorical mistake by deliberately trying to confuse the "Progressive Era" of Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bob LaFollette, Ida Wells, WJ Bryan, etc. with the loons arguing for de-funding the police, "canceling" Abraham Lincoln and returning occupied Turtle Island to ... somebody, which is clearly what Noah was talking about. We need to disambiguate the term "Progressive" (that's what Bill Clinton and the DLC called themselves too!) so that we can use it properly, if at all. Comments like yours increase the confusion. I happen to think Noah does a disservice to generally left-of-moderate Democrats who don't subscribe to all the crazy shit (say, Elizabeth Warren) by calling everybody left of center "Progressive" as a pejorative, but still...
If the term progressive is unclear, Noah is the one who continually uses it vaguely. If I may quote from Wikipedia, "While many ideologies can fall under the banner of progressivism, all eras of the movement are characterized by a critique of unregulated capitalism and a call for a more active democratic government to safeguard human rights, promote cultural development, and serve as a check-and-balance on corporate monopolies."
However, I agree that Noah does a disservice with a pejorative use of the term "progressive".
You seem to be, yes, an just demonstrated it.
Ah, you've risen to the intellectual equivalent of "I know you are but what am I." Please demonstrate more intellectual glories for us!
I meant to edit/delete that post- as I felt embarrassed by restating the obvious in an uncharitable way. Unkind and unnecessary.
Thanks for the apology. We may disagree, but apologies like this are unusual in social media.
In what way do you feel you were misrepresented?
Reaganism and the Tea Party and MAGA are very different. I’m not sure why billionaire supported is highlighted as a thing here when Trump hasn’t out raised the Democrat in any of his elections? I think if billionaires had had their way Trump would never have sniffed the nomination.
"Reaganism and the Tea Party and MAGA are very different." In a few respects. Where they overlap is that their ideas were built by billionaire-funded think tanks (in large part those of the Kochs), and opposition to their candidates was primaried by massive donations. Not to mention an enormous right-wing media apparatus.
"I think if billionaires had had their way Trump would never have sniffed the nomination." I agree, and they did oppose him at first. Better to have a candidate that is dependent on you financially and your media. But once they recognized how venal he was, they knew they could work with him.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/10/30/kamala-harris-has-more-billionaires-prominently-backing-her-than-trump-bezos-and-griffin-weigh-in-updated/
Two key questions this otherwise excellent citation doesn't address:
(1) Numbers of donors is not the same as quantity of money. Which got more money from the very rich, and by how much? Here's a more recent report that shows: "The ATF analysis found most of the support was thrown behind GOP causes and candidates, with 70% of the funds coming from the top 100 contributing billionaire families going to Republicans."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/01/billionaires-record-spending-2024-election
(2) Direct backing as in this article is only part of the story: what about the indirect backing by supporting other candidates endorsing the presidential candidates? And the support from media? And the support to think tanks and the like who help guide the campaigns? And the donations to third parties that promote the candidates and their policies? There is an enormous system of wingnut welfare that goes unaccounted. There is a much smaller system behind Democratic candidates.
Were GOP candidates backed by fewer but richer billionaires than Democratic ones?
Why don't you check OpenSecrets for that. But I'd think so, since pretty much all the richest people in the US lean conservative/Republican/neoliberal.
The Kochs are (or were/is) anti-MAGA, I think
There’s plenty of democratic, liberal, progressive, or social democratic billionaires pouring money into politics. Try Soros, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, Mackenzie Scott Bezos. Billionaires have ideologies like the rest of us. That shouldn’t delegitimize those ideas.
If donors buy elections, explain the past decade. Jeb raised and spent 100x more than Trump and lost the primary. Then Clinton outspent Trump by 2x. No sale. Then Harris outspent Trump by 70%. Doesn’t matter, money doesn’t vote.
Money was the key to conservatives being elected, according to the left, until their candidates started having more.
