Wolves and Sheep

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What’s Happening With the 1,000 Election Monitors Trump Wants to Deploy in 2026?

Chris Bowers — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:04:08 GMT

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

Sometimes, it feels to me that there is a single through-line that connects progressive advocacy groups, mainstream media, and Donald Trump: they all want the center-left and progressive rank and file to be in a constant state of fear and outrage. For progressive groups, it’s so you will open your wallet, for the mainstream media, it is to capture your attention, and for Donald Trump it is because he likes triggering liberals.

The recent news about the Trump administration deploying 1,000 election monitors for the midterm elections is a good example of this. It sounds really menacing—I mean, 1,000 Trump administration employees at polling sites? Yikes! That is, until you look under the hood a bit and realize there isn’t much actually going on. Allow me to explain.

Before I get started, please remember that you can help fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts to meddle with state election administration by supporting the Democracy Legal Defense Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. You donation to this fund goes directly to the legal fight against Trump administration election interference.

Note: Bowers Kerbel Media is the two-person, pro-democracy organization that operates Wolves and Sheep and the Bowers News Media news and activism email list. The amount you donate to each entity can be customized.

Federal election “monitors” vs federal election “observers”

To understand what is going on here, first it is important to understand the difference between federal election “monitors” and federal election “observers.” This difference may seem purely semantic, but it really isn’t. In a very helpful explainer from 2016, the Campaign Legal Center explains the difference (emphasis in original):

Federal election polling place monitoring by DOJ has historically been conducted in one of two ways: either through federal observers who are stationed inside polling locations and watch voting procedures or through federal monitors who are present in a locality to respond to any potentially discriminatory voting problems as they develop. However, there are important differences between the two roles. Monitors are DOJ personnel that can be sent to any jurisdiction but require permission from the relevant jurisdictions to enter polling locations. Observers, on the other hand, were federal employees designated by the Office of Personnel Management. In the past, they were sent on the authority of the U.S. Attorney General and did not require permission from covered jurisdictions to enter polling locations.

What the Trump administration is planning to do for the 2026 elections is to send roughly 1,000 federal election monitors to undisclosed locations within various heavily blue jurisdictions, not 1,000 federal election observers who would actually be inside of polling places in those jurisdictions.

While I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Trump administration actually wanted to send 1,000 federal election observers inside polling places, they actually can’t. This because, ironically, as Notre Dame professor Allison Mashell Mitchell details in a useful explainer at The Conversation, conservative legal success in repealing parts of the Voting Rights Act has rendered it practically impossible for the federal government to send election observers inside polling sites anymore. Before the 2013 case Shelby County vs Holder that repealed Section 5 as well as subsection (b) of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, the federal government could just send DOJ employees inside any polling site they wanted, as long as it was one of the jurisdictions covered in the VRA. Now, however, the federal government needs either the permission of the local jurisdiction (not gonna happen in blue areas) or a court order (not gonna happen either, as Trump’s has lost all his election-conspiracy lawsuits).

Biden deployed a similar number of election monitors in 2024
As useful as I think Prof. Mitchell’s explainer is, I did spot a factual error in it that should be corrected:

In 2024, the [Biden] Justice Department announced it planned to send out 86 monitors on Election Day, the most federal monitors in two decades, due to concerns of possible partisan interference in elections. Some Republican-led states threatened to ban them from the polls.

This, unfortunately, is not accurate. The Biden administration sent election monitors to 86 counties, as the Washington Post article linked as a citation clearly states in its headline. These counties were not monitored by single individuals. Overall, there were 714 election monitors in those 86 groups, which is not really all that different from the roughly 1,000 the Trump administration plans to send this year.

I have a strong feeling that this year’s crop of election monitors will find as much in the way of election irregularities as were found by the class of 2024.

What will the election monitors do? Not much, except maybe be annoying.

The Trump administration has actually been deploying federal election monitors during Trump’s second term. For example, six groups of federal election monitors were sent out to California and New Jersey for the 2025 elections. The Trump administration also sent monitors to the recent primary elections in Wyoming (where Trump’s endorsed candidate for governor lost by a lot) and South Carolina (where Trump’s endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate narrowly won).

Now, these monitors are definitely annoying and pushy, as the local officials in Wyoming can attest:

While voters cast their ballots, Debra Lee, a Laramie County clerk, said poll monitors began to ask questions about their tabulators and training guides for poll workers.
Lee told NBC News she refused to allow those deployed from the DOJ to interview voters and noted that some of their questions were “outside the scope of federal voting rights laws.
“Shortly after learning of their presence, I spoke with a DOJ official in Washington who informed me that the decision to deploy monitors to Wyoming was made on short notice, and an email had been sent to me, but it may have gone to the wrong address,” Lee continued.

That said, these attempts to be menacing and annoying, which skirt the law at best, seem to have influenced the voting process and outcome about as much as election monitors have done in any recent election. Which is zilch.

Perhaps the most alarming story about the Trump administration’s election monitors this year comes from Democracy Docket, whose work I strongly support and cite frequently. Apparently, one of the election monitors that the Trump administration intends to deploy has actually been convicted of illegally accessing government election websites. I mean, yikes, right? However, while that definitely sounds scary when you first hear it, upon reflection I can’t actually figure out why having this guy standing closer to a polling site, but not actually inside of it, is scary. Like, if someone is trying to hack your personal information, is it really scarier to have that person be somewhere down the block from you, instead of, say, in Russia?

In summary

The Trump administration is definitely trying to sound tough and menacing through its announcement that it will deploy roughly 1,000 election monitors for the 2026 midterms. However, that is about the same number of monitors Biden sent in 2024, these election monitors will not actually be inside polling places, and the Trump administration has already been deploying election monitors to no effect. That said, these monitors can definitely be aggressive and annoying, and they may also include some sketchy figures of the sort that often seem to crop up on Trump payrolls.

I don’t want to imply that we should just wave away the Trump administration election monitoring program. It definitely needs oversight, as well as pushback from local election officials of the sort we saw in Wyoming. However, when you look into it a little deeper there is just a lot less there there than it sounds like at first, which is another common hallmark of something either organized by, or meant to please, Donald Trump.

Senate Pathways

Matt Kerbel — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:05:17 GMT

Photo by Siim Lukka on Unsplash

The Senate map is coming into focus as we approach Labor Day, and it is consistent with the year-long trend of things looking progressively brighter for Democrats.

When this cycle began, there was little talk of Democrats re-taking the Senate. That’s because there was no path to a Democratic majority that didn’t involve winning multiple states that Donald Trump had just won emphatically.

Then Democrats started over-performing in special elections across the country by the kind of double-digit margins that they would need to win those Senate races, and it became tempting to imagine what might be possible in a wave election. Still, it wasn’t until the bottom fell out for Trump and his party that the possibility of a Democratic Senate majority entered mainstream discourse.

One characteristic of a wave election is that unlikely opportunities present themselves as Election Day approaches. We are seeing that happen right now. The map is expanding into states that sound ridiculous to discuss. And while Democrats may ultimately lose some or all of these long shot contests, their presence in the conversation is an excellent measure of the slope of the political playing field this year.

Republicans may maintain control of the Senate when all is said and done, but they face a surprisingly steep climb to make it happen.

As of now, Democrats have several ways to net the four seats they will need for a Senate majority. That alone is remarkable.

Let’s take a look at the ways Democrats can assemble a majority by exploring the states where they are over-performing, holding their own, and threatening to be competitive.

Let’s Do This: A Detailed Look at What Is at Stake in the Fight Over State Voter Rolls

Chris Bowers — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:03:41 GMT

Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash

What is the difference between when Republicans who are compliant with the Trump administration manage state voter rolls, and when Democrats manage state voter rolls? It’s the difference between taking Donald Trump’s claims about the number of noncitizens on voter rolls at face value and cancelling hundreds of thousands of registrations of American citizens, versus demanding proof from the Trump administration before removing anyone from the rolls.

Before going further, please remember that you can help fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts to meddle with voter rolls in all 50 states by supporting the Democracy Legal Defense Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. You donation to this fund goes directly to the legal fight against Trump administration election interference.

Please split a $10 donation between the Democracy Legal Defense Fund from the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) and Bowers Kerbel Media. Donate directly to the legal efforts of Democratic secretaries of state who are fighting to keep the Trump administration from denying hundreds of thousands of American citizens the right to vote.

In 16 states around the country, all run by Republicans, state election officials complied with Trump administration demands to turn over their nearly unredacted voter rolls, including driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers. Alaska, which has a crucial U.S. Senate election this year, was one of those 16 states.

What happened in Alaska

In the Last Frontier State, not long after state officials sent their voter rolls to the Trump administration, the Alaska Division of Elections cancelled 3,048 voter registrations, or about 1 in every 200 files on the rolls. After state officials cancelled the registrations, they sent letters to the addresses associated with those files, letting those impacted know of their change in status. Here is what happened next:

“Approximately 685 voters have contacted the Division and stated they are citizens, despite the inconsistency with the DMV’s records,” Carol Beecher, the division’s director, said in a letter addressed to the chairs of the Alaska House Judiciary Committee and the Alaska State Affairs Committee.
Beecher also said “more than 100 people have reported they are not citizens and requested that their voter registration be cancelled.”
About 350 letters were returned as undeliverable, and another 1,900 affected Alaskans have not responded at all.

By about a 6 to 1 ratio, it appears that Alaska cancelled the voter registrations of actual citizens, rather than only cancelling the registrations of noncitizens. As I wrote last Saturday, extrapolating from the responses they received, by adopting the Trump administration’s “cancel voter registrations first, ask questions later” approach, the Alaska Division of Elections may have cancelled the registrations of as many as 2,000 citizens in order to root out the registrations of roughly 300 noncitizens.

