AI can help voters research candidates, but it should support—not replace—independent civic judgment.
CIVPAC would like to have the resources to provide endorsements in the vast majority of primaries and general-election contests. We do our best, but sadly that goal is, at least for now, beyond our reach.
If you find our philosophy and policy positions similar to your own, and you do not find an endorsement from us in a race you care about, we do have a suggestion. You can use your favorite AI tool to assist you in getting to a decision.
We suggest copying and pasting the following prompt into your AI tool. Within the prompt, replace the words [INSERT RACE] with the race you are interested in. Of course, you may want to modify it to reflect your own preferences.
Suggested AI Prompt
“I am a centrist voter broadly aligned with CIVPAC-style principles: market-compatible solutions; fiscal seriousness; equality of opportunity; respect for personal freedom; practical liberal-democratic governance, including respect for constitutional limits, democracy, and the rule of law; support for Ukraine and stable international alliances; and skepticism toward both far-right authoritarian populism and far-left or DSA-style politics.
Please help me evaluate the candidates in this race: [INSERT RACE].
Do not simply tell me who to vote for. Instead:
Identify the major candidates and the election context.
Summarize each candidate’s record, platform, endorsements, major public statements, and relevant controversies.
Compare the candidates against the principles above.
Flag evidence of election denial, authoritarianism, corruption, contempt for constitutional limits, antisemitism, isolationism, hostility to NATO or Ukraine, unserious fiscal promises, or extreme ideological commitments.
Distinguish clearly between facts, reasonable inferences, and opinion.
Use current, reliable sources and provide citations or links.
Explain which candidate appears most consistent with these principles and why.
Identify serious weaknesses, uncertainties, or gaps in the evidence.
If this is a primary, analyze the choice within that party’s field and do not assume that my primary preference will be the same as my general-election preference.
Keep the analysis practical. Perfect ideological alignment is too much to ask. Governing temperament, institutional responsibility, policy seriousness, and ability to represent the district can make up for some degree of policy weakness in a candidate.”
After You Get the AI Response
Do not treat the AI’s answer as a substitute for your own judgment. AI tools can be useful research assistants, but they can miss recent developments, rely on stale sources, overstate uncertain conclusions, or fail to understand local political context. Ask for sources. Check the most important claims. Then make your own decision. AI engines can have subtle hidden biases. Press your tool to be more specific if its reasoning is not compelling for you.
These endorsements should not be read as a general-election endorsement of the Democratic Party. CIVPAC includes members with different views about which party should control Congress. But we are united in believing that, when Democratic primary voters have a choice between practical center-left candidates and far-left or DSA-aligned candidates, the practical center-left candidate is usually more consistent with CIVPAC’s principles.
The three races are different. Missouri’s 1st District is a safe Democratic district, where the central question is what kind of Democrat should represent the district. Wisconsin’s 3rd District is a competitive, Republican-held district, where Democratic primary voters should give serious weight to breadth of appeal and practical governing judgment. New Hampshire’s 1st District is a competitive open seat in a politically independent state, where the Democratic nominee will need to appeal beyond the activist base.
In each race, CIVPAC believes Democratic primary voters have a better center-left alternative to far-left or DSA-aligned politics.
CIVPAC endorses Wesley Bell, Rebecca Cooke, and Stefany Shaheen in their respective Democratic primaries.
These are not endorsements of perfect candidates. They are endorsements of the better choices in a party that should be trying to strengthen its claim to practical, institutionally serious governance.
Colorado matters because it is not New York. It is a state where Democrats have built real strength, where statewide victories are possible, and where the party has had room to present itself as pragmatic, modern, and broadly appealing. That makes the current primary choices especially important.
Democrats should be in a strong position nationally. President Trump and his allies have weakened the Republican Party’s claim to constitutional seriousness, institutional restraint, and responsible governance. In such an environment, Democrats should be expanding their appeal to independents, moderates, suburban voters, disaffected Republicans, and voters exhausted by politics as permanent combat.
Instead, too many Democratic primary voters seem tempted to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory.
But politics is not only emotional expression. It is also coalition-building and governance.
That is why CIVPAC supports John Hickenlooper in the Colorado Democratic Senate primary. Hickenlooper is a serious, pragmatic, center-left Democrat with experience as mayor, governor, and senator. He is the kind of candidate who can help Democrats maintain a broad governing coalition and preserve credibility with voters who do not think like Democratic activists.
Julie Gonzales is a serious public official and deserves respect. But her challenge reflects a broader impatience with mainstream Democratic politics. CIVPAC does not believe Colorado Democrats should replace a proven statewide winner and pragmatic senator with a more ideological challenger at a moment when the party’s central task should be expanding its claim to the center.
The same concern applies in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District.
Diana DeGette is not a centrist Democrat. She is a mainstream progressive Democrat from a safe Democratic district. CIVPAC does not endorse her because she represents our ideal policy position. She does not. We endorse her because the primary choice is not between centrism and progressivism. It is between an experienced mainstream progressive and a democratic-socialist challenger whose victory would further strengthen the movement-left direction of the party in one of its safest seats.
That matters beyond Denver.
Safe Democratic districts are not politically isolated. They help define the national Democratic brand. When deep-blue districts choose candidates whose politics are more ideological, more urban, more confrontational, and more movement-driven, voters elsewhere notice. So do Republican campaigns and conservative media. The party cannot say it wants to win everywhere while allowing its safest districts to become symbols of a politics that travels poorly.
