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Centrist Dems Dismiss the Progressive Wave at Their Peril
In the coming months, Hakeem Jeffries and others like Rahm Emanuel and James Carville may discover a growing canyon between their direction for the party and a Democratic base increasingly friendly to democratic socialism and impassioned for Medicare for All.
Nov 01, 2026
The energy and votes unleashed this year by the insurgent new left of the Democratic Party would surely be welcomed by the Dems’ leadership after a long hangover from 2024 and setbacks at the hands of President Donald Trump, right?
Not exactly. These developments are viewed as anything but good news by many members of the party elite. Hakeen Jeffries (NY), in line to become Speaker of the House if Democrats prevail November 3, refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani last year even after he won the Democratic Party nomination in New York City. In Michigan, Jeffries had endorsed Senate candidate Haley Stevens, a big recipient of American Israel Political Action Committee (Jeffries himself has been a beneficiary of AIPAC), over the staunchly progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who won the primary. These choices were consistent with Jeffries’ history of hostility to progressives in the Democratic Party.
Over the last year, primary victories by progressives have given Jeffries much more to worry about. While there has been a general growing upsurge in support for Democratic candidates, much of the drive has been fueled by the left wing of the party. The Democrats have witnessed something of a rebirth charged by youthful, notably progressive momentum . While Democrats including moderates have gained ground in both special elections and primaries, the electoral strength of left-wing candidates has become a growing trend. From the election of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in 2025 to primary and special-election victories won by avowedly left-of center candidates this year, there is now a significant activated progressive core within the Democratic Party.
But Carville is correct on one point: Jeffries will encounter resistance from new House members wary that he will deeply alienate the electorate with tepid reforms that fail to produce tangible improvements in voters’ lives.
A number of the candidates are closely affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), others are independent progressives, and a much larger number are firmly committed to fighting for a Medicare for All healthcare plan. This trend reflects a broader, momentous shift to the left within the Democratic base. Democratic socialists make up only a minority, but they have earned a recognized place in the party. Recent polls from CBS News and The New York Times found that roughly 58-66% of Democrats view socialism positively, with that number rising to 70% in a ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted this month. CBS News polling revealed about 60% of Democrats favor a mix of socialism and capitalism.
But evidence of this relatively recent turn in the outlook of the Democratic base is only perceived as deeply disturbing by Jeffries and others like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and James Carville, an influential Democratic strategist. Fittingly, Jeffries’ statement on democratic socialism and presumably DSA in particular projected no welcoming for an energetic, youthful element of the party: “There will never be a moment where I bend the knee to hard-left democratic socialism.” In this comment, Jeffries deploys a trope that DSA-backed candidates are somehow “hard-left” extremists fixed on espousing far-out symbolic views rather than winning substantial reforms at every level of government. In fact, the DSA-affiliated candidates and officeholders are pursuing broadly-shared progressive aims like taxing billionaires, sharply raising the minimum wage, providing universal childcare, and legislating a Medicare for All healthcare system.
On Medicare for All, Jeffries’ evident lack of support places him far outside the Democratic mainstream. At a 78% level of support, the base of the Democratic Party ardently backs a Medicare for All system that would largely replace large insurance corporations with a government-administered system as in Canada. A national Data for Progress survey found 65% of all voters support a Medicare for All system, including 71% of independents, and 49% of Republicans.
For the next Congress, Jeffries will be swimming against the tide on Medicare for All, as it is all but certain to become a pressing issue in the face of rising public concern over healthcare, which is already one of voters’ top affordability concerns and will become more sharply climbing as employers are aggressively thrusting rising insurance premiums back onto workers. Further, major cuts in Medicaid are already creating enormous stress for those otherwise lacking conventional insurance, and these reductions will intensify in 2027 when they come fully into effect.
At the same time, Medicare for All is gaining credibility as an alternative to the status quo. An important Yale study calculates that Medicare for All would save the US $1 trillion per year. Further, Medicare for All would save an estimated 114, 000 lives annually as the 27 million currently uninsured finally gain timely access to care.
Former Chicago mayor and diplomat Emanuel, a potential 2028 presidential contender, is another leading force who characterizes DSA and progressives as extreme and fiercely opposes Medicare for All. He told MS NOW that he believes that DSA simply has no place in the Democratic Party.
Emanuel, like Jeffries and several other figures in the Democratic establishment, caricatures DSA based on the most fanciful elements of DSA’s official long-term “agenda.” But that agenda is almost uniformly ignored by DSA officeholders, candidates, and local chapters alike. Still, Emanuel spotlights.impossible-to-achieve points on the agenda (e.g., abolishing the police and prisons) while ignoring the actual work of DSA conducted by officeholders like Mamdani, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and many others, and DSA chapters across the nation working on the minimum wage, taxation of billionaires, and well-funded public services—an agenda far different from Emanuel’s fixation on the much-derided sweeping privatization of services and sell-off of resources while mayor of Chicago.
Emanuel, who dismissed DSA on MSNOW TV as "an Ivy League seminar,” in reality seems less troubled by DSA’s meaningless long-term “agenda” than the more concrete programs that a new band of left-wing members will bring to the next session. Emanuel, for example, is singularly focused on repudiating the idea of Medicare for All legislation, which will gain a substantial influx of support if progressive candidates prevail in the midterms.
But the most ferocious voice excoriating the Democrats’ Left has been Carville, the long-time Democratic strategist. Carville describes DSA and the progressives as “over-educated little white turds,” conveniently ignoring the high-profile people of color within the progressive coalition, including, for example, Latina primary winners for the House from New York and a new House member from New Jersey. Carville has been unwilling to acknowledge the prominence of people of color in the democratic socialist camp, like Mamdani; Ocasio-Cortez; recently-elected US Rep. Analilia Mejia of New Jersey; and House candidates Melat Kiros of Colorado, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York City, and Donavan McKinney in Michigan, the last two defeating entrenched incumbents in their primaries.
Escalating his attempts to alienate Blacks from DSA and the left wing of the party, Carville lashed out at DSA, claiming, “They think that Lenin was a more glorious human being than Martin Luther King or Frederick Douglass. That's what they really think.” Of course, Carville somehow manages to overlook the fact that King himself considered himself a democratic socialist, as did other key Black giants like A. Phillip Randolph.
But nothing tops Carville’s comment earlier this month in which he actually expresses more fear of DSA and the left than having far-right Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) continuing in his post. The searing hostility of Carville toward the Democrats’ left was evident in The Bulwark Takes podcast: "I would be disappointed if it [the midterms] comes in at 225 House seats. And that would almost be—I would rather the Republicans keep the House by five than the Democrats win by five because if that happens, they're hostage to the DSA," Carville said. "Like Hakeem cannot move. There's no place for him to go." Whether meant even partly in jest, Carville displayed the venom gathering against the left electoral successes.
But Carville is correct on one point: Jeffries will encounter resistance from new House members wary that he will deeply alienate the electorate with tepid reforms that fail to produce tangible improvements in voters’ lives. Media accounts report that Jeffries has no visible challengers to becoming speaker, but he will surely face battles both with increasingly progressive Democrats in Congress and the party base to which they are giving a new voice. “He [Jeffries] needs all of our votes to be speaker,” Chris Rabb, the DSA-backed Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania’s third congressional district, pointedly told The New York Times.
Jeffries has cloaked his conventional centrist politics as simply representing a majority of Democratic voters, while feeling free to lash out at progressives critical of “corporate” members of Congress whose policies align closely with their donors in corporate America: “The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter, when the majority of the electorate constitute mainstream Democrats at the polls."
But in the coming months, Jeffries and others like Emanuel and Carville may discover a growing canyon between their direction for the party and a Democratic base increasingly friendly to democratic socialism and impassioned for Medicare for All. Some in the establishment set may be preparing themselves for a battle with the marginal “white turds,” but not a significantly shifting “mainstream” of the party seeking the fighting spirit and visionary reforms offered by the party’s left.
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A Closing Midterm Message for Progressives Looking to Wrest Power From Tyrant Trump
In media appearances and at public rallies, progressive candidates should pledge to Impeach Trump and authentically summarize what they will fight for—that resonates with left and right voters struggling to have decent livelihoods.
