A populist plan to beat the far-right and win back America
A three-pronged plan, with things that we all can do
Welcome to a Monday edition of Progress Report.
You’ve been hearing a lot from me over the past few days via email and live stream, and perhaps Notes and threads on the Substack app if you’re plugged in there, too. If you missed last night’s great conversation with former NY State official and Cuomo whistleblower Lindsey Boylan, don’t fret, because I’ll be sending the whole thing over later tonight, along with some shorter clips and such. The next live video interview will be later this week, so stay tuned!
With so much happening, I wanted to re-send a big, wider-lens piece that I initially published on Saturday. I didn’t give it the best subject line, so it got caught up in a fair amount of spam filters, and while I’d usually just take the L, this one feels important. So, let me know what you think after reading it, and I’ll be back with the video interview later tonight.
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Bernie was characteristically blunt: “Elon Musk is the best thing that’s happened to us in many, many years,” the senator from Vermont told us. “But only if we meet the moment.”
Musk is the epitome of everything Bernie Sanders opposes and personally detests. But as a movement leader, fighting against a global economic elite that so often operates in relative obscurity, having the world’s richest and most unlikeable man as the face of the war on government and working class people is an undeniable political gift; Musk is a perfect villain and rallying point.
Sanders, whose office I visited with colleagues this week, has been touring the country to enormous crowds, largely consisting of apolitical people radicalized by current events. The immediate project is largely preventing the full-on destruction of the government and oligarchical plunder — and publicizing when Republicans do things like overturn the cap on bank overdraft fees. But what remains undecided is an existential question: Then what?
This week in DC, I sprung it on influential lawmakers like Sen. Sanders and Rep. Maxwell Frost, Hill staffers, organizers, media experts, progressive professionals, and my colleagues. It’s a giant question, but the neoliberal political project is already hard at work trying to fill the void (created by neoliberal failure), so time is of the essence.
I’ve taken bits of those conversations (while respecting their privacy), along with my own observations and data, to come up with a broad three-pronged approach to winning back the future. All of this is predicated on a growing resistance to the Trump administration’s reign of terror, which remains the biggest immediate priority. Elements of these steps are achievable by individuals, while others will require both grassroots action and the leadership and resources of established organizations, so people can pick and choose which items fit their circumstances best.
1. Take Back the Culture
One way to understand how the two parties’ coalitions and public perceptions have shifted over the past decade is to imagine American politics as a typical high school classroom.
Once the party of the counterculture, Democrats right now are the equivalent of the teacher soberly lecturing about some niche topic at the front of the classroom, as well as the first few rows of eager teachers’ pets. Conservatives, meanwhile, are the class clowns and troublemakers who sit in the back, cracking jokes, whispering to bored classmates, passing notes, and yelling bullshit at random to frustrate the teachers and send lessons veering off track.
The teachers may be accomplished and the students at the front of the classroom may know all the right answers, but the goof-offs and troublemakers are more often than not going to own the classroom. The problem is never going to be solved with detention or kicking people out of class, either. This metaphor is getting pained, but to take it one more step, the most effective way of yanking back attention is meeting students where they are, engaging them, and being more entertaining than jerks in the back.
The far-right’s growing dominance of the internet and mass media, and with it American culture, is not a product of a deep and abiding national love for slashing social services, Christian evangelism, or Nazi ideology. Instead, the right has infiltrated culture by courting the disaffected through shared interests and affinities, seizing on niche outrages, empowering independent voices, and gaming the digital ecosystem and its algorithms.
I watched this happen up close while working in the entertainment industry. In 2012, incels in the video game space turned a bitter game developer’s false accusations against an ex into a full-blown “scandal” that became known as GamerGate, a mass reactionary attack on women who worked in video games. The flames were fanned by conservative outlets, which encouraged a misogynistic campaign waged by a horde of losers and radicalized them. Smack in the middle of the socially progressive Obama years, it was the first hint that young, internet-addled people were quietly becoming radicalized, especially the younger millennials and pre-teens that would become Gen Z.
The same kind of thing happened when the new Star Wars movies centered a young female Jedi as Luke Skywalker’s protege. YouTube vloggers built up huge audiences by ragging on the new trilogy, especially Rian Johnson’s excellent second installment, The Last Jedi, and their bad faith criticism was validated by Disney’s decision to go back to JJ Abrams, who wrote and directed a terrible finale. The right now regularly throws these kinds of idiotic tantrums to marginalize anything that does not prioritize straight white people, including last weekend’s live action Snow White adaptation.
