Two years ago, Ruy Teixeira and Yuval Levin wrote a report for the American Enterprise Institute that I think back to a lot.
It was called “Politics Without Winners.”
“In the American political system,” they wrote, “the parties’ purpose is to form enduring national coalitions. Look at almost any point in American history, and you will find a majority party working to sustain a complex coalition and a minority party hoping to recapture the majority. Today, however, American politics features two minority parties, and neither seems interested in building a national coalition. Close elections and narrow majorities dominate electoral politics more than at any other point in American history.”
Gone are the days of LBJ winning a 44-state landslide in 1964, followed by Richard Nixon winning a 49-state landslide eight years later in 1972 and Ronald Reagan doing the same 12 years later in 1984. And gone, seemingly, are the days of either party even trying to replicate such success.
Most political operatives spend their days sweating it over over getting to 50% plus 1, the magic number needed to clinch victory. But narrow victories often prove to be temporary victories (just look at how power has ping-ponged between Democrats and Republicans in recent years). Small majorities, devoid of a mandate, also make it harder to enact very much of your agenda. Why are both parties so focused on catering to their bases, rather than reaching outwards to try to build a coalition that could cement lasting power and actually get a lot more done?
In the latest installment of the Wake Up To Politics Book Club, I speak to someone who is trying to change that. Adam Jentleson is a longtime Democratic strategist. As a top aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, he watched the last political supermajority rise and then crumble. (Remember: Democrats briefly boasted a 60-seat Senate majority in 2009, not that long ago.) He’s now the president of the Searchlight Institute, which just published some fascinating polling data in the New York Times.
Jentleson is also the author of the new book “Supermajority,” which traces the history of past Democratic majorities and tries to lay out a roadmap for the party to build a more expansive coalition. “I wrote this book because I think we sort of got stuck in a moment where it’s felt like we’re prisoners of structural forces, right?” he told me. “And I think that’s not true.”
In our conversation, Jentleson and I talk about supermajority politics, which Democrats are practicing it, which Republicans keep him up at night, whether his old boss John Fetterman is going to switch parties, and a whole lot more.
I also raise some of my doubts about the supermajority thesis.
To put my cards on the table, I agree that neither party is trying for a supermajority right now and — purely as an observer who thinks our politics could be more than an endless, no-win 50-50 bloodbath — I would love to see one of them try.
But I’m not 100% sure it’s possible.
It’s true that it used to be common for one party or the other to win a supermajority of Americans, but it’s also true that the two parties used to be much less ideologically sorted than they are now. A party might win a supermajority, but that didn’t mean an ideology necessarily would.
Perhaps the country is simply roughly 50% liberal and roughly 50% conservative, which didn’t create an even party split in a time when liberals and conservatives could be found in both parties, but does in a time when almost all liberals are Democrats and almost all conservatives are Republicans.
Having such ideologically scrambled supermajorities also required party members to make huge sacrifices. FDR’s Democratic supermajority, for example, was made possible by bringing Black voters and Southern segregationists under one roof. The price of winning the New Deal was making many of its programs available only to white Americans.
Would Democratic base voters today be OK winning a supermajority if it meant making the party less pro-LGBT or less pro-climate? Would Republican base voters be OK winning a supermajority if it meant being more pro-choice or more pro-taxes? Are those sacrifices they would be willing to make? And after you make those sacrifices, what’s left? Have you simply built a large majority that’s too divided to get anything done?
All of these issues are also exacerbated in an age where so many decisions about a party’s direction are made by primary voters. What if a party’s leaders wants to take this more expansive direction, but primary voters — generally more rigid and orthodox in their views — refuse to nominate a wider range of candidates? Or, what happens if a more heterodox candidate does get nominated? A party might have a better shot at winning over swing voters, but might they lose support from their base? That might not be a gamble parties are willing to take, since base voters are much more engaged than swing voters; at the end of the day, they’re a more reliable constituency to target. Perhaps you have to dance with the one who brung you.
Jentleson, of course, had answers to all these critiques. It’s true that previous Democratic supermajorities were divided on social issues, he said, but they were united on economics. That was the only way to get the New Deal or the Great Society done.
He also said that Democratic primary voters, at least in swing states, have already begun nominating more heterodox candidates, like Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa or Mary Peltola in Alaska, who have broken with party consensus on issues like transgender rights or fossil fuels. That sets up 2026 as a key test of Jentleson’s thesis. If these candidates win, it might point the way towards a more ideologically fluid party. But if they lose, it suggests the party will have to stretch even further to achieve Jentleson’s hopes.
If a coalition from AOC to Fetterman already feels unstable, can it really survive expanding even more in either direction?
I think you will enjoy Adam and I thinking through these questions. The video is above. The transcript, available to paid subscribers, is below.
Transcript
Adam Jentleson, thank you so much for joining.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you. So, let’s start at the very beginning. The book is called “Supermajority.” What does it mean to you for a political party to compete for a supermajority and why do you think it’s so important?
