Veteran political analyst Ezra Klein of The New York Times has a blunt message for Democrats: if they want to crush Trumpism, they need to stop arguing about ideology and start thinking bigger.
In a new Op‑Ed published Sunday, Klein warns that the Democratic Party’s obsession with whether it’s too progressive or too moderate has become a distraction. The real challenge, he says, is building a movement broad enough to represent more Americans — even those who don’t fit neatly into the party’s current comfort zones.
“Think of it this way: If Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayor’s race running as a democratic socialist in New York City and Rob Sand wins the Iowa governor’s race next year running as a moderate who hates political parties, did the Democratic Party move left or right?” Klein wrote. “Neither: It got bigger. It found a way to represent more kinds of people in more kinds of places.”
That, Klein argues, is the attitude Democrats desperately need to rediscover. “That is the spirit it needs to embrace,” he continued. “Not moderation. Not progressivism. But, in the older political sense of the term, representation.”
It’s a brutal wake-up call for a party that often equates unity with sameness. Klein’s warning is clear: chasing purity — on either side of the spectrum — is a losing game. What’s needed now is a party flexible enough to win over everyone who’s fed up with the chaos and resentment driving Trumpism.
Klein points to examples of Democrats who have broken through by focusing on tangible, everyday issues rather than political identity. Candidates who speak directly to voters’ economic pain, rather than their partisan loyalties, are the ones finding success.
“For all the talk of what the Democratic Party should learn from Sanders and Mamdani, there should be at least as much talk of what they should learn from Manchin or Golden or Marie Gluesenkamp Perez or Sarah McBride,” Klein added. “The party should be seeking more, not less, internal disagreement.”
That line hits hard. Klein’s argument isn’t about softening up or finding the middle ground — it’s about expanding the ground altogether. If Democrats want to crush Trumpism, they can’t do it by trimming the edges of their coalition. They’ll have to stretch it wide enough to make Trump’s brand of politics irrelevant.
