Henry Tonks’s thought-provoking essay sets out to correct the record and point toward a way forward for Democrats and liberals. He rejects the “liberal betrayal narrative” whereby growth-oriented members of the Democratic Party – the so-called Atari Democrats or New Democrats – perversely inaugurated a new age by embracing neoliberalism. Not so, argues Tonks. Rather than Reaganite Judases, these liberal Democrats were authentic heirs of the New Deal, updating it for the new millennium.
Having rescued these men, Tonks suggests contemporary Democrats might win on a platform based on their spiritual successors – the “Abundance” movement. He proposes an economically forward-looking, growth-oriented agenda, linked to the Democratic tradition, and targeted at the very communities that have shed their allegiance to the Democratic Party over the past four decades.
For all the merits of these points, his story of liberalism and Democrats is a strangely sealed one. In politics, as in war, the enemy gets a vote. Liberals and Democrats have been defined by the Right as much as they have defined themselves. Indeed, when they do define themselves, it is in terms set – or at least sharply constrained – by a conservative opposition. A growth agenda is great, but what Democrats really need is to win elections.
The Many Deaths of the Liberal Coalition
No political coalition is permanent. Even the durable New Deal coalition that undergirded mid-century liberalism and seemed as though it might last forever collapsed under its own contradictions. In retrospect, it had been under pressure for years. The story that Tonks tells emphasizes how since the late 1960s, “Democratic policymakers gradually adopted an attitude rebarbatively termed ‘compensate the losers’: redistribute the proceeds of growth to less fortunate communities rather than crafting ways to stimulate growth within such communities.” Unable to improve the pocketbooks and lives of working-class and middle-class constituents, the Democrats lost much of their appeal to these voters. This policy shift, Tonks adds, occurred alongside a change in internal party dynamics. The party of bosses, union men, and “good ole boys” became the party of the professional managerial class (PMC). Educated, liberal, and relative economic winners, the PMC alienated traditional voters as it lowered the policy horizons of the party.
These stories are true, but incomplete. Questions of culture and race massively shaped the transformation of the Democratic coalition in ways Tonks doesn’t account for. The Democratic Party hemorrhaged Southern white and white ethnic voters in the 1960s and 1970s, first to intermediary candidates like George Wallace and then to the Republican Party, which actively courted them. No doubt the reasons were in part economic, but they were also cultural and racial.
As did the rival coalition building of the unmentioned Republican Party and, with it, a decades-long conservative effort to demonize liberalism. Ever since Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans curbed aspects of the New Deal in the 1930s, right-wing strategists longed for true union of these unloved wings of their parties. Kevin Phillips documented in real-time how the new majority came to be a reality. In the South, white voters resented national Democrats’ stewardship of civil rights legislation and the desegregation of the South. As the memory of the Civil War – and the prohibition on voting for the Party of Lincoln – receded, an increasingly conservative Republican Party became a viable choice for Southern whites, first through Goldwater, then with Nixon and Reagan. At the same time, demographic shifts in the South and across the Southwest created an economically dynamic “Sunbelt” that brought population growth and political clout to regions with deep-seated anti-statist political cultures.
In Northern cities and suburbs, the expanded white middle class, built in part by New Deal legislation and later the GI Bill, balked at changes in liberalism – once again on class and racial grounds. Traditional Democratic voters noticed a shift in liberal legislative priorities in the Great Society program away from a financially oriented “quantitative liberalism” of the New Deal to a “qualitative liberalism” they sensed was targeted at minorities – often Blacks. This change occurred alongside massive and resentment-inducing programs of school desegregation that corrected racial injustices at the cost of transforming working-class white schools and communities (while leaving middle class enclaves less disturbed).
When these factors combined with a prolonged and painful period of inflation that shredded the economic certainties and assumptions of the post-war era, Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party began to seem appealing to many former Democrats.
Far from winning an internal struggle for party dominance, Black and PMC liberals were empowered because white working- and middle-class membership in the Democratic Party declined. Meanwhile, the Republican Party actively competed for these disgruntled voters.
The cultural changes wrought by these structural changes in the two major parties have created a PMC-dominated party alien to white “bitter clingers” – to use an abused and misunderstood phrase – not because Democratic policy doesn’t reach these voters but because they are culturally unintelligible. While, as Tonks notes, Biden made serious efforts to extend his economic policies to reach voters in conservative, rural counties, his successor, Kamala Harris, was most effectively eviscerated in the 2024 election by ads emphasizing transgender issues. The red state/blue state divide is ultimately a cultural one.
But this unintelligibility, though real, is exaggerated. In his 2025 book, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals), Kevin Schultz argues that mid-century liberalism did not die a natural death. It was assassinated in a three-way hit. Liberalism was challenged from the left, the right, and by minority critics. Left-wing critics charged liberalism was a compromisers’ ethos that affirmed capitalism and inequalities while fiddling around the edges. Black radicals slammed liberalism as overwhelmingly white and insufficiently transformative. Meliorist at best, liberalism, they argued, covertly reinforced white supremacy. Both of these criticisms are relevant for the intra-Democrat clash Tonks is referring to. But arguably the most influential anti-liberal gunman is the conservative critique depicting liberals as self-aggrandizing and self-interested fools. From William F. Buckley to Rush Limbaugh to Roger Ailes to Libs of TikTok, an enormous infotainment industry dedicated to criticizing – and, frankly, caricaturing – liberalism has flourished. Staggering levels of negative polarization against liberals are one of its major accomplishments.
