“Public policy is public service.”

One of the big debates—maybe the most important debate right now—going on in progressive politics is the the extent to which policymaking requires compromise. It’s both an electoral question—how can Democrats regain a majority both in 2026 and in 2028 and beyond—and question about crafting the kind governance that actually moves dearly held issue priorities forward. These are conversations I’m especially interested in because, although I cover all sorts of perspectives on policies related to kids and families—ranging from history to religious faith to civic engagement—at the end of the day, I’m a policy analyst. I’ve always been drawn to questions that require research, data, and evidence to bring a little light to the heat of political controversy. And right now, I’m getting pretty heavily criticized among many friends in the public school community for sticking to that approach on a couple of education questions—one of which we get into today. All of this is why I read with great interest a new book by Adam Jentleson, who makes the case that heterodoxy—both with respect to policy, but also politics—is necessary to actually win elections and govern. Adam is the president of the Searchlight Institute, having previously served in a number of leadership positions on Capitol Hill.His new book is called Supermajority: How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power (W.W. Norton & Co.)A Conversation with Adam JentlesonAdam Jentleson, thanks for being here. You make a pretty provocative argument that Democrats shouldn’t just be trying to win the next election, but should be trying to build something more like the dominant coalitions Democrats had in the FDR and LBJ eras. What do you think Democrats fundamentally misunderstand about what it takes to build a political supermajority?Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s a fair summary of the argument—and not to downplay the importance of winning elections. I would actually argue that my thesis is that we need to take that extremely seriously. But the way you do that is instead of aiming at the bare minimum number of votes.Whether you’re talking about the electoral college or like how to get to 50 plus one in individual election, instead of aiming at the bare minimum number of votes, we should be aiming higher to build bigger, broader coalitions so that every election doesn’t come down to a coin flip, you know, especially given the stakes that we’re dealing with today, where you have a genuine rise of right-wing authoritarianism in this country, and every election could be the difference between the survival of our democracy or not. So, you know, I think what the party has been missing is that—look, it is a privilege to have as much data at our fingertips as we do today. It’s an extremely useful tool. I would be the first to embrace it, but we at Searchlight have an in-house public opinion operation. We take it very seriously, and part of the argument in the book is that Democrats do need to pay attention to it.But you can’t become captive to the data. And one of the things that’s happened is we’ve decided that we can sort of, you know, slice the electorate extremely thin and aim, you know, and be very efficient in our resource allocation, you know, just to get to that literal, you know, 50 plus one that you need to win.And that has been a disservice because it’s caused us to try to be too clever by half in a lot of ways. My argument is that we should step back and say, what do I need to do to represent a broader coalition than the bare minimum necessary to win?That’s important electorally. It’s important for building, you know, more than just winning the next election. It’s important for building dominance over the next generation. But it’s also important on principle because, you know, you should aspire to represent as broad a swath of the public as you can, whether you’re talking about representing a district or a state or the country writ large as president. You know, it is a good thing and a healthy thing in civic society to try to represent as many people as you can, rather than just the bare minimum. So that’s… that’s, I think, what the party has lost, to answer your question, is that bigger perspective, that broader perspective of saying, you know, what does it take to build a dominant electoral coalition in this country, and how can we break out of that era of narrow… this era of narrow polarization that we’ve been stuck in for way too long?You write about the importance of “heterodoxy” — candidates who don’t necessarily fit neatly into the Democratic ideological box. But there’s an obvious tension here: if Democrats need to appeal to voters who don’t think of themselves as liberals, how do you distinguish productive heterodoxy from simply moving to the right? What’s the test?The test is whether you’re represent… Two tests, actually. One is whether you’re authentically reflecting your own views as a, you know, candidate, as a leader. Yeah, well, you know, let me pause on that one for a second, and I’ll get to the second test in a second. But, you know, we talk a lot about authenticity these days, right?Part of my argument is that it is actually inauthentic to assume a rigidly ideological position across the board, because that’s just not how… that’s not how I work, it’s not how you work, it’s probably not how your listeners and your readers work. I think, you know, any person, if they’re being honest with themselves, you know, is maybe mostly liberal, but probably has a few points of view where they diverge from the prevailing orthodoxy of their side of the spectrum, or, in the case of politics, from their party. And what we’ve done over the last 10 years is we’ve created an ecosystem that tries to suffocate any divergence from that orthodoxy, and that polices rigidity, and that tries to enforce these purity tests. And so what you end up having is candidates who are inauthentic, because they pretend