Oct 31, 2026
The Democrats will probably gain control of Congress, but by a small margin rather than a landslide. Donald Trump, the worst, most unpopular outlaw, cruel, lying, corrupt, bigoted, violent, self-enriching, and devastating dictator harming the American people in our history, has greatly helped the Dems in the midterm elections.
Unfortunately, corporate consultants dominate Democratic campaigns—and have failed to capitalize on the political ammunition Trump hands them every day. This allowed Trump to get away with campaigning for toady Republican candidates and to monopolize media attention that should be focused on how the Republicans in Congress allowed the savagery of his egomaniacal and corporatist regime to undermine democracy and harm the American people.
What should progressive candidates highlight between now and election day?
You can assume that what Trump did to wreck, endanger, and weaken America will intensify his efforts to wreck, endanger, and weaken America.
First, they should alert people to the reality that the second two years of Trump’s term will be much worse for them, their children, and many millions of innocent families abroad. The poor from less developed countries were cut off from key medicines, food supplements, and other inexpensive lifesaving supplies when he and Elon Musk illegally shut down the Agency for International Development. They actually bragged about their deadly deed.
Smarting from an electoral rejection that puts him on the defensive, a vengeful, puerile Trump will likely foment upheaval at home and wage war abroad to reclaim center stage. Note, the White House is defiled daily by Trump, who has a dangerously unstable personality and is driven to do whatever he wants, regardless of laws, the Constitution, Congress, the courts, and norms of common decency. He got away with this law-breaking big time in 2025-2026, so get ready for his further unleashing of corporate polluters from the oil and gas and coal industries, smashing what’s left of laws protecting you, the consumer; you, the worker; and you, the ill patient. He will further impede millions of Americans’ access to food stamps, Medicaid, Obamacare, and other social safety nets, like Meals on Wheels and Head Start.
He’ll turn the White House into an even bigger source of gigantic personal enrichment for himself and his family, using the office to coerce, extort, and bribe companies into abject submission. From his own 2025 financial disclosures, his bribe-extort dealings with seedy collaborators netted him $2.1 billion, or, broken down on a 40-hour week, $1.1 million AN HOUR!
Rather than extend this list, you can assume that what Trump did to wreck, endanger, and weaken America will intensify his efforts to wreck, endanger, and weaken America. Expect more wars, more attacks on critical scientific protections and research, more suppression of renewable energy, more punishment of free speech, and more intensely shattered readiness to deal with pandemics, climate catastrophes, and out-of-control generative AI Frankenstein monsters rampaging on their own. This imposter has called these three omnicides a “hoax.”
So, candidates do portray Trump and his Trump Dump as becoming ever more lethally toxic to humanity. Unless, that is, the voters elect a pro-Impeachment Congress to Fire Trump and begin building a lawful country that works for the People. (See my book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People.)
As of last April, 90% of the Democrats and almost two-thirds of Independents want to Impeach Trump. Probably higher now!
In media appearances and at public rallies, Progressive candidates should authentically summarize what they will fight for—that resonates with left and right voters struggling to have decent livelihoods.
- Raise the frozen federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to at least $15 or $17 an hour. Twenty-five million workers will benefit.
- Raise Social Security benefits, frozen for 45 years, paid for by raising the Social Security tax on the wealthy. About 60 million elderly people will benefit.
- Enact an authentic child tax credit, cutting child poverty in half. Over 60 million children will be better off.
- Catch up with Western countries and Taiwan by passing Medicare for All, lifesaving, far more efficient, and much less aggravating than the present profit-gouging, benefit-denying, corporatized system of greed first.
- Crack down on corporate crooks stealing consumer dollars, worker wages, and pensions. (Saving trillions of dollars yearly and having 90% approval.)
- Adopt childcare, paid family sick leave, and other humane programs long in place in Western Europe and Canada.
- Pass labor laws for safety, economic freedom to speak and band together, and pension protections put forth decades ago. (See: pensionrights.org).
- Invest in crumbling public services and infrastructure in communities. Creating many good jobs.
- Paying for the above by (A) restoring taxes on the very undertaxed or non-taxed super rich and large corporations to the level of the prosperous 1960s; (B) ending huge corporate welfare giveaways, subsidies, and bailouts; and (C) de-bloating the runaway, unaudited military budget, devouring over half of all operating spending by the federal government and getting more wasteful, fraudulent, and controlling corporate contractors by the year.
For more practical ideas, see the attached piece by former Secretary of Labor and current popular blogger Robert Reich, titled "10-Point Plan to Make America Affordable."
This weekend is the perfect time for Midnight Campaigning to reach the many midnight shift workers who keep the country going while we sleep. They are ignored by political candidates. A “thank-you” news release describing the major occupations on the midnight shift and a three-hour series of campaign stops should get candidates recognition for caring. Favorable last-minute news coverage can encourage more voters to turn out.
And finally, a word to registered voters: Political pundits predict that more than half of you will stay home. Don’t! Vote for the candidate of your choice—including write-in candidates. Otherwise, the rascals will be happy to fill the vacuum.
Then watchdog your members of Congress to turn their promises into legislative enactments.
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'Make Him Veto Medicare for All': Khanna Proposes Bold Agenda in Case of Dem Victory
Progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna argued against centrist Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz's statement that Democrats should not try to pass ambitious bills if they won control of Congress in November.
Oct 24, 2026
Progressives including Rep. Ro Khanna slammed a recommendation from Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, who will be the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate if the party retakes control of the body following the November 3 midterm elections, that Democratic legislators should moderate their ambitions if they regain control of Congress.
Speaking on CNN's "The Arena" with Kasie Hunt on Thursday, Schatz responded to Hunt's question about how a governing Democratic caucus might respond to the "energy" and "anger" on the left with a word of caution.
"I do not think it is time to propose things that the president of the United States is guaranteed to veto," Schatz said. "I think that is somewhat of a bit of wasted energy. And then if we want to be more aspirational, if we want to make more bold policy changes, we're going to have to take the presidency and both chambers and that's for 2028."
https://t.co/7ahr7Yu3Iv
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) October 24, 2026
Instead, Schatz argued that Democrats should see a midterm victory as an "institutional check against an out-of-control president" and use its leverage "to try to bring this war to a conclusion and to reverse the Medicaid and SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] cuts."
Not everyone agreed with Schatz's prescription, however, arguing that forcing President Donald Trump to veto popular policies could only help the Democrats going forward.
Progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) wrote on social media late Friday that Democrats should force Trump to veto a litany of progressive policies from Medicare for All to blocking aid and bombs to Israel to taxing billionaires.
"Make him veto Medicare for All," he advised.
Make him veto Medicare for AllMake him veto a $25 living wageMake him veto free childcareMake him veto Block the Bombs to IsraelMake him veto zero aid to IsraelMake him veto free collegeMake him veto erasing student loansMake him veto taxes on billionaires
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 24, 2026
Groundwork CEO Lindsay Owens called Schatz's strategy "worrisome" on Saturday.
"Trump vetoing bills to make healthcare cheaper is a good political outcome for Dems," she wrote on social media, arguing that it would increase the likelihood of a Democratic victory in 2028.
Worrisome strategy form a top Dem. 1. By defn if the bill gets to potus’s desk ~everyone in the caucus voted for it (not just the left). 2. Trump vetoing bills to make health care cheaper is a good political outcome for Dems (& makes it more likely that we win in 28 to do this).
— Lindsay Owens (@owenslindsay1) October 24, 2026
Writer Katelyn Burns agreed, writing: "No, wrong. You pass the popular agenda and let the other party stand in the way of what the people want. Why the fuck would you pre-veto shit??"
The Debt Collective wrote: "This broken ideology actually explains a lot. They just genuinely do not understand the strategy of making President Trump veto popular things—it almost makes you wonder if they just don't support the popular things at all."
Other s responded with sarcasm.
"Let's just not make waves and confirm Trump's judges for two years, maybe let Republicans run the committees too, that would be the sensible move," wrote The Prospect executive editor David Dayen.
Austin Ahlman, a reporter and political analyst for anti-monopoly think tank the Open Market Institute, joked: "Smart. Wouldn’t want anyone to mistake you for the opposition."
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'She’s Going to Win,' Says Bernie Sanders After Weekend in Florida Backing Angie Nixon
"Trust me on this," Sanders said. "This is going to be a spark that is going to ignite the entire country."
