The Purity Trap

White, college-educated progressives have made it harder for Democrats to win elections.

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

— H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major

Many of my fellow Democrats with strong political views care more about the sanctity of their ideas than winning elections. They have fallen into a purity trap.

I say this as someone who holds many views that are electorally disqualifying. I’d happily mandate collective bargaining for our lowest-wage workers. I’d abolish the Electoral College, the US Senate, and the Second Amendment. I’d tax carbon and fund elections with public vouchers and anonymized donations. But I hold these views knowing that they render me politically toxic outside of a few university towns, and I routinely set these and other preferences aside to support more electable candidates.

White, college-educated professionals lead most groups in the Democratic coalition outside of organized labor. They staff policy nonprofits and key political operations. Most have lost track of how far to the left their politics have shifted, especially in blue states and Washington, DC.

• Research by Pew’s Values Survey found that college-educated Democrats had shifted 30-40 points left on issues such as racial justice, immigration, foreign policy, environmental regulation, and the role of government. Noncollege Republicans moved half that far, 15-20 points, to the right (especially on immigration and racial resentment), but their shift was slower and less ideologically consistent.

• Harvard’s Comparative Election Study (CES), the American National Election Studies, and independent scholars have likewise concluded that white, college-educated Democrats have become significantly more liberal than their non-college counterparts have become conservative.¹

How to spot a purity trap

There is a reliable and straightforward way to reveal which Democrats have fallen into a purity trap. Ask, “Do you have a credible plan to win a Democratic majority in the US Senate?” Many of the educated white professionals who steer the Democratic party do not. They are focused instead on regaining control of the House in 2026 and, in some cases, on running Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) for President in 2028. This is dangerously short-sighted.

The Purity Democrats’ plan to regain the House requires no painful adjustments. All Democrats need to do is run against Donald Trump in districts where he either lost or won by a narrow margin in the 2024 election. Purists see no need for Democrats to rethink the candidates they run or the story they tell about who they are and what they want America to be.

Purity Democrats have a comforting plan for the House, but no plan at all to regain control of the Senate, which requires candidates to carry states, not more homogeneous districts. Dems need to flip four seats to win control of the Senate. The states where they have the best chance are Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, and Texas. Winning these states requires a substantial course correction.

• Maine. This looks achievable. After all, most Maine voters are Democrats, and Kamala carried the state! Except that Susan Collins is a fortress in Maine. Her reputation for moderation is worth ten points before the campaign even starts. Democrats who distrust moderation might reflect on this. Taking Maine will be tough.

• North Carolina. Our next best shot is North Carolina — a state that Trump has barely carried three times. Democrats are whispering sweet nothings to moderate former Governor Roy Cooper, urging him to run. Maybe he will, and perhaps he will win. They would still need three more seats.

• Ohio. Ohio is home to JD Vance and a state that Trump carried by 11 points in 2024. This is a larger margin than Harris achieved in New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, New Jersey, Virginia, New Hampshire, or Maine. There is no chance that white college-educated Democrats can turn Ohio blue without significantly revising our approach.

• Iowa, Florida, and Texas. Today’s Democratic strategists are ceding Iowa and Florida, despite both states voting for Obama in 2012 and electing statewide Democrats in 2018 — the year that Beto O’Rourke received more statewide votes than any Democrat in Texas history.

Instead of moderating their politics to win elections, Purity Democrats double down on their catechism, especially in the “movement” factions. The Bernie/AOC wing focuses more on scoring an ideological scalp in Michigan than on figuring out how to crack Iowa or Ohio. This may be preferable to the sleepwalking party establishment, but Democrats need to create better choices.

A focus on midterms can be strategically misleading. Midterm elections usually tilt against the president’s party. If Trump remains unpopular, House Democrats will have the wind at their backs in 2026. But if Democrats don’t escape the purity trap in 2026, they are setting themselves up for an even worse landscape two years later because the presidential election makes it much harder for Senate candidates to outperform the national partisan baseline.

Learning from Dan Osborn

Purity Democrats are especially irritating because they recognize viable alternatives, but prefer to keep their distance. Dan Osborn’s campaign is a good example. Osborn ran for Senate in Nebraska against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in 2024. He massively outperformed expectations. What accounted for this?