Increasing cultural coverage on the right — as well as cultivation of apolitical small-time streamers and influencers — brought in new audiences, who stumbled upon these channels and were slowly poisoned like frogs in boiling water. It put the right in position to seize on the #MeToo revelations, turning a reckoning with the industry’s dark secrets to a toxic campaign that once again empowered bitter men and led to relentless attacks on women.
This has metastasized across interests and industries over the past decade, infecting sports, technology, and health and wellness. Right-wing media covers all of these things while also both propping up conservative niche streamers and rewarding apolitical broadcasters willing to play into their biases with guest appearances, investment, and firehoses of traffic.
Perhaps most importantly, the right gave a home to the anxiety and id of young men who felt alienated by the identity-driven pursuit of social justice on the left, which could feel like a firing squad to those who already felt alienated and not particularly privileged, regardless of what the zeitgeist told them. Politicians on the right have indulged them, and adopted memes and trends as their own. The White House turning the unfortunate trend of using ChatGPT to Ghibli-fy photos into a disgusting celebration of its immigration policies is but the latest example.
I wrote about this with more depth last year, including in this somewhat epic piece:
It’s almost impossible to spend more than a few minutes surfing social media or watching videos about weightlifting, combat sports, or many video games before being sucked into the vortex of the so-called manosphere. Websites like Barstool Sports mix fun and engaging sports coverage with often toxic commentary that veers to the right and frequently touches on political themes. Politics is as tribal as sports, and people tend to believe friends and trusted para-social figures, and the conversion to the right is often seamless and undetected.
Few influencers or media outlets from the left discuss pop culture or sports in any meaningful or enthusiastic way, and those that do are often on the Democratic blacklist for not walking the messaging line. This is an urgent problem, as political coverage has an inherently small and self-selecting audience, especially as the news continues to be a black hole of negativity and despair. No matter how compelling and well-done, the audience is going to shrink as people start to look for distractions that offer relief from feeling bad or critically thinking about policy all the time.
To reverse this effect, progressive media needs to branch out into coverage of sports, pop culture, and other hobbies and interests, and that coverage needs to engage with each subject in a straightforward, often nonpolitical way. Building the audience, gaining their trust, and opening them up to more empathetic and progressive perspectives on the major stories that come to pass.
With that in mind, I’m going to start covering some elements of pop culture and sports here at Progress Report, tapping my years of experience in those fields to secure streamed interviews with talent, host conversations with experts, and infuse difficult newsletters with some joy and entertainment. It will be a small slice of what we do, but it’s worth trying.
If there are TV shows, movies, sporting events, or other niches that you think deserve coverage, please let me know. And please also be patient if you aren’t interested in any of that stuff — just read the political coverage and know that the additional content will help to build our audience and further the political project.
2. Give People Things to Do
I had a conversation this week with a progressive Congressional staffer who simply couldn’t hide his exasperation. “We’re getting all these angry constituent calls and emails demanding that we do more [to stop Trump],” he relayed. “What should we be doing? What do people want?”
His boss has been consistent in speaking out against Trump and Musk’s fascistic rampage, and to his credit, this was a solicitation for advice, not defensive grumbling. I was grateful for the openness. Still, the conversation was a reminder of how top-down the party has become and the inherent caution with which even most good members operate, down to inventing convoluted potential narratives to justify inaction.
One example: He reasoned that Democrats couldn’t skip the president’s address to Congress, because if they weren’t there, it would appear as if everyone supported Donald Trump. It was genuinely confusing — there is no way anybody would think that Donald Trump has suddenly become universally beloved, and it was actually showing up and paying him deference that suggested bipartisan support.
Another person participating in the conversation offered a smart alternative: Democrats could have walked out mid-speech and joined a rally on the steps of the Capitol, rejecting Trump and embracing tens of thousands of cheering federal workers, activists, Medicaid recipients, and pissed off voters. This was greeted as a radical new idea, but getting people mobilized around concrete action is pivotal.
People who are scared and outraged are looking for things to do and places to channel that energy. Conservatives profit from loneliness and atomization, exploiting the decline in empathy through fear and grievance. That must be countered with building solidarity, which right now requires guidance and direction. Concrete actions taken by groups can provide a sense of purpose and empowerment while building up muscle memory for bigger fights.
In many states, the Democratic Party is either a wheezing husk or a useless collection of grifting consultants, so organizers have to build a permanent parallel infrastructure. Right now, this role is being filled by stalwarts like Indivisible, new leaderless groups like 50501, and organizations focused on Medicaid, climate, and LGBTQ+ rights.