This is the same concern CIVPAC raised in New York. The problem is not that every movement-left candidate is identical or that every incumbent deserves protection. The problem is that Democratic voters in safe districts and primaries may be choosing candidates who intensify the party’s internal mood while weakening its national appeal.
That is a dangerous road.
A party serious about governing must tolerate internal variety. It needs candidates who fit different electorates. It needs some members who are more progressive and some who are more moderate. It needs new candidates, but not every new candidate is an improvement. It needs energy, but energy is not a substitute for judgment.
The Democratic Party should not make the same mistake that MAGA made in the Republican Party: treating moderation inside the party as betrayal. MAGA created the language of RINOs and loyalty tests. Democrats should not create their own version of that habit by treating pragmatic Democrats as embarrassments, obstacles, or insufficiently pure.
By “Blue MAGA,” CIVPAC does not mean that democratic socialism and Trumpism are identical. They are not. They represent different threats. They do have a core similarity: the habit of treating politics as a test of factional loyalty rather than as a practical exercise in persuasion and governance. The habit of assuming that the other side’s extremism justifies our side’s extremism. The habit of confusing activist enthusiasm with general-election strength.
Colorado Democrats should resist that temptation.
Hickenlooper and DeGette are very different candidates in very different races. But the common thread is the same. Both represent mainstream Democratic politics against challengers who would move the party further toward a more left-wing, movement-driven style. CIVPAC believes Democrats should choose the candidates who strengthen the party’s claim to responsible governance, not candidates who make the party easier to caricature.
President Trump has given Democrats an opening. He has reminded many voters why institutional seriousness matters. He has made some independents and moderate Republicans available to persuasion. He has weakened the Republican claim to constitutional conservatism.
Democrats can use that opening to build a broader coalition. Or they can squander it by allowing their primaries to become exercises in ideological self-expression.
That is why CIVPAC supports John Hickenlooper and Diana DeGette in Colorado’s Democratic primaries.
The country does not need a blue version of factional politics. It needs a stronger governing center.
When CIVPAC began, we expected much of our work to involve supporting center-left and center-right candidates in primaries, with the hope of nudging both parties toward the political center. That task has changed. Increasingly, CIVPAC finds itself supporting conventional left-wing or right-wing candidates against more extreme alternatives that, not long ago, would have seemed unlikely to gain serious traction in American politics.
When this effort began, through CIVPAC’s predecessor organization, the New Independent Party, the national political world was still recognizable. The 2012 presidential race was Mitt Romney against Barack Obama. CIVPAC would have had criticisms of both candidates, but both were serious, constitutional, mainstream figures. The distance between that world and today’s politics explains why CIVPAC’s task has changed.
Espaillat is not a centrist Democrat. He is a mainstream progressive Democrat with a reliable party-line voting record. But the question in NY-13 is not whether voters should choose a centrist over a progressive. The question is whether Democratic primary voters should replace an experienced incumbent with Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic-socialist challenger backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
That race is part of a larger pattern. Mamdani has endorsed three congressional candidates in New York: Avila Chevalier in NY-13, Brad Lander in NY-10, and Claire Valdez in NY-7. CIVPAC is not making endorsements in all three races at this time. But the slate matters because it has become a national signal about the direction of the Democratic Party in its most heavily Democratic urban districts.
Deep-blue primaries are not politically isolated. New York City helps shape the Democratic Party’s national brand. When candidates running on democratic-socialist, movement-left politics become the face of the party in highly visible urban districts, voters outside New York notice. So do Republican media and campaign strategists.
If Democrats believe Mamdani’s strategy and the candidates he is backing are likely to succeed nationally, they should ask why Fox News is so eager to make that strategy visible to voters outside New York City.
CIVPAC does not object to new candidates merely because they are new. Parties need competition, new voices, and serious challenges to complacency. Nor does CIVPAC believe incumbents are entitled to renomination. But not every insurgency is an improvement.
This is one of those situations. The work now feels less like gently nudging the parties toward the center than trying to keep the planets from being flung out of the solar system.
Our concern is the road to “Blue MAGA.” We do not mean that left-wing populism and Trumpism are identical. They are not. But both can reward tribal certainty, ideological escalation, contempt for persuasion, and the belief that political intensity is a substitute for broad public appeal.
In NY-13, CIVPAC believes the better choice is clear. Representative Espaillat is not a CIVPAC ideal candidate, but he offers experience, institutional knowledge, and continuity. Replacing him with a movement-left challenger would strengthen the very tendency CIVPAC has warned about: the temptation to make deep-blue urban politics the face of the national Democratic Party.
That is bad politics for Democrats and bad politics for the country.
CIVPAC therefore endorses Representative Adriano Espaillat in the Democratic primary for the U.S. House in New York’s 13th Congressional District.
CIVPAC has posted several new primary and runoff endorsements in Georgia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. The races are different, but the standards are the same.
CIVPAC is looking for candidates who show practical judgment, respect for democratic institutions, willingness to govern beyond slogans, and some understanding of how policy actually works. We are trying to identify candidates who strengthen the governing center.
That sometimes means endorsing a Democrat. Sometimes it means endorsing a Republican. Sometimes it means making no endorsement.
