← The Realignment
The Realignment
States Forum Journal | Audio Essay: Marshall Kosloff on "The Missing Liberal Story"
00:20:00
Today's episode is an audio essay adapted from Marshall's States Forum Journal piece: The Missing Liberal Story. In the essay, Marshall lays out his case for why he believes liberalism’s most urgent task is to craft a compelling story that resonates with the electorate if there is any hope for changing our politics. The broader States Forum Journal issue focused on "Double Security" and features fourteen essays on federalism, democracy, and the role of states in safeguarding American governance.
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Marshall here. Welcome back to the Realignment Instead of an interview today, I'm going to turn my first piece of realignment focused writing into an audio essay. I published this piece, the Missing Liberal Story, in the State's Forum Journal, one of the best new organizations launched post 2024. If you'd like to learn more about the State's Forum Journal, you can put a link to my interview with its co founder, former New York State legislator Daniel Squadron, in the show. Notes My essay is a part of the state forum's second issue, double 14 essays on federalism, Democracy, and the Role of States in Safeguarding American Governance. My essay really pulls together a lot of my thinking out loud during the show the past year in my decision to cover the realignment of left liberal ideology and the Democratic Party the same way the show covered the realignment of conservatism and the GOP that culminated in President Trump's 202024 election victory. One piece of feedback I've gotten on this essay is basically no duh. There's no story. There's no there there. What actually is the story? It seems like a cop out to not actually offer that up beyond just sort of diagnosing the problem. To which I have two responses. A Stories are a group and individual projects, so my aim was to identify the problem and invite others to contribute rather than claim that I myself, Marshall Kozlov, have the answer. One of the things I balance on the show is the fact that I have two different audiences I'm trying to serve. One is basically a 'Thousand people in D.C. and the states who are trying to directly work to influence and inform. The other is the broad popular one that doesn't work in day to day politics policy. I've noticed that my broader audience has understood these rifts on story, worldview and ideology better than the D.C. crowd where usually wonkery polling, message testing and other more empirical tools of the trade make my talk about story, worldview and ideology just seem a lot more superficial. B the show's going to focus on the story problem and the need to build a realignment liberal worldview moving forward. So if this essay feels like a cop out on my part, treat it as the first chapter of a broader effort. Now onto the actual essay, the Missing Liberal story. A void is open in American political consciousness. It's time to abandon cautious messaging and develop an authentic narrative that voters can believe in presidential elections, offer the winner a chance to implement a new vision and set the country on a different course. With Donald Trump's victory in 2016, the MAGA movement created a more participatory ecosystem and a politics that leveraged influencers and alternative media to give voters a new way of making sense of their world. At the same time, the more technocratic center left struggled to tell a cohesive story about liberalism, one grounded in common sense and a shared understanding of the country. Both parties are shaping their respective narratives within a new political reality. Avoid the grud of the mismatch between what people have been told they should believe about our institutions and governance and their actual lived experiences. The key to successful post2016 politics is the ability to tell an authentic, compelling story about America. Facing an anti status quo electorate, winning candidates and movements are in a position to articulate what's gone wrong, where we've been, and where we're going. These stories can feature a wide cast of characters, broadly resonant themes, and clearly identifiable heroes and villains. And like interactive theater, they welcome audience participation. But until a candidate, movement, or party can tell that story in a way that not only wins backlash elections but but successfully governs to the point of reelection and consensus, the political void that defines the second quarter of the 21st century will remain open. The opportunity to fill it or prevent your opponent from doing so is at the root of the existing political reality we now find ourselves in. Nowhere in this essay will a reader find an exact articulation of what the liberal story should be that is very much by design. As the host of the Realignment Podcast, I spent the past 10 years embedded in left and right populous spaces, especially in the post2016 early days. Populists were less concerned with any one person's specific answer and more interested in attracting participants to their project and asking the right questions. Over the years, unifying stories, ideas, and election outcomes built upon themselves to the point that something comprehensive was on offer in the2020s. My main argument is that the interested parties should recognize that story is an underemphasized