Oct 19, 2026
Judging by the polls, progressive Democrat Angie Nixon faces an uphill battle as she contends for Florida’s US Senate seat. But after campaigning with her this weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders is confident she's being underestimated.
"She’s going to win," Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media Sunday night, after making four stops across a state that's long been written off as a GOP stronghold.
"They say Florida is a red state, but you know what I'm hearing?" Sanders said. "Working people everywhere are sick and tired of the same old politics and policies. They want real change."
Nixon, a state representative and former labor leader, has already shown that calls for change can galvanize voters. Running on what she's called a "Working Families Guarantee"—which includes Medicare for All, free childcare, paid leave, and stronger bargaining power for workers—she unexpectedly defeated the better-funded, establishment-backed centrist Alex Vindman in August's Democratic primary.
In an election season where Republicans are expected to face a reckoning over rising prices and shameless self-enrichment by President Donald Trump and his allies, Nixon's message seems to be resonating in Florida. Despite the past decade's massive influx of wealthy retirees, a strong base of working-class supporters, particularly in Florida's politically neglected Black communities, has mobilized behind her.
At a rain-drenched rally in Tampa on Saturday, about 2,200 people watched as Nixon spoke with what the Tampa Bay Times called "a preacher’s charisma," hitting back at Republican Sen. Ashley Moody’s attempts to characterize her platform as "radical."
"If believing that a child with cancer should get treatment they need whether their parents can afford it or not is radical, then call me radical," Nixon thundered. "Then I guess I'm a radical, Ashley. I guess I'm radical as hell."
"Where I come from, none of that is radical," she continued. "That is just plain common sense. That is basic human decency."
Nixon has called for Moody to be jailed over her actions as the state's attorney general. In 2024, Moody approved the diversion of $10 million from a Medicaid fraud settlement—which would have benefited low-income Floridians, including children—to political campaigns supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and other Republicans.
"Are you all ready to fight back?" Nixon shouted to a roaring crowd in Tallahassee on Sunday. "Are you all ready to put an end to the corruption that's driving up our prices and ruining our democracy?"
"Well, I am ready, too!" she said, as supporters stood behind her waving signs reading "Freeze the Rent," "Tax Billionaires," and "Protect Social Security."
While recent polls still show Nixon trailing Moody in the final weeks of the campaign, her fundraising in the third quarter of the year has soared, and other major figures in the Democratic Party from progressives like Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) to establishment liberals like Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) have campaigned with her in person.
With gas prices continuing to soar as Trump threatens dramatic escalations in his war with Iran, signs of a coming electoral apocalypse for Republicans are flashing ever brighter.
Democrats now lead by around nine points on the generic congressional ballot, and Trump's approval has dipped to historic lows. The GOP's fundraising arms have begun diverting resources initially for swing states like Georgia and North Carolina to protect territory once thought safe—in South Carolina, Kansas, Ohio, and, yes, even Florida.
The 2026 cycle has already challenged the long-standing conventional wisdom that chasing Republicans to the right is a necessity to win voters in purple and red states.
With similar populist messaging, Abdul El-Sayed and Troy Jackson are leading Republican opponents in Michigan and Maine, respectively. James Talarico is favored to become the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas since the Clinton administration. Meanwhile, Dan Osborn, Josh Turek, Adam Hamilton, and Sherrod Brown are all hanging tough in states that Trump won by double digits in 2024.
But a win by Nixon—a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who, unlike other progressives, won her primary largely with support from the state's lowest-income, least college-educated constituencies—would signify more than just a backlash to "the most dangerous president in the history of the United States," Sanders said.
"This election is not only important for the people of Florida in getting a senator who is going to fight for you," Sanders told the Tallahassee crowd. "Trust me on this, after Angie wins, this is going to be a spark that is going to ignite the entire country."
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6 Strategies Progressives Can Use to Win in November
Here are some suggestions that can be implemented quickly in the remaining three and a half weeks before Election Day, November 3.
Oct 11, 2026
Ever wonder why, more often than not, progressive candidates for public office lose to the most venal, corrupt, right-wing politicians? It is not just that progressives don’t have enough money. Too often, they run cookie-cutter campaigns—tediously monotone, without exciting and compelling activities. They also fail to draw a vivid contrast between their records and commitments to the public and those of Republican corporatists. Here are some suggestions that can be implemented quickly in the remaining three and a half weeks before Election Day, November 3.
1. The GOP is the Party of NO, NO, NO. As the party of big corporations, it has repeatedly resisted efforts to protect the public from corporate abuses. In the 19th century it opposed regulation of the railroads and the banks, resisted the organization of unions and women’s suffrage. In the 20th century, Republicans opposed the progressive agenda of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—among them were Social Security, the minimum wage, and unemployment compensation—and, in the 60s and 70s, the GOP fought to weaken or stop consumer, worker safety, and environmental health protections that have saved millions of lives.
Under President Donald Trump, the Republicans have gone crazy, leaving people unprotected and defenseless against the corporate crooks, the avaricious health insurers, the deadly polluters, and the freeloading corporate welfare kings. Trump has eradicated or starved the agencies protecting you as consumers and eliminated or weakened consumer regulations and the agencies responsible for enforcing them, including protections involving auto safety, fuel efficiency, and vehicle emissions, for example.
Bad as the past GOP has been, it would be much worse for people here and abroad in the next two years of Tyrant, Greedy, Violent, Cruel, Corrupt Trump who repeatedly breaks the law.
How can these GOP candidates deserve your votes? All people bleed the same color in red and blue states. Trump’s Republicans drove Congress in 2025 to weaken Medicaid and Medicare and increase the cost of coverage under Obamacare, leaving millions of families, including children, losing health coverage at an accelerating rate into 2027. Similarly, millions of people are being pushed off food assistance programs.
2. Bad as the past GOP has been, it would be much worse for people here and abroad in the next two years of Tyrant, Greedy, Violent, Cruel, Corrupt Trump who repeatedly breaks the law. A new Congress must stop him, by impeaching and convicting Trump and telling him, “You’re fired.” (His favorite bullying words inflicted on millions of innocents.)
3. Gather your policies into a pledge or compact for the voters, reflecting common left-right values of your citizenry that are opposed by your opponent. (See Ky. Values vs. McConnell published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, 2014). The core “kitchen table” issues are raising the minimum wage, now at the frozen federal $7.25 per hour; instituting an authentic child tax credit; increasing Social Security benefits, frozen since 1971, paid for by raising the income cap for Social Security taxes on the wealthy; cracking down on corporate crooks who exploit workers and consumers; and ending the tax escapes of the plutocrats and big corporations, so that the revenues can return to communities to fund better public services and infrastructure. (See Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan to Make America Affordable and my Compact for American Workers). You may wish to add the looting of private pensions (see pensionrights.org) and the latest Trump restriction on 40 million student loan debtors.
4. Show how much you care for workers by midnight campaigning to reach the many midnight shift workers who rightly feel excluded from electoral campaigns. Hospital, nursing home, factory, fire, police, EMT, all-night stores, and guard workers among them, should be listed in your news release thanking them and announcing your campaign stops.
5. Trump’s dictatorship has left our country unprepared for pandemics, climate catastrophes, and the AI Frankensteins. He ignorantly calls warnings of perils on the horizon “hoaxes,” while he undermines and suppresses solar and wind energy in favor of the homicidal oil, gas, and coal companies. So, challenge your opponent to defend or disavow these failures of presidential responsibility. Any candidate who tolerates Trump’s dangerous abdications of presidential duties, along with his crazed statements about not “caring for Americans’ financial conditions,” urging Republicans to “cheat like hell” regarding the elections, and saying in January, “There shouldn’t be elections in November” certainly does not belong in Congress.
6. Call out the GOP for throwing millions of families off Medicaid, Obamacare, and Medicare through various mechanisms and press for Medicare For All, as Canada, Western Europe, and Taiwan have had for many years. A recent Yale School of Public Health study found a “single-payer universal healthcare system could cover every American, save more than 113,000 lives a year, and still cost over $1 trillion less than the system it would replace.”
For more ready-to-use, winning get-out-your-vote ideas, see what 24 civic leaders are proposing in their winningamerica.net presentations. If you have any further questions, you may wish to contact them directly about their articulate nonpartisan mission of advancing justice for all.
