Liberalism Needs Salesmen
Nobody Buys What Doesn't Get Pitched
Klein: And look, you and I are not going to agree on a million things. My point is not to convert you to my politics. I’m not going to do that.
Rufo: You should try. I mean, why not? I’m trying to convert you.
That exchange comes from a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show where Klein is interviewing professional conservative shit starter Chris Rufo. I saw this quote pop up in my feed as an example of how milquetoast PMC liberalism has become, and while I think that’s a little unfair to Klein (it’s his podcast, trying to win all your guests over to your point of view would be both gauche and undermine the point of the show) it is nicely illustrative of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: no one is out there actively selling liberalism anymore1.
Getting Tired of Winning
No one trumpets liberalism anymore mostly because its triumph in the 20th century was so complete that for decades no one felt like they had to. Liberal governments were the ones that beat the Nazis and other assorted fascists and later won the Cold War against illiberal Marxism. For many years in American politics no mainstream party seriously contested the consensus that liberalism was awesome. Democrats and Republicans fought over policy differences but it was always under the umbrella of liberalism. Whether is was the avatar of the left FDR positioning massively expanding the social safety net as a freedom2 or the right’s champion Reagan cloaking nationalism in liberal rhetoric almost no major politician felt free to argue for policies outside the liberal Overton window. Liberalism became the air Americans breathed to such an extent that we forgot it could be otherwise.
But of course like all ideologies liberalism has failure modes. As readers of this blog know I love to think about political programs in terms of their weaknesses and failures when taken to extremes, and liberalism is not immune from that analysis. Extending the notion of free markets beyond national borders led to massive offshoring of manufacturing jobs which decimated the American heartland. Unshackling Big Finance gave us the disastrous 2008 Great Recession. On the left the transformation of liberal notions of equality and egalitarianism into illiberal notions of equity enforced via professional and personal excommunication killed free expression wherever it contradicted the new moral consensus. And of course there are long standing problems in American life that liberalism is ill suited to solving. Racial inequality is one, wealth inequality is another. That rapid changes to the structure of the American economy left huge swathes of the nation behind mired in despair and substance abuse wasn’t really seen as a problem for a liberal society in which individual achievement became the sole marker of personal worth. Fast forward to the present day and we find both of our major political parties at some stage of takeover by decidedly illiberal ideologies that promise solutions to these failures of liberalism. On the right we have MAGA as a sort of soft white Christian nationalism eschewing internationalism, economic globalism, equality before the law3, and other pillars of classical liberalism, while on the left we have a resurgence of genuine socialism combined with a radical Harrison Bergeron-esque approach to racial and queer equity. MAGA at this point is the GOP, though whether that death grip outlasts Trump remains to be seen, while the attempted DSA takeover of the Democratic Party is more nascent in electoral success if farther along in rhetorical power and popular perception of the party.
And liberalism finds itself bereft of champions. Not that there aren’t still a ton of American liberals out there. In fact almost all Americans’ personal politics contain some admixture of liberalism, whether they consider themselves a conservative or a Dem-lib. But liberals in politics got so used to liberalism as the dominant ideology that they’ve completely lost the muscle of publicly defending it. Seriously, who is out there making a positive case for why liberalism is good and why we need to return to it as a guiding principle of governance? Who is extolling the benefits of freedom?
Casting Bones
In the spirit of this essay as musing rather than prescription I’ll close with some thoughts about where a renewed defense of liberalism is most likely to come from. I see two potential sources: the Rubio right and the Abundance left.
The next big fight in GOP politics is most likely going to be the 2028 presidential primary in which the likeliest frontrunners will be JD Vance and Marco Rubio. Vance represents the continuance and even deepening of MAGA as a white Christian nationalist movement. Vance is hostile to free markets, international institutions, non-Christians of all stripes (ironically given his marital situation, but read his new book if you think I’m off base here), and generally speaking the interests of anyone who doesn’t fall into his notion of ‘heritage Americans’. Rubio on the other hand is much more a traditional Republican in his internationalism and respect for the rule of law. There are undoubtedly some Trump policies he’d continue like anti-DEI and strict border controls, but those are not necessarily in opposition with liberalism4. If Rubio is able to come out ahead and the MAGA wing that is mostly a Trump personality cult loses interest in politics altogether without their orange god emperor at the top of the ticket I do think the GOP could return to some semblance of sanity. Rubio would still have the burgeoning Neo Nazi wing of the party to deal with, but without a sympathetic president in place those people are likely to be re-marginalized within the party as a whole.