Your numbers are suspicious. 100x? That doesn't pass the sniff test: cite a source. Trump and his allies spent more than Clinton according to OpenSecrets: https://www.opensecrets.org/outside-spending/by_group/2016?disp=O&type=A&chart=V
And while money doesn't vote, it does put its finger on the scales.
As for the argument in your first paragraph, it is as stupid as saying "two piles of money are the same amount because they are both piles".
And of course the problem with billionaire contributions is that they outweigh the contributions of ordinary people. That does not sit well with the ideal of democratic equality.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/where-the-money-came-from-not-how-much-mattered-in-the-presidential-race:
"Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the race to the White House despite raising half as much campaign cash as his Democratic opponent and benefiting from $162 million less in outside spending by groups devoted solely to helping him win." He also relied on small donors more than Clinton: "27 percent of Trump’s entire campaign chest came from small donors (checks of $200 or less), compared with Clinton’s 18 percent"
Jeb Bush spent $156 million https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00037006. I was wrong about Trump's primary spending. (You're right that 100x doesn't pass the sniff test, and I should've looked harder than take the first google result I saw). But I was correct that Trump spent far less than Bush: Trump spent $50 million total on the nomination race per https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/trump-wrapped-gop-nomination-cheap-n567791 (I'm not using Opensecrets because they combine his primary and general election spending). Rubio and Cruz each spent ~$150 million total per opensecrets.
A million dollars from billionaires or from small donors is a million dollars, but the money from small donors goes FURTHER, because it doesn't need to be funneled through PACs which can't explicitly coordinate with the campaign.
I agree that money can put a finger on the scales, but you're overrating how important it is. You can advertise to voters as much as you want but if they prefer some other candidate it's all for naught.
I think this is generally correct, though I’d say the “core of MAGA” is whatever Trump says at that exact moment; we’ll need to see how it reconstitutes around Vance or someone else.
The critique of extremism on the Left needs work (“policing” may need to be readopted in blue cities, but I get wary of an HOA approach to public spaces), but the comparisons of staffers from both Right and Left were useful.
Yep, I've been disappointed at Noah's political takes of yet. We have the most brazen administration in modern times, but he comes up with both sides takes, which absolves the administration and right wing extremism from a lot blame.
I have mixed feelings on the both sides as well. Though I think there can be value in constructive criticism of the Democrats, in efforts to make them a more viable political alternative to Republicans/MAGA.
You conflate the rankest elements of MAGA with the whole, and then extend your statements to identify a huge conspiracy theory that encompasses conservatives and plausibly moderates, who don’t share your worldview. I’m curious whether you hold to the unicause theory of the far left and/or excuse left liberals who when challenged respecting the more egregious positions of the far left say that they, of course, didn’t hold those positions, even though they did hold their silence.
Next time you criticize communism, should I say "you conflate the rankest elements of the Communist Party with the whole"? It is a simple fact that the core of MAGA which is in power is white supremacist and Christian Dominionist. And I should hope that I don't share those world views. Their conspiracies have been well-documented by numerous historians for centuries. I haven't said anything about the left: you're just another pretend mind reader there.
I asked about your opinion of the left given your opinion of MAGA, thinking it would be interesting. But nowhere did I suggest you hold any position other than what you’ve stated.
All good. Has been going on since before the Civil War. See W.J.Cash, The Mind of the South, now almost a century old. Karl Rove putting gay marriage on the ballot in Ohio in 2004 to give "cultural" red meat to the base while supporting an elite economic agenda.
I think the 1960s terminology ("liberals" and "radicals") was better (and nobody launched yet a "Review of Progressive Political Economics").
Probably with "progressives" Noah was talking about the heirs of 1960s/70s "radicals", not about the heirs of the technocratic pro-big government/big-business alliance, eugenicists, pro-imperialists "progressives" of the beginning of the 20th century
If this is a "strategy by the ultra wealthy to keep the lower classes divided and controllable" as you put it, the why were the ultra wealthy nearly universally opposed to Trump in 2016? What is it? Is it a populist mob or a billionaires club? You seem to want to have it both ways here but you have to pick a lane.
