Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich sort out ” Which States Won — and Lost — Seats in the 2020 Census” at FiveThirtyEight:

On Monday afternoon, the U.S. Census Bureau announced how many seats each state will have in the U.S. House for the next 10 years — a once-in-a-decade process called reapportionment. In total, five states will gain one House seat each starting with the 2022 elections — and Texas even added two. But for every seat these states gained, another state had to lose one — and indeed, seven states lost one congressional district each.

Overall, the gains and losses following the 2020 census largely continue a pattern in recent decades whereby states in the Midwest and Northeast have lost seats because their population growth has stagnated, while states in the South and West have mostly gained seats because their populations have boomed. (There is one exception to this overarching trend: California actually lost ground for the first time in its history.)

Texas is on track to pick up 2 seats as a result of the census, while FL, NC, CO, OR and MT will each gain a seat. California, NY, IL, PA, OH, MI and WV each lost a seat. Worse, “As a result, we can now say with finality that Republicans will control the redrawing of 187 congressional districts (43 percent) — or 2.5 times as many as Democrats (who will redraw 75 districts, or 17 percent).” In adddition,

There are also 167 districts (38 percent) where neither party will enjoy exclusive control over redistricting (either because of independent commissions or split partisan control). And, of course, there are six districts (1 percent) that won’t need to be drawn at all (because they are at-large districts that cover their entire state).

But just because most of the states that are gaining seats are red and most of the states that are losing them are blue does not necessarily mean that reapportionment will help Republicans — in the House, at least.¹ That’s because many of the fastest-growing areas of red states are increasingly Democratic, so it matters a lot how the new districts will be drawn.

Skelley and Rakich also note, “The three most populous states to gain seats are Texas, Florida and North Carolina, and in each, Republicans will control the redistricting process. For the first time in decades, they won’t have to seek preclearance from the Justice Department either before implementing their maps thanks to the 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. That, in turn, could open the door for more extreme gerrymandering in these states, which historically disenfranchised voters of color. “

The share a summary of the emerging political demographics and redistricting process in each affected state, and conclude:

Of course, we’re a long way from knowing the full political ramifications of redistricting, as the 31 other states that didn’t lose or gain a seat and will have more than one representative will also have to redraw their congressional lines. We also don’t know how the 13 states we’ve examined here will draw their maps. But today’s announcement of the reapportionment numbers marks the first step toward knowing what the lay of the land will be ahead of the 2022 election.

All in all, it’s a tough redistricting map ahead for Democrats, which makes Biden’s success even more critical for Democratic prospects in the 2022 midterm elections.

The new paper by Micah English and Joshua L. Kalla, Racial Equality Frames and Public Policy Support: Survey Experimental Evidence, has gotten quite a lot of attention and deservedly so. Through a clever survey experiment, they show quite clearly that racial framing detracts from support for progressive policies relative to a class or even a neutral framing. This indicates that Democrats are marketing their policies poorly to the extent that they use racial framing to urge support for essentially race-neutral policies that will disproportionately benefit blacks and Latinos because they are disproportionately poor and disadvantaged. Therefore by increasingly relying on racial framing for progressive policies they are actually hurting the very constituencies (the black and Latino poor) they are so intent on helping.

The conclusion to the paper is worth quoting in full:

“As we have demonstrated, despite leftward shifts in public attitudes towards issues of racial equality, racial framing generally decreases support for progressive policies. Despite increasing awareness of racial inequities and a greater use of progressive race framing by Democratic elites, linking public policies to race is detrimental for support of those policies. Importantly, our results showed that Black Americans were just as swayed by the class frame as they were the race frame. Future research should investigate the causal mechanisms behind this.

As Mendelberg (2001, p. 187) detailed in her examination of racial appeals: “Democrats are correct in perceiving that their best interests lie in shifting the electoral agenda away from race and toward economic issues on which blacks and working class whites can agree. The Democrats can still pursue racially liberal policies while in office, and in fact it is in their interest to do so. By eroding racial inequality they will aid in bridging the racial divide that renders them so electorally vulnerable. But as many African Americans recognize, highlighting these efforts to white voters is likely to erode Democratic support among whites.”