Alaska, being a small state, is just the tip of the iceberg. Across the other 15 states that have been compliant with the Trump administration, which includes the very large states of Texas and Florida, this same approach may have led to the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of voter registrations of American citizens, and far fewer cancellations of noncitizens.

What happened in Nevada and Pennsylvania

Now, let’s compare what happened in Alaska to what happened in a couple of states that did not comply with the Trump administration’s demand to turn over their nearly unredacted voter rolls: Nevada and Pennsylvania.

In Nevada, where the secretary of state is Democrat Cisco Aguilar, state election officials demanded proof from the Trump administration before removing anyone from the rolls. As a result, they were able to force the Trump administration to massively revise downward their claim of the number noncitizens on Nevada’s voter rolls:

DHS initially announced it had found close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list. But a DHS official acknowledged in the meeting with Nevada officials that number was “the ceiling” and each voter still had to be manually reviewed. Then, a day later, DHS provided the state with a list of 185 ID numbers pertaining to voters the agency said it was confident were noncitizens. NPR acquired records and a recording of the video call, first reported by The New York Times, via a public record request.

Something similar happened in Pennsylvania, where the secretary of state (technically Secretary of the Commonwealth) is Democrat Al Schmidt. The Trump administration came to Pennsylvania election officials with an inflated claim of the number of noncitizens, but demurred when asked for proof. From NPR:

NPR has confirmed that officials in Pennsylvania had a similar call with DHS after Trump’s allegations in July, but the state has not received a smaller list of potential noncitizens from the federal government.
“It was clear that DHS did not have confidence that the numbers they have stated publicly were accurate,” said an official with knowledge of the meeting in Pennsylvania, who did not have permission to speak publicly. Should DHS provide credible proof, the official said the state would notify law enforcement and work to remove unlawful voters from the voter list.

This is the key difference. Democratic secretaries of state are demanding proof from the Trump administration before summarily cancelling tens of thousands of voter registrations. By contrast, many Republican state officials are taking the Trump administration’s figures at face value and engaging in a “cancel first, ask questions later” approach that has likely resulted in the cancellation the registrations of hundreds of thousands American citizens across 16 states.

This is why it matters that Democrats control state election offices. If you think this is worth fighting for, and would like to help out, please consider supporting the Democracy Legal Defense Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. You donation to this fund goes directly to the legal fight against Trump administration election interference.

Wolves and Sheep/Bowers News Media August Briefing

Matt Kerbel — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:01:11 GMT

Matt and Chris take a deep dive into the Senate contests and find opportunities for Democrats in unexpected places.

Available for iOS and Android

Life in Activism: Fool Me Once . . .

Chris Bowers — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:02:24 GMT

Thank you for reading Wolves and Sheep and its associated news and activism email list, Bowers News Media. Both are operated by Bowers Kerbel Media, a two-person, pro-democracy media and activism organization that aims to help you make a difference without driving you crazy. If you support what we are trying to do here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber for $8/month or $80/year. You will receive access to two paid articles per week, invites to our monthly briefings, opportunities to ask us questions in our Ask Us Anything series, and the ability to post comments on our articles.

Consider splitting a $10 donation between the Democracy Legal Fund from the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) and Bowers Kerbel Media. Donate directly to the legal efforts of Democratic secretaries of state who are winning the fight to keep sensitive voter data out of the Trump administration’s hands.

Photo by Jelena Senicic on Unsplash

On the Thursday evening of August 3, 2000, during the final day of the Republican National Convention, as George W. Bush was accepting his party’s presidential nomination a few miles to the south, I marched through the streets of Philadelphia with a couple hundred other protesters.

If I remember correctly, the route of our march went from Franklin Square to the Friends Center at 1501 Cherry Street.

It was pouring rain that night, so the turnout was much smaller than organizers had hoped for, but I had an amazing time. I had never participated in a protest march in the United States before (I had joined in a few during my study abroad year in the UK about half a decade earlier), and it was exhilarating. I spontaneously led some chants, and got so wet that about halfway through I had to take off my shirt. When the march was over, we got to dry off and mingle in the Friends Center, right near City Hall, and enjoy the famous hospitality of the Quakers. I really felt like a radical badass.

(In reality, after about an hour of that, I put my shirt back on, took a short walk over to the green line, and hopped on a trolley back home to my studio apartment in West Philly, because I had to teach summer writing classes for incoming freshmen at Temple University the next morning.)

What was I protesting? Why free trade, of course! This was part of the anti-globalization protests around the turn of the millennium, which were primarily organized by left-wing radicals.

After a long hiatus, excepting the occasional million-person march on Washington, mass protest movements in the United States re-emerged in late 1999 with the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. As a young lefty in his mid-20s, I found the news about those protests quite stirring, because I didn’t imagine something like that would ever happen in America again. Like a lot of people my age, documentaries about protest marches in the 1960s always seemed exciting to me, but they also seemed like something in the past. After what felt like a politically boring decade of moderation in the 1990s, the thought of mass protests led by young radicals seemed really cool, clashes with the police and all.

Maybe it seems hard to remember this moment in time now, because it feels strange for the largest mass protest movement in the country to be against free trade. However, it really was a thing, and it really was left-wing! There was actually an early episode of The West Wing from this time period that dramatized the moment, and if you have five minutes I suggest you check it out.

Fast forward a quarter century, and support for free trade in the United Sates is most strongly associated with socialists, according to recent polling from The Argument.

For someone who began his political activism in the United States the way I did, this is really topsy-turvy, up is down, cats and dogs living together kind of stuff. It is literally the exact opposite of how politics was aligned 26 years ago, mass protest movements and all.

Now, I’m not writing this article to point fingers, call out hypocrisy, or mock anyone. After all, if there was anyone reading this article to mock, it would be me.

Democracy on the Edge: Trump and Cleveland?

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 14:01:03 GMT

Throughout August, I’ve been posting excerpts from my new book, Democracy on the Edge, which I co-authored with my friend and colleague John White, professor emeritus at Catholic University in Washington, DC.

The book explores the last three national elections through the lens of preserving democracy, examines the forces that contributed to the rise of Donald Trump, and considers how a revitalized democracy serving a diverse, multicultural population could arise from the ashes of MAGA governance.

If you’re interested, you can receive a 30% discount when you order Democracy on the Edge from the University Press of Kansas before August 31. Just type the discount code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout.

When we were developing the book, John suggested exploring what he saw as nontrivial similarities between Donald Trump and Grover Cleveland as a way of understanding what history suggests could happen when Trump is gone.

It was an out-of-the-box idea in line with our use of historical dynamics to understand present-day political challenges. Admittedly, I knew little about Cleveland other than that he was the only other president to serve two non-consecutive terms, and that his second presidency led to a realignment that secured the political dominance of opposition Republicans for the next thirty years.

So I was intrigued.

We ended up including a passage about the similarities between Cleveland and Trump in the book’s Afterword, where we wrote:

While comparisons must be made with caution, especially not knowing how Trump’s second term will end, these two presidents bear some striking resemblances.
Grover Cleveland is a long-forgotten figure in American history. But in the late nineteenth century he dominated the Democratic Party like no other president since Andrew Jackson. His climb to the top was extraordinary. In 1882, he was elected governor of New York as a reformer who bucked the Tammany Hall bosses. Two years later he was the Democratic nominee for president. … The Seattle Post-Intelligencer … described his political standing as being so powerful that it “constitutes party opinion, party caucuses, party conventions, party platforms, nay, even the party itself, all within the circumference of one capacious waistband.”

This trajectory should have a familiar ring to it (as should the capacious waistband). Although Donald Trump rose through the reality TV ranks rather than elected politics, his ascendency to the pinnacle of power was as surprising as Cleveland’s, and the “almost mystical bond” that Cleveland shared with his supporters also describes Trump and MAGA.

Cleveland lived in an era of sharply divided politics and close elections that resembles our own. In 1884, he defeated Republican James Blaine (“the man from Maine”) with only 48.9% of the vote to become the first Democrat to occupy the White House since before the Civil War. Four years later, Cleveland won the popular vote but lost 233-168 in the Electoral College to Benjamin Harrison. As is the case today, tariffs were a key issue in that election, and Cleveland campaigned against them. Then:

In 1890, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the so-called McKinley tariff, which was deeply unpopular with voters and transferred a considerable portion of the nation’s wealth to the rich. … After cheering Republicans rammed the bill through Congress, Democrats declared: “You may rejoice now, but by next November you’ll mourn.”
They were right. In the 1890 midterm elections, angry voters gave Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House. The Senate remained Republican, but only because three GOP senators bucked their party and opposed the unpopular tariff. Harrison’s lackluster term, coupled with the unpopular McKinley tariff, created a wave of nostalgia that swept over former President Cleveland. In 1892, Cleveland took the tariff issue to the voters and was returned to the White House. Even so, the political standoff that dominated the politics of the post-Civil War era persisted. Cleveland polled a mere 46 percent of the vote, although he had a more decisive win in the Electoral College: 277 votes to Harrison’s 145. Democrats captured both houses of Congress, allowing Cleveland to claim he had won a mandate for tariff reductions, even though the popular vote said otherwise. … But just a few months into his second term, Cleveland’s presidency unraveled as a financial panic overwhelmed his attempts at tariff reform.

Cleveland’s inability to provide tariff relief shaped public perceptions of him as an ineffectual president. In a broader sense, his failure on the key issue of tariff reform prevented him from fashioning a lasting majority of northerners and western populists. Like Donald Trump, the possibility of creating an enduring political coalition dissipated rapidly as voters abandoned him.