As wrote earlier, "I agree, and they did oppose him at first. Better to have a candidate that is dependent on you financially and your media. But once they recognized how venal he was, they knew they could work with him."
Good piece.
I think it is not just social media but also digital media and what we used to call “cable news” (MSNow, Fox). They all cater to the engaged due to their revenue model, and all the better if they can help keep the engaged enraged,
I have also observed (from meeting with regulators and congressional staffers myself and being tangentially involved in corporate lobbying efforts) that it is not the staffers who write legislation.
The lobbyists/activists/special interests write the legislation (using their law firms) and hand it to the staffers who slip it into bills.
The progressive groups/NGOs are much better organized and focused than the right. Over a few decades they’ve changed our government so that pols give grants to these groups to provide “services” and in turn these groups (and their tycoon backers) donate to the pols/parties giving the grants and provide ground level support for the pols (and there is a revolving door between employees of the groups and political staffers).
While not every local pol or congressperson is leftist, their money and their engaged supported mostly come from the “groups”.
This is why an ostensible “moderate” like Biden, gets in office and his staff effectively roll out the agenda of leftist groups. Look at what is happening in Virgina- a faux moderate wins and then rolls out the leftist agenda.
The right is a little less monolithic. There isn’t necessarily a natural affinity or shared agenda amongst, say, banks
, pharma companies and oil companies in the way that greens, open borders and teachers union groups might align and ally. Even within an industry, individual companies have their own agenda a s own legislative desires that might conflict with a competitor in the same industry.
“MAGA” doesn’t really have government funded NGOs working at the local and state levels- it is associated more with Trump and his supporters. It strikes fear in the hearts of non-MAGA Repubs, who worry about getting primaried, but it is not a well-oiled, well-funded grift like we have on the left. It is unclear in what form it will survive after Trump’s term is over, particularly (as NS notes) when he alienates many of his supporters.
As someone who is not particularly political - I have policy ideas but I have no party allegiance, have never donated to a pol or party and also celebrity-worship of pols turns my stomach- I don’t see the extreme left or right giving way to the more moderate objectives of the disinterested populace
I see MaGA eroding after Trump and a battle between populist and corporatist Repubs , which will be won by corporatist Repubs pretending to be populist.
On the left, they will put forward moderate sounding candidates who will be entirely in hock to the groups and enact leftist agendas. See also Biden, Virginia, NJ, Gavin, etc
Your choice will be between a conservative cosplaying as a populist or a radical cosplaying as a moderate.
Yes, most staffers are too clueless to write something as complicated as legislation. That said, they gatekeep access to their boss and so can certainly impact which lobbyist or academic gets to push their ideas to the Member.
Yes - usually the ones who pay! 😊
At lot of the “work” is also done at the agency/regulator level. Why bother with messy stuff like legislation and votes when you just appoint activists and lobbyists as regulators who then write rules (coordinating closely with activists/lobbyists/donors on the outside.
This is wrong on many levels.
There is not a country in the world where laws are stand alone -it's really unrealistic and impossible in the modern economy to write the needed level of detail - it is equally unwise as when it happens it tends to code in detail that rapidly becomes outdated, inappropriate. Thus the global phenomena that laws tend to be best as principal rule sets and allow execution detail to be in regulatoin that can be more easily modified on detial.
More competence internally in agencies is certainly potentially desirable, but it is not desireable to adopt the populist and progressive's shared incoherent mefiance of engagement with market actors
If you think it is “wrong” to claim that activists and donors achieve much of their “work” via the administrative/regulatory state in the US then you may not know much about how politics works in the US (nor at the EU).
On the left, it is much easier to use regulators and judges to reward activists and donors as some of their legislative policy objectives would never get through Congress. This exercise is only tangentially connected to codifying the laws and intent of Congress.
CO2 regulation wasn’t envisaged in the original EPA acts but Congress follows the news and has had decades to update the law. It has chosen not to- not even when Dems controlled Congress- because it is not a winner politically. Why stand up and be accountable to the people when you can appoint regulators to do the work for you? Similarly, the Dems never passed immigration reform when they controlled Congress. Much easier to change asylum rules by fiat and use executive decrees. This isn’t about filling in blanks in vague laws, it is about exercising power and rewarding donors without political accountability or transparent debate.