It appears that this still holds true today. Democrats’ use of racial frames in describing their progressive policies may inadvertently make it harder for them to adopt public policies that will advance racial justice.”

Note particularly that the racial frame doesn’t even increase support among blacks for progressive policies. I would also note that it doesn’t matter why support among whites is decreased by a racial framing–that is, whether it’s “racial resentment” or the simple fact that when you’re highlighting how a policy will benefit a particular group, those not in the group will then tend to wonder what’s in it for them. The effect is the same: a racial framing does not work to increase support for progressive policies, it decreases it. Therefore, you shouldn’t do it.

A further note, discussed in the paper, is that the findings, while striking, are hardly a one-off. A wide range of studies and survey evidence has shown the same pattern. (See the graphic below for one of many examples, taken from a recent CAP poll.)

I will close by reiterating a principle I put forward in a recent post.

Just as Democrats should not advocate unpopular policies, they should not advocate popular policies in a way that makes them less popular.

This principle is more relevant than ever, given the current vogue for attaching the word “equity” to virtually everything the Democrats are advocating and frequently seeming to justify race-neutral and popular polices on the grounds that they would promote racial equity. As politics, this makes no sense. You are taking policies that have great appeal to persuadable voters–otherwise they would not be so popular–and framing them as equity policies, which will reduce their appeal to persuadable voters who have non-liberal views on racial issues.

This is a very bad idea. There are far more persuadables who support progressive economic positions but are non-woke on racial issues than there are those that are woke on racial issues but don’t support progressive economic positions. So framing race-neutral, popular Democratic economic programs as equity programs is a very poor tradeoff in support and electoral terms.

What more do you need to know?

In the wake of Earth Day, this year’s annual barrage of media coverage about environmental concerns focuses on climate change and energy policy reforms, encouraged by the White House, other political leaders and environmental activists. Addressing climate change and energy policy may well be the most critical priorities facing America and the world. But neither climate change or energy policy are the top environmental concern of Americans, according to recent polling data.

In “Water Pollution Remains Top Environmental Concern in U.S.” Megan Brenan writes at Gallup:

Of six environmental problems facing the U.S., Americans remain most worried about those that affect water quality. Majorities express “a great deal” of worry about the pollution of both drinking water (56%) and rivers, lakes and reservoirs (53%).

Fewer, though still substantial minorities ranging between 40% and 45%, express a great deal of concern about the loss of tropical rain forests, global warming or climate change, air pollution, and the extinction of plant and animal species. Although less than half of Americans register the highest level of worry about these four issues, broad majorities say they worry at least “a fair amount” about each.

“Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted March 1-15, 2021, with a random sample of 1,010 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.” With respect to partisan differences:

Majorities of Democrats, ranging from 51% to 69%, say they are worried a great deal about all six of the environmental threats, while no more than 40% of Republicans say the same. The party groups diverge the most in their concern about global warming, with 68% of Democrats and 14% of Republicans highly concerned.

Additionally, several other partisan views stand out:

• The pollution of drinking water is tied for the top worry among both Democrats and Republicans.
• Democrats worry as much about global warming/climate change as about polluted drinking water.
• Worry about the pollution of rivers, lakes and reservoirs ties with pollution of drinking water as the top concern for Republicans.

There have been persistent and sizable gaps in degrees of worry expressed by partisans over the past two decades. Since 2001, on average, the percentage of Democrats highly concerned about each of the six environmental threats has been more than 20 percentage points higher than that of Republicans.