to believe every single bullet point on their side’s, you know, articles of faith. So, I think, first of all, to answer your question, the first test is, you know, saying to yourself, well, listen, am I… are there areas where, you know, if I spoke up, I would diverge from my party, I might take some criticism from activists, interest groups, donors on my side.But I would be being true to myself, and I’d be being honest with myself. And frankly, by doing so, you’re probably gonna end up better reflecting the constituents that you’re vying to represent, because chances are that they think that way, too, where they have, you know, thoughts and ideas and beliefs that diverge. The second test is whether you’re picking fights for the sake of picking fights, or whether you’re doing it, um, to try to reflect that diversity of viewpoints that are in the, in the, uh, sort of in the mix of the American people. And I think, you know, there is risk in… part of what I outline in the book is that.These fights are actually very effective at breaking through our crowded media environment. You know, when media loves conflict, when you diverge from your party and you get yelled at by your side, that’s going to create a media scrum that breaks through, even in this intention starved environment that we live in.It is easy then to start to do that just for the sake of, you know, getting that attention and getting that fight. You do see some examples of that with folks who, you know, kind of get addicted to that high of picking the fight, getting a lot of attention, sort of wash, rinse, repeat.I think those two things combine, and that’s where you sort of form your basic standards here. You know, am I doing this because it’s what I believe in? Am I willing to have the argument because it’s my principle, or am I just doing it for the sake of fighting and for the sake of attention? And, you know, listen, as with many things in life, you know, there are gray areas, there are nuances you have to navigate here, and it could become a slippery slope, you know, but it’s easy to have a slippery slope back in the other direction of saying, well, I’m just gonna, you know, not ever speak my mind, or be honest about what I think, and instead just, you know, take the positions that are being forced on me, because that’s the path of least resistance. So, you know, we’re all adults here, I think people sort of know when they are being honest with themselves, or when they’re just doing it for the sake of attention, and that’s the kind of nuance that you have to navigate, but I think it’s worth it to embrace the challenge of navigating it, because the outcome is going to be a more, you know, genuinely representative politics, and, I would argue, more successful at dominating the power structure for the next generation.If we don’t embrace good faith policy disagreement, we really are creating a party that is going to become narrower and narrower and narrower, and our power base is going to become smaller and smaller and smaller.—Adam JentlesonYou’ve argued that Democrats need to build a broader coalition without simply moving right on every issue. So let me test that with an issue I spend a lot of time thinking about: school choice. I’m not asking whether Democrats should embrace private-school vouchers. But the new federal scholarship tax credit creates an interesting wrinkle because, unlike many traditional voucher programs, the money can also support things like tutoring, after-school programs and other educational expenses for public-school families. I’ve argued that Democrats should be looking at this as an opportunity to crack open the voucher model — to make sure public schools and public-school families can access this new revenue stream, rather than ceding the whole concept of educational choice to the right. I’ve gotten attacked a bit by friends in the public school community on that. Is that the kind of policy heterodoxy you think Democrats should be pursuing, or is there a point where adapting a conservative policy framework risks legitimizing the underlying model?No, I would argue on your side against your critics because, you know, this is an issue, you are obviously someone who’s deeply committed to liberal principles. This is an issue you’ve dedicated an enormous amount of your time to. And I think, you know, here you have an example where there’s an issue area where embracing some of the conservative ideas actually leads you to the liberal outcome that you’re seeking. And, you know, more money for the things we care about, right? And I think that that’s the kind of thing that we should embrace, And I would go further to say that you are clearly coming at this from a good faith perspective, and, you know, a lot of the pushback, having received similar pushback on different issue areas myself, people immediately sort of start to try to question your motives, and I think that’s the kind of discourse that we need to be rid of. You know, we need to say, look, we are coming at this in good faith, yet the fact that you would, you know, entertain some ideas from other ideologies is not reflective of, you know, bad motives, it’s reflective of a genuine intellectual curiosity and trying to find the different tools that are available to us to achieve the ends we all agree on.So I would, you know, be entirely in favor of that. I think that that kind of heterodoxy falls squarely within what I’m proposing that we embrace in the book, you know, and that’s if we don’t embrace that kind of thinking and that kind of good faith disagreement, we really are creating a party that is going to become narrower and narrower and narrower, and our power base is going to become smaller and smaller and smaller.We genuinely need to say, you know, this is… we are open to different kinds of thinking, we are not trying to police, we’re not being the thought police here. If you have ideas that have, you know, some pedigree of conservatism or, you know, libertarianism