Oh God, here we go again. This magazine has frequently lambasted figures in and around the Democratic Party for evading the responsibility to provide a powerful alternative to Trumpism. In the aftermath of Kamala Harris’s electoral defeat, all kinds of people and institutions are offering suggestions for where the party goes from here. Should it embrace the “abundance” philosophy of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson? Should it “expand the tent” by viewing once-important issues like abortion as peripheral, to try to encourage anti-abortion voters to join the party? Or should it pursue the economic populism of Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani? 

My view on this has been that it is extremely obvious that Democrats should take the Bernie route. I’ve been banging that drum since 2016, when I told Democrats they’d lose to Trump if they didn’t nominate Bernie. I’ve grown somewhat weary of making the case, but if you’d like to hear it at considerable length you can check out the book Why You Should Be a Socialist. The basic argument is that we need anti-establishment candidates who speak to working people’s economic problems, who aren’t wishy-washy, who don’t back down, and who take necessary moral stands. Kat Abughazaleh, running for Congress in Illinois, calls this a platform of “unapologetic progressivism, anti-fascism, and using material resources to improve people’s lives.” I’ve been impressed with the campaigns of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine. Both of them focus on the ways in which ordinary people are hurting economically, offering tangible solutions like universal healthcare, and both aren’t afraid to take seemingly politically risky but morally courageous moves like calling Israel’s genocide a genocide.

But there are also those who say that Democrats have been too bold in defense of progressive values, and need to run to the center to avoid alienating the Median Voter. For instance, a new think tank called the Searchlight Institute, run by a former staffer for John Fetterman, is encouraging Democrats to “minimize the sway that left-leaning groups have over candidates” and “de-emphasize issues that typically animate the party’s most loyal voters,” such as civil rights. They have been given a $10 million annual budget for their mission, which they are partly using to give selected people $10,000 a month stipends to produce policy proposals. It may not surprise you to hear that this effort is funded by “a roster of billionaire donors highlighted by Stephen Mandel, a hedge fund manager, and Eric Laufer, a real estate investor.”

Some are already wondering whether the Searchlight Institute adds much to the “already crowded scene of Democratic groups” encouraging the party to embrace centrism. (I, of course, would argue that the party has already embraced centrism and this is precisely its problem.) As one Democratic donor adviser told Politico, “we already have a bunch of entities who” spread the message that “we need a moderate voice, because we’re losing everyone and we have to come back to the center and get away from woke, identity politics.” Searchlight’s “Wildflower” conference, which drew “top Democratic donors and officials, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin and other congressional members,” had many echoes of “WelcomeFest,” the festival of centrism held recently in Washington, D.C., at which the New York Times noted there was “glancingly little discussion beyond what would sell with voters” and “the thrust of the day’s discussion was dismissing the party’s left wing.”

So, what is this think tank’s actual proposed policy platform? Well, it says it wants to “disrupt rigidity.” Its mission statement explains: 

The Searchlight Institute exists to disrupt the dominant paradigm of smallness, purity, and fear. We will bring big policy ideas to a political milieu that has grown accustomed to thinking small. We will break down the ideological barriers that have imposed rigidity and separated us from our neighbors. And we will bring clarity to a data environment polluted by misinformation.

Well, that’s not terribly specific, is it? Perhaps we can go to the group’s Policy page to find out more! They don’t have much to say right now on any given topic, which is understandable, since they’re new. But they do discuss the questions they’re going to ask. So, for instance, what are they going to try to answer about Social Security and Medicare? Well, the section entitled “Earned Benefits” reads: 

Can liberals build broad-based support for strengthening the social safety net by frontally addressing questions of deservingness in ways not seen since the New Deal? Can resentment that stems from violations of just-world beliefs be separated from other forms of resentment, and assuaged?