Concerns about safe water are well-founded. At consumerreports.org, Emily Holden, Caty Enders, Niko Kommenda, and Vivian Ho, reporters for the Guardian, note that “America’s worst public water systems—those that have accrued more than 15 “violation points” for breaking standards over five years—serve more than 25 million Americans, the research shows….Latinos are disproportionately exposed, according to the Guardian’s review of more than 140,000 public water systems across the U.S. and county-level demographic data.” in 2019, 1,650 of Florida’s public water systems violated the EPA’s water quality standards, while 3,358 of Texas’s public water systems violated the EPA’s water quality standards in the same year, as did 4,010 of Pennsylvania’s public water systems.

Without diminishing the importance of air pollution, energy policy and climate change, Democrats would be wise to make sure that a hefty share of infrastructure projects be directed to cleaning up water pollution and upgrading water facilities where it is most needed — especially in the swing districts and states.

“Nationally, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021 (HR1280) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in February….Among other provisions, the bill works to end racial and religious profiling in law enforcement, bans chokeholds and no-knock warrants at the federal level, limits the transfer of military equipment to local police departments, requires body cameras, calls for more training and allows for more prosecution of officers who violate policies….HR1280 passed the House 220 to 212 on March 3. It has been received in the Senate, but has yet to be debated or voted on….In Wisconsin, State Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, a Milwaukee Democrat, introduced Assembly Bill 186. The legislation calls for an end to “qualified immunity” for police officers. Qualified immunity limits officers liability in civil cases.” — from “George Floyd’s death prompts calls for police reform in America, Wisconsin” by Tom Durian at WTMJ-TV.

“Tennessee lawmakers are considering a new police reform bill that would require law enforcement agencies to create use of force policies. The bill passed the Senate and now moves to the House….Senate Bill 1380 prohibits officers from using a chokehold and issuing no-knock warrants….If the bill is passed agencies must also develop policies on discharging firearms at or from a moving vehicle….A reporting system must also be developed under this proposal.” — from “Tennessee lawmakers consider new police reform bill” by WMC5 -TV.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

How Much Has Gerrymandering Contributed to Polarization?

Less than you think. A treasure trove of data has just been released by Cook Political Report on the partisan lean of states and congressional districts, with a lot fantastic maps, tables and other graphics. Among their findings is the following:

“It’s become fashionable to blame gerrymandering for polarization and Congress’s ills. In truth, redistricting is only responsible for a fraction of the decimation of swing seats over the past few decades. The bigger factor? Voters’ self-sorting.

In many minimally altered districts, the electorate has simply become much more homogeneous. For example, the boundaries of West Virginia’s 2nd CD have barely changed since 1997, but its PVI score has shifted from EVEN to R+20 as its voters have moved away from national Democrats. Likewise, Albuquerque’s migration to the left has bumped the PVI score of New Mexico’s 1st CD from R+1 to D+9.

The Cook PVI illustrates how voters’ natural geographical sorting from election to election, much more than redistricting and gerrymandering, has driven the polarization of districts over the last two decades. Our 12 unique sets of PVI scores over the past 25 years give us a powerful tool to isolate and quantify the impacts of sorting and redistricting on the makeup of House districts.

We’ve released new PVI scores in seven odd-numbered years following presidential elections: 1997, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021. We’ve also recalculated scores in five even-numbered years following redistricting: 2002 (after the 2000 census), 2004 (after mid-decade redistricting in Texas), 2012 (after the 2010 census), 2016 (after new court-ordered maps in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia) and 2020 (after new court-ordered maps in North Carolina and Pennsylvania).

On balance, redistricting wasn’t as much of a factor in the House’s polarization as the most vocal opponents of gerrymandering might think. Of the net 86 “swing seats” that have vanished since 1997, 81 percent of the decline has resulted from areas trending redder or bluer from election to election, while only 19 percent of the decline has resulted from changes to district boundaries.”