aspect of liberal politics and shift attention and resources away from purely tactical topics and questions which received outside attention in 2025. Now's the time for the left to gather narrative strands into a case of plan of action. The Narrativization of Politics Stories are at the root of the worldviews, ideologies, policies, and popular and memetic slogans that are the key drivers of politics today. For example, when Wall street speculation leads to a devastating financial crisis, as in 1929 or 2008, the belief that government has a intervene and regulate markets is a worldview. Policies are the implementation of that worldview, in this case the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or legislation regulating speculation. The tools that politicians have traditionally wielded to reach the electorate, messaging based on polls and focus groups and around individual candidates still matter. But such data centric tactical approaches often miss the forest for the trees. Critically, they tend to underemphasize the visceral human factors that drive narratives and instead encourage sterile, cautious politics that voters perceive as inauthentic and status quo. Coded in this formulation, slogans matter, but it is difficult to inorganically create one with the real narrative and memetic power. Donald Trump did not hire a consulting firm or panel of experts to come up with Build the Wall. He arrived at it during the course of leading rallies bemoaning America's immigration policy. In first principles in the 11th hour, Adam Pritzker and Daniel Squadron negatively contrast a Washington ruling conservative movement for a left liberal project unable to, quote, offer a compelling narrative. This failure isn't due to a lack of effort or opportunity. The past year saw countless autopsies, books, content creators, organizations and polling try to fill the gap. Beyond the post2024 reckoning, the past decade featured numerous attempts to explicitly counter the politics of maga. For all that effort, no slogan of the potency of MAGA has emerged. No single policy approaches the U.S. mexico border wall's ability to galvanize a rally or go viral on social media. Ask the average voter to quickly identify and sum up any of the grag bag of policies proposed during the Biden administration and many will likely come up empty. These failures are rooted in a misunderstanding of Omega and populism is a story driven narrative that places a voter's reality at its center. MAGA has a worldview, policy, slogans, and plenty of data driven infrastructure. At its core, though, MAGA is a story about the past, present and future of American politics. Any successful liberal alternative must begin by telling its own story. Populist Storytelling during the past decade of political realignment, the populist right and left have been the best storytellers. The MAGA story goes something like since the 1990s, bipartisan elites have driven the country into a ditch. They shipped jobs overseas, let in hordes of illegal immigrants who lowered wages and weakened our culture, let hundreds of thousands of Americans die, opioid fueled deaths of despair and presided over disasters like the Iraq War. If you elect Donald Trump, he will overturn these elites and make America great again. MAGA story is broad and flexible enough that new issues could be incorporated. The MAGA story is broad and flexible enough that new issues can be incorporated within it on the fly. At various points, the COVID 19 pandemic, wokeness attacks on LGBTQ Americans and fear of censorship were added to the narrative. Meanwhile, left populists like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Zoran Mamdani are telling a story that goes like this. Since the 1990s, the worship of neoliberal markets and the oligarchy that resulted have eviscerated the 99% Supreme Court. Decisions like Citizens United enable billionaires and special interests to buy even more power and influence over our democracy. Centrist Democrats like the Clintons and Obama made a devil's bargain for power in alignment with these forces. Elect a democratic socialist and you'll escape economic precarity. In our current media ecosystem, both the left and right version of the populist story can be articulated in a way that reaches a news averse apolitical swing forward. One could easily imagine discussing both with Joe Rogan. Once the message is delivered, tangible policy proposals can emerge from both storylines. The right proposes to build the wall, reduce all forms of immigration and defund higher education. The left pursues Medicare for all and vigorous antitrust enforcement. Audience participation is likewise available to both sides, ranging from Trump's rallies and boat parades to the Mamdani campaign's scavenger hunt, with each side featuring a new and exciting cast of characters. No one had heard of J.D. vance, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon AOC, Zoran Mamdani, or Alina Khan before 2016. And as in a good play, even known quantities can make surprise appearances, like RFK Jr. And Tulsi Gabbard joining Trump's cabinet despite having run for the presidency as Democrats. A key factor is that all of the characters see themselves as participating in the same story, that everyone is reading from the same script. This is largely true on the right, but an open secret in Democratic circles is that many ambitious leftist