GlobeCon: Can Technocratic Neoliberalism Save Us? Um no wtf?

Summary

It Could Happen Here — “GlobeCon: Can Technocratic Neoliberalism Save Us? Um no wtf?”

Date: August 12, 2026
Hosts: Garrison Davis, with expert guest Ben Rose Porter

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Garrison Davis unpacks his experience at GlobeCon 2026 (the “New Liberal Action Summit”)—a convention for self-described “technocratic neoliberals”—and scrutinizes the movement’s core philosophy: that smart policy, administered by technical experts, is the solution to society’s problems. The discussion centers on whether this approach can address mounting crises in American life, especially as left-wing populists and socialists gain ground, and features a sharp critique from sociology professor Ben Rose Porter.

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Main Themes & Structure

• The origins and current ambitions of the technocratic neoliberal movement (CNL)
• Liberalism’s decline: electoral defeats and loss of confidence
• Disputing claims that “smart policy” can save the day
• The “crisis of storytelling” vs. the reality of material conditions
• Technocratic governance, class politics, and the limits of “liberal nationalism”
• Why this approach is failing to mobilize the public, especially the youth

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Key Discussion Points

1. Backdrop: The Rise of Populist Left and Summit Setting

[02:36 – 05:07]

• GlobeCon described: A gathering for young, policy-oriented liberals/centrists, organized by the Center for New Liberalism (CNL), started as a meme group, now affiliating with centrist think tank PPI.
• The summit unfolds amid surging victories for democratic socialists in congressional primaries, with moderates losing ground.
• Jeremiah Johnson (CNL co-founder) highlights that “the far left is simply out organizing and out hustling the moderate wing” (04:35).
• High-profile centrists like Michael Bennett must now adopt “Bernie Lite” language at their own summit just to stay relevant.

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2. The “Crisis” in Technocratic Liberalism

[05:07 – 11:12]

• Johnson and other CNL figures express confusion that voters aren’t embracing their “smart,” technocrat-devised policies.
• Johnson claims: “In America, living conditions are still quite good” and “real median income is… as high as it’s ever been” (11:12).
• Garrison and Ben point out how liberal elites don’t grasp real life conditions: skyrocketing costs outpace stagnant wages, while inequality and job precarity worsen.

“You cannot spin that as things are basically fine. That has all kinds of major effects. One of the big ones is, you know, inequality.” — Ben Rose Porter (12:00)

• Garrison rebuts that dismissing voters’ dissatisfaction as mere “vibe” ignores the reality of economic hardship.

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3. Material Conditions vs. The “Storytelling Crisis”

[15:04 – 19:23]

• Johnson posits liberalism’s woes as a “crisis of confidence” or poor storytelling, rather than policy failure.

“It’s simply that the liberal story is no longer as compelling as the alternative populist narratives.” — Garrison Davis (15:04)

• Johnson scorns “materialist explanations”—yet, as Ben and Garrison note, most data and lived experience show that costs for housing, healthcare, and basic goods are crushing.
• The top 5% of voters say the economy is good; 88% believe the system is unfair (citing a New York Times poll, 17:00).

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4. Misreading Voters and Electoral Reality

[18:41 – 19:23]

• Johnson asserts that socialists only get support from educated, elite voters—a claim Garrison calls “patently untrue.”
• The hosts dismantle the notion that Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are “elitists”, noting establishment Dems do even better among high earners.

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5. Misunderstanding Populism: “Liberal Affluenza” & The End of Struggle

[30:39 – 33:02]

• CNL and Johnson reference Francis Fukuyama: now that liberalism has “won,” people have no real struggles, so they manufacture them for a sense of meaning (“liberal affluenza”).
• The hosts ridicule this as an out-of-touch, condescending frame.

“It’s the most condescending politics there is. It’s literally just: you don’t really have problems… you’re just rebelling against us because things are so good.” — Ben Rose Porter (33:11)

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6. Technocracy as Politics: Limits and Contradictions

[34:16 – 40:54]

• Johnson proposes the solution is more “technocratic ability, cynical maneuvering, and liberal nationalism.”
• The episode dissects the technocratic worldview: it conflates “knowing how” with “knowing what”, assuming that economic growth is obviously good and should be managed by the educated elite.
• But this logic ignores the public’s demand for meaningful redistribution, social democracy, and genuine political agency.

“The technocratic view… is just about, okay, well, our team has the people who know how to do this job well. And they have trouble sometimes even conceiving that… the debate would be about what we’re choosing to do.” — Ben Rose Porter (35:45)

• Johnson advocates a “tightrope” strategy with just enough social and economic policy to avoid backlash—what Garrison dubs a “Goldilocks formula” that ultimately means little in practice.

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7. Liberal Nationalism and Storytelling as Solutions?

[42:29 – 44:44]

• Johnson claims liberals must reclaim patriotism, become “loudly more patriotic,” and tell better stories about how “liberalism made America great.”
• But the panelists note CNL’s events are still obsessed with affordability, not narrative: “How can you pretend that everything is great actually, and then also put on a whole conference focusing on how housing and energy are way too expensive?” — Garrison Davis (43:13)

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8. Technocracy’s Structural Blind Spot

[45:50 – 48:12]

• Ben Rose Porter: Technocrats “are so at capital’s bidding that they don’t even really know it’s there anymore”—their solutions are limited by what the capitalist class allows, mistaking the interests of capital for what is “technically possible.”
• Liberal technocrats believe administrative skill alone is the bottleneck, not the possibility of transformation itself.

