In his Substack today Nate Silver introduces a taxonomy of the factions in the modern Democratic Party as a jumping-off point for his critique of Heather Cox Richardson and the faction she represents. Here’s the taxonomy:
I’d argue that there are three main factions of the Democratic Party as the jockeying is already underway for the 2026 and 2028 primaries. First, there’s the Capital-L Left: populist, deservedly feeling recharged by the success of Zohran Mamdani and a backlash to the increasingly politically assertive billionaire class.
Next, there’s what you might think of as the Abundance Libs: technocratic, more willing to find common ground with Republicans, and more sympathetic to market-based solutions. I’m a big fan of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the authors of Abundance, but I think the project is more neo-liberal than left-wing — to me, not such a bad thing! That’s a subject for a different newsletter, however.
The third faction Richardsonism or a term I’ll treat as synonymous with it: #Resistance Libs. They’re older, with extremely high educational attainment, predominantly female, and very highly politically engaged. This is the audience for a cluster of political activism encompassing things such as the No Kings protests and some highly popular anti-Trump Substacks along with certain prominent podcasts and much of Bluesky.
I think that Nate’s taxonomy is fine as a political science exercise but it suffers from some defects in helping us understand today’s Democratic Party and the challenges it faces.
The alternative taxonomy I would propose also consists of three factions:
- People who want something from the government
This group includes poor and middle income beneficiaries, students, and people whose primary political calculus is distributive. Their moral logic is “Government exists to help people like me.”
- People who see politics and government as a way of making a living, even becoming wealthy
This group consists of politicians, bureaucrats, NGOs, consultants, defense contractors, and regulators. Their moral logic is cloaked in public purpose but is essentially self-interested. It is a very large and powerful group.
- People who want to accomplish things that require government intervention
This group is small but not non-existent and is frequently overruled by the other two factions. Their moral logic is that some problems cannot be solved without state power.
There are a number of differences between Nate’s taxonomy and mine. My taxonomy points to the political economy of the Democratic Party, pointing out that there are large groups that are economically dependent on government expansion regardless of ideology and why failure does not lead to reform. Nate’s taxonomy does a better job of explaining electoral coalitions and messaging strategies and explaining why Democrats squabble so bitterly among themselves even when their material interests align.
Nonetheless, I think my taxonomy has a number of strengths. For one thing it explains why win or lose Democratic campaigns are so expensive. If my view is correct, it suggests that voters are noticing that the Democrats promise outcomes but deliver procedures and funding to intermediaries and are tired of it which leads to declining turnout, particularly in midterm and off-year elections, ticket splitting, and the rise of “burn it all down” candidates.
We’ll soon have an opportunity to test my hypothesis in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 general election. In 2026 Nate’s model would predict that #Resistance purists re-activate around Trump, democracy, courts, and norms and that Democrats regain some ground through turnout and if Democrats lose, the party will adjust its ideas. My model on the other hand predicts that Democrats will run on affordability, ironically since the policies they espouse have the opposite effect, in the midterms campaign spending will be very great, possibly unprecedentedly so. Outcomes will underperform relative to spending, surprise pundits, and evoke post-mortems without reform. If the Democrats fail they will blame it on “the rich” or “corporations”.
In 2028 Nate’s model predicts a better message, a better candidate, and favorable conditions will produce an electoral recovery.
My model predicts that barring external developments in the form of a charismatic outsider, a financial crisis, or generational upheaval, etc. the election will be quite close. The Democratic standard-bearer may well be a billionaire.
Democrats are not losing because they have the wrong ideas; they are losing because the people who depend on how the party works are not the people who depend on it winning.