center to centrist politicians conceive of themselves as island onto themselves, focused on individual races and brand building. Post 2024Liberals and their institutions are lacking a cohesive story or shared set of policies or a central cast of characters. There's no structural or ideological reason that liberalism fell so far behind. The problem is that liberals still own two of the main stories invalidated by the 2024 election and haven't moved past them. The first story was the bipartisan optimism of the Post Cold War 1990s, the worry that American workers might be left behind by globalization as the country transitioned from an industrial to digital economy was largely dismissed. Instead, the left was promised trade adjustment assistance to help send as many people to college as possible. Compare a role to how they made high school education the norm in the 20th century. The prevailing belief was that America was on a path toward a iverse and Progressive 2050, powered by the new economy and globalization. The second story treated the populist revolts of 2016 as aberrations. The country was ultimately on the right path after the 2012 election, temporarily interrupted by Russian interference and a mismanaged Clinton campaign. We just had to get back on track with a return to normalcy and a Biden presidency that could build back better. Any politician still wielding either of these narratives will find themselves lost in 2026 and beyond launching a Liberal Storytelling Project as noted above, there's no single correct answer to what the liberal story should look like. My aim is to encourage liberal proponents, organizations, and thinkers to orient themselves around building that story as a central aim. Anyone interested in pursuing the ideological project should follow these recommendations. 1. Fill the story Centric Programming gap Last year I interviewed Representative Jake Auchincross and Abundance co author Derek Thompson at welcome Fest 2025, an annual gathering of centrist Democrats. As I prepared for the interview, I was taken aback by the lack of a defined and unifying story across the remarks, panels and interviews alongside surveys of research based autopsies of the 2024 election, there's plenty of focus on the tactical benefits of moderation and centrism, including the need to win swing district elections. Remained unclear was what exactly these speakers and attendees believed separate from poll results about the country. This is in stark contrast to discussions in populist spaces, which engage in a very different ratio of storytelling to tactical analysis. After chewing over the Abundance agenda, I asked Auchincass and Thompson about the lack of a story, specifically contrasting it with the populist approach. Let me start by saying I don't know the answer to that question, and that's okay, thompson provocatively argued. What I would say in response to that is yeah, stories for children. Americans need a plan. Americans need solutions. The extended version of their remarks offered more context, with Auchincross emphasizing that a Competitive and Open 2028 primary would surface new ideas, and Thompson arguing that many stories told by populists are quote, bullshit and won't actually address serious problems facing Americans. As a hypothetical candidate, Thompson would emphasize that his job wasn't to be a storyteller, but to actually deliver. In my entire career as a podcaster, I have never received as much feedback on a single episode, with audience members agreeing and disagreeing strongly with both responses. An entire conference, general issue, and podcast series could be organized around the challenge of storytelling with serious arguments on both sides. 2. Acknowledge the authenticity Gap Daniel Lee Thompson, an academic and author of the forthcoming under the Influence what's Real When America Feels Fake, defines the authenticity gap as quote, when our expectations of reality, shaped by the stories we collectively tell ourselves about how the world works no longer aligned for lived experiences. The stories of the populist right and left are premised on the existence of an authenticity gap. Imagine a 30 something millennial who went to college, worked hard, played by the rules, but still wasn't able to afford a house. This person will experience an authenticity gap between their understanding of the path to the American Dream and their lived reality. The same is true of Gen Z recent grad who took the 2000 and tens call to pursue a STEM education and learn to code seriously, but who is struggling to find an entry level job in the tech industry. The populists write in Life with clear stories that explicitly acknowledge these authenticity gaps, name villains, and propose solutions. Note that ENB policies and the Abundance agenda are offered as a potential solution, but as polling demonstrates, zoning and other bottleneck centered reforms, while correct on the policy merits, lack the narrative power of the populist alternatives. 