Georgia Republican Runoffs
In Georgia, CIVPAC endorses Derek Dooley in the Republican primary runoff for U.S. Senate and makes no endorsement in the Republican primary runoff for Governor.
The Senate runoff presents a clear comparative judgment. Derek Dooley is not a perfect CIVPAC candidate. He is new to politics and has not yet built a public record that allows a full assessment of his governing philosophy. But his opponent, Representative Mike Collins, represents a more confrontational and performative style of politics that CIVPAC has consistently rejected.
Dooley is the more plausible choice for Republicans who want to move Georgia politics back toward a responsible center-right tradition.
The Governor runoff is different. CIVPAC supported Brad Raffensperger in the Republican primary because he demonstrated institutional courage in defending the integrity of Georgia’s 2020 election. With Raffensperger eliminated, the remaining candidates do not present a clear CIVPAC choice. CIVPAC is not obligated to choose between unsatisfactory alternatives merely to appear balanced.
In Maryland, CIVPAC endorses Rushern Baker in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 5th Congressional District and Representative April McClain Delaney in the Democratic primary for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District.
In Maryland’s 5th District, the race to succeed Steny Hoyer includes several candidates with real strengths. Harry Dunn has a powerful January 6 story and deserves respect for his service. Harry Jarin also deserves respect for his public-service background and support for Ukrainian first responders. Adrian Boafo has the support of Representative Hoyer and a plausible continuity argument.
But CIVPAC’s endorsement is ultimately about who appears best prepared to serve effectively in Congress. Rushern Baker has the strongest governing-experience case in the field. His service as Prince George’s County executive gives him direct experience with budgets, administration, public safety, economic development, and the practical tradeoffs of governing.
Read the full Baker endorsement here: [CIVPAC Endorses Rushern Baker in Maryland’s 5th Congressional District Democratic Primary]
In Maryland’s 6th District, CIVPAC endorses April McClain Delaney over former Representative David Trone. This is not because the two candidates differ sharply on every major issue. They do not. Both are mainstream Democrats.
But in a race with limited policy distance between the leading candidates, CIVPAC gives weight to incumbency, continuity, and whether the challenger has made a persuasive affirmative case for replacing the incumbent. Representative McClain Delaney is the sitting member of Congress. She won a competitive general election. She has begun doing the job. In the absence of a compelling policy or performance-based reason to replace her, CIVPAC favors continuity.
CIVPAC also supports Kenyan McDuffie in the Democratic primary for Mayor of Washington, D.C.
CIVPAC does not ordinarily involve itself in local races outside its core geographic focus. But Washington, D.C. is not an ordinary local jurisdiction. It is the nation’s capital, a regional economic center, and a city whose governance affects many people who live and work throughout the Washington metropolitan area.
This race presents a familiar question: pragmatic governance or ideological ambition?
D.C. voters want more affordable housing, improved public safety, a local government that deserves their confidence, protection of home rule, and a strengthened economy that cannot take federal employment, downtown office demand, or private investment for granted. These problems require practical judgment, not slogans.
Housing is a central example. CIVPAC is skeptical of down-payment subsidies in supply-constrained housing markets because they can raise demand rather than supply and make homes more expensive for unsubsidized buyers. The stronger case for McDuffie is his greater emphasis on permitting reform, construction capacity, housing preservation, and working with private and nonprofit builders to expand supply.
CIVPAC also rejects threats of federal overreach against D.C. home rule. But opposition to President Trump should not become a substitute for judgment. The answer to federal overreach is not local overreach. It is steady, serious self-government.
These endorsements are not about party loyalty. They are about judgment.
In Georgia, that means supporting a Republican Senate candidate who appears more connected to a responsible center-right tradition while declining to endorse in a Governor runoff where neither remaining candidate meets CIVPAC’s standard.
In Maryland, it means supporting Democratic candidates who offer governing experience, continuity, and institutional seriousness.
In Washington, D.C., it means supporting a mayoral candidate whose approach is more pragmatic, market-compatible, and realistic about housing, public safety, home rule, and economic growth.
CIVPAC’s general view is that public policy should be economically sound, fair, respectful of individual freedom, politically realistic, and grounded in strong democratic institutions. These endorsements apply that standard across different races and different parties.
The country does not need more political performances aimed at ideologically extreme bases. It needs more serious governing.
There is a new idea circulating in Washington that cuts across ordinary partisan lines: the federal government should take an equity interest in major artificial intelligence companies so the public can share in the gains from AI.
The Case for Capturing the Gains from AI
The instinct behind the idea is understandable. Artificial intelligence is not being created in a vacuum. AI systems draw from the accumulated knowledge of society: public research, open scientific work, software, writing, images, data, language, law, medicine, engineering, and countless other forms of human knowledge. Much of that knowledge was created by people who will not be directly compensated when AI systems use it. Some of it was supported by government-funded research. Some of it came from public institutions. Much of it came from the creative and intellectual work of millions of people over generations.
So there is a legitimate question: if AI produces enormous private wealth, should the public share in some of that gain?
Yes. But government equity ownership is the wrong way to do it.
The Case Against Government Equity Ownership of AI
The first problem is that it is not obvious where the gains from AI will actually accrue. It is possible that a few AI companies will become immensely profitable and capture a large share of the value they create. But it is also possible that competition will drive the market price of AI assistance very low. If that happens, the companies that spend the most building AI systems may not capture anything close to the full social value of what they produce.
