At New York, I wrote a post about Andrew Cuomo and the sort of faux-centrism I believe he represents–the week before the former governor went down to a shocking defeat in the New York Democratic mayoral primary. Maybe I was on to something….

There’s something very familiar to me in the air right now as some Democrats unhappy with the alleged leftist direction of their party aggressively brand themselves as “centrist.” I spent quite a few years, you see, associated directly or indirectly with 20th and early 21st-century Democratic centrism, eventually serving as policy director for the famous Clinton-adjacent Democratic Leadership Council. That organization finally closed its doors in 2011, mostly because its principal goal of making it possible for a Democrat to be elected president had been redundantly accomplished.

The DLC and the politicians associated with it regularly oscillated between two distinct impulses: (1) advancing a positive policy agenda rather than simply defending past progressive accomplishments, and (2) disassociating the Democratic Party from some of the more toxic policy and political habits of the left. Bill Clinton embodied both impulses in his 1992 campaign and subsequent presidency: promoting polices from national service to reinventing government to welfare reform that also helped position him as a “different kind of Democrat,” or as we liked to say, a “New Democrat.”

All along there were people in and around the DLC who weren’t all that interested in policy ideas, but were really into “pushing off the left” as some of us called it, or “hippie-punching” as some critics described it. Some of the hippie-punchers unsurprisingly wound up becoming Republicans or Republican-enabling deal-cutters, including longtime DLC chairman and 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman. In any event, the extremism of the 21st-century Republican Party, intensified by the ascendancy of Donald Trump, convinced my kind of DLC Democrats to declare an intraparty truce and work with progressives against the common foe.

Since Trump’s successful comeback in 2024, however, there’s a new era of Democratic intraparty tension clearly underway. And while efforts to bring back some sort of DLC-style institutional presence haven’t born fruit so far, we are definitely seeing the second coming of a breed of centrist Democratic politician who is as interested in “pushing off the left,” almost to the exclusion of any other purpose, as anyone in Clinton’s orbit. Indeed, two of today’s prime examples, Andrew Cuomo and Rahm Emanuel, made their bones as Clinton administration figures (the former as HUD secretary and the latter as a key White House staffer). As Ben Mathis-Lilley argues compellingly at Slate, both men embody what he calls centrist “identity politics,” based on positioning and intraparty conflict more than anything positive or tangible:

“[T]here is the tendency of well-to-do Democrats who work in law, finance, management, and the media to become captivated by a certain kind of pugnacious, business-friendly centrist—examples include Michael Bloomberg, Howard Schultz, and Rahm Emanuel. The Bloombergs and Emanuels win this audience—which includes numerous high-level donors and pundits—by taking shots at the left and extolling their own contrasting commitment to pragmatism and realism. Crucially, their hold on their elite base persists even if, in practice, they turn out to be inept candidates or incompetent managers with few practicable ideas. …

“And no one coasts on reputation for pugnacious realism, in U.S. politics, like Mario Cuomo’s son. Yes, he was forced into resigning in 2021 because a large number of women (including several who worked for him) said he had harassed or groped them; one of those gross interactions even happened on camera. … But let’s not forget that at that time, he was also being exposed for having lied repeatedly about COVID deaths in New York nursing homes and other aspects of his pandemic response. … Extensive reporting by New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister depicted a Cuomo administration that had almost no interest at all in what the actual consequences of its own policies would be, operating entirely as a vehicle for Cuomo’s spotlight craving and feuds with other political figures.”

Cuomo’s “not a lefty” political identity has reached its apotheosis in his current campaign for mayor of New York, in which he has managed to get himself into a virtual two-way race against a young Muslim democratic socialist who has been outspokenly hostile toward Israel’s war in Gaza. “I’m not Zohran Mamdani” appears to be Cuomo’s main message, aside from the personal “toughness” that is supposed to make him an effective battler against the Trump administration.

This last characteristic of latter-day belligerent centrists is key. There are certainly plenty of Democratic politicians who are decidedly not “of the left” — say, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, or for that matter, Joe Biden. But all of these centrist Democrats have more than a passing interest in policies as opposed to positioning, and also are committed to intraparty civility.

