"They Sense That Behind Them Is the Same Old Democratic Party with the Same Old Elites and the Same Old Cultural Priorities"

"Working-class voters are acutely aware that the professional-dominated educated upper middle class who occupy positions of administrative and cultural power is overwhelmingly Democratic. For the working class, the professional upper middle class may not be the super-rich but they are elites just the same. These voters harbor deep resentment toward the cultural gatekeepers who they feel are telling them how to live their lives, even what to think and say, and incidentally are living a great deal more comfortably than they are."

Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot argues that Democratic candidates "need a strong dose of cultural populism" along with economic populism.

"So Why Is American Economic Confidence at Its Lowest Point in More Than a Decade?"

"The answer lies in a mix of economic reality and human psychology. On the reality side, Americans are not at all pleased with the high cost of living, particularly for the 'hard' goods and services in modern life, including housing, energy, health care, childcare, education, household goods, and things such as car payments, insurance, and maintenance. Even with decent wages and income and prospective tax cuts, working- and middle-class families do not feel particularly solid when they open their banking apps. A middle-class life that once seemed attainable and sustainable seems out of reach to many younger people and increasingly precarious for more established older Americans. Cheap televisions, ubiquitous phones, endless entertainment, and fast internet won't make up for people's inability to pay their health care premiums or save enough for a down payment on a home or retirement."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot argues that "the ideological faction or leader who figures out this economic reality first—and responds genuinely and empathetically to Americans' psychological worries about their finances—will be well positioned for success, at least temporarily."

"That's Not Just an Economic Issue. That's Stability Risk"

"The country is living in a K-shaped economy: two diverging roads, where outcomes for one group accelerate upward while outcomes for another flatten–or quietly deteriorate. The top half is compounding: stable employment, rising asset values, and the confidence that comes from having options. The bottom half is exposed: high sensitivity to inflation, fragile cash flow, rising credit stress, and a feeling that even doing everything 'right' isn't enough."

Josh Tanenbaum at Fortune warns of an America "where the top gets insulated enough to become careless, the bottom gets desperate enough to become combustible, and the middle loses belief that effort translates into progress."

"Talent Still Calls California Home"

"Recent comparisons to Detroit misunderstand what makes each city remarkable. The Motor City's decline was largely due to companies offshoring innovation to cheaper factories abroad. Los Angeles' challenge is the opposite: an overabundance of innovation that is decentralizing faster than anyone expected. The industry is not dying; it is diversifying."

In a 2025 Los Angeles Times article, Rachel Zaslansky Sheer and Lori Zuker Briller discuss Hollywood as a place and as an industry.

"Nobody Cared"

"It is also a grim judgment on the entire political system. The Supreme Court has effectively rendered the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution moot. Republicans are completely in thrall to Trump and unwilling to exercise the kind of patriotism their party showed when leaders of the GOP broke with Richard Nixon over his crimes. Democrats, with some noble exceptions such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, have been notably reluctant to make corruption an issue, since it seems to have little political traction."

Jeet Heer at The Nation describes Donald Trump "as perhaps the most corrupt elected official in human history."

"The Public Wants to See Something Bold"

"It's an argument that began in the progressive wing but is increasingly finding purchase across the party: Be proudly, loudly, without reservations, anti-AI. It's not enough, these pollsters, consultants and elected officials say, to caution, minimally regulate and signal a friendly stance toward tech companies building AI. There is a massive, growing opportunity for Democrats to tap into rising anxiety, fear and anger about the havoc AI could wreak in people's lives, they say, on issues from energy affordability to large-scale job losses, and channel it toward a populist movement—and not doing it, or not doing it strongly enough, will hurt the party."

Calder McHugh at Politico discusses options for Democrats regarding the politics of technology.

"Welcome to the Death of Higher Education"

"The real tragedy isn't that students use ChatGPT to do their course work. It's that universities are teaching everyone—students, faculty, administrators—to stop thinking. We're outsourcing discernment. Students graduate fluent in prompting, but illiterate in judgment; faculty teach but aren't allowed the freedom to educate; and universities, eager to appear innovative, dismantle the very practices that made them worthy of the name. We are approaching educational bankruptcy: degrees without learning, teaching without understanding, institutions without purpose."