The man who could once unite the Democratic Party and remake it into a majority party no longer could, and a resurgent Republican Party would dominate politics for the next three decades.

When John and I were writing these passages over one year ago, we didn’t know the fate of Trump’s coalition. Now we do, and its erosion tracks closely with the fate of Cleveland’s Democrats—as do other significant similarities.

Like Cleveland, Trump enjoyed a quick rise to power, becoming the only president to serve without previously holding public office. Like Cleveland, Trump has dominated both his party and the politics of his time using rapier-like force to do so. Like Cleveland, Trump won two very close elections in an era of political stalemate, never capturing a majority of the popular vote—a fact that didn’t stop either man from claiming a mandate. Like Cleveland, the failure of his economic promises—ironically, with Trump citing the McKinley tariff as something he wished to emulate—have made Trump appear ineffectual, a perception he failed to erase by sending troops into American cities to quell dissent [and, more emphatically, by his subsequent attack on Iran]. And like Cleveland, Trump risks dividing his coalition and triggering a reaction to his presidency that realigns politics around his opposition.

We can’t know if history will repeat.

But there is precedent.

If you’re interested in reading more about Democracy on the Edge, you can click here to access the book’s home page on the University Press of Kansas website. And if you order a copy before August 31, you can receive 30% off the list price by typing the discount code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout.

What Would Happen If the Trump Administration Got Its Way on Voter Rolls?

Chris Bowers — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 14:32:44 GMT

Photo by Ernie Journeys on Unsplash

So, what would actually happen if Donald Trump got his hands on a state’s unredacted voter rolls and then convinced that state to purge folks his administration believes are noncitizens?

This is not a question we have to wonder about, since it has actually happened in sixteen states, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. This includes four top-tier Senate battleground states: Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas.

In this article, I take a detailed look at one of those states: Alaska. Before I do, please remember that you can help fight back against the Trump administration’s attempts to acquire the unredacted voter rolls of the other 34 states by supporting the Democracy Legal Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.

Please consider splitting a $10 donation between the Democracy Legal Fund from the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) and Bowers Kerbel Media. Donate directly to the legal efforts of Democratic secretaries of state who are winning the fight to keep sensitive voter data out of the Trump administration’s hands.

The Trump administration is attempting to build a nationwide list of all registered voters, in every state and the District of Columbia. Reporting on the list indicates that its purpose is purportedly to find noncitizens who are registered to vote and remove them from state voter rolls.

In order to build this list, the Trump administration has demanded voter registration lists from at least 48 states and the District of Columbia. Sixteen of those states complied, while the rest did not. The Trump administration has sued all but three of the noncompliant states, losing in court every single time.

Alaska was one of the states that complied. Here is how their compliance impacted voter rolls in the state:

Total registered voters in Alaska: 602,134, according to the latest report from the state division of elections. This number contains duplicates, people who are deceased, and former residents who have moved out of state, since there are only about 565,000 Alaska residents aged 18 or over.

Number of purported noncitizens removed from the rolls: 3,048, or about one half of one percent (0.5%).

Number of people removed from the rolls who have since confirmed they are citizens: 685. The Alaska Beacon reports that “[a]fter the swath of removals, the Division of Elections sent letters to every affected state resident, and many have responded.” Here is what happened next:

“Approximately 685 voters have contacted the Division and stated they are citizens, despite the inconsistency with the DMV’s records,” Carol Beecher, the division’s director, said in a letter addressed to the chairs of the Alaska House Judiciary Committee and the Alaska State Affairs Committee.
Beecher also said “more than 100 people have reported they are not citizens and requested that their voter registration be cancelled.”
About 350 letters were returned as undeliverable, and another 1,900 affected Alaskans have not responded at all.

So, among the people removed or contacted by the state and those who responded in any way, roughly 60% were citizens, roughly 31% could not be reached, and roughly 9% were noncitizens. Extrapolating those numbers to the entire group of 3,048, approximately 1,840 of the people removed were citizens, 940 had bad addresses, and only 270 were, in fact, noncitizens.

In total, this means that roughly one in every three hundred voters (0.3%) in Alaska was unjustly purged from state voter rolls, while one in every two thousand (0.05%) was justifiably removed for being a noncitizen.

Would margins like these impact many elections?

Not really.

Since 2001, only one U.S. Senate election was decided by less than 0.05% of the vote: the 2008 race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. Four others (South Dakota 2002, New Hampshire 2016, Florida 2018, and Pennsylvania 2024) were decided by less than 0.3%. This is out of 404 total Senate elections.

In the U.S. House, about two dozen of the more than 5,000 U.S. House races since 2002 have been decided by 0.32% of the vote or less, with Republicans winning the majority of those. Only four have been decided by 0.05% of the vote or less, with Republicans and Democrats splitting them.

In presidential elections, only four states (Missouri 2008, Michigan 2016, and Georgia and Arizona in 2020) were decided by less than 0.32% of the vote. None were decided by under 0.05% of the vote, and none were the decisive, “tipping point” states in their respective elections.

In summary

Overall, the voter roll purges that the Trump administration is aiming for will not remove a high percentage of voters. If Alaska is any indication, it will be somewhere around 0.5%, or one in every 200 voters.

Further, if Alaska is any indication, about six out of every seven people removed from the rolls will be citizens. A significant minority of the citizens removed from the rolls will challenge their removal and regain the right to vote.

If done nationwide, the voter roll changes sought by the Trump administration would remove roughly one million voters from state rolls, the majority of whom would actually be citizens. While that would indeed be outrageous, it would likely impact the outcome of somewhere between zero and one federal election in 2026. There are many reasons for this, but the three most important are that the national electorate is truly vast, the number of elections decided by 0.3% or less is very small, and many of the people purged will successfully challenge their removal and vote anyway.

I hope this helps put into perspective what is actually at stake in the fight over state voter rolls. Remember, you can assist that fight by supporting the Democracy Legal Fund operated by the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State.

Please, split a donation of $10 between Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Kansas, and Bowers Kerbel Media. As Trump begins to lose power, let’s seize the moment and pull off wins in deep red states like Kansas that would have seemed impossible not that long ago.

Democracy on the Edge: False Dawns

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 14:03:27 GMT

Throughout August, I’ve been publishing excerpts from my new book, Democracy on the Edge. The book takes a sober look at the last three national elections through the lens of preserving democracy, examines the forces that contributed to the rise of Donald Trump, and considers how a revitalized country serving a diverse, multicultural population could arise from the ashes of MAGA governance.

The passage below addresses an issue that comes up periodically in our Ask Us Anything columns: Why is it that three Democratic presidents who campaigned on a change platform weren’t able to change enough to alter the conditions that led to the rise of Trump?

My Monday post offered a partial answer: Republicans have been able to maneuver and manipulate the political system to govern for years as a minority party.

But that’s not the whole story. They have also faced structural impediments imposed by entrenched political interests who stand to lose out if genuine change came to America in the form of wealth and income redistribution. Neither Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, nor Joe Biden served at a time when conditions permitted them to wage a successful challenge to powerful status quo forces.

But next time may be different. Donald Trump has so badly undermined his credibility that voters have figured out he is not on their side, and Democrats are campaigning to go after the wealthy overlords he serves.

The passage below delves into the conditions that prevented Clinton and Obama from being transformational presidents. Elsewhere in the book, we discuss significant ways Trump has upended those conditions to open space for dramatic progress after he’s gone.

Until August 31, you can receive a 30% discount when you order Democracy on the Edge from the University Press of Kansas. Just type the discount code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout.