Cuomo and Emanuel, on the other hand, enjoy long-standing reputations for being — to use a technical term — assholes. Cuomo in particular has inspired loathing among a wide swath of associates and observers, regardless of party or ideology. In a Democratic Party longing desperately for someone to fight back against the terrifying second Trump administration, mere pugnacity can be advertised as a real asset.

Unfortunately, in the long run, brains matter as much as spine in politics. To effectively challenge the Trump administration, centrist Democrats need a fresh policy agenda and a reputation of competence, not just a willingness to fight. And within the Democratic Party, new ideas and a sense of camaraderie will do more for centrists than calling progressives names. Perhaps the most encouraging sign on the center-left is the emergence of the so-called “abundance agenda,” which combines some specific policy goals for Democrats with an acute but not unsympathetic analysis of how the left has managed to frustrate the ability of government to get things done. It’s interesting that one of the authors who has helped stimulate this debate, Marc Dunkelman (author of Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back), was once communications director for the DLC.

In the ongoing emergency of the Trump era, there’s nothing wrong with a robust intra–Democratic Party debate, even if that means an occasional sharp elbow. But those promoting a sort of centrist identity politics of conflict without substance would be well-advised to work harder to identify with the common values and goals that unite Democrats across the spectrum, and to make successful governance rather than ideological positioning the gold standard.

Sometimes you have to look a little deeper than the headlines to understand polls, and I did so at New York this week:

A new Reuters-Ipsos poll provides the unsurprising news that rank-and-file Democrats are displeased with their party’s leadership. The numbers are pretty stark:

“Some 62% of self-identified Democrats in the poll agreed with a statement that ‘the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people.’ Only 24% disagreed and the rest said they weren’t sure or didn’t answer.”

Some of the more specific complaints the poll identified are a little strange. “Just 17% of Democrats said allowing transgender people to compete in women and girls’ sports should be a priority, but 28% of Democrats think party leaders see it as such.” This is largely hallucinatory. With the arguable exception of those in Maine, who earlier this year fought with the Trump administration over the power to regulate their own school sports programs, most Democrats in the public eye have given this sub-issue (inflated into gigantic proportions by demagogic ads from the Trump campaign last year) a very wide berth. It’s not a great sign that Democrats are viewing their own party through the malevolent eyes of the opposition.

But beyond that problem, there’s a questionable tendency to assume that changing “the leadership” will address concerns that are really just the product of the party having lost all its power in Washington last November. And to some extent, the alleged “disconnect” between party and leadership is exaggerated by the lurid headlines about the poll. For example, “86% of Democrats said changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority, more than the 72% of those surveyed think party leaders make it a top concern.” That’s not a particularly large gap, and, in fact, there are virtually no Democrats in Congress who are not grinding away like cicadas on the message that Republicans are trying to cut taxes on “wealthy Americans and large corporations.”

The more fundamental question may be this: Who, exactly, are the “Democratic leaders” the rank and file wants to replace? It’s not an easy question to answer. I am reasonably confident that a vanishingly small percentage of Democrats could name the current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, despite some media stories about turmoil at the DNC since his election.

According to a recent Economist-YouGov survey, 36 percent of self-identified Democrats had no opinion of the “Democratic leader” closest to actual power in Washington, Hakeem Jeffries, who is very likely to become Speaker of the House in 2027. Of those who did have an opinion, 51 percent were favorable toward him and 13 percent were unfavorable, which doesn’t sound much like a mandate for “replacing” him. In the same poll, Jeffries’s Senate counterpart, Chuck Schumer, had a 48 percent favorable and 28 percent unfavorable rating among Democrats, which is surprisingly positive given the massive negative publicity he earned for botching a confrontation with Republicans over a stopgap spending bill in March. Indeed, the favorability ratios for every named Democrat in that poll are a lot better than you’d expect if the rank and file were really in a “throw the bums out” kind of mood: Bernie Sanders is at 82 percent favorable to 8 percent unfavorable; Pete Buttigieg is at 62 percent favorable to 9 percent unfavorable; Elizabeth Warren is at 67 percent favorable to 12 percent unfavorable; Cory Booker is at 56 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable; Gavin Newsom is at 56 percent favorable to 17 percent unfavorable; and Gretchen Whitmer is at 49 percent favorable to 11 percent unfavorable.