Ronald Purser at Current Affairs says that "AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself."

"Culture as a Sort of Terroir"

"Making art with lasting meaning requires resisting the pull of instant exposure and early buyouts. We must think through ways to encourage artists to disappear into their own worlds for a while, developing ideas away from corporate influence and assimilation. Not everyone will have the discipline or capacity for this, but those who do or can will shape the future. And the least that critics and fans can do is give them esteem—when justified—for attempting to move culture forward, instead of ignoring them as marginal, castigating them as pretentious, or belittling their view counts. The past 25 years have taught us that the contemporary economy and media will not prioritize creative invention. The question is: Will you?"

The Atlantic runs an "article has been adapted from W. David Marx's new book, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century."

"A Cynical Means for the Affluent to Transfer Ever More Wealth From the Rest of Society to Themselves"

"In private equity, there is a saying that goes: 'Every day you're not selling, you're buying.' It means that as long as you hold on to a company or some other asset without profiting from it, you're betting on its longer term success. Behind it is a principle that is widespread on Wall Street: that there are only two sides to every trade--the winner and the loser. The same might be said about society's relationship to private equity: every day we're not regulating it, we're letting it regulate us. We're letting it take over our cells and replicate aggressively. It's clear who's on the winning side of that bargain."

In a 2024 Guardian article, Alex Blasdel explores the world of private equity.

The Return of History

"I think that there was excess state regulation and state interference in economies that had developed by the 1970s. And so, you had politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher that tried to roll back some of that regulation. They were supported in this by very prominent economists, like Milton Friedman. The problem was that [they] went too far and attempted to undermine all forms of state activity, even necessary ones, for example, of regulating the financial system. And as a result, we ended up with a globalization that increased inequality and led to substantial instability in the global financial system. And this, of course, provoked a populist backlash that you see both on the left and the right, which partially explains why we are where we are today."

In a 2022 El Pais article, Sergio C. Fanjul interviews Francis Fukuyama.

"The United States Has Entered a New Era of State Capitalism"

"The real question is no longer whether the state will act, but whose interests it will serve. Will it merely prop up incumbents and invite capture? Or can public ownership and golden shares be harnessed for resilience and equity? If progressives don't seize this moment to define a democratic, public-minded industrial policy, they will find themselves living in one designed by the Trump administration."

Todd Tucker at The New Republic tells Democrats, "Don't Let Trump Define What State Capitalism Can Be."

"The First Step, Which Is Often the Hardest, Is to Get Our Thinking Straight"

"The vast majority of us are global consumers and, at least indirectly, global investors. In these roles we should strive for the best deals possible. That is how we participate in the global market economy. But those private benefits usually have social costs. And for those of us living in democracies, it is imperative to remember that we are also citizens who have it in our power to reduce these social costs, making the true price of the goods and services we purchase as low as possible. We can accomplish this larger feat only if we take our roles as citizens seriously."

Back in a 2009 Foreign Policy article, Robert B. Reich describes "[h]ow Capitalism Is Killing Democracy."

"The Broader Threat Posed by Right-Wing Authoritarianism"

"With the rise of right-wing populism and neofascism, the crisis has become acute. Neofascism sees the trade union movement as its enemy while at the same time trying to appeal to the working class who make up labor's membership. However, to win over this base, the far right is harkening back to previous pseudo pro-worker appeals by embracing racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic politics that can present as being in the interest of everyday working people."

At In These Times, Bill Fletcher, Jr., concludes that "[t]rade unionism must either be anti-fascist, or it will be nothing at all."

While Carl Davidson at ZNetwork calls for a "Third Reconstruction."

And Dustin Guastella at Damage blames the "MANGO class."

Demeritocracy

"If we sort people only by superior intelligence, we're sorting people by a quality few possess; we’re inevitably creating a stratified, elitist society. We want a society run by people who are smart, yes, but who are also wise, perceptive, curious, caring, resilient, and committed to the common good. If we can figure out how to select for people's motivation to grow and learn across their whole lifespan, then we are sorting people by a quality that is more democratically distributed, a quality that people can control and develop, and we will end up with a fairer and more mobile society."