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9. The “Brightness Loop” — Countering the Doom Loop

[52:07 – 59:24]

• Johnson proposes a “brightness loop” (a positive feedback loop: more technocracy, more patriotism, more ruthlessness) as the way out of decline.
• Garrison is skeptical: “How’s that gonna go over with voters who are struggling to pay bills and household expenses every month?”
• The hosts highlight that only those directly invested in the political industry (would-be consultants, lobbyists, staffers) are energized by such technocratic appeals; the left’s momentum is drawn from genuine mass politics.

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10. Liberalism, Class, and Mass Politics

[59:24 – end]

• Technocratic liberalism's disdain for mass politics is repeatedly contrasted with DSA's messier but authentic grassroots energy.
• The episode closes by exposing the internal contradiction in neoliberalism: they fetishize New Deal and Great Society history but actively oppose the labor organizing and progressive tax policies that made those eras possible.

“It’s a profoundly undemocratic politics… the people do not really know what their interests are… so it’s up to us, those who do know what the right politics are, to be in charge and to basically call all the shots… They exist at capital’s whim.” — Ben Rose Porter (59:24)

• Ben summarizes the key democratic principle: “What are you growing the economy for, right? The whole point is to provide people with better lives… and they just seem to have it very reversed. Where the point is to grow the economy at whatever cost.” (63:26)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• [04:35] Jeremiah Johnson: “The far left is simply out-organizing and out-hustling the moderate wing.”
• [11:12] Garrison Davis: “He still insists that things are actually fine… which doesn’t actually mean that things are going great.”
• [15:04] Garrison Davis: “The liberal story is no longer as compelling as the alternative populist narratives.”
• [33:11] Ben Rose Porter: “It’s the most condescending politics there is… you don’t really have problems, you are just rebelling against us because things are so good…”
• [35:45] Ben Rose Porter: “Your technical expertise is a key part… but politics at the highest levels is what you’re choosing to do.”
• [59:24] Ben Rose Porter: “It’s a profoundly undemocratic politics… the people do not really know what their interests are… so it’s up to us… to be in charge and to basically call all the shots.”
• [63:26] Ben Rose Porter: “What are you growing the economy for? The whole point is to provide people with better lives… and they just seem to have it very reversed.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Setting the Scene: GlobeCon & the New Liberals – [02:36–05:07]
• Crisis in Liberalism: Johnson’s Framing – [04:35–11:12]
• Material vs. Narrative Explanations of Decline – [15:04–19:23]
• Populist Victories & Inconvenient Data – [18:41–19:23]
• Liberal Affluenza/Fukuyama & End of Struggle – [30:39–33:02]
• Dissecting the Technocratic Mindset – [34:16–40:54]
• Liberal Nationalism as Solution – [42:29–44:44]
• Technocracy and Class Power – [45:50–48:12]
• The “Brightness Loop” – [52:07–59:24]
• Neoliberalism vs. Mass Politics, Final Critique – [59:24–end]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

The episode incisively demonstrates why technocratic neoliberalism is failing to capture public energy and faltering against both right- and left-wing populisms. By focusing on narrative and technical “know-how” while ignoring deepening inequality and the real frustrations of ordinary Americans, the movement confines itself to a narrow, managerial vision of politics that cannot mobilize broad-based support. Ultimately, the hosts argue, political power will be won by those who respond to material needs and collective agency—not just those with the most “correct” technical plans. The relentless focus on being “rich, successful, and awesome” rings hollow in the face of growing economic pain, and the new technocratic elite’s prospects for revitalization appear dim at best.

Transcript

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[Ben Rose Porter]

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[Garrison Davis]

welcome Back to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Last episode I detailed my experience at GlobeCon 2026 or the new Liberal Action Summit, a three day convention for young liberal professionals to socialize and listen to panels about zoning reform, energy policy and broad based taxes. The summit is put on by a nonprofit called the center for New Liberalism, a digital advocacy organization that promotes center left policies and neoliberal economics. The center for New Liberalism, or cnl, basically started as a group of policy wonks on Reddit and Twitter making political memes during Trump's first term. But in 2020, CNL was brought into the Clintonite think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute. Since then, CNL has been doing yearly summits and more IRL political engagement in hopes of filling in the role of something like the DSA. But for more technocratically aligned moderate young libs, the 2026 New Liberal Action Summit took place in the backdrop of an ascendant democratic Socialist and left wing populist movement winning congressional primaries in New York, Pennsylvania, Colorado and now Michigan, beating the more moderate establishment type candidates. A few days before the summit in dc, the New Liberal podcast release an episode about the current crisis of liberalism where CNL co founder Jeremiah Johnson talks about why he thinks people are quote, abandoning the idea that liberalism can help them and are turning to populism, whether from the right or the left.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

The clear trend over time is that we are getting more and more extremely progressive members of Congress, representatives, et cetera, that we are getting more socialists and more DSA aligned candidates, and that the far left is simply out organizing and out hustling the moderate wing of the party or the liberal wing of the party. However you'd like to say it, and this is troubling.