Democrats obviously don’t have a president to offer unquestioned leadership, but back in the day, losing presidential nominees were often called the “titular leader” of the party until the next nominee was named. Under that definition, the top “Democratic leader” right now is Kamala Harris. Democrats aren’t mad at her, either: Her favorability ratio per Economist-YouGov is a Bernie-esque 84 percent favorable to 10 percent unfavorable. Her 2024 running mate, Tim Walz, comes in at 65 percent favorable and 13 percent unfavorable.

These findings that aren’t consistent with any narrative of a party rank and file in revolt. The source of Democratic unhappiness, it’s reasonably clear, is less about party leaders and more about the party’s dramatic loss of power, even as Donald Trump has asserted the most massive expansion of totally partisan presidential power in U.S. history. No new set of leaders is going to fix that.

Barring a really nasty and divisive nomination contest, the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee will become the unquestioned leader of the party, at least until Election Day. Jeffries, as noted, could enormously raise his profile if Democrats flip the House in 2026, and midterm elections could create new stars. Other Democrats could have big moments like Cory Booker’s after his 26-hour speech deploring Trump’s agenda or Gavin Newsom’s during his toe-to-toe messaging fight with the administration over its assault on his state. But in the end, Democrats on the ground and in the trenches won’t be satisfied until their words can be backed up with real power.

 

Keeping up with the norms being violated by the second Trump administration is tough, but I did write about an important one this week at New York:

Donald Trump and Stephen Miller have an arithmetic problem with their mass-deportation initiative. They appear frantic to ramp up deportations. Miller reportedly chewed out ICE brass (“Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?”) on the numbers not long before the agency launched its fateful raids in Los Angeles. But at the same time, the administration has been getting major heat from certain industries — particularly agriculture and hospitality — that going after their workforces would be a really bad idea. Indeed, according to the New York Times, Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins lobbied her boss to ease up on farmworkers. Then, suddenly, Trump was expressing a change of heart on Truth Social. He wrote on June 12:

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”

This wasn’t just loose talk. While border czar Tom Homan denied that any policy change on deportation targeting was underway, ICE itself took the hint, as Axios reported:

“Tatum King, a senior ICE official, sent an email to agency officials nationwide, telling them to ‘please hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meatpacking plants), restaurants, and operating hotels.’”

So what’s the focus now? Trump made no bones about it in a Truth Social post on June 15:

“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities — And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports — And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”

There you have it: The president of the United States is very clearly telling his deportation shock troops to wage partisan war on cities that are the “Democrat Power Center,” based on the hallucinatory idea — a MAGA staple — that “Radical Left Democrats” are herding millions of undocumented workers to the polls to “cheat in Elections and grow the Welfare State.” It’s all a crock, but reflects a distinctly Trumpian mash-up of the “great replacement theory” and crime-wave myths. And the targeting of blue cities seems to have already taken place, Axios recently reported, especially in red states where state law-enforcement officials have encouraged maximum cooperation with ICE:

“Efforts to arrest and remove unauthorized immigrants appear most aggressive in five southern states with Democratic-leaning cities, while deeply red, rural states are seeing less activity, according to an Axios analysis. …

“[L]ocal law enforcement agencies in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia have been most cooperative with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through deals known as 287 (g) agreements. There are 629 such agreements now in place across the country. About 43% of them are in Florida, followed by 14% in Texas and 5% in Georgia.

“The GOP-led state governments in Florida, Texas and Virginia also have made a point of pushing local agencies to partner with federal agents, leading to a series of high-profile, mass raids in those states.”

In effect, Republican state administrations are working with the Feds to come down on Democratic-run cities to scourge immigrant populations. And in blue states like California, the mass deportations feel more like all-out partisan war. Certainly the federalization of National Guard units and planned deployment of Marines to Los Angeles — a place Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem called a “city of criminals” that the administration would “liberate” from its “socialist” elected leadership — signaled an armed takeover more than any sort of law-enforcement initiative. And now Trump is making the partisanship behind it all too explicit for anyone to miss or deny. While this overt politicization of mass deportation may please Trump’s MAGA base, it will likely erode his popularity more generally.

For now, Trump-friendly industries in Trump-friendly parts of the country need not worry so much, but all those radical-left hellholes better prepare for the onset of fire and ICE. After all, Stephen Miller has quotas to meet.