History offers a useful warning. The railroads of the nineteenth century created enormous economic value. They opened markets, reduced transportation costs, changed settlement patterns, and increased productivity across the economy. But that did not mean every railroad investor earned extraordinary returns. In many cases, competition, overbuilding, debt, and financial instability shifted the benefits away from the original investors and toward shippers, consumers, landowners, and the broader economy. Many of these railroads went bankrupt.
AI could follow a similar pattern. The largest gains may not remain with the AI model companies. They may flow to software firms, chip companies, cloud providers, manufacturers, hospitals, banks, law firms, schools, small businesses, workers, consumers, and investors across the economy. If AI becomes a cheap general-purpose tool, much of the value may be captured by those who use AI rather than by those who build the underlying models.
This matters because a government equity stake in selected AI firms is a narrow and speculative instrument. It requires the government to decide which companies are likely to capture the future rents from AI. It also requires the government to value highly uncertain firms, negotiate ownership terms, and then manage the conflict between being a regulator and being a shareholder.
This is not a small problem. The federal government should regulate AI in the public interest. It should be concerned about safety, privacy, national security, labor-market effects, competition, misinformation, energy use, and democratic accountability. If the government also owns shares in the firms it regulates, its incentives become muddier. Will policy be written to protect the public, or to protect the value of the government’s portfolio? Even if the answer is “the public,” the appearance of conflict will be hard to avoid.
There is also a simpler point: we already have mechanisms for capturing broad economic gains.
They are called taxes.
The Case for Capturing Some of the Gains from AI Through the Tax System
If AI produces extraordinary corporate profits, the corporate income tax can capture part of those gains. If AI increases the value of publicly traded companies, capital-gains taxes can capture part of those gains when shares are sold. If AI produces great fortunes, estate and inheritance taxes can capture part of those gains when wealth is transferred across generations. If AI raises productivity and wages, individual income taxes will capture part of those gains. If AI benefits a broad range of firms and industries, the tax system can follow the gains wherever they actually appear.
This is a much better approach than trying to make the federal government a venture capitalist.
The tax system is not perfect. In fact, some of the best arguments for public participation in AI gains are really arguments for repairing the tax system.
One obvious reform is limiting the step-up in basis at death. If AI creates enormous unrealized capital gains, those gains should not simply disappear for tax purposes when an owner dies. A tax system that allows large gains to escape both income taxation during life and capital-gains taxation at death is poorly designed. If this creates a record-keeping burden for small inherited portfolios, the limit on step-up in basis can be tied to estates above some significant threshold.
A second reform is preserving, and possibly modestly increasing, the corporate income tax. The goal should not be to punish business investment. AI will require large investments in computing, energy, chips, software, and talent. But if AI substantially increases corporate profits, it is reasonable for part of those profits to support the public institutions and infrastructure that make economic growth possible.
A third reform is tightening the estate tax. A serious estate tax is one of the few mechanisms we have for limiting the permanent concentration of wealth across generations. This does not mean confiscatory taxation. It does mean that very large fortunes should not be able to avoid taxation through increasingly elaborate planning devices.
One particular issue deserves more attention: the use of charitable structures that allow wealthy individuals and families to receive large tax advantages while retaining substantial influence over the assets. Philanthropy can serve public purposes. But an unlimited charitable deduction for self-governed or family-influenced charitable entities can become a way to avoid tax while preserving social power and control. This is not the same thing as paying taxes to support public purposes through the ordinary budget process.
Conclusion
If the public has a claim to the benefits from AI, the cleanest way to recognize that claim is not for the government to take shares in a handful of companies. It is to make sure the tax system captures AI-generated gains wherever they occur.
This approach has several advantages.
It does not require the government to pick winners.
It does not require the government to decide which AI company will dominate ten years from now.
It does not entangle regulators with ownership interests.
It does not assume that AI developers will capture all of the value they create.
It preserves market competition while allowing the public to share in broad economic gains.
And it fits ordinary public-finance principles. When economic activity creates large gains, the tax system should capture a reasonable share of those gains to support public purposes. When economic activity creates risks or external costs, regulation should address those risks directly.
This distinction is important. AI regulation and AI revenue policy should not be confused.
The government should regulate AI where public risks are real. It should address fraud, discrimination, privacy violations, national-security risks, cyber risks, misuse in elections, labor-market disruption, and the concentration of market power. It should consider whether copyright law, data rules, and competition policy need to be updated for the AI era.
But if the question is how the public should share in the economic upside of AI, the answer should be broad tax policy, not public ownership of selected firms.
CIVPAC’s general view is that public policy should be economically sound, fair, respectful of individual freedom, and politically realistic. A federal equity stake in major AI companies fails too many of those tests. It is economically speculative, administratively messy, politically tempting, and likely to create conflicts between regulation and ownership.
The better answer is less dramatic but more durable: preserve competitive markets, regulate AI directly where public risks are real, and fix the tax system so that AI-generated gains cannot escape taxation simply because they appear as corporate profits, unrealized capital gains, or inherited wealth.
AI may well transform the economy. If it does, the public should benefit. But the way to do this is not to make the federal government a shareholder in a few favored companies. The way to do it is to tax the gains wherever they actually appear.
I am sorry CIVPAC did not endorse Bill Cassidy before the Louisiana Republican primary.