[Garrison Davis]

Jeremiah Johnson cites the Mamdani DSA sweep in New York last June where socialist candidates beat establishment incumbents, and this episode came out about a month before the populist wins in the Michigan Democratic primary. But Johnson does bring up the Colorado primary where one of CNL's favorite politicians, Senator Michael Bennett, just lost his primary for Colorado governor to the state Attorney General, who to quote Johnson quote frankly, was not even necessarily more progressive than him, but simply rode the wave of I'm the populist, anti establishment, I'm more angry, et cetera, et cetera. Michael Bennett is an interesting case. In 2020 he ran for president as like the most centrist candidate of that entire bunch and only qualified for the first two debates. He used to be like one of the least populist senators in the country Like a very CNL type politician who, weeks after losing his primary bid, opened the new Liberal Action Summit with a 45 minute fireside chat with CNL's Deputy Director Tobin Stone. Senator Bennett's remarks earned a very tepid response from the attendees. Bennett blamed the Democratic Party for losing to Trump because they had no ideas. He talked about the need to build housing and transit from a bottom up approach that helps regular people, not just those at the top. How his constituents in Colorado can't afford to live where they grew up and how people in their late 20s and 30s can't get a real job. He often mentioned, quote, working people and quote, affordability and referred to Bernie Sanders as his, quote, friend. The whole talk felt kind of Bernie Lite, which was especially odd because the summit schedule said that this fireside chat was going to focus on the threat of the ascendant populist left. But to the extent that Bennett targeted populism, it was the Trumpian right wing authoritarian variety. And like, don't get me wrong, Michael Bennett is still very much a moderate. But if even a longtime ultra centrist like him feels like he has to make overtures to progressives or populists, even when he's speaking to the completely wrong audience, then the libs must be really feeling the pressure. On that new liberal podcast, CNL co founder Jeremiah Johnson asked his listeners to consider, if things continue on their current course, what the socialist movement could look like in 10 years.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

But just ask yourself, you know, is this type of candidate winning Democratic primaries more or less often than they were five years ago, than they were 10 years ago, and five to 10 years from now, do you expect that they will have more energy or less energy? Because I think any honest appraisal of where we are at right now is that the socialist wing of the Democratic Party has the energy and the momentum. Their organizing infrastructure is far better, far more serious than the moderate or the liberal wing of the party. They have more people who are out there willing to do the work, knocking on doors, phone banking, posting on social media. That is where the grassroots energy of the Democratic Party is. And we can talk about whether or not the voters are there yet, but the voters ultimately follow elite opinion.

[Garrison Davis]

Voters are not just mindless sheep that follow elite opinion. See here the 2016-2024 elections. They can be influenced by the power of capital, but voters do evaluate their material conditions and compare that to how different candidates promise to change or not change those conditions once in office. There may be an elitist side of the academic left. But the unspoken assertion here that the DSA is uniquely representative of the elite as opposed to the centrist Democrats who do not represent elite opinion and are more in touch with voters, that's patently absurd. And CNL's new senior adviser agrees. Here's Greg Schultz, Biden's campaign manager and general election strategist, who spoke on a Globe Con panel about winning back Maha voters.

[Ben Rose Porter]

I think part of the reality is the Democratic Party is a self righteous, know it all party and voters can feel that and they can see it. We think we know what's better for you and your family than what you know is better for you and your family.

[Garrison Davis]

So one is we are increasingly a party of academic elite, academic cultural elite,

[Ben Rose Porter]

who I don't think actually talks for years. Players understand their real concern.

[Garrison Davis]

So while Greg at least admits among friends that the Dems are an elite party detached from the concerns of voters, C L co founder and podcast host Jeremiah Johnson remains somewhat confused as to why people just don't support the smartest policies as defined by him and are instead turning to populism.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Any honest appraisal of where we are at says that liberals are losing ground to socialists in the Democratic Party. To some degree, the establishment has done this to themselves. I think it would be wrong for any analysis to leave that out. But having said that, in America, living conditions are still quite good.

[Garrison Davis]

Even in his explanation of why liberalism is failing, he still insists that that things are actually fine. He talks about how real median income is, quote, unquote, as high as it's ever been, which doesn't actually mean that things are going great. It's barely keeping up with inflation. But Johnson relies on this narrow batch of macroeconomic statistics to insist that, quote, america is still thriving, life is still good. Last week I forced Ben Rose Porter, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York, to listen to this whole Crisis in Liberalism podcast and then discuss his thoughts.

[Ben Rose Porter]

The mainstream capitalist order, which is to say the liberal order as its political correlate is, is breaking down, is failing. So you would expect to see a political moves away from it. There's a very famous graph of worker compensation to productivity. So worker compensation, that's wages, basically. How much of profits, more or less, is going to the workers? Right. So how much are workers compensated, tracked with productivity, which is to say, how much are firms producing relative to inputs? Right. Input to output, productivity over time. And, and this is over the course of the 20th century. And what you see in that graph is that for basically the whole of the 20th century wages. Worker compensation tracks very closely with productivity. So as firms, industries produce more and more stuff, are more and more efficiently producing, are creating more and more wealth. Workers wages are going up and keeping pace with that. So the share of wealth between the owning classes, the bourgeois and the workers is staying about level. Right. As there's more maid workers are getting some of that. Right. And they're getting an even piece. And around 80, 81, you know, the collapse of the labor movement in the 70s and especially with Reagan, right. You see worker compensation flatline and it basically has been inert since the 80s. Since the beginning of the 80s, productivity has continued to go up about the same rate. So we have been producing more and more wealth in this country, right. This is what capitalist production does. It's basically almost always growing in productivity, right. We've been producing more and more wealth, and the share of that wealth that the workers get has flatlined. You cannot spin that as things are basically fine. That has all kinds of major effects. One of the big ones is, you know, inequality. Even if workers are not being paid starvation wages, living in that profoundly, in a profoundly unequal society has all kinds of effects, socially speaking. Right. It does for the middle classes too. People who are, you know, comfortable, who are doing well, who have, who have captured a bit of that growth. Because it gets worse the further you go down the line that when you look at like wages for the lowest paid workers, they've often even decreased, right. But even for those middle class professionals and such who may very well be comfortable, and many of them, we should stress, are not. I think that when you go through and you look at the data, there's a lot of indicators of all kinds of ways in which people might not be comfortable, but even those that are comfortable, you know, they still have to live in a society that is profoundly unequal. That is letting the bottom strata just rot, right? That is just letting, like people die on the streets. That has an effect. Anyone with a, with a soul, with a conscience is, you know, affected by that.