3. Fill the liberal void In a recent appearance on the columnist Ross Douthat's Interesting Times podcast, Abundance co author Ezra Klein said The loss of 2024 shattered the Democratic Party's confidence in its own politics. I just don't think that the new leadership, the new ideas have yet emerged. One reason I think Abundance did as well as did his book and created so much energy, which is more than I thought it was going to create, is because it dropped into a void. Abundance in the organizations, conferences, thinkers and leaders it inspired are a good start. Klein and Thompson seek to answer why post 1960s liberalism failed to build, and their attempt is crucial even if one disagrees with their conclusions. However, filling the void requires answering other, often more profound questions. What does it mean to be an American? After the breakdown of our post1965 consensus about immigration, what is the purpose of higher education in an era of artificial intelligence, the diploma divide, and a declining belief in college itself? How should America reorient its economy to compete with an increasingly innovative China? And most crucially, how can Americans reclaim the idea that we live together in a shared culture even as institutions and norms are breaking down and algorithms push us towards social atomization? The post2024 moment and our unfinished realignment leave us with too many questions for a single essay to contain. But it's important to note that even post Trump, the MAGA conservatism that remains will provide a comprehensive worldview for answering them. The lack of a 2025 alternative from Liberals or the Democratic Party is the void Klein refers to. There are no shortcuts. Focus groups, polls, and the usual party first suspects from Washington will not get the job done. 3. The future is fusion, not Factionalism While this essay contrasts the populist right and left's effective storytelling with center left liberalism, it is a mistake to assume that a liberal story is fundamentally at odds with either populism or the center left. Ultimately, the center left and left are in an ideological coalition predetermined by the structure of America's electoral system. No single faction has a majority of the party and none can seriously contest every political environment. Centrists are weak in cities, socialists cannot win swing districts. They will have to work together to govern nationally. One of the biggest mistakes of the past year was the dissent into factual infighting within the left liberal coalition despite shared opposition to MAGA populism. To pursue their ideological ends and govern, both the center left and left can and must learn from each other. Danieli taunts him, defines fusionism as ideological factions that are clear with what they want to see in the world with enough overlap in a common enemy. If one assembled every faction of the left liberal spectrum in a room, they would agree on three things. They believe that government is a force for good, recognition of a broken status quo and opposition to any MAGA successor to Trump. Agreement on the culture wars, inter trust policy, foreign affairs, climate change, taxation, and healthcare does not naturally follow from the initial consensus. An effective liberal story must be able to include a diverse set of ideological actors who may disagree on serious questions and even seriously dislike each other. One of the biggest achievements of the 20th century Conservative movement was its ability to unite a fractious set of actors, from Cold War hawks and anti New Dealers to social conservatives and John Birchers. Conservative fusionism developed an overarching story, and it had common enemies New liberalism in the Soviet Union and elected leaders capable of navigating between the various factions. The left liberal coalition should follow this model. 4. From story to Alternative Politics as emerged in my conversation with Derek Thompson, a story first approach to post2024 politics is certain to make many liberals uncomfortable. Stories feel unserious, especially in contrast to the technocratic, wonky, data focused approaches in vogue in liberal spaces over the past decade. Ironically, given Thompson's dismissal of stories, his Ezra Klein co authored bestseller Abundance is a worthy first attempt. At its core, Abundance argues that the New Deal liberalism that built the post war middle class ran out of steam in the 1970s. During that decade of post Vietnam Watergate malaise, liberals turned their attention to managing the costs of growth, especially as it relates to the environment. Today's liberal failures, the gap of housing construction between red and blue states, the inability to complete the California high speed rail project, and the permitting and other construction obstacles faced by the Biden administration are rooted to embrace a quote liberalism that builds, as Klein calls it. While this story is compelling on its own terms, it represents a necessary, inward facing critique of blue state governance, not a model or vision for the country as a whole. Feel if any voters outside California or Washington think tanks lose sleep over high speed rail. Liberals should understand the conversation around abundance as a key chapter of the post2024 liberal story, but not the central narrative for goals building and alternative politics. One should consider a compelling story as merely the first step, not as a be all and end all. A story leads to conclusions. Conclusions lead to an ideology and a worldview. From there come specific policies which can be turned into compelling slogans and attract a new cast of characters. I hope you all enjoyed the audio essay and you could find links to the actual piece in the Show Notes. We'll be back on Thursday with a more typical realignment interview.