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Elections Won't Save a Movement People Don't Trust
Democracy has always depended on more than elections. It depends on institutions that people believe are worthy of their participation and capable of improving their lives.
Sep 25, 2026
As millions head to the polls in the 2026 elections, voters are showing up disappointed, forgotten, and worn down from years of failed policies.
After nearly two decades working inside campaigns, Democratic leaders, national advocacy organizations, and movement institutions have made it clear: We’ve got a problem on our hands.
The challenge before us is not simply that Democrats have a messaging problem, nor is it that Republicans have become better communicators. The deeper problem is that we have spent years trying to win elections while underinvesting in the communities, relationships, and culture that make political victories durable.
People don’t organize their lives around resistance alone. They organize around belonging, purpose, hope, and the possibility that tomorrow can be better than today.
Narratives don’t emerge from communications plans, but rather from institutions that people trust. This distinction matters.
We keep hearing the same question: Why aren’t more young people and people of color engaged in the civic process? This is the wrong question.
The question we need to be asking is whether or not our current institutions are willing to or even positioned to share power with us. More often than not, participation is shared only after decisions are made, and usually with an ask attached.
We are not waiting for institutions to tell us how to participate. We have lived the reality of what happens when institutions fail, time and time again. We have seen how powerful it is when we build our own.
Young Black folks in particular are organizing, creating, building community, and culture. Especially for those who are young, queer, and Black, so much of the language and swagger that shapes our lives has been created by us. We know that when institutional belonging is unavailable, community creates belonging. We got us.
As Black queer Americans, we inherit a tradition shaped by people who understood that institutions rarely surrender power simply because the moral argument is clear. Generations before us organized, marched, litigated, and forced America to confront the distance between its ideals and its reality. Progress has never been inevitable. It has always been demanded.
A collective 20 years inside politics has made it clear to us: Institutions rarely fail overnight. Long before they lose public trust, they lose relevance. They become more concerned with protecting existing power than with creating new possibilities, optimizing for stability rather than adaptation.
Eventually, they find themselves speaking fluently to one another while struggling to connect with the people they were created to serve. That is where much of the progressive movement finds itself today.
Americans are losing faith in politics and in the idea that our institutions can solve the problems shaping their everyday lives.
People do not experience institutional failure in constitutional language or policy briefs. They experience it through rising costs, unstable jobs, inaccessible housing, underfunded schools, broken infrastructure, and the growing sense that the rules apply differently depending on who you are and how much power you hold. They talk about fairness, opportunity, dignity, and whether working hard still leads to a better life.
These conversations are not separate from politics. They are politics. We can’t continue mistaking communications for culture.
Too often, the response has been to refine the message rather than rebuild the institution that delivers it. We have mistaken communication for culture, which has led to the consequences we are all currently living with.
The progressive movement has become extraordinarily sophisticated at producing content. We can generate messaging guidance overnight, build rapid-response campaigns within hours, and create endless streams of digital content. Yet none of those capabilities automatically produce trust.
Trust is earned when people see themselves reflected not only in the message but in the leadership, values, and relationships behind it. You can’t message your way out of a deficit of trust. No amount of message testing can compensate for institutions that people no longer believe understand their lives.
This is where imagination becomes essential.
Since 2016, countless postmortems have focused on messaging, media strategy, and digital infrastructure. Those conversations matter, but they begin from an incomplete premise. They assume we already have a compelling story to tell.
We are not convinced we do.
Sentiments such as “fight” or “protect democracy” are important calls to action, but they are not visions of the future. They put us on the defensive and describe what we oppose more clearly than what we are building. People don’t organize their lives around resistance alone. They organize around belonging, purpose, hope, and the possibility that tomorrow can be better than today.
That kind of vision cannot be manufactured through advertising.
It grows from culture. It expands from artists, educators, organizers, faith leaders, entrepreneurs, local institutions, and civic spaces where people build relationships long before anyone asks for their vote.
We can look back at the Obama era, as one example of how politics can bend the arc of history. If you were near a college campus on November 4, 2008, you remember the celebrations. Music poured from dorm rooms and car speakers, topped off with dancing in the street. For a brief moment, hope felt less like a slogan and more like a possibility finally personified. The belief in our collective power and the possibilities it could create ignited a generation.
Research supports what many organizers have understood intuitively for decades. Economist Raj Chetty’s work on economic mobility found that social capital (the relationships that connect people across communities and opportunities) is among the strongest predictors of upward mobility. That insight extends beyond economics.
Relationships shape what people believe is possible. They influence trust, aspiration, and whether institutions feel relevant to everyday life. Politics is no different.
Queer communities have long understood something about the power of relationships that institutions are only beginning to relearn. We call it chosen family: the idea that belonging can be deliberately built through relationships of trust, care, responsibility, and mutual recognition. There is a civic lesson in that tradition. Durable movements are built the same way. Not through an email list or a message tested to perfection, but through relationships strong enough to survive disagreement, disappointment, and the space between elections.
The same is true for Black communities, particularly Black women, whose creativity, organizing, and cultural leadership have repeatedly expanded the boundaries of American democracy while too often receiving recognition only after the fact.
Innovation doesn’t come from preserving the status quo. History has shown us that it comes from creating space for voices that institutions have historically overlooked.
That means the work ahead demands more than better campaigns. It requires rebuilding civic infrastructure and cultivating leaders rather than personalities. A focus on relationships instead of audiences and investing in organizations that remain present between election cycles.
Institutional renewal is no longer optional as artificial intelligence, economic uncertainty, climate disruption, and political polarization reshape public life simultaneously. The pace of change is accelerating, while confidence in the institutions meant to guide us continues to decline.
That should concern all of us. Democracy has always depended on more than elections. It depends on institutions that people believe are worthy of their participation and capable of improving their lives.
The encouraging news is that Americans have not completely lost faith in one another. Mutual aid networks, local organizers, community leaders, and everyday people continue to demonstrate the generosity and resilience our institutions often struggle to match.
We must build institutions strong enough, imaginative enough, and trustworthy enough for the story to tell itself. There’s no other choice.
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Progressive Principles for a New US Foreign Policy
A wave of progressive, left-wing, and socialist candidates and elected officials face an enormous challenge in articulating a foreign policy for the future. Here’s a start.
Sep 21, 2026
For many years, progressive movements and activists have longed for the moment when we could imagine a real foreign policy rooted in true internationalism and solidarity.
But in our efforts to influence actual policy decisions, we’ve settled for important but smaller asks—ending specific wars, blocking the transfer of certain weapons to Israel, reducing military aid, cutting the military budget. That made sense—our movements’ view of the world was rarely fully reflected in Congress, the State Department, or the White House.
Now some of those limitations are fading. There are new possibilities rising as we see new candidates with incredibly progressive politics win their campaigns—and even more importantly, we see in recent years the extraordinary shift in public discourse about the US role in the world, especially (though not only) throughout the almost three years of US -enabled genocide in Gaza.
The escalation of global crises—especially those caused, exacerbated, and sponsored by the United States—means we need to do more as movements, and to demand more from our elected representatives. Israel has lost the battle of legitimacy. US credibility and influence around the world are crumbling, not only as a result of President Trump and his MAGA movement extremism but also because of the foreign policy failures of discredited establishment Democrats like President Biden.
The US, long the wealthiest, militarily strongest country in the history of humanity, is certainly still powerful, but is increasingly losing its ability to impose its will.
The flailing White House and its hollowed-out State Department are stumbling through the huge failures of Trump’s insatiably wealth- and ego-driven foreign policy. They face an unending war with Iran that has spread across the region and is threatening the entire global economy, Ebola exploding across parts of Africa, poverty and unprecedented inequality shattering lives around the world, and a genocide in Gaza visible globally in real time. The US, long the wealthiest, militarily strongest country in the history of humanity, is certainly still powerful, but is increasingly losing its ability to impose its will.
The new cohort of progressive candidates and the movements supporting them face a huge challenge of not only defeating the current foreign policy but also creating the beginnings of an entirely new approach. And for candidates, electeds, and campaigns who have focused overwhelmingly on progressive domestic issues, nothing about that challenge will be easy.
Starting from First Principles
Many countries around the world—from Spain to the Philippines, South Africa to Greece, and Brazil to Uruguay and beyond—have a legacy of powerful left movements morphing into more formal organizations, and from there transforming into political parties. Eventually the parties choose candidates to run for political office, in more or less democratic multi-party systems, and ultimately some of those candidates even reach, at least for a while, the highest levels of government.