Clinton and Obama: The False Dawn of a New Majority
Bill Clinton did not begin a new chapter in American politics; instead, he was an adept triangulator, putting a liberal spin on a conservative agenda in a Reagan-dominated era of small government, much like Dwight Eisenhower put a conservative spin on the popular liberal politics of the FDR era. Both Clinton and Eisenhower rose to power by running against vocal elements in their respective parties that were at odds with public opinion of the day. Clinton, the Arkansas governor, positioned himself above a distrusted Democratic Party by running a personal campaign against an extremist group of House Republicans determined to cut funding for popular programs like Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. Clinton won comfortable but lonely victories in 1992 and 1996 by sounding more like Ronald Reagan than a liberal Democrat, reassuring voters that “The era of big government is over.”In his second term, Clinton sounded like a Republican when he boasted of signing a balanced budget into law. And his administration became a touchstone for the so-called “New Democrats” who, like Clinton, disparaged the New Deal’s emphasis on big government, which had been the cornerstone of liberal thought for decades.
Barack Obama promised to be different. By 2008, the Reagan era was losing steam, potentially giving the US senator from Illinois an opening to be a transformative president in a way Clinton had not been. Obama’s decisive win, together with engorged Democratic majorities in Congress, had the potential to usher in a new regime, with Obama coming along at a moment in history when he might have been, in [political scientist] Stephen Skowronek’s terminology, a reconstructive president with the latitude to repudiate Reaganism and establish something new.^[1]
From the standpoint of electoral coalition building, Barack Obama was transformational. Besides winning every state that John Kerry carried in 2004, Obama added Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana. The onset of the Great Recession during the last days of the George W. Bush presidency, and Obama’s promise to tackle it, sounded echoes of FDR, another reconstructive president who had secured a new majority during the depths of the Great Depression.
Those hopes didn’t last long. Although Obama was easily re-elected in 2012, his party suffered landslide losses in congressional and state elections during his presidency. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats lost twelve Senate seats and sixty-four House seats, making them a minority legislative party for most of the 2010s. The damage the Republican Party inflicted upon the Democrats in the statehouses was even greater: Thirteen governorships and 816 state legislative seats were subtracted from the Democratic ranks, the largest reduction for any incumbent president’s party since the Eisenhower administration. Compounding the problem was Obama’s unwillingness to transfer the formidable campaign organization he built into a lasting force that could be employed by the Democratic Party nationally.^[2]
How could a historic president preside over so much damage? One possibility is that, even though the country was changing dramatically, it was doing so slowly. When Democrats chose Obama in 2008, they were betting that a different America was emerging. Half a century before, the nomination of an African American presidential candidate was unthinkable. In 1958, the Gallup Organization reported that only 37 percent would support a “well-qualified” African American for president; 53 percent would not.^[3] But by 2008 attitudes had changed: 92 percent claimed they would vote for a qualified Black candidate, whereas only 5 percent said they would not. Changing attitudes reflected a changing electorate with different life experiences than their predecessors. Blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans, and other minorities were changing the face of America. Thus, while nominating Obama was a calculated risk, it was one many Democrats believed worth taking.
Immigration helped make this happen. In 1998, Bill Clinton forecast the coming of a “third American Revolution,” because by the middle of the twenty-first century the United States was demographically destined to become a majority-minority nation. A decade later Barack Obama argued that he was uniquely attuned to this development: “I think if you can tell people, ‘We have a president in the White House who still has a grandmother living in a hut on the shores of Lake Victoria and has a sister who’s half-Indonesian, married to a Chinese-Canadian,’ then they’re going to think he may have a better sense of what’s going on in our lives and in our country. And they’d be right.” Obama’s victory seemingly validated his thesis. In 2008, he won 95 percent of the African American vote, 67 percent of Latinos, and 62 percent of Asian Americans—even while losing the white vote to John McCain by twelve points.
Something else was happening, too. Obama was garnering unusual support from college-educated voters.^[4] He was the first Democrat in decades to win college graduates, albeit by a narrow 50 to 48 percent margin. The columnist David Brooks described these voters as “Bourgeois Bohemians”—that is, fiscal conservatives but cultural libertarians.^[5]Obama’s appeal to these voters represented an historic shift from the New Deal era when upper income, college educated groups consistently supported Republicans.^[6] That support, combined with the Democratic Party’s appeal to women that first surfaced in the 1980 Reagan-Carter contest, appeared to confirm the thesis initially set forth by John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeria that there was an “emerging Democratic majority” that would produce more victories than defeats in the years ahead.^[7]
Yet Democrats, despite their appeal to educated voters, minorities, and single women, often sweated out election nights. The trendlines that Judis and Teixeria predicted would yield reliable Democratic majorities flattened before they fully materialized. Democrats became competitive in states like Virginia, Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina owing to a combination of minority voters and bourgeoning cosmopolitan “ideopolises” with large numbers of college graduates working in tech-related idea industries,^[8] but their growth curve stopped in other states before they established dominance.
Consequently, the Obama presidency became, like Clinton’s, emblematic of an era in which Ronald Reagan’s influence remained persistent. The Republican landslides of the 1980s and 1990s had given way to nail-biters as the country became more evenly balanced. But the emergence of a diverse America was moving at the slow pace of generational change. The result was stalemate rather than revolution. Skowronek writes that, while Obama might have more forcefully challenged the tenets of Reaganism, opposition presidents seeking regime change will be frustrated if the prevailing regime remains robust enough to fight back.^[9] This aptly describes Obama’s experience. Although he achieved a signature legislative goal with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Obama did not have the broad-based support necessary to forge a new Democratic majority. Instead, he led a movement centered around his own persona.^[10]

^[1] Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020).

^[2] Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo, “Introduction: Understanding Current Transformations in American Politics, in Theda Skocpol and Caroline Tervo, eds., Upending American Politics: Polarizing Parties, Ideological Elites, and Citizen Activists from the Tea Party to the Anti-Trump Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), xix.

^[3] Gallup Poll, July 30-1958-August 4, 1958. Text of question: “Between now and 1960, there will be much discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified man for President, would you vote for him if he happened to be a Negro?” Yes, 37 percent; no, 53 percent, no opinion, 10 percent.

^[4] Michael Dukakis performed well among college educated professionals in 1988, something that political scientist Edgar Litt forecast as early as 1965 when he tracked the Democratic Party’s performance in state elections in Massachusetts. See Edgar Litt, The Political Cultures of Massachusetts (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press, 1965).

^[5] David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000).

^[6] Vermont, a state filled with Brooks’s “Bourgeois Bohemians,” was transformed from reliably Republican to staunchly Democratic.

^[7] John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira, The Emerging Democratic Majority (New York: Scribner, 2002).

^[8] See Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

^[9] Skowronek, Presidential Leadership in Political Time, 176-181.

^[10] Obama created Obama for America which later became Organizing for America (OFA). But neither of these became a powerful social movement for change.

Let’s Do This: What It Looks Like When Donald Trump Loses Power

Chris Bowers — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 14:02:45 GMT

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

On Tuesday night, three candidates endorsed by Donald Trump lost Republican primaries in Florida and Wyoming. The same thing happened to him earlier this month, in Minnesota, Michigan and Tennessee.

Also on Tuesday, Democrat Brandon Dukes flipped from red to blue a Pennsylvania State House seat that Trump won by 19 points two years ago.

Meanwhile, conservative activists online are spewing vitriol at Senate Republicans, who left town a couple weeks ago without passing either the SAVE Act or Trump’s desired increase in military spending. Senate Republicans did, however, join with Democrats to pass a government funding bill that restricts Donald Trump’s power to cancel federal grants for political reasons.

This is what is looks like when Donald Trump’s approval rating, which is now a net negative 20 points, passes a tipping point, and he begins to lose power. His endorsed candidates start to lose Republican primaries. Democrats start to flip deep red seats. Conservative activists start to turn on Republican members of Congress, who themselves begin to ignore Trump’s legislative demands while joining with Democrats to rein Trump in.

Moments like these don’t come around very often, but when they do things that were once seemingly impossible begin to become realistic for Democrats to achieve.

This is why I believe we should take seriously the polls showing Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Kansas, within striking distance of incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall. Trump won Kansas by 16 points two year ago, which is a lot. However, it’s less than the margin Trump won the Pennsylvania State House district that Brandon Dukes flipped on Tuesday. It is also less than the 20 points that Trump is underwater in his national approval rating.

Adam Hamilton is not your average Democratic nominee. He is the senior pastor of the largest church in Kansas, a Methodist congregation called Resurrection, with an average weekly attendance of 25,000. Hamilton describes himself as moderate, and has significantly outraised Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, $3.1 million to $600,000. He can win in Kansas in a political environment like this, just like Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly won in Kansas eight years ago during the first midterm election when Trump was in office.

I have put together an ActBlue page where you can split a donation between Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Kansas, and Bowers Kerbel Media, the two-person, reader-supported, pro-democracy organization that runs Wolves and Sheep and the Bowers News Media news and activism email list.

Ask Us Anything

Matt Kerbel — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 14:01:22 GMT

For months Matt has been “betting on” a blue wave this fall, but in Monday’s excerpt from his new book, he documented the many shenanigans Republicans have used for decades to stay in power. Is this a way of hedging your bet on November? (Please tell me it isn’t so.)

(Matt) It isn’t so. My new book, Democracy on the Edge, takes a historical look at how the two political parties arrived at where they are today. Part of this discussion traces the origins of today’s Republican party to what you aptly call shenanigans—albeit of a milder variety than what we’re dealing with now. My sense of the midterms is unaffected by this. Every metric points to a strong Democratic year with the potential for a generational election.

In which states do Democrats have the best chance of flipping control of a branch of government (i.e. governor, or one of the two legislative branches)

(Chris) Looking at the Cook Political Report’s 2026 governor race ratings, it seems there are four states where Democrats have a good chance to flip control of the governor’s mansion: Georgia, Iowa, Nevada and Ohio. All four as listed as toss-ups. The Democratic nominees in these four states are:

Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms
Iowa: Rob Sand
Nevada: Aaron Ford
Ohio: Amy Acton

As of this writing, FfityPlusOne has Bottoms ahead by 3.2 points in Georgia, Sand ahead by 5.7 points in Iowa, Ford down by 5.4 points in Nevada, and Acton ahead of Vivek Ramaswamy by 0.3 points in Ohio.

When it comes to state legislative chambers, a news organization called Stateline lists the following 11 chambers as possible Democratic flips:

Alaska House and Senate
Arizona House and Senate
Michigan House
Minnesota House (currently tied 67-67)
New Hampshire House and Senate
Pennsylvania Senate
Wisconsin House and Senate

Notably, this list seems to precisely match the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee’s (DLCC) target list. So, these are probably the only state legislative chambers that Democrats can reasonably flip.

If Democrats do flip all four of the governor’s mansions listed here, as well as all 11 state legislative bodies, that would create Democratic trifecta state governors in seven states: Alaska, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. This would actually bring Democratic state trifectas to 23, equal to the current number of states with Republican trifectas. However, Iowa, New Hampshire and Ohio are three of the states with Republican trifectas, so a clean sweep here would give Democrats full control of more states than Republicans for the first time since 2010.

I see Donald Trump declining before our very eyes. Who will take over when Trump is gone?