That does not mean I agree with Cassidy on every issue. I do not. Cassidy is a conservative Republican, not a centrist in the Susan Collins sense. But he was one of the few Republican senators willing to vote to convict Donald Trump after January 6, and that vote appears to have been a major reason he lost the support of many Republican primary voters. Cassidy finished third in the Louisiana Republican primary, behind Julia Letlow and John Fleming, after Trump intervened against him and endorsed Letlow.
A CIVPAC endorsement would not have changed the outcome. Louisiana Republican primary voters were not waiting for advice from a centrist independent political action committee. But endorsements are not only about winning. Sometimes they are about putting down a marker.
Cassidy’s defeat sends a message to Republican officeholders: if you break with Trump on a matter of constitutional principle, the party may eventually come for you. That is not a healthy signal for a party, or for the country.
CIVPAC does not expect elected officials to agree with us on every issue. We do expect them to respect democratic institutions, the rule of law, and the basic legitimacy of elections. Cassidy’s vote to convict Trump after January 6 was an act of institutional seriousness. It deserves recognition, especially now that it appears to have helped end his Senate career.
That said, the Cassidy record is not simple.
One reason I hesitate to turn this into a clean morality tale is that Cassidy also voted to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Cassidy is a physician and had raised serious concerns about Kennedy’s vaccine views before ultimately supporting the nomination.
In my view, that was a mistake.
Public health is an area where expertise matters. Skepticism toward bureaucracies can be healthy. Skepticism toward settled science, when elevated to the leadership of a major public-health agency, is something else entirely. Cassidy had the background, credibility, and institutional position to oppose that nomination when it mattered. I regret that he did not.
That failure should be acknowledged. But it should not erase the larger point.
Politics often forces imperfect comparisons. The question is rarely whether a candidate is ideal. The question is whether the political system rewards or punishes the traits we most need. On January 6 and its aftermath, Cassidy showed a kind of courage that has become too rare in his party. On the RFK nomination, he did not show enough of it.
Both things are true.
The larger lesson for CIVPAC is that institutionally responsible candidates should be identified and defended earlier. This is especially true when candidates face primary challenges because they respected constitutional limits, accepted legitimate election results, supported Ukraine and NATO, or refused to treat loyalty to one political figure as the highest test of public office.
The country needs two serious political parties. That requires Democrats willing to resist their left wing and Republicans willing to resist their right wing. It also requires voters and organizations willing to support candidates who pay a political price for doing the right thing.
Bill Cassidy was not a perfect candidate. No serious candidate is. But his defeat is still a warning. A party that punishes institutional courage teaches future candidates to avoid it.
That lesson is bad for Republicans, bad for the Senate, and bad for the country.
Good public policy should be economically efficient, fair, respectful of personal freedom, and politically realistic.
That last phrase — politically realistic — is important. It is also easy to misuse.
Too often, people say a proposal is “not politically realistic” when what they really mean is, “I don’t like it, and I don’t want to explain why.” It becomes a substitute for argument. Worse, it can become a way of avoiding difficult tradeoffs.
That is not what political realism should mean.
Political realism does not mean surrendering to current public opinion. It does not mean splitting every issue down the middle. It does not mean that reformers should never advocate for ideas that are unpopular today. And it certainly does not mean that the most cautious, least offensive position is always the right one.
Political realism means asking whether a policy can attract enough durable public consent to be enacted, implemented, and sustained.
That is a higher standard than simply asking whether a policy sounds good to the people who already agree with it.
Abortion and the Limits of Absolutism
Abortion is a good example because the extremes are so visible.
A total ban on abortion, with no meaningful exceptions for rape, incest, threats to the life or health of the mother, or catastrophic fetal abnormalities, is not politically realistic in most of the country. It may satisfy a deeply committed pro-life minority, but it asks too much of voters who do not share that absolute moral framework.
At the other extreme, abortion on demand at any time in pregnancy, funded by the government, is also not politically realistic. It may satisfy a deeply committed pro-choice minority, but it asks too much of voters who believe the moral status of the fetus changes as pregnancy progresses.
Political realism does not tell us exactly where the law should be. It does tell us that a durable policy probably has to acknowledge competing moral claims. A society as large and diverse as ours cannot govern abortion well by pretending that only one side’s moral concerns exist.
That does not mean every compromise is good. Some compromises are incoherent. Some are cruel. Some are designed merely to survive the next election. But a policy that refuses to recognize the moral seriousness of the other side is unlikely to last.
What Is Unrealistic Can Change
Political realism also requires humility.
Some ideas that are unrealistic at one point in history become realistic later. Same-sex marriage is the obvious example. Gallup first measured U.S. support for legal same-sex marriage at 27% in 1996. Support reached majority level in 2011, and Gallup measured support at 60% in 2015, the year the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges.
That history matters.
If political realism had meant simply accepting public opinion as it existed in 1996, same-sex marriage would have been dismissed as unrealistic and therefore not worth pursuing. But advocates changed minds. They made arguments. They told stories. They appealed to fairness, family stability, and equal dignity.
In other words, they did not ignore political reality. They changed it.
That is the difference between political realism and political cowardice.
A politically realistic reformer may say, “The country is not there yet.” But the next sentence should be, “What would it take to get there?” Not every unpopular idea deserves that effort. But some do.