If we ever want to have more representative democracy we need to find a way to roll back the administrative state AND reduce the executive power of the presidency when it comes to domestic policy.
Unfortunately, SCOTUS wants to do the former but not the latter and both progressives and MAGA like authoritarian decrees.
You are dead right that there can be hostility to market players amongst regulators from the right and left , but it is not consistently. Trump has plenty of corporate hack appointees in the agencies (along with hostile nut jobs like RFK Jr). The Dems bent over backwards to help Google and Netflix (vs Comcast et al) in net neutrality - tech tycoons are an important constituency, and plenty of EV companies and unions and Chinese battery manufacturers were happy with Green regs promulgated by the Biden admin. Sometimes it is more about helping one market player (a donor) over another rather than being hostile to all players.
Given what my work is, I am quite the actual applied, not political partisan whinger (banging on about either Leftists or Billionnaires or other pet bugbears) connaisseur of the regulatory agencies.
What I was objecting to, but on re-reading I believe I may have misread was what I thought was a statement about the legislatures and building in law. I understood the comment to be one of legislatures have more detialed law, this may have misread
That the administrative state and regulation can and are exploited by interests, whether NGOs - activists (more but not only a Left phenom) or large corporates lobby (more right certainly) is evident and it is entirely the case indeed the green Lefties tried to exploit using rule and reg manipuation rather than doing hard work of convincing - which of course failed spectacularly.
However I don't see this as being rooted in any way in the structure, it is rather that the Lefty proggy Groups have been more taken over by a college campus Activist mindset where protest and pressuring college administrations, where screaming and targeted pressure rather than broad convincing (I don't recall where I read it, but the contrast I read that spoke to me was "campus activist" righteously pressuring an Administration versus the Labor Union organiser (or similar organiser) whose work has to be about convincing skeptical workers (etc) to vote for organising or an idea - pressuring versus convincing, administration versus broad audience.
That's the source of the Lefty progressive's actions rather than the admin state itself
I am entirely in favor of regulatory streamlining / red-tape cutting as the Lefty / Progressive proceduralist approach is strangling (and contrary to the NGO class understanding of the world more advantageous to the very Big X players [X whatever subject they're obsessed with] that they ostentasiously hate.
Yes- there is nothing inherently bad about a regulator or a judge. What is bad is relying on them to invent new law because your proposed laws couldn’t get majority support in Congress, and putting in place regulators and judges backed by special interests and donors.
I don’t like executive decress from the President, either, but at least they are gone in 4 years and there is some visibility about what they are doing.
I was with you until your comment about SCOTUS. SCOTUS is not the constitutionally designated brake on the Executive. Congress is, and for decades it shifted policy and power to the Executive, finding reelection easier if it dodged hard choices.
Unless you hold to the living constitution idea, which many do, in my opinion that changes judges to legislators with our representative democracy reduced to the level of the opinions of five of nine. SCOTUS presently is deferring multiple decisions on Trump’s norm breaking choices, causing them to be fully argued in lower courts. This is often reported as a win for Trump, when factually it is normal and proper judicial procedure.
Agree Congress has abdicated responsibility willingly, hoping to achieve their polticial aims without accountability. I said that already.
Of course, this has been assisted by the judiciary (Chevron et al) when it comes to the administrative state.
As for Executive decress, the constitution lays out the powers and separation of powers between the executive and Congress, so SCOTUS is very much involved in enforcing boundaries. The current SCOTUS configuration is deferential to the President but less so to the administrative state when it comes to going beyond the letter of the laws passed by Congress.
I have no issue with SCOTUS actions in regard to lower court deliberations on executive orders.
What is the leftist agenda, transformed into law, that you are talking about? Tax rates, regulation, green new deal, more funding for education, whatever? Please let's have some specifics, especially the issues that the wealthy left funders have endorsed.