(Matt) You’re wise to ask this question. Donald Trump has dominated our politics for a decade and it can be difficult to imagine a time when he is gone, but that time will come. When it does, I don’t expect us to experience the usual passing of the baton to another leader like we typically see with political parties. Trumpism is a cult of personality, and as such it is difficult to imagine anyone stepping into the cult leader’s role—by design. Strongman leaders are careful to keep potential threats to their authority at bay by surrounding themselves with people who do not threaten their attachment to their followers. Additionally, you’ve heard Trump muse about running for a third term, and that “joke” is indicative of someone who is not interested in finding a successor. If anyone could step into Trump’s role it would be one of his sons—a kind of imperial changing of the guard more befitting the kind of royal figure Trump’s wishes he was.

If the Democrats win a majority in both Houses of the Congress, how do you think it might impact environmental policy, most especially around policies that impact global warming.

(Chris) I am not an expert in this policy area, butI have been following the congressional negotiations on permitting reform, which Politico called “Washington’s elusive bipartisan dream,” as well as Trump’s cancellation of energy grants to blue states. Here’s my take. These two issues are actually linked, as Trump’s cancellation of green energy projects is the main Democratic demand for agreeing to a permitting reform deal with Republicans.

Permitting reform is not a very descriptive term. What it effectively means is a reduction in regulations that have slowed the construction of infrastructure projects of all types, including those passed under President Biden. A permitting reform deal would be for infrastructure projects, primarily related to energy, that the landmark housing bill was for home affordability. If we make it easier to build new homes and new energy projects by scaling back the regulations and other barriers that prevent their construction, then the cost of homes, and the cost of energy, will go down. (I know that may sound all “neoliberal,” but keep in mind that Elizabeth Warren was the co-author of the housing bill.)

The best case scenario would be if Democratic control of Congress resulted in a bipartisan permitting reform agreement that put a stop to the Trump administration’s war on green energy projects in blue states and districts (Trump has largely left such projects in red states and districts alone), while making it easier to build infrastructure and energy projects of all types.

I know that reading such an idea might make some of you nervous, as you worry that these new projects will be for fossil fuel extraction and use. However, according to the climate-focused news service Canary Media, 93% of all new planning for U.S. power plant construction in 2026 will be for renewable energy. Right now, making it easier to build infrastructure projects of any sort effectively means making it easier to build out renewable energy projects. This will be good for the planet, good for our pocketbooks, good for jobs, and good for overall American strength all at the same time.

Can you give us any stats on the success of the Act Blue pages you create for various causes and candidates?

(Chris) Sure! Altogether, as of this writing, we have directly raised a total of $1,027,687.37 for Democratic candidates and party committees, from roughly 132,000 individual donations.

That total is likely higher, because we link to ActBlue pages controlled by other candidates and campaigns, so we do not have insight into those. For example, back in May, I discovered that we raised more money for three Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in Virginia on ActBlue pages controlled by the candidates than on pages sponsored by us.

In 2025-2026, AdImpact estimates that there will be $11.6 billion in electoral advertising alone, so our contribution is relatively small. Where we have the most impact, in percentage terms, comes in off-cycle special elections that few other media outlets or advocacy organizations are paying attention to. For example, I think that we may have raised over 10% of all the money Catelin Drey raised in her successful run for the first state Senate district of Iowa last August.

I heard a commentator, referring to the upcoming midterm elections, say something like, “If Democrats make the election about defeating Donald Trump, they’ll win. But if they make it about fighting each other over who owns the Democratic vision, they’ll lose.” What do you think of that assessment?

(Matt) I don’t see Democrats making the midterm election about an internal party vision. There has been a lot of coverage of establishment Democrats expressing concerns about the success of some left-leaning primary candidates, but that discussion is taking place internally. I expect it to break out into the open next year, when the party looks for a presidential nominee. But this year’s election, like every midterm, is clearly about the party in power.

Please, split a donation of $10 between Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Kansas, and Bowers Kerbel Media. Let’s invest in trying to pull off an upset in Kansas while draining Republican resources out of other battleground states for the U.S. Senate.

Life in Activism: One Great Idea

Chris Bowers — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:04:40 GMT

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Reader Nicolas Gaffney wrote me last week to share a new project he is launching, and to ask for my feedback on it:

Today I launched A Day Off From Trump.
The idea germinated a few weeks ago when my wife Marie and I were going back and forth about the latest Trump news before we’d even finished our coffee. Not fighting each other—just both of us angry at what we were hearing, same as basically every morning.
Then she stopped mid-sentence and said, “We’re doing it again.”
That stuck with me. I’ve cared about politics my whole life—ran for local office twice, canvassed, volunteered. But somewhere along the way, reacting to him had taken over our mornings, our conversations, even which friends and family I still felt like I could talk to.
I’m not trying to convince anyone to stop paying attention. The stakes are real. But I think there’s a difference between staying engaged and running on outrage until you’re burned out and useless for the actual work ahead—organizing, volunteering, showing up for the midterms.
So I’m taking one day—Wednesday, September 9th—completely off from Trump news, commentary, and social media. Not forever, not even a week. Just one day to reset, then come back with renewed purpose and energy.
I wrote up the full reasoning here if you’re interested. There’s also a site where you can see what it’s about: Day Off From Trump.
I’d be curious whether you’re seeing this same exhaustion in the people you interact with or write for—not disengagement, just burnout from the constant reacting.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I wrote Nick back to tell them that I thought this was a great idea. If you are interested, please go check out his website and sign up to participate.

I would like to add some thoughts in the same vein as Nick’s project and, if I may be so bold, take his thinking a step further: every politically engaged citizen should take a significant part of every day off from not only Trump, but from politics and the news more generally. Doing so will deepen your life, improve your relationships with others, increase your health, and, perhaps counterintuitively, increase your ability to stay politically engaged over the long run. However, doing this isn’t easy, because you can’t just stop doing something with your time—you have to find something else to do with that time instead.

Allow me to explain.

Democracy on the Edge: Minority Rule

Matt Kerbel — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:00:35 GMT

Last Friday, I published an excerpt from my new book, Democracy on the Edge, about why young voters have not become Democrats even though their interests align more closely with Democrats than Republicans.

Today, I’d like to share an excerpt that addresses how Republicans have been able to maneuver and manipulate the political system to govern for years as a minority party.

We can distinguish minority rights from minority rule. The former refers to procedures that give the minority a chance to influence the majority’s agenda. The latter is a perversion of democracy that gives minorities the power to impose their way on the rest of the country. Minority rule is by definition undemocratic and stands in stark contrast to protecting the rights of minorities to be heard in the political process.

The passage below shows how the anti-democratic impulse in today’s Republican party has been building for a long time, and how it has worked to frustrate Democrats from delivering on their promises even when they have had the support of electoral majorities. These disparities will need to be addressed by the next Democratic president.

Until August 31, you can receive a 30% discount when you order Democracy on the Edge from the University Press of Kansas. Just type the discount code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout.