On the left it’s still too soon to tell if the liberal center-left can successfully push back against the rising far left. Whether they’re successful or not really hinges on three things: firstly and most simply, are they willing to get out there and loudly proclaim the benefits of freedom or will they let themselves get railroaded by shouting activists. I’ll admit, their record so far hasn’t been great on this one, but it’s also not 2022 anymore and I don’t think anyone in the center left has any illusions about the how much popular support the far left actually has5. That the party will have to come up with something other than being anti-Trump after he exits the stage gives me some hope here, since the #Resistance is largely made up of conventional politicians who will be able to focus their attention on beating back challengers in their own party rather than trying to preserve the republic with what little power they have.
Secondly, the center left needs to put together an actual agenda. I know what the DSA would try to do if they got into power. I hate most of it, but it’s an identifiable plan with a lot of narrative power. What’s the center left got? I have no idea. I’d like to see most of the abundance agenda adopted, but so far that hasn’t happened. Once again it’ll be important to watch closely what elected Dems (most of whom are center left) do once Trump is no longer around to suck up all the oxygen in the room. Trump being as bad as he is has allowed the Democratic policy platform to atrophy as opposing Putin on the Potomac took priority. Can the mainstream of the party find a voice and a spine again once Trump’s gone? It remains to be seen.
Thirdly, the center left has to deliver on whatever policy platform it ends up putting forward. If center left politicians can start leveraging government to build again, get away from ‘everyone gets a veto’ consensus worship, and show some positive results for their constituents they can build huge momentum against a left flank that often successfully paints them as feckless. Ironically you can see how this has worked in Mamdani’s NYC where his decidedly non-socialist reforms have started to rebuild some faith in local government. The hard part here is that this movement can’t start at the federal level, it has to start in deep blue states and municipalities where Democratic control hasn’t been challenged in decades and as such the party has grown complacent and more concerned with internecine power struggles than delivering for constituents. But even there you’re starting to see some green shoots with Newsom’s work to promote housing construction in California and mayors like Mamdani and SF’s Daniel Lurie delivering increased public security and services in high profile blue metros.
The Only Thing You’ve Got in this World is What You Can Sell
An underrated part of Donald Trump’s appeal is that he is in fact a terrific salesman. For all his weird non sequiturs and falsehoods he built his political movement by constructing compelling narratives of what was wrong with the country and why he was the guy to fix it. He never let received political wisdom get in the way of a good story. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a call to go out and do Trump-but-for-liberalism. That wouldn’t work and honestly we wouldn’t want it to6. But it is a call for those who’d like to see a return to liberalism on the centers right and left to get out there and sell it. Understand that you will not win by default. That’s not what Fukuyama meant by liberalism as the end of history7. You need a narrative and you need to persuade people that liberalism will be better for America and for them than what anyone else has on offer, socialists or nationalist reactionaries. I know this isn’t a muscle you’ve had to use in a minute, but you better start now or the tides of extremism will overwhelm you. And remember: politics is even more brutal than real estate. There are no steak knives on offer. First prize is power, second prize is go home with nothing. AIDA…fuck or walk8. Thanks for reading.
Necessary disclaimer to any discussion of liberalism: I’m using it in the classical sense of favoring freedom, individual rights, free expression, equality before the law, etc. not as a synonym for being on the American center left.
The famous ‘four freedoms’ speech.
They would argue with this of course, but a consistent through line of MAGA thought is the classic criticism of conservatism that they believe there are those the law binds but does not protect and those the law protects but does not bind. Case in point would be their constant apologetics for both J6 and the staggering corruption of the Trump administration.
In fact you can only have a meaningfully liberal state if it is in fact sovereign, and real borders are a piece of that.
It’s almost none. Trump’s 2024 victory drove that home.
Mostly because MAGA rests on a foundation of lies and appeals to the basest instincts of the electorate and that’s not how you want to win because in addition to being immoral it’s ultimately not very sustainable.
Has any statement in political science been more misinterpreted?
These are all Glengarry Glen Ross references for anyone too young or uncultured to know what I’m going on about.
Nailed it!
DEI, at its best, is compatible with classical liberalism (although one could quibble a bit depending on how one defines “equity”). At its worst, it is anathema to classical liberalism.
I’ve said this before; I’ll say this until I’m blue in the face. The Dems should be routing the GOP right now. The fact that they are not is on the Dems.
If the DSA would quit making B-roll for the GOP, things would be different. But people aren’t going to vote for the Dems if they out-weird the GOP. The moderate Dems need a pair of nads to stand up to the DSA Omnicause cancel-maniacs.
You have hit the nail on the head, Dog. Democrats have let Bernie and his acolytes talk shit about them, everyone who doesn’t agree is a corrupt corporate stooge, etc., without responding because they don’t want to irritate his base. The result is a deafening vacuum.