In “Republicans are in a messy divorce with big business. Democrats could benefit: As corporations flee the Republican Party, liberals should welcome them into the Democratic coalition – with conditions,” Andrew Gawthorpe writes at The Guardian:

It is premature to predict a wholesale collapse of the Republican party’s alliance with big business. But the events of recent years present an enormous opportunity for Democrats to make political inroads. In 2020, the counties won by Joe Biden produced a whopping 71% of US GDP, compared with only 29% in the counties which voted for Donald Trump – a gap which is 14 points higher than in 2016. Democrats also increasingly represent the more educated voters who corporate America covets as consumers and employees, and who have fled the Trumpified Republican party.

Democrats also represent the values and competence which American businesses – and the workers who depend on them – need to thrive. Trump’s plutocratic tax cuts and shamelessness in gutting the regulatory state might have provided a sugar rush to many businesses, but his woeful handling of the pandemic and impulsive trade wars harmed them. The paranoid, reality-denying, cultish Republican party of today cannot be trusted to elevate competent figures into key political and policymaking positions. As Trump demonstrated, the costs of having a clown in charge can generally be tolerated while the economy is thundering along in normal times – but they become catastrophic when a serious challenge arises.

Democrats, on the other hand, don’t just represent a steady hand in a crisis. They are also advancing plans for infrastructure, increased R&D spending and a green energy transition which are all necessary to the future competitiveness of the American economy. Such plans involve winners and losers, but overall they represent an enormous investment in the economy which can solidify the party’s appeal to corporations, employees and voters.

Republicans are in a race with the clock. They have plased a big bet that white working-class anger  towards Democrats alone will give them the edge they need to take back majorities in the House and Senate in 2022. Meanwhile, however, Biden is making all of the right moves that can actually benefit working-class voters, win corporate support and improve the Democrats’ image as the “recovery party.”

It won’t be a cakewalk for Dems, as Thomas B. Edsall writes in his New York Times column:

Finally, for Democrats, the leftward shift of business is a mixed blessing.

On the plus side, Democrats gain an ally in pressing a liberal agenda on social and racial issues.

On the downside, the perception of the party as allied with corporate interests may take root and Democratic officials are very likely to face pressure to make concessions to their new allies on fundamental economic policies — bad for the party, in my view, and bad for the country.

But Gawthorpe sees a more optimistic outcome, if Democrats seize the opportunity:

Progressive Democrats are right to be wary of calls for the party to identify itself as pro-business. And it’s absolutely right that Democrats seek to reform capitalism at the same time that they embrace it. But Republican tensions with big business give Democrats exactly what they need to accomplish that – leverage. Faced with the alternative, groups like the Chamber of Commerce have proven more open to Democratic proposals like raising the minimum wage than under previous administrations. Their support makes such policies easier to pass and more likely to be enduring.

Something even more important is at stake. For decades, corporate America has been a key pillar in the Republican coalition. That pillar is starting to crack, providing an opportunity for Democrats to weaken a dangerously extremist party which poses an existential threat to American democracy. As big business flees the wreckage of the Republican party, the best thing to do for the future of the country is welcome it into the Democratic coalition – with conditions.

If Biden keeps his current trajectory in the polls and the economy keeps improving, it will be hard for swing voters to deny that only one party offers a credible vision and policies for steady progress, while the other continues to marinate in anger and resentment.

It’s not exactly a hot flash that the GOP hopes to secure a permanent majority of white working-class voters, who are about 45 percent of America’s electorate, and that they have done well with this key constituency since 2016. But for Democratic oppo researchers who like details, Susan Davis has them in her article, “Top Republicans Work To Rebrand GOP As Party Of Working Class” at npr.org. As Davis writes,

A growing number of working-class voters were drawn to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and now top Republicans are searching for ways to keep those voters in the fold without Trump on the ballot.

“All of the statistics and polling coming out of the 2020 election show that Donald Trump did better with those voters across the board than any Republican has in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told NPR. “And if Republicans want to be successful as a party, win the majority in 2022, win back the White House in 2024, I think we have to learn lessons that Donald Trump taught us and how to appeal to these voters.”