or what have you—that doesn’t cancel them out, and that doesn’t automatically mean that they should be disqualified. I think we’ve created this intellectual culture that is far too restrictive, and we need to open it up, and that’s going to lead to creativity, it’s going to lead to good outcomes on policy, I think.The reason we get up in the morning, the reason we go to work is because public policy is public service, and our job is to pass policies that help people and advance the causes we believe in. Are you, at the end of the day, moving the ball forward? —Adam Jentleson Your argument is ultimately about power, not just winning elections. But Democrats have had moments where they won substantial majorities and then failed to preserve them — or failed to use them as effectively as they could have. What do you think Democrats should do differently the next time they actually have the votes? In other words, what does a supermajority need to accomplish in its first two years if it’s going to become a durable realignment rather than just another electoral cycle?Well, you know, having sort of been there at the inception of the last supermajority when President Obama had 60 seats in the Senate and huge margins in the House, I was working for Senator Harry Reid at the time in the Senate, you know, one of the things, I mean, look, I’m proud of what we accomplished there.We passed the Affordable Care Act, we passed, you know, a tremendous number of laws that actually helped people. I’m not gonna sit here and list them, because your viewers, your listeners are familiar, but, you know, but I would say that we probably could have done more, and next time we should do more. And one of the things that held us back at the time was this lingering belief that Republicans would act in good faith, you know, on policy and not just prioritize winning elections. And this was sort of it almost sounds naive to say it now, but, you know, at the time, this was there was still legitimate reason to believe that senators like, you know, a Chuck Grassley or an Olympia Snowe or a Mike Enzi would engage thoughtfully on healthcare policy because they had dedicated so much of their careers to working with it, working on that issue. Mitch McConnell was sort of the villain here, and he said to his caucus, I don’t care how much effort they put into reaching out to you and trying to court you to partner with them on policy. We are going to block everything this president does, because that will be better for us electorally, and it will show the American people that he can’t deliver on his big promises of hope and change. And so it took really two years for it to become clear that McConnell would succeed in whipping his caucus into line, and that it was going to work. For a long time, we thought that branding Republicans as the party of no, who refused to work with this popular new president, was gonna work electorally, and it just didn’t. And so that was sort of the last gasp of an old era. We are in a new era now, and I think we are more familiar with the political realities as they exist. And so when, if Democrats are lucky enough to have a trifecta and have the White House in control of both houses in Congress in 2029 they should not entertain that fantasy at all. They should obviously welcome Republicans if they want to come work with us, but we should have an agenda from day one that just powers through and passes as much big-scale policy change, but also structural reforms. And this is a roundabout answer to your question, but part of the way we make it stick is not just by passing a raft of ambitious policy, but also passing some of the structural reforms that are going to be necessary to make that policy durable. And so I’m talking about things like court reform to rebalance the scale of the courts, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, ending the filibuster, a major passion of mine. It was actually the topic of my first book. And again, if Republicans are interested in working with us and governing, the door will always be open, but we’re not gonna wait for them. And we’re gonna move aggressively with the mandate that we will have at that point. If the people choose to put us in control of all three branches of government, and we will enact our agenda, and also the structural reforms to make sure that conservatives can’t just come back and quickly undo what we pass.One thing I found interesting in your argument is that you’re not really describing a coalition without disagreement — you’re describing a coalition that’s comfortable with disagreement. How much ideological conflict do you think a successful Democratic coalition can actually tolerate? And is there a danger that in trying to make the tent big enough to win a supermajority, Democrats become so internally heterogeneous that they can’t actually govern together?I think we are so far away from the tent being that big that that’s like a problem I’d love to have. But it’s a legitimate question, and I take it seriously. And I think, part of the historical examples that I discuss in the book are illuminating on this score. You look at the coalition that sustained the New Deal in the 1930s, and you want to talk about internal conflict, I mean, this was a coalition that included the most avowed, you know, proud white supremacists, you know, self-identifying white supremacists. They would literally use those words to describe themselves. In the South, I mean, remember at this time, the South was basically a one-party region and all of the… and to be elected as a Democrat, you had to swear to uphold Jim Crow and dedicate your career to it.And then this was also the period when Black Americans, who had been loyal to the Republican Party up until this point because the Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, started to shift to the Democratic coalition, because despite all of the carve-outs and things that the white supremacists in the South insisted on putting in