[Garrison Davis]

Having foreclosed the idea that there is anything economically or structurally wrong with society, Jeremiah Johnson is left to conclude that this, quote, crisis in liberalism appears to be a crisis of confidence, a crisis of storytelling. So to Johnson, it's simply that the liberal story is no longer as compelling as the alternative populist narratives. Johnson mentions two potential explanations for liberalism's decline, one coming from the right, the other from the left, neither of which he finds convincing. Johnson says that the right wing is promoting a cultural explanation for liberalism's decline, arguing that liberals have moved too far to the left on cultural issues and lost voters, while the left wing offers a quote unquote materialist explanation claiming living

[Jeremiah Johnson]

conditions have actually deteriorated. And your statistics do not capture this. And people can tell when their lives are getting, you know, materially worse. You know, when things cost too much and they don't have as much income. And that is why people turn away from liberalism towards alternate explanations.

[Garrison Davis]

Of course, in this entire 52 minutes of podcast, Johnson never talks about, like wealth inequality as a real problem in society because someone from his self described neoliberal economic worldview just does not believe that skyrocketing wealth inequality is actually a real problem in and of itself. But then he has to pretend to be confused as to why more and more people are falling for this materialist explanation of why there's a crisis in liberalism and why people are not convinced by the quote unquote story that liberalism is telling them with macroeconomic statistics. You know, the stock market is booming, unemployment is low. Things like that don't actually indicate what types of jobs are available, service industry or gig economy. Work is crushing and offers no path for a sustainable future. Buying a house seems impossible, rent keeps skyrocketing, energy costs are ballooning, all while the rich get even richer. Even if on average, the median wage has kept up with inflation at about 3.5% per year. There are of course, many people who are not seeing that wage growth. And even if they are, that 3.5% is far below the 30% rise in the price of groceries over the past few years or the 25% jump in residential electricity rates. And of course, minimum wage workers are not keeping up with inflation, let alone the massive bumps in housing, education and health care costs. A New York Times poll from last May showed that among Democrats and Democrat leaning voters, only 5% said the economic conditions were good or excellent. 88% said the economic system in this country is generally unfair to most Americans, 63% said that the political and economic system needs major changes, and 20% said it needs to be torn down completely. But Johnson would have you believe that the materialist explanation is without merit because DSA candidates actually get a lot of support from middle class workers.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

The people who tend most to be sympathetic to this kind of leftist story tend to be the people with the most education and the highest incomes. If you look at, you know, the, the, the demographics of Zoran Mamdani's win in New York, he won the highest income brackets. And this is despite, you know, having kind of a eat the rich kind of Persona and very, very DSA aligned politics. And this makes me doubt the materialist explanation.

[Garrison Davis]

As we discussed last episode, this is just patently untrue. In both the Democratic primary and the general election, former Governor Andrew Cuomo performed best in the city's highest income districts and with voters who made over $200,000 a year. But no, it is actually the DSA who are truly representative of the elite, and the richest of the rich are Zoron's main base of support. Johnson needs that to be true because, as we will learn after this ad break, he contends that liberalism might actually be suffering from its own success. Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got suspense, mystery, a slightly few flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately though, Mint's story is better. Every plan $15 a month. Even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears.

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[Garrison Davis]

Welcome back. CNL co founder and new liberal podcast host Jeremiah Johnson doesn't buy into either of the populist explanations for liberalism's decline. The cultural one pushed by the right or the materialist one argued by the left. Johnson thinks that if anything, these explanations should be reversed. He discounts the right wing cultural explanation because the places where those progressive cultural advances have gone the farthest are in deep blue districts that are still deep blue. And as for the materialist story told

[Jeremiah Johnson]

by the left, if you look at the places that have actually suffered potentially under the, the liberal era of the last 40 to 50 years, I think the places you could most point to authentically that you could make the strongest case for would be the kind of rust belt towns, small towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Michigan and so forth, where the decline of manufacturing, you know, the decline of the auto industry or the steel industry or whatever may have hollowed out the local economy. Now this is a very left leaning explanation, but the people in those towns have not bought into the left explanation. They've, they've turned into Republicans is the thing. You know, the, the materialist argument pushed by the left is actually most applicable to the areas that now vote for Donald Trump.