Listen, Deipnosophist, I don’t have time to converse with someone who chooses to be uninformed. If you have an option on Noah’s piece, share it.
The right has ALEC, which has pushed a lot of conservative policy at the state level in the form of 'model bills' for decades.
I have one criticism of this piece. It ignores the asymmetry between the parties. Going back to the Ornstein Mann article from 2012, the Republicans in Congress had already moved much further to the right extreme than the Democrats had to the left extreme. The asymmetry still holds. MAGA is in the White House and Congress. The left is in Portland.
In 2024, the Democrats in the Senate had worked out an immigration bill with Senator Lankford, a conservative Republican. Trump nixed it to keep immigration as an issue. That episode is of a piece with the other asymmetrical facts. Which right wing Republicans are complaining that Mike Johnson, who adjourned the House for months to avoid the Epstein issue from surfacing, is not sufficiently MAGA? Schumer and Jeffries, on the other hand, are attacked daily from the left in the Democratic party and yet there they still.
Noah knows his audience. As can be seen from the comments. He's going to always equate a small minority of powerless Democratic House members with the Republican trifecta that has total control of the Federal government since Jan. 2025 and the support of the partisan Roberts Court. It's just the way it is.
Seems like you’re projecting your anxiety. ‘Noah makes sense. People like what Noah says. You disagree with what he says.’
That’s because you’re a vapid twat. A rather whiny one at that.
Just because you’re a liberal faggot doesn’t mean Noah is a pandering charlatan.
Thank you!
2012 is fundamentally a different political era from today. Maybe that was true before you had progressives advocating for nonsense like basically open borders, all but legalizing petty theft, and defunding the police, but not today. This was the democrat position on immigration back then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVuuzTJBE5Y
As for the immigration bill you mention there is some important context there. Biden said for 3 years he couldn't act without legislation, and then after the legislation failed he acted unilaterally to close the border in a much stricter way than his own legislation would have permitted him too. Why would any Republican want to vote for that when they can get more than they asked for just by doing nothing at all?
"Liberals built trains, but now people don’t want to ride the train because of crime and disorder, requiring big bailouts from the state of California."
This is an overstatement. People aren't riding because of work from home. Crime/disorder is a secondary factor, and one that pales in comparison to changing commute patterns. BART has the same number of unique riders now as it did pre-pandemic, but ridership is only at about 50% (though it's increasing 10%+ per year) because they're going into the office at a much lower rate. The crime/disorder situation on BART has changed dramatically over the past year or two as well, with crime dropping over 40% year over year, as the system installed improved fare gates and ramped up patrols from its police force. Source: I work for this transit agency.
I noticed a HUGE difference since the new fare gates were installed. Not just menacing or scary type behavior, but annoying and inconsiderate things like leaving McDonald’s wrappers and stray fries on the seats. It’s a lot nicer, and cleaner, to ride the trains now.
The broken window theory strikes again. Asocial behavior tends to cluster in a relatively small number of individuals who victimize their surroundings in all sorts of ways, from reckless littering to assault.
It makes sense to try to suppress "small" crime such as fare evasion, because there are more pronounced effects downstream from that.
The problem is that Democrats are so concerned with not excluding anybody that they end up building a system where most people exclude themselves to stay away from the people that the Democrats won't exclude.
Alternatively, most people are more interested in restricting freedom than allowing it, because freedom causes social friction, and progressives got on the wrong side advocating for too much freedom.
I think your analysis of the structural weaknesses in both movements is very good, but it misses an asymmetry. Yes, progressives are failing at governance - their naive idealism undermines the liberal institutions they inherited - as you say. Fine. I don’t vote for them either. But the Right fails differently. They’re enacting policies of deliberate cruelty and vengeance. Intentional - not a side effect. And there’s another difference: The right invokes conspiracy theories to rationalize violating their principles - like overturning elections, even through political violence. The mainstream moderate right doesn’t turn away in disgust. Progressives don’t do that. They still have moral boundaries. Unfortunately - Vote Democrat.