That path provides not only a clear arc from organizing to power, but also a set of consistent political principles and policies on which left candidates can ground their campaigns for office. But the left and even the broad progressive movements here in the United States have not been able to claim that particular arc of history for a very long time. As a result, we are operating, in this unusually electorally focused year, without a clear set of unifying principles.
Those principles are not completely missing. Policy initiatives once sidelined as positions only of the left have instead unified broad movements and become part of mainstream discourse. The most prominent probably include Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, the Fight for Fifteen, and the Dream Act/DACA. A generation of young people came of political age mobilizing on those issues alongside the crucial struggles against racist police violence, and many turned towards various strands of socialism to support and build those campaigns.
The central mobilizing issues of today’s Trump era—including ending ICE, rejecting AI/data center construction, housing for all, and challenging authoritarianism and the billionaires—emerged on the scene alongside those earlier priorities. Today’s arguably most influential democratic socialist leader, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, cut his political teeth on those issues.
What we still don’t have is a clear set of foreign policy principles, let alone specific policies responding to particular global crises, around which progressive movements will unite. The one exception, paid for with Palestinian blood, is Gaza. The most massive mobilizations in the country responding to Israel’s live-streamed genocide in Gaza took place during the Biden years. Those mobilizations and the movement behind them animated politics, and shaped big new majorities for ending Washington’s military support of Tel Aviv. Following decades of elite adulation and broad public support, Israel is now widely reviled as a pariah state.
Trump’s re-election changed much of the political picture, but the centrality of Gaza as the moral core of our movements—especially, though not only, among the young—represents a vitally important crack in that pro-Israel consensus. It has profoundly reshaped longstanding political assumptions, normalizing unflinching criticism of Israel and rejecting AIPAC funding as requirements for progressive candidates. As a result, Israel and the legitimacy of Palestinian rights are central issues in many races. Even in places where the assumed campaign focus would be domestic, candidates are inescapably being compelled to talk about it.
What principles should undergird a progressive official US foreign policy?
And yet Gaza is not enough. Certainly, ending the US-Israeli war on Iran emerged quickly as another specific demand within the broad anti-authoritarianism/anti-fascist movement, and there are other foreign policy positions on which most progressives would agree. The easy ones (to agree on—not necessarily to achieve!) would probably start with cutting the military budget, abolishing nuclear weapons, opposing US wars and military interventions, and working cooperatively with other countries on international crises including climate and global health.
But there is no clearly articulated set of principles, or of specific policy goals based on those principles, which represents a consensus position claimed by candidates and electeds, and upheld by the diverse progressive, left, and socialist activist constituencies across this country. We need to step up that process now, both in anticipation of the coming elections of this year and 2028, and to define what US foreign policy could or should look like in the future.
Understanding that official US positions will never completely match all that our movements fight for, what principles should undergird a progressive official US foreign policy? What follows here is an attempt to identify some of those principles, with a few examples of what they might look like in practice.
Foreign policy should be based on diplomacy, not the use or threat of military force.
That means strengthening real diplomacy rooted in a serious commitment to international law and multilateral treaties, diplomacy that aims to prevent and/or solve conflicts through genuine, good-faith negotiations. It means rejecting the use of “soft power” diplomacy designed merely to strengthen US domination and supremacy.
What might that look like in practice?
- End the Iran war, accepting that serious negotiations, not more force or more sanctions, will be required.
- Relatedly, prohibit any use of force against any country, including Iran, with whom the US is negotiating a ceasefire or peace treaty.
- Recognize and engage with China as an economic and diplomatic rival, and a potential partner in solving global crises, not a military threat.
- Recognize that while Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was clearly illegal, past US provocations, including NATO expansion, had raised tensions with Russia and made Ukraine a target for Moscow’s retaliation. Today the conflict must be approached with a far greater commitment to international diplomacy than we’ve seen so far.
- Begin rebuilding the foreign service with staff educated in and committed to using diplomacy and international law as real alternatives to war, not as “force multipliers” to achieve military goals. We must not see a return to earlier years of secretaries of state cheerleading for military force instead of diplomacy.
Foreign policy should end the US war-based economy that has shifted resources away from social needs—especially damaging the lives of poor and low-wealth people across this country—and has destroyed people, societies, and the environment around the world.
That means massive reductions in the military budget and redirecting hundreds of billions of dollars saved to jobs, health care, environmental justice, education, child and elder care, and other social needs across the US , and to increased humanitarian and development needs around the world, especially in countries devastated by past and curren US wars.
- Challenge congressional assumptions that more and bigger weapons and “the most lethal military” will somehow keep people in the US safe—they will not.
- Acknowledge that between the $1 trillion 2026 and proposed $1.6 trillion 2027 military budgets, the increase alone (about $600 billion) is more than twice the total military budget of China, ostensibly Washington’s biggest challenger.
- Move to cut the proposed 2027 military budget by at least half, making sure that the money saved goes to strengthening diplomacy, social needs at home, and support for impoverished, climate-threatened, and war-ravaged communities and countries around the world.
Foreign policy should reject the 250-year-old US search for regional and global hegemony and empire.
That means abandoning efforts towards global military control and “full spectrum dominance,” including by shutting the 750-800 military bases and other installations outside the United States designed for projection of military force.
Other progressive demands stemming from this principle could include:
- Lift all economic sanctions regimes affecting entire countries or peoples, or that impose extraterritorial secondary sanctions on other countries, and reject any new such sanctions (which are themselves an act of war).
- Stop all attacks on civilian boats in or near Venezuelan or Ecuadoran territorial waters based on unproven claims of drug violations. End the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” and acknowledge that even if any of those boats contained smuggled drugs, murdering their crews is completely illegal.
- Recognize Venezuela as a sovereign, not a vassal, state by ending the US seizure and withholding of Venezuela’s oil income and its control of Venezuela’s imports and overall economy, and return Venezuela’s right to solve its problems internally.
- Stop all threats of military attack or regime change against Cuba. Recognize how economic sanctions are creating enormous suffering on Cuba’s civilian population, end the “maximum pressure” campaign, and lift the trade embargo to allow free trade, tourism, cultural and people-to-people exchanges, and medical and health collaboration.
- Definitively end US territorial claims to Greenland, Canada, Panama, Gaza, Mexico, the Strait of Hormuz, the moon, or elsewhere.
- End the pressure on NATO to increase purchases of US weapons and escalate the militarization of Europe. Reduce NATO’s primacy in Europe in favor of diplomatic/human rights-focused multilateral organizations such as the Council of Europe and the OSCE.
- Officially end the Korean War with a lasting peace agreement to replace the 1953 Armistice.
Foreign policy should be rooted in the rule of law, rejecting all claims of US exceptionalism.
That means recognizing US accountability to international law, including joining the International Criminal Court as a full member and pledging to implement all decisions of both the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Related steps would include:
- Recognize Israel’s settler occupation of Palestinian territory, the existence and expansion of settlements, and the separate and unequal legal systems applied to Israeli Jews and Palestinians (including Palestinian citizens of Israel) in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem as completely illegal under international law. Reverse all US policies currently supporting the occupation, including ending all arms transfers, military aid, and efforts to integrate US and Israeli military forces and producers, as required under the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion and Provisional Ruling, and the related UN General Assembly resolution passed in 2024.
- Lift all sanctions imposed on ICC staff, UN experts, and others for their work at the ICC, and abandon all threats to undermine, weaken, or destroy the international courts.
- End the US pressure campaign against South Africa rooted in the country’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, including the exclusion of South Africa from participation in the G20, the denial of visas to South African officials, and US support for the false claim of “white genocide” in South Africa and its resulting privileging of white South Africans as the only people allowed to claim refugee status in the US.
- Stop violating customary international law and the UN Charter Article 2 (4), which prohibit the arrest of a sitting head of state, and release Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.
Foreign policy should acknowledge and implement US responsibility for reparations and repair for the lives of millions of people displaced and the thousands of communities destroyed by US actions (whether military, economic, or climate-related).
That means creating and implementing laws to guarantee legal, social, and financial support for communities and people to rebuild their lives at home, and to recognize, respect, and implement the internationally guaranteed rights of refugees and asylum-seekers to seek and find better lives inside the United States.