[Garrison Davis]

Yeah, that's the whole point. It's the economy, idiot. Just flatly dismissing any materialist analysis on the basis that such analysis, as argued by the left, is actually even more applicable in places that are voting for Trump rather than Democrats is completely missing the entire point of the left's analysis. Trump ran as a populist, a right wing populist, but that is like evidence for what the left is arguing. That is the left's explanation why those places, which used to be Democrat working class union districts, why they have gone to Trump. It's because he's offering a populist solution. Now is Trump's right wing populist solution actually going to be a real solution to the base problems? No, because instead he's going to do economic nationalism, he's going to do tariffs, he's going to scapegoat immigrants as the reason for why housing is expensive, why the job market sucks. So he is offering a populist solution, but not a good solution. While campaigning, he was addressing the poor economic conditions, price of eggs, as opposed to the liberal assertion that things are great actually, or something as tone deaf as bidenomics is working.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Here's a better story, like a better explanation for that is just paying attention to the actual history. I'm from the south, right? The south is, so much of it is the core for, you know, a kind of reactionary cultural, right wing cultural politics. The south is also where the labor movement, the unions were just decimated. I mean, it's brutal there. Union density is in the shitter and has been for a while. And so one way of explaining this is like, yeah, people in these places, people in the south often gravitate towards a kind of cultural reactionary, confused politics precisely because there's no other option. They don't have a kind of coherent socialist project. And so they, they go towards these other things where there's more of a labor movement, where it has held on to some degree. Somewhere like New York for instance, there is an alternative route, right? And it took us a while to get there. You know, this is a relatively new trend of the rise in socialism. But I don't know whether this is like cynical or if he just genuinely does not conceive of how. Well, yeah, it may be that these are real material stressors and pressures that are then interpreted through cultural lenses for all sorts of reasons. The idea that it must be one or the other, that if, well, if these, if people favor a cultural explanation, then there must not be material problems is also the whole thing is just fraught. I mean, like the idea that the only places suffering from deindustrialization or, you know, dried up economies are just republican states and cities. That's just not true in any sense. There are lots of places where a dying economy is responded to with very left materialist analyses. Nor also the idea that again, I mean, just very hand wavy, like just citation needed, we're moving, things are fine outside of like a limited deindustrialized red states, you know, where things maybe are a little bad, everything else is fine. Like is the idea that in major coastal cities everything's fine and just completely ignores that like service workers in the lowest rungs of workers in these places are being crushed right now, many of which have to then leave the cities they're in. And then, you know, people who may be able to maintain a comfortable income and comfortable there is, you know, a little strange. I mean, gig work is on the rise. People are having to work all sorts of strange hours at beck and call of their, their employers. Alienation from their kinds of work and the ability to choose one's job is really profoundly wrong. Incomes for college graduates have dropped. So professionals, while they may be able to maintain a somewhat comfortable income, are often still declining in that capacity. Enfranchisement in people's worlds, both in their economic world and in saying how they labor, how they work, but also in the wider political world and in getting a say in how government is happening, people feel totally disenfranchised. They are disenfranchised from those things. So it's just a very thin patina of things are fine that falls apart upon any examination. Ironically, these people represent the whole project of things are fine because we maintain full control. The other side of the coin of things are fine is we need not empower anyone else. Just let us, the technical experts, run everything.

[Garrison Davis]

So instead of a cultural explanation or a materialist explanation for the current crisis in liberalism, the center for New Liberalism seems to kind of embrace this sort of liberal affluenza, as if people are actually suffering from affluence. For this, Johnson turns to Francis Fukuyama.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Fukuyama, in his book the End of History in the Last man, very famously said that he believed man needs struggle, essentially. You know, in the 20th century, we got the great struggles of World War I and the Great Depression, World War II and then the Cold War. And liberalism flourished under these conditions because it had an identifiable enemy to fight. It had a struggle that, you know, men and women could throw themselves into, you know, that we could defeat the Nazis, we could defeat the Communists. And then he predicted that if history really did end in air quotes, that men might struggle just for the sake of struggle. They would struggle against the very system that created this prosperity just for the sake of having something to feel. Of having something to feel useful for.

[Garrison Davis]

The idea is, now that liberalism has conquered the globe, people don't actually require anything materially different, but will still desire for self worth, dignity and recognition. This is a sort of postmodern crisis of a struggle for meaning totally divorced from a materialist desire.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

But Fukuyama argues that while modern liberal democracies can provide peace and material wealth, they leave people feeling alienated by not delivering that sense of higher purpose. And that. That is what leads people to nationalism or populism or identity politics, because people want some sort of recognition.

[Garrison Davis]

To Johnson, ultimately, liberalism is struggling because, quote, there is no more great struggle.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, there is no real struggle that this is all made up. It's all smoke and mirrors. Like, everybody's fine. I mean, if you pursue it to its. Its logical conclusion, it's. It's the most condescending politics there is. It's literally just. You don't really have problems. You are just rebelling against us because things are so good and you don't have meaning other. Other than opposing us. It literally. I was listening to that and I was like, this sounds like bourgeois revolutions of early modernity. Right? This is like how the monarchy reacted to so many times. You get like, you know, absolute monarchs just saying, like, well, the people there aren't really Problems. You're fine, it's fine. Just chill out, like I'm your king. We're doing fine. It's all good. Right. And of course that worked out brilliantly for them. Yeah, it's the same politics. It's just, well, there's basically no struggle. People are, people are mad because, you know, they don't have enough meaning. I just, I don't know how that plays out to anyone is insane. To me, the idea that, you know, all of the struggle and strife in the world today is just, it's not real. It's somehow a made up pretend we're all doing. It's ridiculous.