Since 2010, the most significant growth in the Republican coalition has been white voters without a college degree — an imperfect but widely used metric to quantify the working-class voting bloc — along with some marginal growth among similarly educated Black and Hispanic voters. Banks believes the only winning path forward for the GOP is to reimagine itself permanently as the party of working-class America.

Banks is the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, a conservative faction in the House long rooted in small government, low taxes and social conservatism, and he recently sent a six-page memo to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., making his case. For Banks, it means tougher immigration laws and cracking down on China, Big Tech and, perhaps most provocatively for the GOP, corporate America.

“For too long, the Republican Party fed into the narrative and the perception that the Republican Party was the party of big business or the party of Wall Street,” Banks said.

Davis shares the entire, 6-page GOP memo from Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Comittee to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In the memo, entitled “Cementing the GOP as the Working-Class Party.” Davis quotes John Russo, who has contributed to The Democratic Strategist:

“I think the claim that says the Republican Party is the party of the working class is at best, insincere, and more likely, political misdirection and rebranding exercises,” said John Russo, a visiting scholar at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University and a co-editor of the publication Working-Class Perspectives.

The working-class vote is complicated and too often confused with whiteness when about 40% of the working-class vote is people of color, Russo said. Their support also didn’t cut overwhelmingly toward Republicans in 2020. Biden still won a majority of voters who earn less than $50,000 year, while Trump won a majority of voters who earn over $100,000 a year.

Russo said about one-third of working-class voters are considered persuadable in elections, and it’s never reliable whether cultural or economic forces will drive their vote. “The working class, like all of us, carry multiple identities, race, class, gender, religious, geographic, and people may vote different parts of their identity as situations and moments change in their lives.”

Davis concludes, “The battle for the working class is even more urgent for the two parties because it’s a growing bloc of voters. Since the 2008 financial crisis, Russo said, more middle-class people have slid economically backward and are experiencing what he calls “the fragility of working-class life.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Andy Levison at The Democratic Strategist takes a look at the latest Democracy Corps memo on “What Will Trump Loyalists’ Sensed Powerlessness Mean For Politics?“and considers how moderate Democrats can leverage the situation to improve Democratic prospects. Important stuff. As I have frequently noted, the ostentatiously progressive Democrats get the ink but the Democrats’ near-term fate depends much more on how moderate Democrats fare in coming elections.

“While it is almost impossible for many Democrats to seriously imagine that any white Americans could be genuinely afraid of this result, there is no question that it is felt by many white Republicans with complete sincerity. While Democrats envision a progressive future America as being an exciting, culturally and ethnically diverse, multiracial country in which there is general tolerance for diversity, white working class and small town people imagine an elitist society in which they have no place. To understand how this vision can seem entirely plausible, one has only to consider how rarely small town life or manual labor are portrayed positively in TV commercials and other media as part of the golden future that lies ahead. In slick advertisements and magazine spreads “the future” always looks like a world of gleaming office towers, bright young people in bustling urban centers and “country” as a place that people drive to in late model SUVs in order to go rock climbing or mountain biking.

The political implication of this is that moderate Democrats in Red State districts must very sincerely reassure Republicans that they genuinely value and respect the America of small towns, manual labor and the cultural traditions of that world and do not think it all an obsolete relic that should disappear. Moderate Democrats must make clear that the Democratic vision is for mutual tolerance and respect for different kinds of communities and not the ascendency of one group or community over another.

A related fact that emerges from the research is that many Republicans are seriously and deeply disturbed by what seems to them a Democratic indifference and even tolerance for social chaos. This extends across a wide range of social problems – from crime to urban decay to homeless vagabonds, illegal immigrants and failing schools. For Republicans, the common thread in all these problems is a Democratic failure to insist that rules should be followed and law and order firmly upheld.