A Minority Party with Outsized Power
Whenever a political party loses an election, it not only accommodates itself to its unhappy present but also argues that its alternative programs deserve both a hearing and a vote. … After Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide victory, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford declared that Republicans should “oppose those proposals of the President and the majority which for one reason or another are unsound or do not get at the problem in the best way.” Ford added that the “minority’s task is to offer good alternatives, so the Congress and the people have a real choice.”
But after consistently winning the presidency starting with Eisenhower’s victory in 1952, Republicans refused to accept the role of loyal opposition to an emerging center-left Democratic party. Consequently, they rejected moderation and selectivity during the Clinton, Obama, and Biden years in favor of being a party of resistance, with consequences for themselves and for the body politic. The conservative scholar Bruce Bartlett writes that, “when a political party abandons ideas, demonizes intellectuals, degrades politics, and simply pursues power for the sake of power,” the result is an inherent inconsistency and an incessant pursuit of power for power’s sake.Republicans became reflexively opposed to whatever Democrats proposed in an attempt to prevent them from any substantive legislative accomplishments that could help them win the next election. With Republicans about to seize control of Congress in 2010, Mitch McConnell bluntly stated, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” While a unified opposition party didn’t accomplish McConnell’s ultimate objective, it did stymie any further legislative victories for the Democratic president. Thus after the sudden death of the archconservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, McConnell led the Senate in refusing to consider Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Court. McConnell recalled: “One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.’” And with Joe Biden in the White House, Republicans, acting on the orders of Donald Trump, killed an immigration deal that would have added more border patrol agents, devoted more resources to the illegal importation of fentanyl, expedited the asylum process, and allowed the president to close the border should illegal immigration reach a critical level. Mitt Romney said of Trump’s opposition: “The fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”
This is far different from the way Republicans behaved during the Lyndon Johnson/Gerald Ford era, when they saw their role as offering “good alternatives” to the Democratic majority. Today, the Trump-dominated Republican Party thwarts any diminishment of power by relying on constitutional mechanisms like the Electoral College and the two-senators-per-state constitutional arrangement to have an outsized voice in government. Both the creaky and outdated provisions of the Constitution have created a type of tyranny that its framers hardly envisioned. While grasping the possibility that disproportionate state populations could allow for minority rule, the framers discounted its potential for trouble. …
Things have not worked out that way. Over the years, the disproportionate numbers between rural and more heavily populated states have grown. Back in 1790, a voter in Delaware had approximately thirteen times more influence in the Senate than a voter in Virginia.^[1] Today, California has sixty-eight times the population of Wyoming, yet each state has two senators. The numbers are so out of whack that only in 2002, 2010, and 2014 did Republicans control the Senate after winning a majority of the votes cast in all Senate races.^[2] Undoubtedly, given their warnings about the potential for minority rule, the framers would be aghast at today’s disparities. And they would no doubt recognize the danger to democracy with that rule being exercised by an anti-democratic, Trump-controlled Republican Party.
The filibuster is another device Republicans have used to exercise outsized power. The filibuster was not used in the first Congresses until 1806 when the Senate, acting on the suggestion of Aaron Burr, ruled that any motion to end debate and move to a final vote was an unnecessary duplication, thereby creating the conditions under which filibusters could occur. Filibuster rules have been modified several times since, but a reform-minded Congress in 1975 added a provision that put the burden of ending a filibuster on the majority. This allowed the filibuster to be automatically deployed on nearly every vote. Thus every contested measure needs to clear a herculean threshold of sixty votes to pass. Consequently, Republicans have been disincentivized from taking positions that can be embraced by a majority of voters because the filibuster gives them power whether or not they hold a Senate majority. …
The rickety Electoral College compounds this problem. In this century, Republicans have twice lost the popular vote (2000 and 2016) yet won the presidency. In 2000, Al Gore outpaced George W. Bush by more than 500,000 votes but Bush garnered 271 electoral votes. Sixteen years later, Hillary Clinton won nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump but lost the Electoral College by 304 votes to 227.^[3] Had just 40,000 votes in three states flipped from Biden to Trump in 2020, Trump would have held the presidency despite having lost to Joe Biden by seven million votes. The Electoral College has twice permitted Republicans to govern despite being popular vote runners-up. Although designed as a lowercase r republican mechanism to give some control over presidential elections to the states, the effect was literally to establish minority rule.
Finally, the United States Supreme Court has given Republicans extraordinary opportunities to exercise undue power. Beginning in the 1980s, Republicans elevated judges who promised to be “strict constructionists” and would interpret the constitution in ways that restrict the power of the federal government. An organized effort to identify such jurists was undertaken by the right-wing Federalist Society, which eventually supplanted the neutral American Bar Association as the arbiter of Republicans’ Supreme Court nominees. For Trump, the imprimatur of the Federalist Society was necessary to reassure conservatives he would faithfully execute their desires. In 2016, Trump took the unusual step of releasing a list of names of those he would appoint as federal judges should he become president. He kept that promise, elevating three Federalist Society-approved candidates to the Supreme Court.^[4] Before him, George W. Bush did likewise, appointing two justices.^[5] Together, these presidents—each one initially elected without a popular vote majority— built a durable conservative Court majority.
The imposition of a creeping counter-majoritarianism has been buttressed by the Republican Party’s very successful efforts at using the gerrymander to redraw House districts. During the Obama years, Republicans used every means at their disposal to ensure House majorities for the remainder of the 2010s and into the next decade. Thus in 2016 Republicans won 48 percent of the popular vote for the House yet controlled 55 percent of the seats. The conservative Supreme Court helped by ruling that partisan gerrymandering claims were beyond the reach of the federal courts, leaving in place most lines drawn by Republicans.
And to make sure they do not lose power, Republican-controlled state legislatures have limited early voting days, enacted new restrictions on absentee voting, and required voters to produce identification as Republican lawyers and poll watchers challenged results without merit and intimidated poll workers. According to Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, this was a new form of “lawfare,” that is, “legislation that was ostensibly aimed at combating fraud but in reality was designed to dampen turnout among lower-income, minority, and younger voters.”^[6] The former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens likens such measures to the Democrats’ use of the poll tax and literacy tests after the Civil War to prevent newly enfranchised African Americans from entering the voting booths.^[7]

^[1] Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point (New York: Crown, 2024), 169.
^[2] Levitsky and Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority, 175.
^[3] There were five electoral college write-in votes that year.
^[4] Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
^[5] John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
^[6] Levitsky and Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority, 111.
^[7] Levitsky and Ziblatt, Tyranny of the Minority, 111.

Kansas? Really? Maybe!

Chris Bowers — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:02:09 GMT

Photo by Laura Gilchrist on Unsplash

The idea of Democrats winning a U.S. Senate race in Kansas, something which has not happened since 1932, is admittedly a bit of a stretch. However, please take about three minutes of your time to consider some recent news out of the Sunflower state (for those of you who don’t know, that is the state nickname of Kansas).

Adam Hamilton is not your average Democratic nominee

This may be quite surprising, but the Democratic nominee, Rev. Adam Hamilton, is the senior pastor of the largest church in Kansas, a Methodist congregation called Resurrection, with an average weekly attendance of 25,000. Hamilton describes himself as moderate. He significantly outraised Republican incumbent Sen. Roger Marshall, $3.1 million to $600,000.

On August 4, Hamilton easily won the Democratic primary, scoring 34.8% of the vote in a crowded 11-candidate field.

Two Democratic polls shows a close race

Last month, an internal poll from Adam Hamilton’s campaign showed him down only four points against Marshall. This month, another Democratic poll, this one for the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC, showed Hamilton within one point of Marshall.

Democrats can win in Kansas

Kansas currently has a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly. She first won in the Democratic wave election year of 2018, and was re-elected in 2022, a difficult year for Democrats. Back when Morning Consult was conducting quarterly polls of all 50 governors, a practice which I wish they would resume, Kelly’s approval rating at the end of 2025 was a net +26. At the time, this made her as popular in deep red Kansas as Gov. Gavin Newsom was in deep blue California, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was in deep purple Michigan. (Yes—I made a Deep Purple reference in a political article!)

Granted, Donald Trump won Kansas by 16 points in 2024, which reinforces the obvious: Kansas will be a difficult nut for Democrats to crack this year. However, over one-third of the 109 contested special elections that have taken place since 2024 have shown a pro-Democratic swing of 16 points or more, according to data collected by The Downballot.

So yes, Kansas is a stretch, but it is also not impossible.

There are good reasons to invest some of your small dollars in Kansas

You might be hesitant to spend any of your limited donation budget on a longshot-ish race in Kansas, and I get that. I understand that you cannot donate to every worthy Democratic campaign, and that you want your donations to make the biggest impact possible for the causes you believe in.

However, here are two reasons why small donations to Kansas are actually a good bang for your buck:

Small dollars go much further in Kansas than they would in more populous and expensive states.

If Kansas can stay competitive, then national Republican groups will be forced to pull money they had planned to spend on elections in other states, like Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, or Ohio, and redirect them to shore up Kansas. So, in a very real way, making Kansas competitive helps Democrats all around the country.

I have put together an ActBlue page where you can split a donation between Rev. Adam Hamilton, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Kansas, and Bowers Kerbel Media, the two-person, reader-supported, pro-democracy and pro-Democratic organization that runs Wolves and Sheep and the Bowers News Media news and activism email list.

Democracy on the Edge: Young People

Matt Kerbel — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:02:21 GMT

My new book, Democracy on the Edge, was published this week by the University Press of Kansas. Co-authored with my friend and colleague John White, an emeritus professor at Catholic University in Washington, it looks at the prospects for democracy following the last three national elections.

The book examines a country at a crossroads, perched between the reactionary politics of MAGA governance and the possibilities for dramatic progress fueled by the intense blowback to the second Trump presidency. John and I view the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections as a trilogy on democracy, where each had dramatic implications for the fate of the democratic system—whether or not voters realized it.

We explore these three elections through the prism of generational change and partisan realignment, addressing how Donald Trump has trapped the Republican party in a prison of its own creation, while Democrats have not yet figured out how to build a permanent majority from the wide range of voters Trump’s party has shed.

Over the next few weeks, I will be sharing excerpts of the book with you. Today’s passage looks at the potential for Democrats to benefit from generational changes that have left young voters unmoored from both parties. When we wrote it, there was no way to know if Donald Trump would be able to bring these young, predominantly male voters into a right-wing coalition. But we knew he would have to deliver on his promises to have a chance.

Now that he hasn’t, Democrats have a huge opportunity to attract Millennials and Zoomers, but only if they understand what they have to do—and then deliver.