Related demands include:
- Stop detaining migrants in the US who are not convicted of a violent criminal offense, and allow them to live and work legally in the US while their immigration status cases go through the court system.
- Abolish ICE and end the collaboration between federal immigration enforcement authorities and local law enforcement agencies.
- Reinstate TPS protections including residency and work permits, ensure individual access to court hearings before TPS is withdrawn against anyone, and expand TPS to broader sectors of the global community.
- Recognize that rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including the right to speak and protest, apply equally to all people in the country, whether they are citizens or not.
- Ensure that migrants forced from their homes because of circumstances caused by US actions have full access to TPS or equivalent protections. This would include migrants from Haiti, Afghanistan, and Palestine, among others.
- Begin processes of investigation, apology, and reparations for US crimes, including but not limited to wartime massacres, in Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere.
- Be prepared with War Powers Resolutions, specific budget prohibitions, and other means to prevent future military interventions and wars being attempted by current and future administrations.
Foreign policy should embrace democracy and not interfere (openly or covertly) in people’s efforts to build real democracy around the world, and repudiate the claim of “promoting democracy” as a cover for military intervention.
That means rejecting all efforts towards regime change of governments who disagree with the US, and ending all campaigns using claims of “democratization” as an excuse to escalate militarism.
- Stop demands on other governments to spend more of their own money on military weapons and forces, which undermines democracy in those countries and does not make anyone safer.
- Remove Cuba from the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism” and move towards normalization of relations, including the repeal of all regulations aimed at extraterritorial enforcement of the embargo. Repeal the Helms-Burton Act to ensure a Congressional role in shaping new relationship with Cuba.
Foreign policy should recognize the obligations that come from being the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of humanity.
That means supporting multilateral institutions and creating new US institutions designed to supply urgent and long-term humanitarian aid, speed green energy transition, provide development support and more, while rejecting the hegemony-driven goals of earlier aid systems.
- Rebuild and re-fund USAID or a replacement institution designed to coordinate global assistance—humanitarian, emergency and development-based—at scale, with the sole goal of aiding people, not to achieve “soft power” for political or strategic goals.
- Challenge the politicization of aid distribution to ensure that reaching people in need remains the goal rather than strengthening particular allies, factions, or other groupings.
- Ensure that longstanding crisis areas, such as Sudan, Yemen, DRC, Haiti, Afghanistan, and others are included in access to US support regardless of political challenges inside.
- Provide political and economic support, to scale, for global projects under the control of multilateral and/or civil society organizations, designed to repair the environment and move towards environmental justice.
Foreign policy should aim to create new kinds of internationalism and global solidarity.
That means both creating multilateral institutions and coalitions, and providing support to civil society institutions (without imposing control over them) to address international crises including wars, endemic diseases, extreme inequality, and climate catastrophes (especially those caused or exacerbated by the United States).
Progressives should also support:
- Efforts towards complete nuclear disarmament, not just non-proliferation.
- Abiding by decisions of international courts and other institutions to guarantee universal human rights.
- Ensuring global access to existing and new vaccines, technologies, and more.
- Protecting and ensuring the rights of refugees and other migrants regardless of their point of origin.
- Committing to serious efforts to end fossil fuel dependency and repair the devastated environment.
Hopefully these principles can serve as a beginning reference point for what foreign policy could look like as more progressives, leftists, and socialists are elected to bring those new policy ideas to life in a much-changed—and far more open—political environment.
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How Progressives Can Lead the Dems Out of the Foreign-Policy Blob
What begins as opposition to the conventional Democratic approach to Israel could evolve into a broader challenge to the party’s establishment—and ultimately rescue Democrats from their disappointing foreign policy record.
Sep 19, 2026
For the past two decades, the Democratic Party has struggled to articulate a coherent foreign policy doctrine. From the Iraq War to the rise of China to the Russia-Ukraine war, Democrats have had little exciting to offer. Too often, they have converged with Republicans on militarism, occasionally tinging it with a dose of liberal internationalism in an effort—often fruitlessly—to demonstrate that they are different.
But that uninspiring foreign policy may finally be facing a serious reform movement in the wake of the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the Democratic establishment once again turns to militarism to defend the US-Israel alliance, insurgent progressives—once on the fringes of the Democratic Party—are gaining momentum to reverse that tradition. For all intents and purposes, what begins as opposition to the conventional Democratic approach to Israel could evolve into a broader challenge to the party’s establishment—and ultimately rescue Democrats from their disappointing foreign policy record.
Make no mistake: Democrats once knew how to do foreign policy. Those who succeeded in building a robust foreign-policy identity shared one important trait: They all connected their foreign-policy principles to their domestic agenda. In doing so, they created a coherent foreign-policy philosophy that could resonate with mainstream Democratic voters, who generally care more about domestic affairs than foreign policy.
Connecting Foreign Policy to the Domestic Agenda
The idealist Woodrow Wilson framed American entry into World War I and the creation of the League of Nations in terms of protecting American security and prosperity. Likewise, the pragmatist Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his recognition of the Soviet Union as part of a broader effort to advance American economic interests during the Great Depression. Jimmy Carter framed nuclear arms control with the Soviets as a means of reducing the economic burdens of the arms race and preserving resources for domestic priorities. A business-friendly Bill Clinton presented China’s accession to the World Trade Organization as an opportunity to expand American exports, create jobs, and strengthen the US economy.
That foreign-domestic policy nexus largely disappeared after 2004. When Democrats rallied behind John Kerry, they hoped that his military service in Vietnam and his vote authorizing the Iraq War would give him the credentials to challenge George W. Bush as an accredited commander in chief. But they overlooked a fundamental flaw: Kerry had an internally contradictory foreign-policy record. He supported several US military interventions while remaining committed to multilateralism. The result was that Kerry, the liberal hawk, alienated anti-war Democratic voters without giving hawkish voters a compelling reason to prefer him over Bush. More importantly, in their effort to portray Kerry as a strong grand strategist, Democrats failed to answer the question that mattered most to their own base: How would a Democratic president with an inclination toward Republican-style military intervention actually make Americans better off?
The Kerry puzzle seems to have haunted the Democratic foreign-policy agenda ever since, with occasional exceptions. Yes, Barack Obama had some notable foreign policy achievements, such as the Iran nuclear deal and the normalization of US-Cuba relations. And those achievements, pitched domestically either as a means of enhancing US national security or of expanding economic opportunities for Americans, suggested that he had the potential to reform, if not transform, the rigid Democratic foreign policy orthodoxy. But the unexpected rise of Donald Trump abruptly brought that process to a halt, shifting Democrats’ focus from opposing Republican foreign policy in general to opposing Trump, the person.
US primacy should not be the premise on which American foreign policy is built. Rather, it should be the American people.
Democrats’ obsession with Trump left his Democratic challengers—from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to Kamala Harris—stuck in the limbo of status-quo foreign policy. They became so eager to deliver an immediate and defining foreign-policy victory, in the hope of reassuring voters of their ability to handle global affairs, that they lost sight of a more fundamental task: developing a set of principles that the party could consistently defend rather than maintaining the status quo through piecemeal policies. Many of the top officials in the Biden administration, for instance, had been involved in negotiating the original Iran nuclear deal, which sought to advance cooperative internationalism, yet his administration showed little appetite for restoring it.
Nor did Biden make good on his promise of a foreign policy for the middle class. His administration proposed redirecting part of the defense budget toward technological workforce development to preserve America’s innovative edge and strengthen long-term readiness. Yet defense spending continued to grow throughout his presidency. Likewise, he promised to move away from promoting democracy through costly military interventions, but his administration repeatedly relied on military force abroad, including strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen without congressional authorization and US involvement in conflicts across multiple regions.
Biden epitomizes the conundrum confronting the Democratic foreign-policy establishment: It has one foot in the present to search for reform while the other remains firmly planted in the past. That dilemma helps explain why liberal hawks so often prefer ad hoc decisions to a systematic strategy for the long game. And the poignant yet unavoidable consequence is that Democrats still lack a robust foreign-policy identity, leaving their pursuit of national security credentials always several steps behind their Republican opponents.