Many serious people believe a carbon tax is good policy but politically unrealistic in the United States. They may be right, at least for now. American voters do not like visible taxes. Energy prices are politically explosive. Opponents can easily describe a carbon tax as an attack on ordinary households, rural communities, and working people.
But that does not mean carbon pricing is inherently unrealistic. Other democratic countries have adopted carbon taxes or carbon-pricing systems. The World Bank reports that jurisdictions representing a substantial majority of global GDP have adopted some form of carbon pricing, including carbon taxes, emissions trading systems, or both, and about 28% of global greenhouse-gas emissions are covered by a direct carbon price.
So the question is not whether a carbon tax can exist in a democracy. It can.
The question is whether it can be designed and explained in a way that enough Americans can accept.
That means revenue use matters. Protection for low-income households matters. Border adjustments matter. The effect on domestic industry matters, but not simply because domestic firms deserve protection from competition. The larger issue is that a carbon tax loses much of its effectiveness if carbon-intensive production simply moves overseas and the United States imports the same goods from countries with weaker environmental standards.
A carbon tax that simply raises energy prices and leaves voters to wonder where the money went is probably doomed. A carbon tax paired with transparent revenue use, protection for low-income households, and border adjustments that reduce carbon leakage may still be difficult — but it is not fantasy.
Political realism should force better design. It should not end the conversation.
Social Security and the Politics of Arithmetic
Social Security is a different kind of example.
Almost everyone who looks seriously at the federal budget knows that Social Security cannot remain unchanged forever. The arithmetic does not care about campaign slogans. Longer life expectancy, demographic change, and benefit promises eventually require some combination of higher revenues, benefit adjustments, retirement-age changes, or broader fiscal reform.
And yet almost every specific proposal is politically dangerous.
Raise the retirement age? You hurt people in physically demanding jobs.
Raise payroll taxes? You reduce take-home pay and increase labor costs.
Trim benefits for higher-income retirees? You weaken the link between contributions and benefits.
Borrow more? You push the problem onto younger taxpayers.
So politicians often do what politicians do best: avoid the issue while accusing the other side of secretly planning to destroy the program.
Political realism here does not mean doing nothing. It means recognizing that reform has to be gradual, transparent, and probably grandfathered. It means giving people time to adjust. It means refusing to pretend that there is a painless answer.
Sometimes political realism is not about finding a popular solution. It is about finding the least unfair way to admit reality.
Immigration Reform and Mutual Distrust
Immigration is another area where political realism gets abused.
There is probably a broad political deal available in theory: stronger border enforcement, a more rational legal immigration system, and humane treatment for some long-resident undocumented immigrants, especially those brought here as children.
But the deal repeatedly fails because neither side trusts the other.
Many conservatives believe legalization will happen but enforcement will never follow. Many progressives believe enforcement will become harsh and permanent while humane reforms are delayed or abandoned. Both sides have historical reasons for suspicion.
The distrust is made worse by the way both sides talk about demographics. Some on the right have embraced paranoid claims that Democratic elites are intentionally trying to “replace” existing voters through immigration. That rhetoric is dangerous and should be rejected. But some progressive and Democratic commentators have also treated demographic change as politically or morally encouraging, and Democratic strategists at times assumed that a more diverse electorate would naturally benefit their party. That is very different from a deliberate replacement plot, but it helps explain why some voters hear demographic language as threatening. In a diverse country, demographic change should not be treated as a partisan weapon. Immigration policy needs public consent, and public consent becomes much harder when one side sees immigration as cultural displacement and the other side appears too comfortable with that perception.
Political realism requires acknowledging that distrust.
It is not enough to say, “Comprehensive immigration reform polls well.” Lots of things poll well in the abstract. The real question is whether voters believe the government will actually enforce the parts they care about and protect the people they think deserve protection.
That means sequencing matters. Credibility matters. Administrative competence matters. The details are not details. They are the policy.
Many people say they want affordable housing. Many of the same people oppose new housing near them.
That is not a minor obstacle. It is the obstacle.
A purely technocratic housing reformer can say, correctly, that restrictive zoning reduces supply and raises prices. But that does not make neighborhood opposition disappear. People worry about traffic, schools, parking, neighborhood character, property values, and simple change.
Some of those fears are exaggerated. Some are selfish. Some are real.
Political realism does not mean giving every homeowner a veto over new housing. That is how we got the problem. But it does mean recognizing that reform may need to be phased in, paired with infrastructure, handled partly at the state level, and framed around opportunity, property rights, and affordability rather than simply denouncing every opponent as a NIMBY.
Again, political realism should improve the policy. It should not be an excuse for paralysis.
Trade, Industrial Policy, and the Return of Hard Questions
Trade policy is another area where yesterday’s political realism may no longer be today’s.
A generation ago, the elite consensus in favor of free trade was very strong. It was not entirely wrong. Trade increases efficiency, lowers costs, expands markets, and raises living standards overall.
But the distributional effects were too often minimized. Some communities paid a very high price. Some workers were told, in effect, that the economy was better off even if they were not. That may be true in a narrow economic sense, but it is politically poisonous.
Trade also became the political face of economic disruption that was often driven at least as much by technology and automation. Factories did not just move overseas; they also became more productive, more automated, and less labor-intensive. Even if the United States had closed itself off from trade, many manufacturing jobs would probably still have disappeared. The timing and location of the losses might have been different, and trade clearly played a role in some communities, but the deeper force was not trade alone. It was the combination of global competition, technological change, automation, and changing consumer demand.