Millennials and Zoomers are not tethered to a political party and are downbeat about what government can accomplish. This distinguishes them from the Boomers who defined the Reagan era. Reagan Republicans boasted that it was their president who revitalized the economy, ended the Cold War, and made them feel better about the country and themselves. Reagan often relished contrasting himself to Jimmy Carter because there was value in drawing a distinction to a discredited political party when young voters were rallying around theirs. In 1980, Reagan sealed his victory by drawing a blistering contrast with Carter: “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago? Is America as respected throughout the world as it was? Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we’re as strong as we were four years ago?”
This type of rallying appeal does not resonate with today’s younger voters. Millennials and Zoomers do not see either party as having records of successful governance. Instead, they are shaped by a series of failures that they ascribe to both parties. Rising income inequality and economic upheavals, racial discrimination, a worldwide pandemic, unaddressed climate change, a gun violence epidemic, and failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the two youngest generations believing that neither party speaks to their concerns. More than six-in-ten Millennials and Zoomers say that while growing up they distrusted their political leaders.1
To this we can add exorbitant student loan debt that makes buying a home a virtual impossibility for young college graduates. This is partly why Millennials and Zoomers differ dramatically from the Baby Boomers who could afford to purchase suburban homes when they began their careers. Today, one-third of Zoomers believe they will never be able to afford a home, and another one-third report living with their parents. …
Against this angst-filled backdrop came Donald Trump. At first many young voters were repelled by his brash persona and the crisis-ridden presidency that characterized his first term in office. Negative partisanship motivated their anti-Trump, anti-GOP angst. But that movement is tepid at best. A recent study found that, while 70 percent of all adults believe voting is the best means of creating change, only 53 percent of Zoomers and 57 percent of millennials agreed.2A study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that, among young adults who were eligible to vote in 2020, 2022, and 2024, only 16 percent actually voted; 41 percent did not vote in any of these elections. To the extent that young voters have been drawn to any political figure, you can look to the presidential campaigns of octogenarian US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who won substantial support from youthful participants in the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries. Sanders’s winning message centered on addressing a rising wealth gap that benefits a plutocracy but leaves others far behind. Announcing his 2020 candidacy, Sanders made this pledge:
“We will no longer stand idly by and allow three people in this country to own more wealth than the bottom half of America while, at the same time, over 20 percent of our children live in poverty, veterans sleep out on the streets, and seniors cannot afford their prescription drugs. We will no longer accept 46 percent of all new income going to the top one percent, while millions of Americans are forced to work two or three jobs just to survive and over half of our people live paycheck to paycheck, frightened to death about what happens to them financially if their car breaks down or their child becomes sick. Today, we fight for a political revolution.”^[5]
That revolution failed to materialize. The disappointment that Millennials and Zoomers had with Joe Biden’s presidency, and Kamala Harris’s failure to keep it in Democratic hands, misses that moment. If younger voters see a second Trump administration as making their lives better in such a way that their faith in the American Dream is restored, the Republican Party will benefit. Yet time and again Republicans led by Trump have squandered opportunities to appeal to younger voters, seeing them as both political and cultural opponents and embracing the disdain that many Baby Boomers have toward them. Well into Donald Trump’s second term, that disappointment seems to have taken root. …
Out of power, Democrats will be able to do little more than capitalize on the potential failure of the second Trump administration to make good on its promise to bring down prices; they could return to power by running against the perceived failures of a Republican administration, as in 1992, 2008, and 2020. However, this time it will take much more than restoring the status quo ante to turn skeptical younger voters into partisan supporters. Democrats will need to produce results—perhaps dramatic ones. The Democratic Party’s cultural alignment with the values expressed by young Americans must be coupled with economic achievements that make Millennials and Zoomers believe the American Dream is attainable. Without hope, these disillusioned voters will vacillate from one party to another, leave the political playing field entirely, or—ominously—embrace Trump’s strongman version of governance even as his administration advocates for values they do not share.

If you’re interested in reading more about Democracy on the Edge, you can click here to access the book’s home page on the University Press of Kansas website. And if you are interested in ordering a copy, type the discount code 24ONTHEEDGE at checkout and receive 30% off the list price.

Daniel A. Cox, Kelsey Eyre Hammond, and Kyle Gray, “Generation Z and the Transformation of American Adolescence: How Gen Z’s Formative Experiences Shape Its Politics, Priorities, and Future.”

Executive Summary, “A Political and Cultural Glimpse into America’s Future.”

Let's Do This: The People Who Protect Our Elections Have an Unbroken Winning Streak Against the Trump Administration

Chris Bowers — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:03:14 GMT

Photo by Nadine E on Unsplash

In 2025, Donald Trump signed an executive order that, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “attempted to assert presidential control over significant aspects of federal elections.” While it would be difficult to summarize all of the many facets of this executive order (you can read an explainer from the Brennan Center here), the important thing that you should know is that Democratic state officials sued, and the executive order has largely been blocked in court.

So far in 2026, the Trump administration filed lawsuits against 30 states and the District of Columbia demanding that they turn over their unredacted voter files—including driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. However, the state officials targeted by the Trump administration fought back in court, and have won every single time.

Notably, this is even though most of the judges ruling on the cases were appointed by Republican presidents, including almost half by Donald Trump himself. That last fact is worth keeping in mind whenever Trump administration figures trot out their tired “activist judges” talking point on these rulings. If they don’t like what they consider activist judges, then maybe they should stop appointing them.

Also in 2026, the postal service began the rule-making process on another executive order on elections from Donald Trump, this time one that squarely targets mail-in voting. Once again, Democratic state election officials sued, winning in both district and circuit federal courts. That executive order is now, at least of this writing, blocked nationwide.

With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, the Trump administration has appealed those rulings to the Supreme Court. Just yesterday, it issued a supplemental brief to its appeal, urging the Supreme Court to quickly unblock the executive order on mail-in voting. Once again, the legal team on the other side is a coalition of Democratic state officials.

You may have noticed a pattern here: Donald Trump is doing whatever he can to take control of our elections, and basically the only thing standing in his way are lawsuits from Democratic state officials. And, indeed, it has been every Democratic state official, no matter what faction or wing of the party they come from, no matter their age or how long they have been in office. Further, these Democratic state officials are carrying on this fight for the entire country, even if they only represent two dozen states. So far, they are undefeated.

I put together an ActBlue page that gives you a way support state-level Democratic elected officials in their ongoing, and so far successful, legal fight to protect the 2026 elections from attempted Trump administration interference.

On this page, you can support:

The Democratic Attorneys General Association (also known as DAGA), that supports Democratic state attorneys general around the country
The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (also known as DASS), that supports Democratic secretaries of state around the country
Bowers Kerbel Media, the two-person pro-democracy and pro-Democratic organization that operates Wolves and Sheep and the Bowers News Media news and activism email list.

The amount you donate to each organization can be customized.

Please, support the decisive legal efforts against Trump administration interference in the 2026 elections by splitting a $10 donation between the Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State (DASS) and Bowers Kerbel Media. A ruling from the Supreme Court could come any day now.

Ask Us Anything

Matt Kerbel — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:03:50 GMT

What changes and what stays the same following the Todd Blanche confirmation? I’m seeing a lot of concern about it, and understandably so, but Trump’s boundless corruption is already pretty well established. Anyone he nominates is a sycophant who believes (or possibly pretends to believe) whatever nonsense he spouts. Wouldn’t Blanche continue trying to prosecute Trump’s political opponents as he and others have already been doing, and continue (hopefully) losing in court? Or am I missing something?

(Chris) I don’t think you are missing anything. I don’t think anything changes because Blanche is confirmed, and I don’t really think anything would have changed if he was not confirmed.

If Blanche had not been confirmed, then he would have stayed on as acting Attorney General. If Trump eventually nominated someone else who was confirmed, more likely than not that person would have been just as bad as Blanche, and just as much a puppet of Trump. I would expect the same level of corruption we are seeing now, and the same, endless, but consistently failing, efforts to prosecute Donald Trump’s political opponents.

So yeah, I agree with you. Nothing has changed, as far as I can tell.

Is there any politician out there that is truly neither left nor right but centrist? If so, does that politician have any chance of being elected?

(Matt) The problem with the concept of centrism is that it implies there is a middle position to public opinion. This may have been the case in the past, but in the age of Trump we are divided into two camps with opposite world views. What is the centrist position between the MAGA vision for America and everyone else? You can’t split the difference between supporting democracy on one hand and seeking to maintain power at all costs on the other. And while it is certainly possible to speak of politicians being more or less progressive and more or less conservative, these degrees of moderation fail to capture the center of the broad sweep of public opinion. This is why I’m reluctant to use terms like moderate or centrist to describe politicians at this moment.

If the Blue Wave comes and Democrats win back Congress, I have heard that Trump will try to pressure the current Republican Congress (and, of course, his lapdog Mike Johnson) to refuse to seat the incoming Congress. If such a thing happens, are we stuck with the Republicans despite our votes? Is there anything one citizen can do?

(Chris) The Constitution gives the House of Representatives absolute power to determine the winners of its own elections (Article I, Section 5, Clause 1). There is literally no recourse, not even to the Supreme Court, to what the majority of the House of Representatives decides when it comes to their own elections.

So, technically speaking, it is possible for a majority of the House of Representatives to go rogue and decide not to seat any members of their opposition—or, for that matter, any members of their own party that they don’t like.

That said, this is just not a realistic fear. To be honest, it is another case of progressives swallowing Donald Trump’s con job that he is all powerful.

Trump has been either president, or president-elect, when over 600 Democrats won elections to the House of Representatives. Did he try to refuse to have any of them seated? Was there a significant campaign from anyone not to seat any Democratic member of Congress? The answer to these questions, of course, is no.

The reason there has been no effort to prevent anyone from being seated is because there is unanimous consensus among members of the House of Representatives of both parties to seat the free and fair winners of House elections.

Before ABC News took it down, FiveThirtyEight had a great article showing the long-term trend in disputed elections for the House of Representatives by decade. Thanks to the wanderers of the Wayback Machine, you can view it, in snapshot form, by clicking here. The article shows that there used to be far more disputed elections to the House of Representatives, but that they have been in decline since the turn of the 20th century, and are now at their lowest point ever.

If you will forgive me, I would like to add that sometimes I find questions like this a little exasperating. People who think that every single Republican member of Congress will just do literally whatever Donald Trump wants, up to and including preventing Democrats from being seated in Congress, just seem to be living in a different world than I am. Trump is regularly rebuked by members of his own party, who regularly do not do what he wants. One of the things they definitely won’t do is refuse to seat any Democrats—because they actually believe in democracy, for the most part—and we know this because none of them have ever tried to do it!

Current polls keep showing that Trump’s approval ratings are cratering. We are supposed to draw hope from this. Going back to 2016, polls have consistently and repeatedly misrepresented the Trump voter, whether the polling misses those voters or whether they lie in their responses, or whatever. He and his minions have ended up with numbers that do not reflect the polls. How do we really stand with respect to the midterms, given this decade-long trend?

(Matt) Pollsters have had difficulty accounting for the percentage of Trump supporters in the voting population, and this has been an issue when Trump was on the ballot. That, of course, will not be the case—at least not in the literal sense—this November. Trump—like any incumbent president—will be the main driver of the midterm vote, because the public stands to pass judgment on his party for how they view his administration. But he will never be on a ballot again.

