1. I've been pretty aggressive about pointing out progressives got crushed, but I don't have a strategy going forward. That's because admitting defeat and figuring out what to do has to be a collective conversation. Here are some thoughts...

2. Admitting defeat isn't just a matter of dusting yourself off and saying well now it's time to do what we did, only more of it. More organizing! More starting at a local level! Etc. That's not admitting defeat, that's doubling down on failure.

3. Admitting defeat means admitting that progressives shouldn't do the same things they were doing. It means admitting that the ideas animating the left were unappealing and did not, in the end, provide anything useful for politics or policy.

4. It also means understanding not only why Biden crushed Bernie and Warren, but also why progressives had nothing to say when there was a massive bailout. It means reckoning with the fact that left-wing politicians do very little. What went wrong?

6. Progressives are still operating on an old, and terrible, playbook from the 1960s. This is the New Age counterculture view of politics as personal liberation, as opposed to politics as an expression of collective decision-making by citizens. It's libertarianism, left-flavored.

7. Progressives have to embrace politics, and that doesn't mean silly parsing of electoral strategies. It means really understanding policy and finance, and how that connects with a vision of a good society. If you don't have a view of the Fed, you are not doing real politics.

8. In one sense, progressives need to actually learn a language they have neglected for far too long. That is the language of finance and power. Learning languages takes time, and it means learning, being curious about how things work.

9. Progressives need to develop a relationship to commerce and production. What does it mean to build things or lend money in a progressive way? Progressives also need to develop a relationship with the military and geopolitics. What does it mean to deal with China?

10. Both of these problems are unanswerable as long as progressives remain entirely focused on victimization narratives. That's the ideological problem that makes progressives unable to hear unless someone makes claims about racism or various forms of abuse.

11. The obsession with wokeness needs to end, not because it's unpopular but because it's immoral. Wokeness isn't about racial justice or gender-based concerns, it is in-group signaling for aristocrats who have learned a complex language of fake tolerance. Stop it.

12. And America is not a nation of victims, it is a nation of tradespeople. Learn that language. Private equity and derivatives markets are a different type of arrangement than farms and factories. Handwaving 'capitalism' has to stop, not bc it's right or wrong but bc it's lazy.

13. Finally, it's time to actually be honest about what we face. The Democratic Party must be reshaped. But this is not going to happen through primaries, because the problem isn't a lack of progressives. Progressives are as much a problem as any other faction.

14. Democratic elected leaders, left and center, have no ability to independently assess reality and make political claims. Most Democratic members of Congress don't read books and largely can't think. They just want to be friends with one another. That's it.

15. Democrats simply internalize what cultural totems like the NYT, lobbyists or economists tell them. So they are easily intimidated and fooled. Most Democrats did not know what was in the bailouts they voted for. They only noticed when a billionaire went on CNBC and told them.

16. The good news is progressives don't need a majority of members to do things. They only need one or two, who are a loud pain in the ass but whose loudness is a function of interity. We don't have a single progressive troublemaker, bc the progressive movement doesn't want that.

17. Progressives by and large want either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, both of whom prioritize unity among Democrats over any sort of coherent approach to wielding power. And this is true among nonprofits and unions too. Unity!

18. Progressive failed leaders are also responding to a progressive movement that doesn't actually want them to stand up to Wall Street, except in a performative way. It's a movement that believes Obama was powerless and Trump is all powerful, though they held the same office.

19. So progressives need to find a way to develop a real vision, and to elevate leaders who share that vision and promote it above maintaining relationships with party leaders. Oh, and being a pain in the ass will work, quickly. Dems are empty and moveable.

20. But progressives also need to declare political independence, and start working with Republicans where they can. I've noted that there are conservatives rethinking their ideology. That's a natural alliance. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-new-populist-right-imagines-a

21. But I think the hardest part is going to be really rethinking core assumptions. And those fake assumptions are (1) business is irrelevant or bad, (2) victims are all that matter, (3) America is a global force for evil (4) wokeness is a legitimate language of justice.

22. The destination for populists is a nation where workers, artists, engineers, writers, farmers, businesspeople get to control their lives and their communities, without being dominated by the powerful. It is a nation of equal citizens.

We can get there. But...

23. ... Progressives have to face some bracing truths. It's not just that progressives were defeated, it's that progressives were afraid to stand up against Wall Street, when it mattered most. They didn't just face political defeats, they revealed a fundamental lack of integrity.

24. We have the great honor of living in a democracy. And that means both accepting the great gift of self-government, but also responsibility for what we do with it. Can we accept that?