• Authentic working-class appeal. Osborn’s background as a Navy veteran, industrial mechanic, and former union leader resonated with many Nebraskans. He led a large strike at Kellogg’s Omaha plant in 2021, advocating for workers’ rights and preserving middle-class jobs. His biography appealed to voters seeking genuine representation. And he produced some funny videos.

• A populist platform. Osborn ran as a cultural moderate and a political independent. His platform combined economic populist support for labor rights and opposition to corporate influence with moderate stances on gun control and border security.

• Grassroots fundraising and support. Osborn’s campaign relied on small-dollar donations. Although he publicly distanced himself from party affiliations, he also received significant behind-the-scenes support from Democratic-aligned groups.²

• Voter dissatisfaction with inflation, immigration, and incumbents. Osborn tapped into a broad frustration with political establishments. He used his personal narrative and policy positions to challenge entrenched interests and advocate for everyday Cornhuskers.

Osborn said things that made Purity Democrats cringe. He defended gun rights and criticized illegal immigration as bad for American workers. The result? While 39% of Nebraskans voted for Kamala Harris, 46.5% voted for Osborn. Nebraska has another Senate seat up in 2026. I hope that Osborn runs again and speaks more about making housing, healthcare, education, and energy affordable.

Osborn’s focus on economic fairness and tone of cultural respect would make a significant difference in Iowa, Ohio, and even Texas. Here is what Democrats can learn from him:

• Broaden the candidate pool. Instead of relying on lawyers and businesspeople, Democrats need to develop candidates who can talk rural, talk working class, talk energy independence, talk sensible immigration enforcement, and — yes — talk gun rights with nuance. Marty Walsh, a former construction worker and labor leader, became the mayor of Boston and later served as Secretary of Labor. Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez from Washington ran an auto repair shop and is a small-business owner who connects with working-class voters. As former SEIU head Andy Stern recently put it, “Democrats need leaders who speak clearly to economic concerns and are comfortable in a union hall, on a construction site, or at a Little League game.”

• Do not try to enlighten voters. As Democrats shed certain ideological reflexes, they need to see non-college voters not as people in need of political enlightenment, but as citizens to be listened to carefully. This means retooling standard Democratic positions towards cheap energy, regardless of its source, towards greater tolerance of personal firearms, towards a secure border, and immigration and trade policies based on American needs.

• Maintain moderate cultural views, local messaging, and populist economics. Osborn signaled that he respected traditional values. He sided with small businesses and workers against agricultural, pharmaceutical, and tech monopolies, as well as local elites. He understood that swing voters hate monopolies as much as progressives do — but many of them hate ideological lectures even more.

Osborn also forced Democrats to show some strategic humility. Where the Democratic party brand is toxic, they need to let independent or hybrid candidates carry the torch. Better yet, rebuild the brand to speak to everyday Americans and move away from those who are too pure to rebuild a party that can win and govern.

Like Osborn, Democrats need to tell a story about America’s future that includes not just urban innovators but rural producers. We need to speak not just to highly mobile college graduates, but to workers with skills, families with dreams, and communities with deep roots. We need far less ideological purity.

Musical CODA

A good week for Canada, where everybody knows…

1. CES. Harvard’s Cooperative Election Study (CES) is the gold standard for large-scale surveys, with tens of thousands of respondents every two years. They find that college-educated Democrats (especially whites) moved sharply left on race, gender, LGBTQ+ issues, criminal justice, and climate. Noncollege white voters showed more mixed behavior: some drifted right on immigration and crime, but stayed moderate or even leaned left on healthcare, Social Security, and minimum wage increases.

ANES. The American National Election Studies found that college-educated Democrats were the only group to become more progressive on virtually every social issue between 2016 and 2020. Noncollege Republicans became more nationalistic and skeptical of immigration, but not significantly more conservative on economic issues.

Scholars. Academic research here finds that Democrats became more ideological (leftist on culture and identity) while Republicans stayed a looser anti-left coalition rather than coherently moving right across the board.

2. Osborn criticized both parties and refused to take donations from the Democratic party. But the Nebraska Democratic party chose not to field a candidate in the race, and a super PAC funded by Senate Democrats contributed over $3.8 million to Osborn’s campaign.