The Way To Confront A MAGA Party Is With A Populist Progressive Party— Not A Corporatist Party

I Can See Both Parties Splitting In Two

The corrupted Democratic Party blew it

In the raging DOGE v MAGA war, Paul Krugman feels badly for Bannon and Loomer. “You weren’t in on the con,” he wrote. “You were among the marks... It has always been clear that [Señor T] shares the tech bros’ contempt for ordinary Americans, but is he willing to openly sell out his MAGA base? Why, yes:

Krugman is laughing at himself for not forseeing a MAGA civil war even before Trump was ensconced back in the Oval Office. “Every political movement is a coalition made up of factions with different goals and priorities. Normally what holds these factions together is realism and a willingness to compromise: Each faction is willing to give the other factions part of what they want in return for part of what it wants. What’s different about MAGA is that I’m pretty sure that almost all of the movement’s activists (as opposed to the low-information voters who put Trump over the top) knew that he was a con man, without even concepts of a plan to reduce prices. But each faction believed that he was their con man, putting something over on everyone else. But now the two most important factions— what we might call original MAGA, motivated largely by hostility to immigrants, and tech bro MAGA, seeking a free hand for scams low taxes and deregulation— have gone to war, each apparently fearing that they may themselves have been marks rather than in on the con… One especially striking thing in this discussion has been the open contempt tech-bro MAGA has for U.S. workers, the people Trump supposedly champions (and the people who buy his sneakers and crypto.)”

Look what Musk is agreeing with here. And then imagine if a prominent Democrat were to say anything remotely like this:

A friend of mine in Lewiston, Maine told me Blue Dog chair Jared Golden is probably going to run for governor— as an independent, switching from being a Democrat, just the way his predecessor Blue Dog chair, Kyrsten Sinema did. Yesterday, Holly Otterbein and Brakkton Booker noted that other elected Democrats are looking at the independent label as well. “Losing to a twice-impeached convicted felon,” they wrote, “has left a small, but growing, number of Democrats wondering if their party brand is so toxic that they should shed the label— particularly in battleground and red states. Mike Duggan, the longtime Democratic mayor of Detroit, is pursuing an independent campaign for governor in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory in his state. Democratic strategists are studying this year’s bid by independent Dan Osborn, who as a Senate candidate in Nebraska overperformed the top of the ticket, as a model to win the upper chamber. And a Joe Biden mega-fundraiser is floating a gubernatorial run in Florida on what he calls the ‘Capitalist Party’ ticket. The deliberations, some of which are taking place in private, reflect the extent to which Trump’s win has made the party unsure of what to do next. Few Democrats are dismissing Trump as a fluke anymore after he carried the popular vote and expanded his support among key parts of their base. Democrats who have jumped ship are making the bet that voters are so frustrated with the existing political parties that they will reward them for shaking things up.”

They sure didn’t reward Sinema. Democrats abandoned her and neither Republicans nor even independents embraced her. Otterbein and Booker wrote that “With the Senate map in 2026 favoring the GOP— and many seats once held by Democrats looking out of reach for the foreseeable future — some Democrats are thinking about fielding more Osborns. ‘Anyone looking at the Senate map, not just in 2026 but over the next six years and beyond, sees that we need a path to chipping into the Republican majority,’ said a Democratic strategist who was granted anonymity to speak frankly. ‘And it doesn’t necessarily mean electing Democrats. But it means changing what the denominator is that we need to get to a majority.’”

Oops. The Democrats did not “field” Osborn and he had pledged to not caucus with them and didn’t agree with them on many points, to the right of them some social issues— like guns— and to the left of them on some economic issues. And most importantly, he’s authentic, not a Democratic Party cutout. There were two Senate races in Nebraska this year— one for Deb Fischer’s seat, in which Osborn took 46.7% of the vote and a special election for Pete Ricketts appointed seat, in which Democrat Preston Love took 37.4%.

• Dan Osborn (I)- 436,493 (46.7%)

• Kamala Harris (D)- 369,995 (39.1%)

• Preston Love (D)- 349,902 (37.4%)

  
  

Douglas County (Omaha)

• Dan Osborn- D+17

• Kamala Harris- D+10

• Preston Love- D+5

Lancaster County (Lincoln)

• Dan Osborn- D+17

• Kamala Harris- D+4

• Preston Love- D+0.9

Sarpy County- relatively swingy county that includes Omaha’s southern suburbs:

• Dan Osborn- D+0.4

• Kamala Harris- R+12

• Preston Love- R+17

Nebraska is a very red state— and the Democratic brand is toxic. Let’s look at Ohio, where Sherrod Brown ran to the left of Kamala Harris. She took 43.9% and he took 46.5%. He bear her in every county. These are the 10 most populated counties:

Franklin (Columbus)

• Kamala- D+28

• Sherrod- D+34

Cuyahoga (Cleveland)

• Kamala- D+31

• Sherrod- D+38

Hamilton (Cincinnati)

• Kamala- D+15

• Sherrod- D+19

Summit (Akron)

• Kamala- D+7

• Sherrod- D+14

Montgomery (Dayton)

• Kamala- D+0.5

• Sherrod- D+7

Lucas (Toledo)

• Kamala- D+13

• Sherrod- D+19

Butler (Cincinnati suburbs)

• Trump- R+26

• Moreno- R+19

Stark (Canton)

• Trump- R+22

• Moreno- R+13

Lorain (Elyria)

• Trump- R+6

• Sherrod- D+5

Warren (Cincinnati suburbs)

• Trump- R+32

• Moreno- R+26

Look at those numbers again. You get the point; it’s not necessarily the Democratic brand that's toxic, as much as what the corporate whores post-Bill Clinton have turned the party into. Brown is a progressive populist. Kamala is… whatever the inauthentic pig-in-a-poke she's trying to be. I don’t know if Sherrod would have done better running as an independent. But it may be a good route for a populist progressive like him— or him— to take in the 2026 special election to fill JD Vance’s seat.