Vivek Ramaswamy is too young to remember George Wallace. I remember him well, which is why Ramaswamy’s snarky effort to compare Gavin Newsom to him drove me to a refutation at New York:

The last time tech bro turned politician Vivek Ramaswamy waded into American political history, he was touting Richard Nixon as the inspiration for his own foreign-policy thinking, so to speak. Unfortunately, he betrayed a pretty thorough misunderstanding of what Nixon actually did in office, not to mention somehow missing the Tricky One’s own role model, the liberal internationalist Woodrow Wilson.

Now the freshly minted candidate for governor of Ohio is at it again with an analogy aimed at Gavin Newsom that nicely illustrates the adage from This Is Spinal Tap that “there’s a fine line between clever and stupid.” He made this comparison on social media and on Fox News:

“I actually like Gavin Newsom as a person, but he won’t like this: there’s another Democrat Governor from U.S. history that he’s starting to resemble – George Wallace, the governor of Alabama who famously resisted the U.S. government’s efforts at desegregation. In 1963, JFK had to deputize the Alabama National Guard to get the job done, just like President Trump is doing now: – George Wallace fought against federal desegregation; Gavin Newsom now fights against federal deportations. – George Wallace wanted segregated cities; Gavin Newsom now wants for sanctuary cities. – George Wallace blocked school doors; Gavin Newsom blocks ICE vans. It’s the same playbook all over again: dodge the feds, rally the radicals, & do it in front of the cameras to pander to their base to carve out a lane for their presidential goals. And mark my words: Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions will end the same way George Wallace’s did – in the dustbins of history.”

Putting aside for a moment Ramaswamy’s dumb little quip about Newsom and George Wallace representing the same “Democrat governor playbook” (it would take all day simply to list the wild differences between these two men and the states and state parties they governed), his facile comparison of their stances toward the exercise of presidential power doesn’t bear any scrutiny at all. When George Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door” to block the enrollment of two Black students at the University of Alabama, he was defying a nine-year-old Supreme Court decision, an untold number of subsequent lower-court decisions, and ultimately the 14th Amendment, on which Brown v. Board of Education was based. He wasn’t opposing the means by which the federal government sought to impose desegregation, but desegregation itself, and had deployed his own law-enforcement assets not only to obstruct desegregation orders, but to oppress and violently assault peaceful civil-rights protesters. That’s why President John F. Kennedy was forced to either federalize the National Guard to integrate the University of Alabama or abandon desegregation efforts altogether.

By contrast, Newsom isn’t standing in any doors or “blocking ICE vans.” The deportation raids he has criticized (not stopped or in any way inhibited) are the product of a wildly improvised and deliberately provocative initiative by an administration that’s been in office for only a few months, not the sort of massive legal and moral edifice that gradually wore down Jim Crow. And speaking of morality, how about the chutzpah of Ramaswamy in comparing Trump’s mass-deportation plans to the civil-rights movement? Even if you favor Trump’s policies, they represent by even the friendliest accounting a distasteful plan of action to redress excessively lax immigration enforcement in the past, not some vindication of bedrock American principles. No one is going to build monuments to Tom Homan and Kristi Noem for busting up families and sending immigrants who were protected by law five minutes ago off to foreign prisons.

As he made clear in his speech last night, Newsom objects to Trump’s federalization of Guard units and planned deployment of Marines on grounds that they are unnecessary abrogations of state and local authority transparently designed to expand presidential authority as an end in itself. George Wallace made defiance of the federal government under either party’s leadership his trademark. John F. Kennedy wasn’t spitting insults at him as Trump is at Newsom; he and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, negotiated constantly behind the scenes to avoid the ultimate confrontation with Wallace. There’s been nothing like that from Trump, who has all but declared war on California and then sent in the troops to run Los Angeles.