That distinction matters because blaming trade alone can lead to the wrong cure. If the real pressure is partly automation, then tariffs may raise costs without bringing back the world people remember.
Now the pendulum has swung toward protectionism and industrial policy. Some of that is understandable, especially given China, supply-chain fragility, and national-security concerns. But broad protectionism is not a serious answer either. It can raise costs, invite retaliation, protect inefficient firms, and reduce economic growth.
A politically realistic position has to hold more than one thought at a time.
We should defend the benefits of trade. We should take national-security vulnerabilities seriously. We should be cautious about industrial policy becoming a pork barrel. And we should stop pretending that workers harmed by trade, immigration, automation, or some combination of all three can be placated with empty retraining rhetoric.
That is not as satisfying as a slogan. But slogans are part of how we got here.
The Misuse of “Politically Unrealistic”
The phrase “politically unrealistic” can be useful. It can also be lazy.
It is useful when it forces people to ask hard questions:
Can this policy pass? Can it survive the next election? Can it be implemented competently? Can voters understand it? Can the losers be treated fairly? Can the policy survive contact with interest groups, courts, bureaucracy, and the budget?
Those are serious questions.
But “politically unrealistic” becomes lazy when it is used to avoid argument.
I have heard people dismiss market-based climate policy as unrealistic when they really object to energy taxes. I have heard people dismiss entitlement reform as unrealistic when they really do not want to identify who should pay more or receive less. I have heard people dismiss immigration compromise as unrealistic when they really do not want compromise. I have heard people dismiss basic-income proposals as unrealistic when they really do not want to rethink the welfare state.
Sometimes “politically unrealistic” means “voters will never accept it.”
Sometimes it means “interest groups will kill it.”
Sometimes it means “I do not like it.”
Those are not the same argument.
What CIVPAC Means
When CIVPAC describes public policy as politically realistic, the point is not that politics should be reduced to polling.
The point is that governing requires consent.
A policy that cannot be explained cannot be sustained. A policy that ignores obvious losers will create backlash. A policy that depends on voters being fooled will eventually fail. A policy that treats half the country as morally illegitimate is unlikely to produce stable government.
But political realism also requires courage.
It requires telling voters that some things cost money. It requires telling interest groups that they cannot have everything. It requires telling activists that intensity is not the same as majority support. It requires telling moderates that compromise is not always available, and telling reformers that good ideas still need political strategy.
Political realism is not an excuse to avoid hard arguments. It is a demand that we make them honestly.
That is the standard CIVPAC tries to apply.
CIVPAC will not always get the balance right. No one does. But the goal is to be clear about the tradeoffs, honest about the constraints, and open to changing our view when public opinion, evidence, or circumstances change.
“What is politically realistic?” should not be the end of the conversation.
I recently completed a tour of the American Southwest. The scenery was spectacular and the spring climate remarkably pleasant.
At the beginning of the tour the tour director asked us to introduce ourselves and identify something that we were passionate about, other than our families. I was picked to go first and noted that, while others tended to avoid the topic in groups like this, I was passionate about public policy and, therefore, politics. There was some nervous laughter, but one woman called out that she loved discussing politics.
Over the next several days I was able to get a sense from some members of the group about their feelings on a number of important issues and the state of our politics. Sometimes these views were expressed openly. In other cases a bit of coaxing through questions was required. None of the conversations were confrontational.
What struck me most, however, was not the conversations themselves, but how few of them there were. Despite my obvious invitation to engage, most people avoided politics almost entirely.
That itself seemed revealing.
Democratic Party Politics
The easiest conversation to start was with the woman who volunteered that she loved talking politics. She turned out to be a Democratic Party activist from a northeastern state. Her self-description was that she was left wing but not far left wing.
We agreed on a number of things, one of which was that the Democratic Party needed to reach out to voters outside of its normal constituencies. I shared the CIVPAC website information and asked her to take a look and tell me what she thought. My sense was that she ultimately did look at it and did not like what she saw. She never raised the issue again throughout the trip.
At one point, I was told that she regularly wrote John Fetterman, the Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania, arguing that he should leave the Democratic Party.
If accurate, I found it ironic that someone who agreed the Democratic Party needed to broaden its coalition would reject a Senator who still voted with his party the overwhelming majority of the time.
I think it may be easier to accept the concept of an expanded coalition in the abstract than it is to accept the reality of sharp disagreement from members of one’s own coalition.
The Senate Race in Maine
One member of the group was from Maine. She volunteered that she was relieved to see Janet Mills, the current 78-year-old Governor of Maine, withdraw from the race for the U.S. Senate seat from Maine.
When asked how she felt about the leading remaining Democratic candidate for the Senate, she expressed strong dislike for him. Not exactly her words, but that was clearly the sentiment. I later researched the candidate myself and told her that I largely agreed with her concerns. She shrugged and said that “they are all awful.”
I would not take this as an endorsement of Susan Collins so much as one more exhausted voter reluctantly embracing the lesser of two evils.
For myself, the Maine race presents a genuine challenge. If CIVPAC does not ultimately endorse Collins, I am not sure what other Republican Senate candidate we would endorse. She appears more centrist on many public policy issues than almost every other Republican Senator and arguably to the left of a handful of Democratic Senators. She has opposed Trump on a small number of important issues, which makes her stand out, but she also supported Trump on many more issues that tarnish her centrist credentials.