What does “frontally addressing questions of deservingness” mean? And that second sentence, well, I really am not sure what we’re even asking here. Why do I suspect that this is going to end up with justifications for cutting benefits? (“Strengthening support” by “addressing questions of deservingness” sounds like it could mean “trying to make it more popular by cutting out those perceived as undeserving,” similar to how Bill Clinton’s “welfare reform” actually meant “kicking people off welfare.”) I mean, I don’t know, because this is all so vague. I guess we’ll see, but I’m not encouraged by the first research brief Searchlight has put out, which is basically beyond parody. It’s on climate change, and Searchlight’s conclusion is that Democrats just need to stop talking about climate change altogether. 

I’m not kidding. It’s called “The First Rule About Solving Climate Change: Don’t Say Climate Change.” Is that because they don’t think the term climate change polls well, and we should find some other way to talk about the issue? Nope. They just don’t think we should talk about the issue. (“How to Talk About Climate Change: Don’t.”) They call it an “abstract problem.” (Not very fucking abstract when your house is burning to the ground, or you’ve died from heatstroke working on a construction site). They go on:

When leaders say the words “climate change,” voters get bad vibes[…] So, if elected leaders shouldn’t say the words “climate change,” what should they talk about? As you can probably guess: lowering costs. It’s the only issue that over half of battleground voters say is extremely important to them—well above other climate-related issues and byproducts.

Their argument is, essentially: voters think their immediate concerns about energy prices are more important than addressing climate change, so politicians should just drop mention of the climate crisis entirely and focus, as Republicans do, on cheap energy. Does Searchlight say that the cheap energy in question should be renewable? They don’t really discuss it. They just say, essentially, climate change is a losing issue with the electorate, so stop discussing it. 

The problem here, of course, is that the climate crisis will continue and worsen regardless of polling. To abandon discussion of one of the most important issues of our time because “cheap energy” polls better is indefensible. If the asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, pollsters might find that talking about the asteroid depresses people, and they’d rather hear politicians promise a chicken in every pot. But it’s the responsibility of those who grasp the scale of the problem to move public opinion, not to simply ignore the crisis because the public doesn’t currently grasp the nature of the crisis (in part because Democrats have spent so many years being terrible on climate change and failing to convey an understanding of the emergency to the public). I believe that, properly framed, climate change can actually be a massive winning issue for Democrats, because Republicans have no solution to this immense unfolding disaster, and are in total denial about it. And this advantage will only increase with each passing year, as the extreme-heat deaths and the unprecedented hurricanes and wildfires become more frequent, and more people are directly affected. The Republicans should be aggressively attacked for failing to meet the moment, but instead, Searchlight is advising Democrats to drop the issue precisely when it’s most critical to act. This is objectively nuts.

 And it’s not like Searchlight is against trying to move public opinion on the issues its donors care about, either. Faced with the unfortunate reality that voters are not excited by Abundance centrism, with its emphasis on deregulating housing construction, and prefer Sanders-style anti-oligarchy politics, Searchlight recommends finding ways to show people that increasing the housing supply is important. Fine, but surely if the principle is that we must teach the public what is in their interest, showing them what a catastrophe climate change is pretty damned important! The think-tank’s organizers want to have it both ways: when they agree with what voters think, polling is everything, but when they disagree, polling suddenly doesn’t matter at all, and the public needs to have its mind changed.

I suspect the Searchlight Institute is mostly going to succeed at spending millions of dollars of its billionaire donors’ money and producing a few unread PDFs. They exist mainly to tell centrist Democrats to double down on what they are already doing, namely throwing immigrants, climate activists, and trans people under the bus in the name of electability. I think this strategy is a disaster. It poses as pragmatism, but in fact it just dulls the contrast with Republicans, making Democrats look weak and unprincipled. The massive popular enthusiasm for Bernie and AOC’s Fighting Oligarchy tour, and the Zohran Mamdani campaign, shows that people are thirsty for an opposition that actually fights, rather than “disrupting rigidity” and throwing civil rights issues out the window because they are “identity politics.”

I sigh when I see that Searchlight is going to be spending $10 million per year pushing this nonsense, which is not only morally indefensible but electorally suicidal. If the Democratic Party listens to this bullshit, it will continue to learn nothing, continue to ignore the biggest problems of our time, and continue to lose. This is just another useless capitulation at a time when the American people need public fighters for economic justice, civil rights, and climate justice more than ever.