"Always discriminate against a young white man in a hiring/admission process because diversity is sacred" is quite cruel in practice and fueled a lot of the current right wing backlash.
If progressives want to reclaim moral superiority, they should start by dropping the entire concept of "whiteness" as something evil that should be extirpated.
At a certain scale, does intent matter? To make an extreme example, I'm no less dead if I starve to death in a famine caused by incompetence rather than malice. As a voter, why should I care what the intent was if the outcome is the same?
I am unconvinced that these moral boundaries on the left exist. They want to restrict freedom of speech and put in place a racial quota system. They want to restrict 2nd amendment rights and self defense, and at the same time cut police enforcement leading to chaos and disorder. There is no limit to how much money they will take from my paycheck and funnel into their grift network. They talk about paying a fair share but it seems like their answer to "how much is fair?" is "more." They are better at cloaking this in moralistic language, but there is no more morality here. You are correct in your assessment of the right. You are also correct that there is an asymmetry, but wrong about its nature. It is a simple matter that I am a target for the left, but not for the right, and so I must think of my self interest.
whether taxes are higher are lower, gun restrictions are tighter or looser, how much preferential treatment in admissions/hiring, etc, it sounds like you and I have the same views. Where we disagree: positions on either side of those debates are not political violence or democracy-threatening. It’s not the same as trying to overturn elections. It’s not targeting individuals and groups with cruelty so as to punish or even to affect policy. Only Republicans are doing that - using state power to separate families at the border as deterrence, threatening prosecutors investigating them, preparing lists of political enemies for retribution, refusing to accept election results. They’ve allowed their political passions to take them into what is properly moral terrain and engage in Machiavellian political reasoning where moral reasoning is required.
What does "democracy" really mean here, though? I elect representatives to act in my interest. Those representatives pass civil rights laws to protect me from discrimination. And then a bunch of left wing judges and bureaucrats decide that those laws actually mean the opposite of what they say and they actually mean that I can be discriminated against freely. What good did democracy do me here, exactly? The right to vote for representatives doesn't really do me any good when the laws they pass are completely ignored. Is it really democracy if I'm not voting for the people who actually make the rules?
I'm having a hard time wanting to vote for either option. I live in Chicago so my options are usually particularly poor.
Yup, I get it. I voted for Kamala Harris. But me and my index finger had an argument in the voting booth.
There's always a conservative option in Chicago races. It's just harder to pretend progressive policy is the issue and not 'cities are hard to govern' when you might end up in charge. Rahm *hated* progressives. That didn't make him a better mayor.
Governing cities is hard. If conservatives or centrists did it better, they'd get elected.
So you did exactly what you were always going to do all along and you still have the moral high ground?
Vapid. Preening. Twat. Progressive.
Impressive to hit the quad box.
It's not just the staffers that are extremely online. A lot of elected officials are, too. Look at JD Vance. It would be good for elected officials themselves to log off and prohibit anyone on their staff from using social media. It would be hard to enforce, but if it became a norm and spread it would make a big difference. Think tanks and other groups should have the same rule for their employees. They would also be wise to hire from a more diverse pool in terms of education. Way too many come from a small number of elite schools. Campaigns have had that same problem.
The cluster of colleges/universities from which staffers are drawn is so small and insular. DC types should do outreach to the College of Mines or Appalachia U - it would take them into interesting policy considerations.
That's entirely plausible. I think people from schools like that would be happy to work for elected officials and would be aware that not many people from their schools have been able to do it. One problem with elite schools is so many of their graduates get to do it that it becomes an entitlement. A lot of staffers these days have it in their heads that they're in charge and it's a real problem. Just hiring more people from flagship universities would be a big improvement, but certainly less known places like those two would be good.
I think one has to qualify this further re Closed Primary system: " The well-known one is the closed-primary party system. Republicans win primaries not by aligning with the median voter, but by aligning with the median Republican voter — usually in an area that’s already right-leaning to begin with. The same is true of Democrats."