Kamala Harris may have recognized this dilemma and attempted to break with it by making the bold move of picking progressive Tim Walz as her running mate. But putting aside Walz’s progressive domestic agenda, his realist approach to foreign policy rendered the Harris-Walz ticket, at most, slightly-left-of-center and unlikely to bring genuine change to the party’s foreign-policy outlook. Their broad alignment with Biden’s policy toward the Gaza conflict only reinforced the impression that they would remain tethered to a Democratic foreign-policy establishment operating within a bipartisan “Blob” whose worldviews have been monolithic.
That said, the only way for Democrats to escape this quagmire is to stop tinkering with—or, worse, simply repeating—some version of the tired conventional Democratic “wisdom.” That approach has proved ineffective at best and counterproductive at worst over the past two decades. What Democrats need is an outside-in reform. And as quixotic as it may sound, this is something only genuine progressives—the outsiders of the Democratic Party—can deliver.
The Outsider Agenda
Progressives, by nature, embody an egalitarian imagination. Their dissatisfaction with the US status quo can easily translate into opposition to the Democratic foreign-policy establishment’s hunger for “normalcy.” Because progressives view conflict as anchored in structural inequality at multiple levels, they seek to reshape the very inequality-based “normalcy” that gives rise to traditional security problems. Therefore, they possess a quality desperately needed for foreign-policy reform that is difficult to find within the Democratic establishment: a willingness to reconsider America’s changing place in the world increasingly defined by inequality.
The greatest challenge is the Democratic Party’s fixation on US military dominance, which progressives increasingly view as an important contributor to global inequality. In defending that dominance, the Democratic establishment reveals the gap between its ideological commitments and its actions. It champions cooperative internationalism as a means of reducing inequality yet repeatedly returns to militarism in ways that can perpetuate it. Given Hillary Clinton’s advocacy of a no-fly zone in Syria, Obama’s airstrikes against Libya, and Biden’s use of military force in Yemen, it doesn’t take a policy wonk to figure out how the next Democratic president would respond if a skirmish broke out in the South China Sea.
In stark contrast, progressives are dedicated to dismantling US military dominance and reconstructing American exceptionalism from within. Free from the establishment’s unbreakable ties to militarism, progressives avoid conflating “effective US foreign policy” with “military intervention”—as Democratic elites often do—thereby bringing domestic clarity to foreign policymaking.
Progressives, equipped with direction, determination, and time, will be the only viable counterforce capable of ultimately revitalizing a modern Democratic foreign-policy identity that actually speaks to Democratic voters.
This domestic clarity enables progressives to offer a clearer foreign policy vision than the establishment. By working toward social transformation at home, strengthening the democratic legitimacy of the American state, and reinforcing the moral legitimacy of its economy, the United States can increase its capability to marshal diplomatic pressure on behalf of allies around the world. By doing so, Democrats can reclaim the domestic-foreign nexus that Democratic grand strategists once wielded so effectively and present their voters with a foreign policy that speaks directly to their interests.
The most direct benefit of restoring that nexus is exactly what Democratic foreign policy needs: giving voters the ability to hold policymakers accountable for poor foreign policymaking. Due to the notoriously self-forgiving nature of the foreign-policy establishment, Democratic elites can often walk away scot-free despite the consequences of their policy advice. Biden’s behind-the-scenes hawkish advisers Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, and Brett McGurk were responsible, for instance, for the administration’s near-unqualified support for Israel. Yet they were never meaningfully held accountable for their advice. A foreign-policy agenda grounded in progressive accountability would give voters a more effective means of judging the consequences of such decisions.
And the result of this shift toward accountability would be a clearer answer to what Democrats should pursue in an era of intensifying geopolitical rivalry: not ex post facto militarism, but ex ante diplomacy. This progressive vision was on display in the remarks of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) on Taiwan at the Munich Security Conference this year. Despite her stumbles, Ocasio-Cortez captured an ethos fundamentally different from a militarism-based approach to US foreign policy: Rather than emphasizing how the United States would defend Taiwan and democracy through strength, as many centrist Democrats might, she emphasized the need to work toward ensuring that the United States and China “never get to that point.”
The Democratic establishment ridiculed that progressive vision and tried to keep it under control by stopping democratic socialist Bernie Sanders’ presidential bids in 2016 and 2020. Little did it know that the progressive spark Sanders ignited a decade ago would grow into a political cyclone in 2026, sweeping through one state after another in a string of electoral victories. From Melat Kiros and Abdul El-Sayed to Peggy Flanagan, progressive candidates have repeatedly defeated AIPAC-backed establishment figures and, in an ironic twist, have benefited politically from the warnings of Democratic elites. In a broader sense, this progressive wave is also reshaping the party’s stance on the litmus test of Israel. In July, over half of House Democrats voted to support cutting $3.3 billion in US aid to Israel, a shift that would have been difficult to imagine even five years ago.
Accountability Matters
Perhaps that is what a real progressive revolution is supposed to look like: not top-down reform, but a bottom-up revolt. The grassroots movement that has catapulted the left forward now gives progressives an opportunity to capitalize on their momentum and forcefully expose the uncomfortable elephant in the room that the Democratic foreign-policy establishment has long avoided: US primacy should not be the premise on which American foreign policy is built. Rather, it should be the American people.
Under pressure from the left, Democrats will have to rediscover that their foreign policy must ultimately remain answerable and vulnerable to the demands of mass politics. They will have to take seriously voters’ growing frustration with the longstanding shibboleths of American exceptionalism and US global leadership when those grand ambitions do little to make healthcare more accessible or everyday life more affordable. And they will also have to recognize that the rise of a progressive pro-Palestinian foreign policy is not simply a manifestation of youthful political naïveté but reflects a grassroots revolt against a US-led global order that many young Americans increasingly see as inseparable from the economic inequalities they experience at home.
The establishment might be strong, but its outdated militarist doctrine will not endure forever. And progressives, equipped with direction, determination, and time, will be the only viable counterforce capable of ultimately revitalizing a modern Democratic foreign-policy identity that actually speaks to Democratic voters. Such a foreign policy would put people before US primacy, diplomacy before militarism, human rights before geopolitical calculations, and the needs of ordinary Americans before bloated Pentagon budgets and forever wars.
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Gloria Steinem Never Lost Hope Or Purpose. Neither Can We.
Gloria didn’t believe that history’s pendulum automatically swings back on its own. It swings because people organize, build movements, and refuse to give up.
Sep 16, 2026
“How can I be of service?”
That was the phone message Gloria Steinem kept leaving at the office of the African National Congress Parliamentary Women’s Caucus in Cape Town, South Africa in 1997.
I had arrived in the country a year earlier, working as a young staffer for some of the first women elected to lead South Africa’s new democracy. When they asked if I wanted to call that American woman back, I jumped at the chance.
Soon Gloria was on her way to Cape Town, and I was assigned to pick her up at the airport.
As this global icon—something she hated to be called—stepped into my rusted car, the first thing I remember is asking her to keep her head near the window as exhaust crept in through a hole in the floor. (She didn’t flinch.)
When she turned to me, she was both generous and matter-of-fact: “How can I help?”
The road ahead will not be easy. It will require new leadership and new lessons. But we do know how to begin.
With that, I became one of countless women who would become part of Gloria’s ever-expanding circle. For the next three decades, a group of us would be invited into the colorful living room of her New York brownstone to share updates on our work and to inevitably be asked once again: “How can I help?”
After Gloria’s death, we—and millions of others—are left reflecting on the lessons of her life. How can we make sense of a time when our politics seem to be the very opposite of her life’s work?
She wouldn’t have allowed me to ponder that question for long.
In the dark days following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, I went to visit her. My group chats with women I’d spent my career working alongside were blowing up. My nieces called me, furious and worried. All of us were terrified and angry.
When I walked into that familiar yellow living room on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the grief I expected to find was nowhere in sight. “It’s okay, the pendulum is swinging one way now, but it will swing back. We will get through this.”
Along with wit and humor, Gloria’s most defining characteristic was her optimism. She called herself a “hope-a-holic.”
Years of bitter backlash to the feminist movement didn’t make her cynical, it made her hopeful. She had seen the other side of backlash: the progress that suddenly emerges after years where nothing seems easy.
She also understood intuitively that despair was a political weapon, and she refused to supply it.
Adversaries of the feminist movement would change over time. Whether it was Phyllis Schlafly or Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh or that guy at the end of the bar, they still seemed to have something in common. They were counting on us to feel hopeless and helpless. Their power depended on us questioning our own.