[Garrison Davis]

Johnson's contention is that things just got so good under neoliberal technocracy that it created a postmodern crisis of meaning, resulting in people struggling against the very system that provides for them to gain a new sense of purpose, basically self sabotaging by electing bad populist candidates, which then do make economic conditions worse. But then Johnson's solution to this problem is just to put neoliberal technocrats back in power, but this time be even more cynical and also more patriotic. In contrast to the United States. Johnson points to Canada as an example of where liberalism is currently succeeding. And he credits this to, quote, technocratic ability, cynical maneuvering and liberal nationalism, adding, quote, we need technocrats more than ever. I introduced the idea last episode that one of the main tendencies among these so called new liberals is the belief that politics is just the application of technical knowledge. You know, conflating having technical knowledge with the ability to govern well and do decision making at the highest level. A view of politics without politics, the

[Ben Rose Porter]

technocratic point of view sort of works like this. It understands that, like, okay, there's technical expertise, let's say you're trying to, you know, reform tax policy. Tax policy is very complex. The way that taxes work, the way that, you know, government revenues work is very complex. So if you're going to rearrange that, yeah, you are going to need some people who understand how that works, who are intellectuals, you know, who have the technical knowledge required to make your policies work. That's a crucial part of any politics. You absolutely need that. Any political faction that seeks to have a chance of successful governance needs a level of technical expertise. Absolutely. But that is an entirely separate question from what does one choose to do? Your technical expertise is a key part to successfully doing what you set out to do. But politics at the highest levels, right at the level of like, party line of like what party strategy is about, what are you trying to do? The technocratic view basically thinks that that question is already decided. To them, it's obvious what you should do. What you should do is grow the economy, maximize economic growth, because in their view, that's good for everybody. You know, rising tide lifts all boats. That's good for everybody. There is no conflict here. And so if there is no conflict here, then that's the obvious pick. And then the only difficulty is just getting people in to do that job well. And so for them, politics is just about, okay, well, our team has the people who know how to do this job well, and the other team doesn't know how to do the job well. And they have trouble sometimes even conceiving that. In fact, no, the, the debate would be about what we're choosing to do.

[Garrison Davis]

Johnson explains that liberal governance has to walk a dangerous tightrope. If you lean too far to the left, you stifle the economy and feed radicalism and extremism. Johnson points to Europe as an example of this. But if you lean too far to the right, economically, people will revolt if they don't share in the prosperity.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

If you don't successfully walk this tightrope, then you risk entering a kind of doom loop where, you know, oh, everything seems really bad. We're all dooming. And so people are going to choose an illiberal candidate, and that illiberal candidate is going to do stupid things that make things worse in society, and that's going to make people even more illiberal, even more tilted towards extremism, which will lead to worse candidates who will make things even worse than before, and so on, et cetera. There is real risk of entering that kind of doom loop, and that's why it's important to actually have smart, technocratic leadership.

[Garrison Davis]

The doom loop theory glosses over the fact that Trump came after Obama. The sentiment that this technocratic leadership wasn't working didn't just come from the right. Bernie Sanders also rose to prominence by arguing this from a left wing perspective. And the capitalist class were more threatened by Sanders. So they mobilized to take out the threat of left wing populism, even if that meant Trump's right wing populism would win, because they know that the left wing version is the one that could actually empower labor against the interests of capital. Johnson also claims that Joe Biden had big goals, but, quote, his technocratic ability wasn't there, meaning there was too much red tape prohibiting his policies from having an impact because he, quote, went about policy in a stupid way. Now Johnson knows that calling For a technocracy isn't an election strategy. For that, he proposes more, quote, unquote, cynical maneuvering and that liberals should get more, quote, unquote, ruthless in terms of running elections. He says Kamala Harris should have forcefully distanced herself from. From Joe Biden, or the party should have pushed her out for being too compromised due to her association with Biden. Of course, Johnson does not acknowledge that the party is very capable of cynical, ruthless maneuvering when it serves their interests and the interests of their donors. Once Again, consider the 2016 and 2020 Democratic primaries and the concerted efforts to take down Bernie Sanders, something that quite possibly lost the Democrats the 2016 election. But Johnson also talks about the need for cynical maneuvering in implementing policy.

[Ben Rose Porter]

The main things he talks about seem to be flatly at odds with each other because he says, well, you know, we need technocratic politics, which is to say, you just need the right policies. You need the ones that are correct to do the job. Well, again, what the job is, what we're trying to do is totally like, not on the table. That's. That's a given. Right? And then you just need the people who can technically do that. Well. But then he also says you need some cynicism. You need to be able to just be ruthless electorally and operate politically in order to win. Which seems to directly contradict. It's like, well, what should you do? Should you pick the policies that are correct? Pursue technocracy regardless of whether or not it's popular, whether it can win elections? Right. Which is his whole contention, is that the right policies are somehow not popular among the people. Or should you be electorally ruthless and try to appeal to the masses and win elections by perhaps. I mean, he gives an example with the carbon tax, where he says, I think this policy is great. I think this is the technically correct policy, but you have to abandon it. Again, I'm sure if you asked him, he would say, well, you have to strike a balance between the two. But as strategy, that's useless, right? It's like, well, how should you ride a bike? Well, you don't want to lean too far left, but you also don't want to lean too far right. You want to kind of stay right in the balanced middle. Okay, that tells us nothing. You should pick the right policies, but not so much. You need to also be ruthless and be able to win elections. Pick the right policies and win. Win elections. Don't see Stalingrad take it immediately.

[Garrison Davis]

Johnson argues that the final necessary step in exiting the populist doom Loop is quote unquote, liberal nationalism. Basically the idea that liberals need to become loudly more patriotic and reclaim and be proud of the progressive parts of American history. But liberal patriotism isn't enough to win elections, and the Harris campaign already kind of tried this.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

Liberals have got to be better at telling a story of how America is great. Liberalism made America great. Liberalism is why we're all rich and successful and awesome.