When I assess the likelihood of a blue wave, I look at a series of metrics that have proven reliable in previous midterms—including the 2018 election when Trump was the incumbent—to assess how the electorate is shaping up. These metrics are all pointing in the same direction, whether we look at Trump’s historically low approval rating, his dismal standing with independent voters, the Democrats’ strong standing in the generic House ballot, Democratic over-performance in special elections since the start of Trump’s second presidency, the disproportionate number of Republican retirements from Congress, the ability of Democrats to recruit stronger candidates than Republicans, greater enthusiasm among Democrats to vote, higher rates of participation in Democratic primaries, successful Democratic grassroots fundraising, or the large number of Republican House seats being targeted by Democrats.

That’s a lot of data, and it’s not all from polling. It suggests that Democrats are in an extremely strong position going into November.

I’d like to see progressives give a unified response to the ongoing “Democrats in disarray “narrative. Something like: “Democrats believe that each candidate should represent his or her constituents—in a diverse country that means a range of candidates and we embrace that.” What do you think and how would you phrase it?

(Chris) That’s a very nice idea. However, I have to be frank with you: there are powerful activist organizations, members of Congress, and influential media figures who do not favor a big tent in the Democratic Party. They expect everyone to take the same hard line, and variation and dissent are not tolerated. They believe in frightening people to stay in line by publicly destroying the careers of prominent dissenters.

And folks like that aren’t going away. As such, the factional fighting will continue unabated, and it will continue to dominate headlines about Democratic politics.

As individuals, the only thing we can do is to learn more about the political landscape so we can identify the main people and groups fueling these fights, and then choose whether to participate. Having had close contact with many of the groups and individuals involved with it, I can tell you right now that I want no part of it whatsoever.

(Matt) The “Democrats in disarray” narrative is a remnant of the long period when Democrats were a minority party composed of a range of groups promoting their particular agendas. You can go back to the Reagan years, when Republicans accused Democrats of being a party of “special interests” without a coherent national platform. This is not an unusual position for a party after a long run in the majority, because coalitions burn themselves out over time and are reduced to their component parts once the country no longer wants what they are selling.

The Republican party is currently in this situation. After setting the national agenda for the better part of four decades, it has been reduced to a rump reactionary party under Donald Trump and the country is in the process of rejecting it. This gives Democrats the ability to offer a vision and ask for a mandate to lead a post-Trump America. It may not put an immediate end to the disarray narrative, especially because the process that will shape that vision will be a presidential primary campaign that may well not be orderly. But it should give Democrats something much better—the opportunity to demonstrate they can lead the country. If they are successful, a new narrative will follow.

Life in Activism: Four Steps to Maintaining a Clean Inbox Without Going Crazy

Chris Bowers — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 14:00:49 GMT

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

If you are a Democratic or progressive grassroots activist, or just a concerned citizen who likes to stay politically engaged, your email inbox can be one of the more frustrating aspects of your political experience.

Why did you sign up for so many newsletters? How did so many organizations that you don’t remember signing up for get your email? And why do news outlets, activist organizations, and Democratic candidates send so many emails in the first place?

Sometimes it feels like cleaning out your inbox is a part time job, doesn’t it? What’s more, a lot of emails are really alarmist and unpleasant to read. You may feel worse after you checked your inbox than you did beforehand, with the emails you receive leaving you on edge over the news, badgered with donation requests, and distracted by half-read articles.

First, let me say that I get where you are coming from. I have been making a living primarily through email for 17 years now, and using email regularly for almost 34 years, and you are correct in your inclination that email is a lot more crowded, a lot pushier, and a lot less personal than it used to be. To put it bluntly, the email space has become kind of ugly, especially given how at one time it was a wonderful, far more efficient way to keep up with friends and family than had ever previously existed.

However, that does not mean that your inbox cannot be salvaged, nor does it mean you cannot keep it under control on a regular basis. I have three primary emails that I use for work and personal life, all of which are often at “inbox zero,” and all of which are always up to date. And, let me assure you, this is even though I have probably signed up for more news organizations and Democratic campaigns than you have, and even though I conduct a lot of personal and family business over email to this very day. And it never drives me crazy, either, at least not anymore.

In this edition of Life in Activism, I present to you my four steps for maintaining a clean email inbox without it driving you crazy.

Growing Pains

Matt Kerbel — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:01:44 GMT

Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash

Consider the following statements:

Statement #1: “The real fight in this country is not left versus right, it’s top versus bottom.”

Statement #2: “It’s not left versus right. It’s the people who are locked out versus the people doing the locking out.”

These statements sound pretty similar.

Both connect the problems of ordinary people to large corporations and uber-wealthy individuals who exercise undue influence over the economy and the political system.

Both suggest the damage being done to us hurts conservatives and liberals alike.

Both reject the left-versus-right cultural and ideological disputes that defined political debate for decades and animate politicos inside the Beltway.

What’s noteworthy about these statements is who said them.

The first quote is from Texas Senate nominee James Talarico.

The second is from Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

Talarico is an economic populist.

El-Sayed is widely described as a left-wing insurgent affiliated with Bernie Sanders and AOC.

Talarico is viewed by Washington Democrats as the party’s best hope in ages to win a statewide election in Texas.

El-Sayed is viewed by those same Democrats as a leftist threat who is sending “tremors through the Democratic party.”

So how can two candidates who are so aligned in their respective understanding of the political moment generate such different responses from establishment Democrats?

The answer rests not so much with where these candidates converge but with the company they keep and an entrenched belief that it is risky for Democrats to appear openly progressive after four decades of “liberal” being a political epithet.

And for some party supporters who stand to pay the bills for progressive reforms, it stems from the fear that a populist tide could capture the party and Democrats will actually try to make good on their priorities.

These are the divisions that are roiling the Democratic party as it seeks to broaden its appeal, become a permanent majority party, and set the terms of our politics after four decades of being relegated to a supporting role.

If you look closely, you can find these fault lines reflected in coverage of El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan primary last Tuesday, like this report from the BBC:

In a year in which Republicans appear to be facing significant electoral headwinds, Democratic primary voters have taken a chance on a left-wing insurgent, raising the stakes in a Senate race in November that could decide overall control of the upper chamber.
The question is whether the way El-Sayed has electrified the party base and tapped into their anger will work on general election voters. And whether an unabashedly left-wing Democrat can win in a swing state. …
El-Sayed, the child of Egyptian immigrants, ran on a left-wing platform with the backing of such liberal stalwarts as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. …
In debates and on the stump, El-Sayed proved to be the more gifted candidate, and Democrats seemed open to his policies, including government-sponsored health insurance, efforts to lower drug costs, higher taxes on the wealthy and campaign finance reform.
His campaign refrain—”money out of politics, money in your pocket”—has been a common one among left-wing candidates this election cycle.

That’s true. But it has also been a common refrain of candidates who do not self-identify as left wing. And there is nothing exclusively left-wing about advocating government-sponsored health insurance, lower drug costs, higher taxes on the wealthy, and campaign finance reform. In 2026, these are mainstream positions that poll well with a wide range of voters.

The Democratic party was experiencing internal conflict long before El-Sayed narrowly defeated a Chuck Schumer-backed opponent to claim the Michigan Senate nomination. National and state Democrats quickly closed ranks around El-Sayed after his victory, but in the background there was angst among Democrats who came of age during the long period of Republican ascendency in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

It makes sense that political professionals who think in ideological terms would be worried about positioning the party where the voters are. And El-Sayed will have to be an adept general election candidate to build the coalition he will need to win Michigan—although that same critique would have applied to his primary opponent Haley Stevens had she won.

Concerns about El-Sayed become misguided when they spill over to questions about the ideological direction of the party. When Democrats fret about candidates like El-Sayed pulling the party too far to the left, they are employing the very ideological framework that younger Democrats like El-Sayed and Talarico reject.

As we move into the 2028 presidential primary season a few months from now, you will probably see a lot of stories about how Democrats are engaged in an ideological civil war. Legacy media reporters tend to look for conflict wherever they can find it, and the narrative of Democrats in disarray has a well-worn history.

But the overlap between Talarico and El-Sayed suggests this framing distorts the larger picture of what’s happening to the party at a time when the allegiance of a wide range of voters is up for grabs.

The question of whether Democrats should move to the center or move to the left is overly simplistic and easy to answer. They can—and should—do both, depending on the constituencies they are trying to reach.

As parties grow, they should be capable of expanding their coalitions. Democratic socialists who can win in New York should be able to sit side-by-side with prairie populists who can win in Iowa, faith-driven economic populists who can compete in Texas, and self-described “moderates” or traditional Democrats who can win in Virginia.

This means looking beyond an ideological frame of reference and recalibrating the party to address the concerns of a diverse set of voters by promising to protect rights and liberties while rebuilding a middle class that has been gutted by the policies of the past four decades. Even self-described moderates can win with a message of fixing a broken system that’s rigged against ordinary people.

The essential matter is how Democrats can appeal to a post-Trump America and expand the number of voters who can find a home under their tent.

Changes like this are hard for a party to address. But it is a healthy and important debate for Democrats to have.

And it is not an accident that it’s happening now. When we look at the turmoil enveloping the Democratic party in the context of the self-immolation of the Republican party, it should be clear that what’s happening on one side is in response to the political fallout of what’s happening on the other.

Not just the parties but the party system is under pressure. Plenty of voters are up for grabs. What’s happening with Democrats is what we would expect to see during a period of great change—and great opportunity.

From this perspective, the Democratic party is hardly falling apart.

The conflict we’re seeing is not a civil war.

It’s growing pains.