Starting in the 1970s as I understand "progressives" refomrs removed dejure control of the Parties over primaries, candidate, niavely thinking the proverbial and literal smoke filled room would be replaced by "more democracy"
As Parties can't control access to their brand - and primaries are structurally now mini-pseudo elections which are naturally structurally dominated by the motivated fringes - i.e. the ideological extremes - we are set-up for take-over episodes.
the fundamental post 70s "reforms" were naive and very wrong headed structurally. how to fix that requires better electoral mechanics design understanding than I have by far, but I think this is fundamentally a profound problem that is quite neglected.
Yes- I think a party should choose a candidate however they like - whether smoke filled room, or member vote (eg in UK) or in a primary election. And we’d have more parties as a result.
Of course, primary elections generate a lot of publicity (often free) so that is hard for parties to pass up, which gives the states regulating elections a lot of leverage.
The biggest abomination is the California system, which actually prohibits parties from putting forth candidates to stand in a real election.
Imagine you start a party and your candidate legally cannot be on the ballot for the actual position unless they come on top 2 in a jungle primary that elects nobody and is mostly paid attention to by partisans of the major party?
Oh yes, such an abomination that’s modeled after pretty much every sporting tournament. CA Democrats suck but Republicans suck even more for not putting up moderate candidates.
Do the bigger countries get to send two teams to the World Cup qualifiers?
Yes. Have you watched any individual sporting events like the Olympics or Grand Slams?
Absolutely nothing prevents any party from having their own internal jungle primary to see who gets on the ballot.
Sure but that’s not the only way to decide a winner, as I explained to you with the sporting analogy. People don’t vote for the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. They vote for the candidate. That’s why independents can run even though they don’t belong to a party. The reason Republicans don’t win very often in CA is not because of the structure of the elections but because their candidates suck more than the other candidates. Arnold was a Republican governor only 15 years ago. So, it’s possible for moderate Republicans to win in CA but they seem hell bent on nominating idiots like Larry Elder.
I disagree. The California jungle primary is much better than party primaries for allowing a moderate candidate not aligned with a major party through. Currently this doesn't really work because CA is so far left, but it's also how they got Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In theory, perhaps, but the reality is that the states pushing these non traditional voting schemes tend to be dominated by one party….and they aren’t choosing the schemes to give the other party a better chance
In some elections in CA there are no Repubs to vote for except the presidency, and that’s a wasted vote in CA for a Repub. suppresses their turnout, including for the voter referendums, which is the whole point.
I think every party, including small ones, should have a chance to put their candidate forward in a real election for the position. A better model to help small parties would be a French style two rounder if nobody gets 50 % on the first go. Of course that would be impossible in CA and they cannot promptly count votes that are cast from one election.
That's not how they got Schwarzenegger. He was elected in the Gray Davis recall election, and he last ran in 2006, before the jungle primary was adopted.
I don't even think it's primaries; the incentives remain the same as long as we have single member first past the post elections.
Very interesting. I don't disagree about extremism. I understand what has happened on the Left. Part of Dem DNA gives us Portland, crazy environmentalists, the current type of antisemitism, etc. The Dem party is a coalition of competing interest groups united only by a sense that govt exists to make life a little less brutal, nasty, & short. I think they'll work it out; they always have. What I don't understand is what has happened to the GOP. Is Trump sui generis or is there something in GOP DNA which has produced him? Why do you believe Trump about that Obama post? He has a strong record of racism & antisemitism. Wither the GOP? You're right to say a racist party has no future.
How is the current conflict of extremes different from before the Civil War or during the 1930s? Yes, communication technology is different, but is that truly decisive? Are we looking at a world-wide phenomena--Brexit, Putinism, Xism, etc.--& if so, what drives it?
We’d have to go to Davos or Epstein’s island to find out, but I suspect it is that the elites have divorced the populace and live in their own bubble. Not an original thesis. See Lasch and onwards
I'm sure you're right, because I think we all live in a bubble of one kind or another, maybe in several bubbles. I'm acutely aware of the bubble(s) I'm in.