[Garrison Davis]

This is the massive contradiction at the heart of their project. They want to say, we're all rich, the economy is great, living conditions are fine. But the neoliberals do have at least some awareness of material problems because most of the conference panels were about affordability, especially in relation to housing and energy costs. So are there massive economic factors driving voter behavior or not? How can you pretend that everything is great actually, and then also put on a whole conference focusing on how housing and energy are way too expensive?

[Commercial Announcer]

You.

[Garrison Davis]

You do know that there are material problems. What's actually happening here is that you're frustrated that people aren't buying into your neoliberal solutions to the problems caused by neoliberalism. But to the technocrat, it can't be the policies that are wrong. So instead, it must be that we are not telling a strong enough story.

[Jeremiah Johnson]

We need to be able to figure out a pro growth, patriotic, muscular, liberal message that works because people respond to two things. In the end, they respond to material conditions. If the material conditions are bad enough, they will get mad at you, but they also respond to stories. And it's hard to identify the story that liberals tell today.

[Garrison Davis]

At the very end of this podcast, Johnson finally admits that people do in fact respond to material conditions, but only if things get bad enough. But he also believes that the economy is good. We are rich, we are successful. So the problem has to be something else, and that something else is stories. Liberalism just isn't telling the right stories. Again, it's not material problems, it's storytelling problems. And Johnson says the story we should tell should be rooted in two a return to history and a vision of abundance. Johnson truly believes that this is all about stories and not actually about politics. And this is where the technocratic version of politics hits its own massive limitations. This is where it runs up against its extremely narrow view of what politics is and what is politically possible.

[Ben Rose Porter]

They're totally whipped by capital like that. That's the thing is, like, capital sets the agenda because, you know, they, as I said, they've ceded the territory of, like, political decisions, properly put, right? They concern themselves with the technical administration of the system, but are totally uninterested in the commanding heights of the system of, like, how is the economy structured? But ceding that territory doesn't mean it's neutral. It just means that, like, yeah, capital gets to call the shots then. And so capital basically says, well, here's what's possible and here's what's not, right? Based very much on capital's interests, right? In order for us to maintain our profitability at the levels we would like and the ways we would like, these things are not possible. And the technocrats, they just accept that, right? Like, it's a real belief for them. It's not cynical. You know, there is a time where with shrewder and more aware liberals, liberals who are aware of like class struggle, I think, and who were throwing in on the side of capital, like originally, like the classical liberals as well as liberals throughout the 20th century, right? When they really, when they had to contend with like real socialist politics, they knew, like, they were self conscious about, well, we are on the side of capital, right? That's the biggest difference between sort of the past ages of liberalism and this, you know, upstart young liberals. They're so in the pocket of capital, they're so at capital's bidding that they don't even really know it's there anymore. And so they just perceive this as like, again, what capital wants is basically just the natural state of the world. What is possible, period, with, you know, like just such an impossibly narrow historical focus on, like, what is possible. And I just don't know how anyone, like, looks at the past, you know, hundred years of history and feels they can conclude very solidly what is and is not possible. But they just feel that what capital says is basically the natural constraints of what's possible in society. And so given that, which they take as a given, the only question is competent administration. It's a fault from previous liberals who argued for, like, no, we want to empower capital over labor to a certain extent, right? Or we want to achieve a balance between these things, usually with capital leading in some way.

[Garrison Davis]

It's time for one more ad break before we learn how Jeremiah Johnson believes that a quote unquote brightness loop might be the key to solving the crisis of liberalism.

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a sleep number store or sleepnumber.com. Welcome back. Johnson proposes the way out of this populist doom loop is what he calls a brightness loop, or basically like a positive feedback loop, which will be achieved through technocracy, ruthless politics and liberal patriotism, embracing America and our history and loudly

[Jeremiah Johnson]

proclaiming we are rich and we are successful and we are awesome. America rocks.

[Garrison Davis]