The most powerful issue in 2020 was the specter of urban riots whose importance the GOP vastly exaggerated until many Republicans were sincerely convinced that it was totally out of control….Democrats must draw a clear line regarding what they view as genuinely unacceptable violations of social order. Among progressives there is tendency to resist endorsing slogans like “law and order” because they can sound like coded appeals to racial prejudice. But carried to an extreme this is profoundly counterproductive. Democratic voters do not actually support rioting of the type in which the Antifa protesters engaged in last year or passively accept street crime and other urban lawlessness. Democrats can be tough on riots and crime and actually win support from African-Americans and Latinos who drifted notably toward the Republicans in significant measure because in 2020 they also fear and reject chaos as much as whites….
Moderate Democrats will also have the opportunity to make inroads into the 30% who are somewhat or strongly opposed to him.

The Democracy Corps report says the following about this group: About 30 percent of Republicans are [either] non-Trump conservatives [or] the ideologically and religiously moderate —with the latter forming half of this bloc that vocally opposes Trump. …they are now much clearer where they differ with Trump and much more willing to express it, even in a room full of Trump loyalists. Trump’s CPAC speech — “that’s what I hate” says one. They called out the “nut jobs” and conspiracy theorists. They don’t understand their fellow Republican’s opposition to masks and health measures. They don’t think the 2nd Amendment is sacred, oppose the display of weapons in Michigan, and want to regulate guns. When others said they appreciated what the Proud Boys did, they called them out as “not patriots.” They seemed open to a much more expansive role for government.

This is encouraging but it should not lead to misperceiving them as fully in agreement with moderates or liberals:

They do share with other Republicans an aversion to BLM and cancel culture; they too are looking for more law and order and seem uncomfortable with whites being on the defensive. They agreed that the elite media ignored the violence in the cities.

What this clearly indicates is that the same tactics that can reassure or partially neutralize the opposition of the Trump loyalists can also present an attractive alternative for these voters….

[M]oderate Democrats must recognize that they have to pre-empt the inevitable Republican distortions of their views by very clearly drawing certain “lines in the sand” about their firm opposition to rioting, crime, and allowing demands for “political correctness” to essentially require that average Americans completely adopt the language and culture of the university or face censure, contempt and condemnation.

A position of this kind will not only resonate with the 30% of non-Trumpist Republicans but will also “lower the temperature” of the Trumpist Republicans themselves and convince them that the elections of 2022 and 2024 are not apocalyptic battles against evil in which the future itself is literally at stake. To the extent that this can be achieved, it will reduce the turnout of low frequency GOP voters and enhance the likelihood of Democratic victories.”

Read all of Levison’s analysis and the original DCorps memo.

The following article by Peter Juul and Brian Katulis is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

As we’ve written before here at The Liberal Patriot, the center-left needs a new intellectual infrastructure to better disseminate its core principles and resist illiberal politics from all quarters. An important part of that effort involves building new sources of support that can yoke practical policies to broader principles. In other words, liberals need a new set of institutions, programs, and individuals that can tell a compelling story about their principles, politics, and policies.

Right now, however, this narrative infrastructure doesn’t exist – and it shows. The Biden administration has gotten off to a strong start on a number of fronts, from pandemic relief and economic rebuilding to pragmatic foreign policy decisions. But it’s struggled to tie its actions together in a coherent story that it can tell the American people and the world.

“Build back better” and “a foreign policy for the middle class” are slogans for a very ambitious and possibly historic policy agenda – one that could transform the country for the better. But don’t be mistaken: these headlines and the policy components don’t yet constitute a narrative, a story that connects with ordinary Americans and instills a sense of national purpose. As things stand, they remain skeletal notions, and the Biden domestic and foreign policy teams have yet to flesh them out in many ways.

Take two recent speeches by Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Antony Blinken – both lay out a number of good policy ideas but don’t go the extra mile and connect them to a persuasive political narrative. In her remarks on international economic policy, for instance, Yellen made important points about the need to help low-income nations vaccinate themselves and enact a global minimum corporate tax rate. But much of her speech remained standard technocratic boilerplate that could have been delivered at any point over the past thirty years without much alteration. That’s a missed opportunity on the narrative front given the historic, transformative times we’re living in right now.