In a 2024 Atlantic article, David Brooks writes about "How the Ivy League Broke America."

While at The Hill, Jenna Robinson argues that "[i]t's well past time to bring back standardized testing" in college admissions.

"Frustrated and Underemployed Elites Are Uniquely Well-Positioned to Disrupt Society"

"The day after The New York Times posted Mack's op-ed, Smith re-posted a 2022 piece about Turchin's theory of elite overproduction. It noted that demand for lawyers and government employees (the bulk of whom work for state and local governments) levelled off after 2008; that employment in publishing crashed in 2001 and never recovered; and that university job postings in the humanities crashed during the 2008 financial crash and never recovered. (If there's a poster child for elite overproduction, it's the humble university adjunct.) In the 21st century the professional-managerial class has experienced a loss of economic power that's analogous to (though of course much more muted than, and conducted at a much higher level than) the working class's loss of economic power starting in the late 1970s."

Timothy Noah at The New Republic considers "the rage of what Barbara and John Ehrenreich once labelled the professional-managerial class."

"Both Ideological Groups—the Left and Center—Mistakenly Believe They Can Conquer the Other Faction to Achieve Electoral Glory"

"Having examined the strengths and delusions of both factions for several decades now, the most plausible path I can see to bridge these divides and reach more independents is for both the left and the center to drop their cultural, foreign policy, and single-issue demands and concentrate on restoring Democrats as the party of economic uplift for working-class Americans."

John Halpin at The Liberal Patriot asks, "Can Democratic Factions Coexist and Win Over Independents?"

Ruy Teixeira argues that "today's progressives have abandoned their former goals of universal uplift based on universal values and aspirations."

And Justin Vassallo offers advice on "How To Rebuild the Democratic Coalition."

"In the 1935 Telling, Redistribution Was the Mechanism of Abundance"

"Even in those invocations of abundance, the stark differences between the socialist abundance movement of 1935 and the moderate abundance agenda of 2025 are apparent. The concept of 'production for use' is in contrast to the capitalist profit motive. In socialist thought, one of the core issues of a capitalist economy is that profit motives result in wealth accumulation becoming divorced from the creation of actual economic value. A production for use system makes production and allocation decisions based on need (or 'use value'), rather than market prices."

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis at The New Republic describes "An Altogether Different Kind of Abundance Agenda."

"To Put Down Roots and Then Oppose New Development"

"Glaeser and Gyourko go one step further. They hypothesize that as Sun Belt cities have become more affluent and highly educated, their residents have become more willing and able to use existing laws and regulations to block new development. They point to two main pieces of evidence. First, for a given city, the slowdown in new housing development strongly correlates with a rising share of college-educated residents. Second, within cities, the neighborhoods where housing production has slowed the most are lower-density, affluent suburbs populated with relatively well-off, highly educated professionals. In other words, anti-growth NIMBYism might be a perverse but natural consequence of growth: As demand to live in a place increases, it attracts the kind of people who are more likely to oppose new development, and who have the time and resources to do so. 'We used to think that people in Miami, Dallas, Phoenix behaved differently than people in Boston and San Francisco,' Gyourko told me. 'That clearly isn't the case.'"

Rogé Karma at The Atlantic writes that "[t]he Sun Belt, in short, is subject to the same antidevelopment forces as the coasts; it just took longer to trigger them.

You Got Two Ways to Go

"Ceasing to think of freedom as the possession of many options would be no small rupture. What might take its place? Abandoning a consumerist worldview might not be the worst thing for humanity, and for Americans in particular—it might lead to a sturdier value system, maybe one more concerned with the common good. But the resulting vacuum could just as easily be filled by Trump's idea of freedom, one based on power and sovereignty over others, and on screwing the other guy before he screws you. The cruelty of this vision almost demands a reinvigoration of choice, an effort to salvage what had made this human impulse so liberating to begin with."

Gal Beckerman at The Atlantic reviews Sophia Rosenfeld's The Age of Choice.

"A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine"

"The way I see it, we're family. It really does disappoint me that so many brilliant colleagues—whose genuine breakthroughs I've profited from for years—would be so quick to condemn this newer, stupider way that I and others like me can make money off your life's work, through stealing."

So writes Amanda Bachman at McSweeney's.