Images of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Joe Biden, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are displayed during the first day of the Republican Midterm Convention at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on Sept. 9, 2026.
Photo: Mark Felix/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In case anyone
was starting to feel that American democracy is just a little too secure, distaste for the common man is now finding purchase beyond the political right, with centrist liberals test-running their own brand of distaste for mass participation.
Over the past two years, centrist liberal writers have been emboldened to expressly call for less public participation in government and politics, sometimes just coming right out and saying, “What we need is fewer engaged people,” as prolific pedant Matthew Yglesias recently
said
over on the reanimated corpse of Twitter.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rampant hostility to small-dollar donors. In external communications,
we’ve heard
notions like Democrats needing to “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors.” In
writing not meant for a wide audience
, the honest assessment from the Abundance Network is more extreme: Widespread grassroots fundraising “makes politics dumber.” The reasoning is that such donors
tend to be more liberal
than traditional big-dollar supporters and, as a result, push Democrats away from the preferences of the median voter. But in reality, the moderation bought by high-dollar contributions only serves to further cater to the
interests of the wealthy
.
The Democratic Party Gets Its Populist Takeover
Centrists have taken to characterizing the dueling ascendance of left-economic populism and right-chauvinistic “populism” as a
pincer
movement
against
the righteous “vital center.” In recent years, centrist publications have been replete with examples,
urgently calling
to
safeguard liberalis
… [more]