We made a national agreement in the 1960s that racial discrimination was no longer permitted, and this was written into the civil rights legislation of the time. But the Democrats did not hold to this agreement and engaged in a political strategy of fomenting racial tension and instituting racial quotas. Of course the Republicans are doing the same thing. What did you expect? The only thing that surprises me is how long it took. You can't expect one side to hold to an agreement while the other flagrantly violates it.
I think the case for progressive disorder is overstated. I want to point out that every liberal city is not Portland. In fact, almost every big city in America has a Democratic mayor, and on average, cities in red states have significantly more crime.
All is well!
Noah's headline sounded optimistic, implying both extremes will fail to *get elected* so we'll finally have the moderate government we want. But the content so the article is far more depressing call it argued that both the extremes are going to fail at *governing* but also offers no hope that we are ever going to get a different kind of government---just an alternation of failing ones Is there any pathway to optimism at all?
Hi Noah. I appreciate your thinking and writing a lot. I’m sad that you re-posted Trump’s post about the Obamas. Just my take: reposting it adds more views. And it was particularly vile.
It was taken down before many people had seen it. We wondered what it looked like. Re-posting lets us see how stupid it was, in addition to being racist.
If you claim that someone said / posted something bad, you have to show the actual post or I am going to assume you are lying.
It’s a misleading story. The monkey video was a next up autoplay, not the posted video.
Wrong. It was spliced into the video.
Is this trolling or ignorance? Trump's post about the jungle specifically has the Obama's as monkeys. It was part of his AI video...
Neither, it's informed.
It's not informed. It was legit part of the video Trump posted though. You keep sidestepping that part. Noah clocked it right and even Trump tried to say a staffer posted it...
Was it a next up autoplay or not? Thats the claim I made and the claim I’m defending
"Trump refused to apologize for the video, demonstrating how extremist staffers can essentially force the politicians who employ them to take more radical positions."
I think it's more that Trump refuses to apologize for anything, ever. One of the Roy Cohn lessons.
Agree with a lot of this, but a substantial counter to polarization would be to adopt mandatory voting (misleadingly called compulsory voting).
Having come from a system that has it, I find all talk about democratic mandates in the US really strange when about a third of the population doesn't vote. From 1980-2000 less than 60% voted. In 1988 (Bush v Dukakis) only 52% voted.
In 2016, Hilary got 48% of the popular vote and Trump only got 46% and yet Trump won. But then consider that Trump only got 46% of the 59% who voted, so only about 27% of the population actively voted for Trump. Then estimate what percentage of that vote was hard-core MAGA and how many were Republicans who did not like Trump, but couldn't bring themselves to vote for Hilary - ie did not enthusiastically vote for Trump.
You then take the effect of gerrymandering and the primary system and then you probably need much less than 13% (half of the 27%) of the population to determine who is the Republican candidate who can win in 2016 with only 27% of the active endorsement of the US population.
Creating a radical 13% of the population is much easier than radicalizing more than 50% of the population, which is what democracy should require.
Even more than this, mandatory voting would dilute the effect of money and the role of special interest block-voting (gun-lobby, antiabortion vote, union vote, Cuban vote).
I know the introduction of mandatory voting is pie-in-the sky, but I think any analysis of polarization has to start with the fact that more than a third of US voters do not vote regularly and very likely these are swing or moderate voters. It is like the center is missing altogether.
California has open primaries and those primaries have not had moderating effect on who gets elected. California’s state legislature and Congressional delegation remains well to left of California’s voters.
The law that makes less that $950 in theft a misdemeanor is not a pandemic era law. It was instituted in 2014 by Prop 47.
“Asian “grind culture” is simply another case of immigrant striver culture, which tends to fade by later generations”
As a fifth generation Jewish-American, can confirm.
I dunno… it may diminish in later generations, but it is strong in immigrants. I live in Northern Virginia and grind culture is quite prevalent. It’s the academic version of traveling sports. Like club soccer, you need to put your kid in Kumon if they hope to get into the most elite math class.