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 traveled through the American Southwest. The scenery was spectacular, and the spring climate was remarkably pleasant.
Travel has a way of producing conversations that are different from ordinary social life. You meet people briefly, often in beautiful or unfamiliar places, and sometimes talk more freely than you might at home. Other times, of course, people avoid anything controversial.
During this recent travel, I had a few conversations about public policy and the state of American politics. Sometimes views were offered openly. In other cases, they emerged only after questions. None of the conversations were confrontational.
What struck me most, however, was not the number of political conversations, but how few there were. Despite making my interest in politics clear more than once, most people avoided the subject almost entirely.
That itself seemed revealing.
Democratic Party Politics
The easiest conversation to begin was with someone who had volunteered an interest in politics. This person had been active in Democratic Party politics and described their own views as left wing, but not far left wing.
We agreed on a number of things, including the need for Democrats to reach voters outside their normal constituencies. I shared the CIVPAC website and asked for reactions. My suspicion is that the site may have been reviewed, but it did not generate much enthusiasm.
I heard, from someone else, the view that Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania should leave the Democratic Party. I found that revealing. Fetterman still votes with Democrats the overwhelming majority of the time. He is also exactly the kind of culturally heterodox Democrat who may be able to reach voters the party otherwise struggles to reach.
It may be easier to accept the concept of a broader coalition in the abstract than to accept the reality of sharp disagreement from members of one’s own coalition.
A Competitive Senate Race
Another conversation concerned a competitive Senate race in the Northeast. The person I spoke with knew the race well and was clearly dissatisfied with the available choices.
The reaction was not enthusiastic support for one side so much as exhaustion with the alternatives. The sense I took away was not ideological excitement, but political fatigue.
For CIVPAC, races like this are difficult. A candidate may be more centrist on a number of public policy issues than most members of that candidate’s party and may even have broken with party leadership on some important questions. But that same candidate may also have supported party leadership on many other issues in ways that weaken any claim to independence.
At the same time, the opposing candidate may hold views on socialism, foreign policy, public safety, or political violence that many moderates find difficult to accept.
The conversation itself was short. Unlike my exchange with the Democratic activist, this did not feel like a conversation with someone trying to shape the future of a party. It felt more like a conversation with someone tired of choosing among imperfect options.
My suspicion is that this kind of voter may be more representative of the broader electorate than the activists who dominate so much political discussion.
Immigration and Economic Dislocation
I have also encountered strong views about immigration, especially when people believe immigration has affected their own economic prospects.
The H-1B visa program for highly skilled workers is a good example. At the national level, expanding the supply of skilled labor may increase growth, reduce costs, and support innovation. That is the standard economic argument, and it has real force.
But the individual experience can look very different. Someone who invests time and money in retraining for a technology-related career, only to find the door closed, may experience immigration policy not as an abstraction, but as a personal economic threat.
I am not in a position to judge whether any particular person’s career disappointment was caused by foreign labor competition. Labor markets are complicated, and individual outcomes rarely have a single cause.
But the feeling is real. And politically, feelings of unfairness matter.
Policies that appear efficient at a national level can still generate resentment and distrust if people experience the burdens and benefits as unfairly distributed. A politics that ignores those concentrated costs should not be surprised when affected voters become angry.
International Politics
Another conversation turned to European politics, immigration, and nationalism. The person was very familiar with European politics and followed political developments there closely.
The views expressed did not fit neatly into standard American categories. There was concern about democratic backsliding and authoritarian politics, but also some sympathy for European leaders who had taken a harder line on immigration. The argument was that immigration restrictions may have protected some countries from social and public-safety problems experienced elsewhere in Europe. There was also interest in pro-natalist policies, including benefits and protections for new parents.
This was not a wholehearted endorsement of European nationalism. Nor was it a full-throated condemnation.
What interested me most, however, was how poorly the conversation fit American political categories. A person with cross-border experience expressing partial sympathy for nationalist European leaders because of concerns about immigration, crime, and demographics does not fit comfortably into the ideological narratives that dominate American politics.
For myself, I viewed recent political change in parts of Europe, including the defeat of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary, with guarded optimism. Guarded because it is never immediately clear how a new government will actually govern. Optimistic because cooperation with democratic allies and support for Ukraine matter a great deal.