I wonder how that's gonna go over with voters who are struggling to pay bills and household expenses every month. Might they turn to another candidate who actually addresses the fact that maybe things aren't so great for everyone? The limitations of the technocratic mindset is a big part of why center left candidates are losing to left populists in very high profile races. I really don't know how CNL expects to grow their organization and build momentum among young people to advance their own candidates to claw back the Democratic Party away from the socialists, away from the populists, from the progressives, when their political project is calling for technocracy, cynicism and liberal nationalism. How do you think that will attract and then mobilize an actual energized, motivated base? Because the only people I can see that appealing to are those who aspire themselves to be technocrats. And true to form, that is who attended the New Liberal Action Summit last month in Washington D.C. it was a group of people who identify with and submit themselves to the mainstream neoliberal order and who understand themselves through identifying with the base structure of capitalist American society. That's where they get their self identification and in many cases their jobs and their income. This is people who want to work in politics, who want to work as a consultant, a campaign manager, a lobbyist or a congressional staffer. In contrast, a lot of the people in DSA don't have an actual interest in politics as an industry. In fact, they might have a frankly aversion to electoral politics. And they're kind of involved in DSA somewhat begrudgingly. In a sense, most DSA members that I interact with would not want to work in politics as their job. But they are doing this because they believe in it and because there's material forces that are driving them towards wanting this sort of change versus the CNL approach of trying to base all your on the ground mobilization. Unlike other aspiring technocrats and professionals whose lives are built very materially around these politics, around doing politics. And so their efforts to promote neoliberalism could be interpreted as a form of class reproduction, an attempt to maintain their particular position within a class dynamic. Now of course, the socialists do have their own flock of aspiring professionals and intellectuals who are seeking roles within civil institutions and political positions of authority. The difference lies in what political project you are a part of, what kind of class politics you're tied to, what class you're trying to empower. Are you intending to maintain or alter class relations? And ultimately, what does political success look like? Just growing the GDP as much as possible, increasing the total amount of wealth? Or is it economic equality and democratic control of society and production in their attempts to claim liberal history? Right, the new liberals will associate themselves with, you know, fdr, the New Deal maybe if they're shrewder, the Great Society. One of the most frustrating parts of the conference for me was hearing these lobbyists talk about, you know, the great legacy of fdr, while in another breath strongly arguing against wealth taxes, against taxing the rich. At the end of the Crisis in Liberalism podcast, Johnson says, quote, the populist left says that you don't actually need to have any form of economic growth as long as you can categorize people into good and evil groups and tax the evil ones and give all their money to the good ones, unquote. And I just don't think that is how they would describe New Deal or Great Society era tax rates. They would never describe those tax rates and the reasons for why they were instituted as like we decided there are good and evil groups and therefore we must punish the evil ones and give all their money to the good ones. The new liberals have to play it both ways, because they still want to associate themselves with the sort of heights of liberal democracy in the United States, which they point to these eras as. But they're both fundamentally opposed to what these eras actually are, the economic policies and tax base that made those policies possible, and also vehemently opposed to the organized labor apparatus that fought for those policies. So they want to claim the legacy of those things for liberalism, but shorn of all content, they have to completely ignore both the substance of those politics and the forces that drove those politics, which was chiefly the labor movement. And socialists were a huge part of that. But neoliberals don't want to acknowledge or promote labor because organized labor runs contrary to the interests of capital and because they know they can't compete with dsa. If you're going to play that game in somewhat breaking From Ezra Klein, CNL's strain of neoliberal abundance explicitly blames unions for why it's so hard to build housing and infrastructure. They think labor unions are bad for the economy and thus are evil, and that the general public are stupid children throwing a temper tantrum, sabotaging the greatest country ever by electing populists because liberalism made the world too good. There's no more struggle, and liberals just have to tell the sheeple a better story so that neoliberal technocrats can stay in power, that those with technical knowledge can rule.

[Ben Rose Porter]

It's a profoundly undemocratic politics. You pursue it to its logical ends, and it is literally. Well, the people do not really know what their interests are and in fact will go against them just for the sake of having meaning, I guess. So it's up to us, those who do know what the right politics are, to be in charge and to basically call all the shots. And who has the authority to say that we have the right politics? Well, us, of course. Right. It's why, you know, these people exist at the whim of capital. Without capital, they are nothing. Right. They have this idea that they produce their own authority by having the correct policies. They know the world, and that's where their power comes from. They exist at capital's whim. Right? And if capital decides to move in a different direction, they have no authority. They have nothing. It's capital or labor. You either get your source of authority and political power from the economic powers that be the property owners who control production and have an enormous amount of power in that sense, or you get it from the Masses from the people, the laborers who actually power society and power all production. Those are the two forces. This idea that correct knowledge in itself supplies authority is not only obviously undemocratic, but it's just profoundly confused. It's completely oblivious to political reality. It doesn't believe in politics. It doesn't think there is a realm of politics.

[Garrison Davis]

With that though, you are forgetting that. That we're rich, that we're successful, that we're awesome.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, we are. We are rich, we are successful. We are awesome. America rocks. America rocks. God, what a. Yeah, he pairs that one with talking about like, you can't be a depressing nerd and talk about what America has done wrong. I love the idea of like trying to set yourself up against like nerds being like, don't be a nerd and then being like, America rocks. We're rich, we're successful, we're all. That is like the nerd line.

[Garrison Davis]

This is like, this is a whole nerd conference. This is like the most policy wonky. Like Will Stancil, Matt Iglesias, like nerd central.

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, well, maybe you're on the football team, but I have an A in math. Like it's literally that. It's the. Well, we're rich, we're successful and we're awesome. We won World War II, we beat the communists. We beat the communists. It's just very. Yeah, it's hollow too. I mean, I'm a red blooded American. You know, there's a lot to like about the American society. But this like, America rocks. America is awesome. Like, I don't know, maybe there's a reason people aren't really feeling that one right now. You know, just shouting it into the faces of the misery of the masses is not the best move.

[Garrison Davis]

You don't think that's going to go over well with voters who are maybe not rich and who are struggling?

[Ben Rose Porter]

Yeah, I don't know man. Look around. It's been a pretty bad like. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't. I think this kind of God, we're awesome.

[Garrison Davis]

As much as the New Liberals are upset and confused why the political momentum is with DSA and not them, the center for New Liberalism will never be able to build an organization of young libs capable of rivaling dsa because technocratic liberalism categorically rejects mass politics. So while CNL and the New Liberals make a big show online, ultimately they are just a front group for ppi, the Progressive Policy Institute, the centrist think tank that convinced the Democratic Party to abandon the working class in the 90s, abandon redistributive new Deal liberalism and embrace deregulatory free market neoliberal economics under Bill Clinton. So while the Blue Globe Emoji people will continue to post prolifically online, I suspect that is where their political impact will largely remain. Here's a final note from sociology professor Ben Rose Porter.

[Ben Rose Porter]

I mean, look, economies are hard to figure out, but I think it's just worth saying, like, what are you growing the economy for, right? The whole point is to provide people with better lives, you know, raise their wages, give them more power and control over their lives and their society, and they just seem to have it very reversed. Where the point is to to grow the economy at whatever cost. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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