With Donald Trump as our bully-in-chief, that’s a lesson we should remember now. We’ve seen him before.
Gloria didn’t believe that history’s pendulum automatically swings back on its own. It swings because people organize, build movements, and refuse to give up.
Perhaps one of her most important lessons was also her most prescient. As we face the most misogynist administration in my lifetime, we also face the most racist, with relentless attacks on civil rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and the truth about US history. Gloria understood deeply that there could be no gender justice without racial justice. As she said in 2017, “If it’s White, it’s not feminism—by definition, it includes all women.”
She acted on that commitment by ensuring that Black women and women of color spoke with her side by side, including brilliant activists like Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Florynce “Flo” Kennedy. She was also canny and practical about her power as a white woman. She saw that she could reach other white women, get them into a room, and open a conversation about upending racism and sexism together.
Ever the organizer, Gloria was also deeply practical. Inviting another leader to speak by her side meant you could get twice the audience. Movements are built in crowded rooms.
Donald Trump’s entire project can be summed up in one word: division. He knows that sowing mistrust is key to consolidating power at the top. As long as we are fighting with each other, we won’t see how much we have in common.
It’s the exact opposite of the ethos that came to define Gloria’s worldview, which she often summed up as, “We are linked, not ranked.”
Her death comes just as a multiracial, multigenerational coalition is required to defeat authoritarianism. Gloria’s principled—and practical—approach to movement building is now a road map. The bigger the movement, the further and faster the pendulum will swing.
A decade ago, a reporter asked Gloria if she was ready to pass the torch to the next generation of activists.
“I’m not giving up my torch, thank you very much,” she replied. “I am using it to light other people’s torches.”
As we raise our own torches, we light up a world in immense crisis. The road ahead will not be easy. It will require new leadership and new lessons.
But we do know how to begin. Now it’s our turn to ask: “How can I help?”
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Cancel Thanksgiving? A Progressive Guide to Handling the Holidays
Matt Witt’s new book Make Holidays Your Own encourages creative rethinking of family gatherings and community practices on major holidays.
Sep 07, 2026
It’s a good thing that labor journalist and author Matt Witt was not running for governor of Wisconsin this year like Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong.
Democratic primary rivals and Republican opposition researchers would have badly distorted the message of Witt’s new book Make Holidays Your Own (Common Ground Press). It encourages creative rethinking of family gatherings and community practices on major holidays.
In their effort to discredit Hong, her foes in both parties created what The New York Times called a “social media kerfuffle” over old posts dissing Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween.
The outspoken state legislator and former restaurant owner from Madison lost her August 11 primary despite polling very strongly beforehand. Given the annual sense of foreboding that overtakes millions of Americans when tense family reunions draw near in late November, Hong’s past call for Thanksgiving to be “canceled”—because of its connection to “colonialism”—probably had its local fans.
Sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!
Under fire on the campaign trail, Hong did concede that bringing people together around a table can be “a good thing.” But, according to the Times, she also courted controversy by “questioning the value of Valentine’s Day and Christmas trees.” So not only Wisconsin turkey farmers, but gift card sellers and Christmas tree growers—if sufficiently miffed—might have voted instead for the moderate Democrat from Milwaukee, David Crowley, who won the primary.
And even if Hong had prevailed, according to the Times, she faced the challenge of winning over voters like John Wilson, a 61-year old pharmacist from Platteville, Wisconsin, who usually “leans Democratic.” However, when asked whether he favored Hong or US Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican running for governor, Wilson chose the latter because “you have to take people at their word” about serious matters like Thanksgiving.
Tiffany has strong views on holidays too; in 2021, he was one of 14 House members who voted against making Juneteenth Day a federal holiday, which won’t be popular with African-American voters statewide.
Just A Few Days Off
In the future, left-leaning candidates can avoid even momentarily distracting flaps like this by reading Matt Witt’s book—hopefully, before pulling the trigger on Twitter, in a moment of pique. The few paid days off that most Americans get to enjoy should not be cancel culture targets, when, as the author argues, they can be celebrated in ways “more historically accurate, meaningful, inclusive, and fun,”
In Make Holidays Your Own, Witt offers much creative advice about dealing with Turkey Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the Fourth of July, and eight others; his focus is on countering their crass commercialization, historical baggage, stultifying traditionalism, or exploitation by the right.
See, for example, the garish 250th birthday party staged on July 4 of this year in Washington, DC by the White House and its corporate funders. While no doubt critical of that, Abdul El-Sayed, the successful Democratic Senate primary winner in Michigan is definitely tip-toeing around the issue of fireworks on the Fourth.
As the Times notes, “He has deleted a number of videos and posts where he floated the idea of abandoning fireworks on Independence Day.” El-Sayed’s press spokesperson is now reminding voters that he “is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander.”
In other words, he’s an all-American guy! As Witt explains: “In every culture, holidays matter. They come with a message and symbols—with a story that reinforces a certain way of looking at society and passes on certain values to the next generation.” According to the author, what’s good about remaking holidays, in ways that send a different message, “is that you don’t have to convince everyone in your community who doesn’t agree. They can celebrate however they want and so can you.”
A Labor Day History Lesson
And sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!
As a former communications director for the United Mine Workers, Teamsters, and Service Employees International Union, the author delves, most informatively, into the political agenda behind the creation of Labor Day, as a counter to nascent working-class internationalism in the late 19th century.
Readers will learn that it was a corporate Democrat president—rather than any anti-union Republican—who first tried to erase the memory of May 1, as an international workers holiday born in the USA, and replace it with an end of summer day off out of step with the rest of the world.
To add insult to injury, May 1 then got officially rebranded, during the McCarthy era, as Law Day—although nobody, even corporate lawyers, get time off for that. Yet, thanks to multiple MAGA threats to the “rule of law” since President Donald Trump got reelected, more than 1,000 California bar members used their lunch hour to stage a first-time ever May Day-style protest in downtown San Francisco.)
As Witt recounts, massive demonstrations seeking shorter working hours occurred in Chicago and other US cities on May 1, 1886; when repeated on May Day four years later, workers in “dozens of countries in Europe and Latin America also held rallies and marches to support the eight-hour day demand.”
Thereafter, much to the alarm of “robber barons” here and abroad, May 1 protests became “an annual event for workers all around the world” and an expression of cross-border solidarity between labor radicals of varying stripes.
Forget May Day?
By 1896, however, a business-backed resident of the White House named Grover Cleveland needed a “sop to unions.” He had, after all, just called out federal troops to crush the Pullman strike organized by the American Railway Union, a pioneering alternative to craft unionism led by future Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs (who was jailed for his role in the strike).
At Cleveland’s request, Congress declared that workers should be given a day off, every year, on the first Monday in September so, as Witt notes, “Actions taken by US unions would not be coordinated with their counterparts in the rest of the world.”
“Today, Labor Day is a paid holiday for about 3 in 4 workers in the US. Ironically, the lowest paid workers are the least likely to have the day off with pay. That includes non-union workers in food service, retail, hotels, agriculture, delivery, and janitorial services, as well as part-time workers, or those whose companies claim are ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees.”
On the holiday counterprogramming front, the good news is that May Day (as noted above) has made a major comeback over the last two decades. There is also “the shining example of the transformation of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day as now observed in many cities and states.”
Thanks to the efforts of progressive veterans’ groups like Veterans for Peace and Common Defense, at least some commemorative events on Memorial Day and Veterans Day now focus on peace and justice issues, rather than uncritical celebration of past wars.
In his chapter on Martin Luther King Day, the author suggests a range of activities that “can be about the movement and not just the man.” (This is advice that venerators of Cesar Chavez are taking, but only belatedly, after recent revelations about his history of sexual abuse while president of the United Farm Workers.)
Witt reports that all proceeds from his book are going to Rethinking Schools, a “national nonprofit organization that supports social, economic, and environmental justice teaching at a time when the very idea of public education is under attack. Rethinking Schools’ materials have been used by tens of thousands of educators and have reached millions of students.”
Let’s hope that Make Holidays Your Own also gets into the hands of many educators who have to come up with fresh ideas for in-school celebrations of holidays, that cannot be cancelled even in blue states. But, of course, don’t want their personal creativity in the classroom (or pet peeves) unleashing a conservative backlash of the sort that did not help Hong.
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