These movements and groups should have at least one eye focused on local politics, whether downstream from the DOGE fallout or local government. Maybe it’s a statewide ballot initiative, or something even more local, like passing a school bond or winning a city council election. It could be affordable housing development or a tenants union fighting one bad landlord. Environmental cleanup initiatives are good ways of attracting people from across the political spectrum.
The more local you get, the more likely it is that coalitions can transcend partisanship and spark realignments. Local projects also offer something that can otherwise feel elusive: an opportunity to topple entrenched power and win meaningful victories. There’s no better feeling than winning a public campaign that leads to some kind of material improvement. Success leads to momentum and begets more success, leading to larger changes and growing movements.
3. Give People Something to Fight For
Conservative anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is famous for saying that his goal was to shrink the government to the point that it was small enough to drown in a bathtub, a long-term project that has involved purposeful degradation and piecemeal privatization of public services and functions. Ironically, by taking a chainsaw to eliminate so many essential benefits and services entirely, Musk has unwittingly managed to make the kind of affirmative case for government that Democrats have been unable — and in some cases, unwilling — to articulate for the past 45 years.
The timing couldn’t be better, because the only way to truly defeat Trumpism is to offer a compelling alternative to working and middle class voters. The public has come to see the Democratic Party as the elite defenders of the status quo, pearl-clutching technocrats who overpromise and under-deliver, prizing propriety and institutions over hardworking Americans. It isn’t a coincidence that the party’s ratings are in the toilet while hundreds of thousands of people are turning out to see Bernie Sanders, the independent who was twice thwarted by the Democratic establishment.
This isn’t going to be fixed by buying TV ads or messaging harder or going on podcasts. The only way to change the perception is to actually change, and the only way to keep people energized and engaged is to offer them a cohesive alternative vision for a drastically different future where they are valued and fairness prevails.
Politics is in some ways shifting from a right-left paradigm to a top-bottom one, defined by elite pro-business policy vs working class populism. Warren Gunnels, the populist economist who works for Sen. Sanders, suggested taking inspiration from an unlikely source: Newt Gingrich and his Contract With America.
Seeking to capitalize on Bill Clinton’s low approval ratings ahead of the 1994 midterm elections, Gingrich and Dick Armey took some plans from the Heritage Foundation and turned them into a comprehensive legislative platform for the Republican Party. Hundreds of the GOP’s sitting lawmakers and candidates pledged their commitment to the agenda during a landmark rally on the Capitol steps, thereby nationalizing the election around a cohesive ideology that fit the mood of the public.
Gunnels advised that progressive populists come up with something similar, based in part on FDR’s Four Freedoms, specifically the “freedom from want” that asserted economic security as a fundamental human right. Sanders has long been the foremost champion of Medicare for All, which would be at the top of any progressive populist Contract with America, as would a much higher minimum wage, which Gunnels suggested come in at $17 an hour. Gunnels also suggested that this agenda include free public college.
There were other suggestions, and personally I’d include a massive national housing initiative, aggressive worker protections and union rights, voting rights, corporate accountability, taxing the rich, and pro-family policies like universal childcare.
These are all populist ideas that solve problems, rearrange power structures, and together tell a story about a movement’s fundamental values. They are broad policies — there’s no need to get into the mechanisms for each — that demand more of the elite, provide help for working families, and recenter the economy around valuing and rewarding work over capital.
They also aren’t particularly new ideas; most of them were featured somewhere in recent Democratic Party platforms. But those platforms are just large jumbles of policies designed to satisfy various constituencies, not actual principles that Democrats have come together to pursue beyond piecemeal legislative efforts that mostly consisted of press conferences and a few interest groups rally.
The thought of getting all — or even most — of the party’s politicians and nominees to publicly pledge to this agenda, much less stand for a photo on the steps of the Capitol in support of those policies, is a bit far-fetched right now. The corporate-sponsored, anti-union center-left is trying to hijack the conversation by pushing its own agenda of deregulation and eschewing wealth redistribution, a message that has no audience beyond its patrons.
None of the policies listed above are absolute deal-breakers, either. The goal has to be a concerted shift in overarching approach and instincts. The public has to believe — and be correct to think — that Democrats (and aligned independents) are focused on fighting for working people, not donors or their own political comfort. That will inevitably be conveyed in part by some of those policies, but it’s also about taking the right side when the moment presents itself.
As I’ve written many times, this step will ultimately require vigorous primary challenges, support for independent candidates, and a willingness to topple party leaders who would rather keep their limited fiefdoms than see a populist overhaul of the country. Democratic leaders say the party’s brand is toxic. They’re correct, but they’re the ones poisoning it.
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