Beyond all the specifics, you can’t help but wonder why the very name “George Wallace” doesn’t curdle in Ramaswamy’s mouth. If there is any 21st-century politician who has emulated the ideology, the tactics, the rallies, the media-baiting, the casual racism, and the sheer cruelty of George Wallace, it’s not Gavin Newsom but Donald Trump. I understand Vivek Ramaswamy isn’t old enough to remember Wallace and his proto-MAGA message and appeal, but I am, and there’s not much question that if the Fighting Little Judge of 1963 was reincarnated and placed on this Earth today, he’d be wearing a red hat and cheering Trump’s assaults on what he described as the “anarchists … the liberals and left wingers, the he who looks like a she” and the professors and newspapers that “looked down their nose at the average man on the street.”

This terrifying week in California had a high point after all, and I wrote about it at New York:

In the second Trump administration, Democrats have had trouble finding a focal point for their opposition to the 47th president’s riotous agenda. It’s significant that the most galvanizing moments for congressional Democrats have been the scattered and uncoordinated signage they displayed during Trump’s address to Congress in March and a 26-hour filibuster by Senator Cory Booker in April. Neither provided much in the way of clear and sustainable leadership. Grassroots protest activities have ramped up significantly since January as Team Trump began violating constitutional norms and threatening key public services almost hourly; the “Hands Off” protests in April were impressive. But the net effect is reflected in the contrast between next weekend’s massive show of military force in Washington to celebrate Trump’s birthday and the diffuse “No Kings” events around the country aiming to counteract it. The opposition needs a singular voice among the many voices of protest.

Trump’s assault on Los Angeles and California may have provided such a focal point in the unlikely figure of Gavin Newsom. Longtime observers of the two-term governor, former San Francisco mayor, and veteran chaser of spotlights know him to be a man who sees a future president of the United States in his bathroom mirror each morning. But despite his obvious brains and policy chops, he’s never quite overcome his reputation as someone whose ambition isn’t matched by the political skills needed to achieve them, a problem displayed most graphically when he provoked a 2021 recall election by violating his own pandemic rules to attend a party for a lobbyist at one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world.

Most recently, California’s budget problems have forced Newsom to reverse his state’s long march toward expansion of health care and other progressive initiatives. A month ago, he looked a lot like a former political star beginning to fade from sight.

All that was changed by the Trump administration’s decision to go nuclear on California with respect to a broad range of policy disputes. Even as the president threatened to eliminate all federal assistance to the state to punish it for its alleged “wokeness” and incompetence, ICE launched widespread raids in and near the heavily Latino city of Los Angeles, and then Trump poured gasoline on small protest fires by federalizing National Guard units and deploying U.S. Marines. For all the world, it looked like the federal government was declaring war on the Golden State and its governor, whom it threatened to arrest and jail.

Now Newsom is rising to the occasion, delivering the best opposition speech of Trump’s second term. In a Tuesday evening address, Newsom said that the president sending the military to Los Angeles is just the first step in a broader move toward authoritarianism.

“California may be first, but it clearly won’t end here,” Newsom said. “Other states are next. Democracy is next … the moment we’ve feared has arrived,” he added.

Newsom’s speech, carefully scripted and telepromptered (a practice he normally disdains) and broadcast nationally through multiple social-media outlets, was notable for its simple and calmly expressed indictment of the administration’s conduct in Los Angeles and its defense of the besieged city and state. He made a point of denouncing violence by protesters and accepting the need for immigration enforcement that properly targets dangerous criminals, while accusing the president of deliberately creating an unnecessary crisis in order to inflate his own power. Newsom said:

“We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

“That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.”

Then the governor pivoted to the national implications:

“If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

“Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control. …

“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

“This is about all of us. This is about you.”

Newsom provided a subtle but unmistakable contrast with those who have responded to Trump’s provocations and power grabs by seeking compromises, making concessions, or changing the subject, as CNN observed:

“Newsom, people familiar with his thinking say, wants California to hold the line after some universities and law firms facing White House pressure reached concession deals with the administration.

“’What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty. Your silence. To be complicit in this moment,’ Newsom said in remarks released Tuesday evening. ‘Do not give into him.’”

It’s possible Trump’s war on California won’t be front of mind in a week or a month, but it’s more likely he and his allies will continue to demonize a state that Trump mocks for its struggles with wildfires and a metropolis that DHS secretary Kristi Noem calls “a city of criminals.” Every day this continues, with or without the deployment of troops or more terror tactics from ICE, Trump makes the California governor nationally relevant and potentially presidential. And nobody has spent more time preparing for this moment than Gavin Newsom.