These combined attacks mean that today Democrats’ unfavorability levels still outpace those of the GOP. For his part, Schultz thinks the term liberal is so compromised that it should be ditched. I am less convinced, but liberal Democrats face very real challenges in policy retail and implementation. Tonks’s reference to “malformed political communications, procedural bottlenecks, and self-inflicted errors in other policy arenas (notably, immigration and the Middle East)” drastically understates the hostile political, cultural, and media terrain in the precise places he believes Democrats need to push complex legislation. In some places, a liberal policy may simply be DOA.
The Future is Unwritten (and Charismatic)
Elections have consequences, but their deeper meanings are revealed only in retrospect. They are easily over-interpreted in the moment, as Tonks rightly notes regarding the “much-feted” Trumpian realignment. Based on current polling and off-year election results in New Jersey and Virginia, it seems likely to me that the mid-terms will be a bloodbath for Republican incumbents. Even if the elections will only paper over divisions within the Democratic Party, they will nonetheless be a significant platform for the party to reorient itself toward the 2028 election. Tonks argues something more than anti-Trump sentiment is needed and offers a pro-growth agenda of targeted deregulation and high-tech development. But unlike in Westminster-style democracies, where a party apparatus sets its policy manifesto, in the American system, electoral victories almost precede policy. Only a charismatic, electorally successful politician will win the opportunity to set the policy agenda.
American parties have always been big, ideologically diffuse tents. Despite conservative myth-making, this is still true of the Democrats: “I’m a member of no organized party,” the old riff goes. “I’m a Democrat.” Personally, I want to see more ideological diversity in both parties, rather than a unified agenda.
The way inter- and intra-party disputes are resolved is ultimately in the brutal arithmetic of elections, including, critically, party primaries. Technical policy questions are somewhat addressed in primary and general elections, but as we know they really test things like broad priorities, key platform themes, individual electability, and party messaging and mobilizing capability. In many respects these things are determined by the successful candidate, their personality, image, priorities, and the campaign they have built. A temporary party unity is then developed by coalitional maneuvering, such as the selection of a VP or campaign promises, and above all the need to beat the other guys.
Truly successful presidents bring both their party and the nation toward their ideological principles. Not every Democrat was a New Dealer in 1932; nor every Republican a Reaganite in 1980. Through their electoral strength as much as their ideological vision, each set the terms of political debate for years. God knows, Donald Trump has remade the GOP in his image, though the national half-life of Trumpism remains to be seen.
Of course, Tonks recognizes this and hopes for an “Abundance”-pilled Democrat to win the day and secure the kind of policy wins he thinks will set the party up for long-term strength. Personally, I have great fondness for “experts” – the technocrat, the retiring decision-maker, and the “wise men” of the mid-century consensus. But that is not what works in our current media and cultural regime. To emphasize them reinforces the very PMC alienation Tonks seeks to solve.
In one of the most fascinating recent books on American history, Molly Worthen traces the importance of charisma in American public life. Not charm or attractiveness, charisma connects people with leaders through potent narratives that bind them to a much larger story, something like heavenly or earthly salvation. It is “Yes We Can” and “Make America Great Again.” From FDR to Reagan to Obama, the most successful American politicians have married their personal vigor to the newest communications technology – radio, television, the internet – to bypass the opposition, and the gatekeeping of their own PMC advisors, and speak directly to a national narrative.
It may seem easy and absurd to say “be charismatic,” but electoral victories create the opportunity for charisma. Bill Clinton is remembered today as an embodiment of charisma, but his campaign was far rockier and his star far dimmer in 1992. A great deal of his charisma came from winning and exercising power. In other words, nothing succeeds like success.
Tonks is right that being anti-Trump is not enough, but a wonky policy agenda is not how to win an election, and a knock-down policy fight risks deepening party fissures at a key moment. Instead, you need narrative, unity, and broadly agreed upon aims. Policy particulars can be worked out later in the White House and Congress. One story that may work, I think, is the idea that American dream can be attainable again through growth, housing access, and a curb on the “exploiting” class, however defined. As the Abundance crowd underscore, Americans want vigor and competence in their leaders, and they want good economic indicators and low inflation. But growth is a feeling as much as a ticker crawl. Americans want a story that gives them and their lives meaning. Democrats need to be the ones to declare “it’s morning in America.”
Aged and infirm, Joe Biden was uniquely unable to turn political wins into charisma. Despite the efforts of his disastrous comms department (and some funny memes) Biden’s anti-charismatic presidency proved a disastrous misstep for the Democrats. But this won’t be true of all Democratic politicians. 2026 and 2028 will be platforms from which to build a new liberalism. Whoever this new liberal paladin may be, they will be demonized by the conservative media complex. Democrats need someone who can venture into the lion’s den and survive.
Tonks makes a valuable contribution in reviving a proud tradition of prosperity-oriented liberals as authentic heirs to the New Deal, rather than neoliberal compromisers. This intellectual work is essential for the governing that must follow future Democratic wins. But in America, policy fights rarely win elections. Elections win policy fights.
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