Real voters are often more complicated than our political labels.
Conclusions
There is nothing remotely scientific about gathering political impressions while traveling. But informal conversations sometimes reveal things that polls cannot.
I had only a handful of political conversations. Despite making my interest in politics clear, most people I encountered did not express political views 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 strangers. Passing on an obvious invitation to discuss politics may therefore tell us quite a bit.
I also suspect that some vocal people already have relatively fixed political identities and voting behavior. But the quieter majority may still be politically available in ways activists and highly engaged partisans often underestimate.
Both parties should recognize that and act accordingly.
In retrospect, I also wish I had identified myself more strongly as a centrist independent and not simply as someone interested in politics. 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.
We reject the increasingly common practice of supporting extreme candidates in the opposing party’s primary in the hope that they will be easier to defeat in the general election. While tactically tempting, this approach contributes directly to polarization and dysfunction.
At the same time, we recognize that voters—particularly independents—often face imperfect choices. In some cases, strategic voting may be appropriate: supporting the candidate who is most likely to produce a better governing outcome, even if that candidate is not an ideal match with my policy preferences. This differs from “sabotage” strategies: the goal is not to weaken the opposing party, but to improve the quality of the likely winner.
In open or semi-open primary systems, this logic may also influence which primary a voter chooses to participate in. Even for voters who typically lean toward one party, if their preferred primary is effectively decided while the other party’s contest is competitive, it can make sense to vote where the outcome is still in doubt—particularly when doing so may help a more moderate candidate prevail over a more extreme alternative.
Support for Bipartisan Problem-Solving
We place a high value on candidates who demonstrate a willingness to work across party lines.
Membership in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus is a strong positive signal. While not a guarantee of alignment with our views, it reflects a commitment to negotiation, compromise, and governing—qualities that are essential to a functioning democracy.
Ideological Alignment and Its Limits
We are less likely to support candidates closely aligned with highly ideological factions.
Membership in the Freedom Caucus is a strong negative signal. Alignment with more ideological factions on the left is also a negative factor, including candidates supported by organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America or the Working Families Party.
At the same time, labels are imperfect indicators. The fact that some members belong to both the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus illustrates the limits of ideological labels and the importance of evaluating governing behavior.
Endorsements and Political Incentives
Endorsements provide useful signals about the coalitions a candidate depends on.
A Trump endorsement is viewed as a negative factor in our evaluation, reflecting alignment with a style of politics that we believe has contributed to increased polarization and institutional strain. That said, we also recognize political realities: in some districts, such endorsements may be effectively required for electoral viability. Our evaluations will take this context into account.
Similarly, endorsements from organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America or the Working Families Party are viewed as negative signals, reflecting alignment with policy approaches that we generally believe move away from economically efficient or politically sustainable outcomes.
Demonstrated Independence
We place significant weight on demonstrated independence.
Candidates who show a willingness to depart from their party leadership—particularly when it reflects a willingness to support moderation or bipartisan compromise—provide a strong signal of a governing mindset. While such votes can carry political risk, they are often essential to producing durable policy outcomes.
A Pragmatic, Case-by-Case Approach
No single factor determines our endorsements.
We evaluate candidates holistically, considering:
Their policy positions
Their demonstrated willingness to govern
The political realities of their district
The likely consequences of their election
In some cases, this may lead us to support candidates who are imperfect but represent a clear improvement over the alternatives. In others, we may decline to endorse at all.
A Note on the Current Environment
I have found it increasingly difficult to identify candidates in the House—and among those running for it—who consistently reflect a moderate, centrist approach. This is not a criticism of any one individual so much as a reflection of the incentives embedded in the current system.
Rising polarization has narrowed the space for pragmatism, while partisan redistricting has made many districts effectively noncompetitive in general elections. As a result, primary elections often become the decisive contest, where more ideologically committed voters play an outsized role. In those environments, candidates who emphasize moderation or compromise often struggle to gain traction, while more ideologically driven candidates can succeed.
I find this trend troubling and, at times, disheartening. A system that makes it harder for pragmatic, solutions-oriented candidates to emerge is one that struggles to produce effective governance. The struggle to bring moderation and reason into our politics can seem increasingly quixotic, but it has also become increasingly important.