Similarly, Secretary of State Blinken’s remarks on appointing former USAID director Gayle Smith as international COVID response czar put forward a number of compelling arguments. In language reminiscent of airline pre-flight safety notices to secure one’s own oxygen mask before helping others, Blinken noted that the United States rightly focused on beating COVID-19 at home before helping others do the same. But he also made the case that Americans wouldn’t be safe from COVID-19 or recover economically until the pandemic was beaten worldwide.

Blinken’s speech was cogent and competent, which in and of itself a marked improvement from most of what America saw on the foreign policy front during the previous administration. But like Yellin’s speech, it was not connected to a persuasive political narrative – one that helps move to the coming post-COVID recovery phase. The main challenge is that the story told is incomplete – it’s like a baseball pitcher on the mound who winds up and throws but doesn’t follow through completely. The ball is less likely to hit the glove in the strike zone.

This lack of a convincing center-left story results from a variety of causes, but it’s fundamentally rooted in the much broader collapse of liberal intellectual infrastructure in recent decades.

This collapse has 4 components:

1. Outsourcing narrative-building to academics, activists, and political journalists.

After the tumult of the 1960s, liberals in and around the Democratic Party outsourced the vital task of narrative-building to a random assortment of activists, academics, and political journalists. Anti-war activists, for instance, issue empty calls to “end endless wars,” while unpopular and unwise proposals to defund the police originated with small, unrepresentative far-left activist groups. When these parties are interested in constructing narratives, they’re likely to tell bleak and pessimistic stories about America itself – such as the factually-challenged 1619 Project published and heavily promoted by the New York Times. For their part, many politically-minded academics have spent the past many decades conjuring up what the late philosopher Richard Rorty called “dreams not of political reforms but of inexplicable, magical transformations” of a fundamentally corrupt society in thrall to mystical “preternatural forces.” To be clear, voices from a diverse range of experts and activists should be part of the mix when it comes to building an inclusive nationalism. But to succeed in building a narrative, the North Star should be about painting a hopeful vision of the future, rather than getting stuck in the current moment or wallowing in the past.

2. Positioning through polling rather than staking out clear positions based on ideas and values linked to a story.

Starting in the 1970s, moreover, politicians themselves turned to political consultants and pollsters rather than intellectuals and wordsmiths to shape and guide their policies. Since its advent, modern polling has always been an important factor in politics and policy. But the ever-increasing contemporary reliance on consultants have left liberals with plenty of messaging but not a whole lot of actual message. As a result, the narrative infrastructure on the left is more about positioning – reacting to the political winds that blow – rather than generating a new breeze in a narrative that stakes out principled positions based on values and advancing those positions.

3. The rise of the technocratic and bureaucratic wonks.

In the 1990s, a new class of technocratic policy experts rose to dominate political and policy discussions on the center-left. Ensconced in universities and think tanks interspersed with a couple of years of government service, these policy wonks tend to focus narrowly on their areas of expertise and specialization. It’s assumed that technical proficiency of the sort possessed by economists and foreign country specialists scales up and allows a mastery of generalist subjects, but it’s not at all clear that that’s the case either in theory or in reality. Liberals have a cadre of highly-educated experts to manage government bureaucracies and execute complicated programs, but few have the skills to tell a compelling story about liberal politics and policies. Some of the most agonizing meetings that take place in Washington are the ones involving foreign policy or economics specialists struggling to cobble together a convincing political narrative. It’s like a cello player in an orchestra trying to tell the conductor how the overall piece of music should be put together: sometimes it works, but most times it is off-key.