At the same time, her likely opponent appears to be a far-left populist whose views on socialism, Palestine, and even the possible role of political violence are difficult for many moderates to accept.
The conversation itself was short, and unlike the earlier conversation with the Democratic activist, I sensed that this woman was simply politically exhausted. My suspicion is that she may actually be more representative of the broader electorate.
One member of the group did engage deeply about immigration policy, specifically the H-1B visa program for highly skilled workers. She had acquired additional training in an effort to make a mid-career transition into the information technology field. Despite the retraining, she was unable to break into the field and felt that her path had been blocked by competition from less expensive foreign labor employed through the H-1B program.
Obviously, I am in no position to judge whether her assessment of why she was unable to enter the field is entirely accurate. But her feelings were very strong, and I suspect they may eventually turn her into a one-issue voter.
She likely reflects the feelings of many Americans who believe immigration has adversely affected their economic prospects.
The economics here are complicated. Expanding the supply of highly skilled workers may increase growth, reduce costs, and improve innovation. But concentrated adjustment costs are also real, particularly for workers who invest substantial time and money preparing for careers they believe will offer stable upward mobility.
Policies that appear economically efficient at a national level can still generate resentment and distrust if many people do not experience the burdens and benefits as fairly distributed.
As chance would have it, one member of the group spoke Hungarian and maintained contacts back in Hungary. I took the opportunity to ask him how he viewed Viktor Orban’s recent defeat.
He argued that Orban retained significant support in Hungary and that some of that support was understandable. He believed Orban had served Hungary well by restricting immigration and felt this had protected Hungary from some of the immigrant-associated crime experienced elsewhere in Europe. He also seemed to admire Orban’s pro-natalist policies, including generous employment protections and benefits for new mothers.
This was not a wholehearted endorsement of Orban, nor was it a full-throated condemnation.
For myself, I viewed Orban’s departure with guarded optimism. Guarded because it is not yet entirely clear how his replacement will govern. Nevertheless, there are early encouraging signs, particularly regarding cooperation with the European Union and support for Ukraine.
What interested me most, however, was how poorly the conversation fit into standard American political categories. An immigrant expressing partial sympathy for a nationalist European leader because of concerns about immigration, crime, and demographics does not fit comfortably into the ideological narratives that dominate American politics.
Conclusions
There is nothing remotely scientific about gathering political opinions through group travel. But informal conversations do sometimes reveal things that polls cannot.
I had political conversations with no more than a quarter of the participants on the trip. Despite my obvious invitation to engage, perhaps three quarters of the group never expressed any political opinions at all.
I increasingly think that silence itself may say something important.
Most people may simply be exhausted by the current political environment. They may also be reluctant to expose their views to criticism from people they do not know well. In many social settings, politics increasingly feels less like a conversation and more like a potential social risk.
People naturally search for conversational ground with complete strangers. Passing on an obvious invitation to discuss politics may therefore tell us quite a bit.
I also suspect that some voters, like the Democratic activist and the woman frustrated by immigration policy, already have relatively fixed political identities and voting behavior. But the silent majority may still be politically available in ways that activists and highly engaged partisans often underestimate.
Both parties should recognize that and act accordingly.
In retrospect, I also wish I had identified myself not simply as someone interested in politics, but specifically as a centrist independent. I wonder whether that would have changed some of the conversations — or perhaps encouraged more of them.
We have begun issuing endorsements for the 2026 election cycle, starting with our recent endorsements in Georgia and continuing with our evaluation of Greg Stanton in Arizona’s 4th Congressional District. Additional endorsements will follow over the coming weeks.
Our goal is not to endorse the largest number of candidates, but to apply a consistent framework across a range of competitive races. We evaluate candidates based on the same principles that guide our policy positions: economic efficiency, fairness, personal freedom, and political realism—within the context of strong democratic institutions and a stable international order. In practice, this means placing particular emphasis on a candidate’s willingness to engage with tradeoffs, work across party lines, and operate effectively within existing political constraints.
We are proceeding methodically through a set of races identified from a variety of sources, including publicly available candidate lists and our own review of competitive districts. Our initial focus is on U.S. House races, where candidate quality and governing approach can vary widely and where elections can influence the overall direction of policy.
The order in which endorsements are issued is driven primarily by practical considerations. We are starting with candidates for whom sufficient information is available to make a clear assessment, including incumbents and well-established challengers. In many races, particularly those involving newer or lesser-known candidates, we will defer judgment until more information is available.
In some cases, we expect to endorse candidates in primary elections where there is a clear contrast between a governing-oriented candidate and a more ideological alternative. In others, our focus will be on the general election. We will also take into account the structure of each race, including the presence of independent or third-party candidates and the likelihood that those candidates can compete effectively.
We support efforts to expand voter choice and improve electoral competition, including independent candidacies where they have a credible path to success. At the same time, we believe it is important to consider the likely impact of each vote on the final outcome, particularly in races where non-competitive candidates may influence the result without a realistic chance of winning.
Our endorsements are intended to be transparent, consistent, and grounded in a realistic assessment of both candidates and electoral dynamics. We welcome feedback as this process continues and encourage readers to share their views through the feedback links on each endorsement page. We expect that our approach will evolve as we apply it across additional races.