New Deal programs, nonetheless, a lot of those benefits still did find their way to many Black Americans. So you want to talk about a fractious coalition? I mean that you don’t get much more. And then liberals in the north and the Midwest and Westerners who are their own, you know, whole deal.So, I think eventually the coalition does become so big and fractious that it falls apart and there is some other realignment. But what I’m proposing is that what we achieve with that coalition in the meantime can save our democracy by shifting us away from this trajectory that we’re on. You gotta make it count when you have the power and you have the ability to pass these policies, but if we build a tent that is big enough to sustain us in power, you know, over several election cycles so that we can pass an agenda that relieves people’s economic precarity, that makes our tax system more fair, that makes the wealthy pay their fair share, that reigns in AI at these incredible threats that we’re facing today, plus the structural reforms that make it stick. Will that coalition fall apart eventually over a period of a decade? Probably. But we’ll have made it count, and we’ll have improved the lives of millions of people, and we’ll probably have saved our democracy, and I would say that would be time well spent.You can push as hard as you can for the things you believe in, but at the end of the day, the job of this business is not to make yourself feel pure, it is to enact policies that make a concrete difference in people’s lives. If you sacrifice that potential to change someone’s life just so that you can feel more pure, I would argue you’re doing it wrong.—Adam JentlesonLet me end on a slightly more personal and perhaps slightly less strategic question. There’s a tendency in Democratic politics to assume that if someone is centrist or moderate, they’re either making a calculated electoral decision or they’re compromising because they’re afraid to fight. But some people are just temperamentally centrist — they genuinely see the world that way. How much do you think political temperament matters? And can Democrats make room for people who are centrists not because they’re “selling out” or trying to win a particular constituency, but because that’s actually where they think good government lives?I will give you an example of somebody who fits that description, former President Barack Obama. You know, I mean, here was a man who was, you know, deeply liberal and dedicated to progressive causes, but temperamentally, it was, you know, by nature sort of drawn to inhabiting the experiences of other people and trying to understand the perspective that they were coming from. And, you know, this came through in his very famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he talked about living in a purple American, worshiping a righteous God in the blue States, and wanting to help the poor in the red States, and that was his calling card. I think it’s incredibly important. Listen, I’ve worked with and mentored a lot of young people in my career, and I always tell them, the reason we get up in the morning, the reason we go to work is because public policy is public service, and our job is to pass policies that help people and advance the causes we believe in. Does that mean sometimes making compromises, or trying to build coalitions that include strange bedfellows, or working with religious conservatives on issues of personal freedom and stuff like that?Yes, it does. And does that sometimes mean you abrogate your deeply held political principles, or you do something that is less pure than you would like? Yes, it does. But the question is, are you, at the end of the day, moving the ball forward? Are you helping people? You know, you can push as hard as you can for the things you believe in, but at the end of the day, the job of this business is not to make yourself feel pure, it is to enact policies that make a concrete difference in people’s lives. If you sacrifice that potential to change someone’s life just so that you can feel more pure, I would argue you’re doing it wrong. Now, there’s a role for activism, you know, and purity is the main thing for you, I’ve counseled young people to say, hey, listen, you know, I don’t mean this in a pejorative way at all, perhaps activism is a better calling for you. But when you’re talking about policy and politics and public service, you gotta remember at the end of the day that improving people’s lives is the name of the game.If that means compromising, sometimes that’s just part of how you get it done. And, you know, that’s how progress is achieved. And I’ll close by saying, you know, part of what I try to highlight with these historical examples in the book, you know, going back to the New Deal era.Social Security, what we embrace as the greatest domestic achievement of democratic governance was considered a compromise and a sellout at the time, because you had the Left, led by populists like Huey Long, calling for confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy, and basically universal basic insurance for all families.Just by saying, I’m only going to have an old age pension program, FDR was already called a sellout. So it’s all relative to the to the demands of the era. But, you know, I don’t think anybody would say Social Security was not a worthwhile endeavor. Enacting a public option today, which would be life changing for millions of people on the healthcare front, may not get you to single payer immediately, but it would still be an incredible improvement and change people’s lives for the better. Even though some on the Left might say that’s an unconscionable compromise. And I would, I would respectfully disagree there.Once again, Adam Jentleson is the president of the Searchlight Institute, and author of the new book Supermajority: How Democrats Can Build Lasting Power (W.W. Norton & Co.) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joshcowen.substack.com/subscribe