4. The quest for echo chambers.

On top of these developments, transformations in the media landscape over the past fifty years – and especially over the past decade – have made it more difficult to inject a coherent narrative into the national political bloodstream. It’s not impossible, but the days when FDR or JFK could set the terms of the national debate with fireside chats or televised press conferences have been long gone for a while now. In their place, liberals belatedly and without much success attempted to replicate the echo chambers like Fox News that conservatives have deployed to great political effect. More recently, left and right have built echo chambers on social media platforms like Twitter that encourage the most extreme and Extremely Online voices. In recent years, some elements of the so-called “progressive” left have used these platforms more to beat others up on the left and fragment coalitions and relationships, rather than use them to build coalitions and relationship capital to achieve shared, common goals.

As a result, the broad center-left is not structured to tell a coherent story about its politics and policies. Their programs and messages amount to less than the sum of their parts. Administration communications gurus and activist networks organize pop-up echo chambers to push particular policies, but they don’t invest in the making of big-picture narratives that put these policies into perspective in ways that ordinary people can easily understand. Smart and dedicated people waste their time and energy on what remain fundamentally tactical issues – leaving wider strategic questions unattended and unanswered in the process.

To its credit, the Biden administration has avoided many of the worst mistakes made by present-day progressives. Biden and many of his key aides are terminally Offline, and his administration has wisely focused on bread-and-butter issues like the pandemic and economic recovery more than the culture war issues beloved by both the progressive left and conservative right. “Build back better” and “a foreign policy for the middle class” may not pop as slogans and remain ideas that need further development, but they’re a decent starting point. What the Biden administration needs moving forward aren’t echo chambers that repeat its talking points on, say, its infrastructure package or its Iran policy – it needs generalists that build on and expand the themes it’s sketched out in very rough terms and helps carry those narratives to the broader American public in a way that seeks to advance a more inclusive nationalism.

That’s easier said than done, as President Obama learned when his “New Foundation” formula failed to gain traction during his time in office. While his administration found its attention repeatedly diverted by crises and emerging challenges, it also lacked the sort of external intellectual support to reinforce and elaborate on the themes it tried to surface. Obama’s eight years resulted in many important accomplishments such as an effective response to the 2008 Great Recession, health care reform, and steps forward on climate change. But towards the end of two terms in office, the sum total of the foreign policy narrative was “don’t do stupid shit” and this left many Americans asking: what’s the big idea?

Think tanks once might have served this function, but too often they have become either waystations for mid-level technocrats going into and coming out of government or activist operations fueled by funding from elite foundations – and increasingly they’re both at the same time.

Instead, liberals need to invest in big-picture, meaning-making institutions and outlets outside government, academia, existing think tanks, and major media outlets. They cannot outsource their narratives to academics, activists, and political journalists, or rely on think tanks that exist to shelter technocrats and increasingly see unrepresentative activists chart their courses to do the job. Looking forward, a new breed of institution that can see and describe the whole picture from an outside perspective will be necessary to build new liberal political narratives that connect particular policies and programs with underlying principles in a compelling and easily comprehensible way.

These narratives can’t be reduced to mere messaging or communications, either. As the scholar Lawrence Freedman noted in the conclusion of his history of the subject, strategy is as much about stories as anything else. Accordingly, these new narrative-building institutions will have much to say about political strategy and big-picture policy questions. They’ll help tell liberals where they’ve been, where they are, and where they’re going – and, crucially, why. Moreover, they’ll provide a sanctuary for liberals who don’t see mid-tier government positions as their primary way to advance good ideas as well as academics who wish to constructively contribute to the common good.

It’s as good a place as any for liberals to start rebuilding their once-formidable intellectual infrastructure.

Ronald Brownstein warns “Democrats’ Only Chance to Stop the GOP Assault on Voting Rights: If the party doesn’t pass new protections, it could lose the House, Senate, and White House within the next four years” at The Atlantic. As Brownstein sets the stage:

“The most explosive battle in decades over access to the voting booth will reach a new crescendo this week, as Republican-controlled states advance an array of measures to restrict the ballot, and the U.S. House of Representatives votes on the federal legislation that represents Democrats’ best chance to stop them.