Our Objective
Our objective is not ideological purity. It is progress—incremental, durable progress toward a more functional political system.
If enough voters and organizations reward cooperation, pragmatism, and good-faith governance, those behaviors will become more common.
That is the incentive structure we aim to support.
I have been trying to make sense of the recent use of tariffs by the Trump administration. The stated objectives shift from day to day—protecting American industry, punishing adversaries, raising revenue, or forcing concessions from allies. Sometimes the tariffs are imposed. Sometimes they are threatened and withdrawn. Sometimes they are increased, and then partially reversed.
At some point, it becomes difficult to argue that this is strategy rather than improvisation.
The details change, but the underlying issue does not. We have handed a great deal of authority over trade policy to the President of the United States. That authority was granted with an implicit assumption: that it would be exercised in good faith, with discipline, and with some degree of consistency.
That assumption now appears to be breaking down.
The Original Logic Behind Delegating Tariff Authority
The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate trade. Over time, Congress delegated a significant portion of that authority to the President. There were good reasons for doing so.
Trade negotiations require:
speed
flexibility
and a degree of confidentiality
It is difficult to negotiate complex agreements through a 535-member legislature. So Congress created mechanisms that allowed the President to negotiate and, in some cases, impose tariffs under specific statutory authorities.
The expectation was not that the President would act unilaterally without constraint. It was that he would act:
within a defined framework
with a clear objective
and in a manner broadly consistent with U.S. economic and strategic interests
In other words, the system assumed competence and good faith.
This Is Not Entirely New
It would be a mistake to pretend that this problem began in 2025.
Presidents of both parties have stretched the statutory authorities governing tariffs. Democratic administrations have also used trade tools—antidumping rules, targeted tariffs, and “national security” justifications—in ways that expanded executive discretion.
But there is a difference between:
stretching a tool and
using it as a general-purpose instrument of economic policy
What we are seeing now is not simply an extension of past practice. It is a step change in both scope and unpredictability.
Tariffs as a Tool vs. Tariffs as a Weapon
There is a legitimate role for tariffs.
They can be used:
to respond to unfair trade practices
to enforce agreements
or to address genuine national security concerns
But there is a difference between using tariffs as a tool and using them as a weapon of general economic policy.
When tariffs are applied broadly, unpredictably, and without a clear framework, they create uncertainty. Businesses do not know:
what their input costs will be
where to invest
or how long current conditions will persist
This is not a subtle effect. It is the primary effect.
Incentives Matter
If firms believe that tariffs will:
appear suddenly
change frequently
and be driven by short-term political considerations
then they will respond accordingly.
They will:
delay investment
shift production in ways that are not economically rational
or demand higher returns to compensate for policy risk
This is not a failure of the private sector. It is a predictable response to unstable policy.
Erratic tariff policy is, in effect, a self-imposed tax on investment—and one that falls most heavily on long-term planning.
The Problem of Using Tariffs for Everything
Tariffs are now being used—or threatened—to achieve a wide range of objectives:
reducing trade deficits
pressuring allies on unrelated issues
influencing domestic political outcomes
and reshaping entire supply chains
No single policy tool works well when applied to every problem.
Using tariffs this way blurs the line between:
economic policy
foreign policy
and domestic politics
It also makes it difficult for other countries to interpret U.S. actions. Are tariffs a negotiating tactic? A permanent shift? A political signal? Increasingly, the answer appears to depend on the news cycle.
The Erosion of Predictability
Markets can adapt to almost any policy, good or bad, as long as it is stable.
What they cannot adapt to easily is unpredictability.
When tariff policy becomes:
highly discretionary
personalized
and subject to rapid change
the result is not simply higher prices. It is a reduction in the willingness to commit capital.
Over time, that matters more than any individual tariff decision.
Congress and the Problem of Delegated Power
Congress delegated tariff authority to the executive branch for practical reasons. But delegation always carries risk.
It works when:
the executive branch operates within understood norms
and when Congress is willing to reassert its authority if those norms are abused
If neither condition holds, the delegation becomes something closer to an abdication.
We are now in a situation where:
the scope of presidential authority is broad
the use of that authority is increasingly aggressive
and congressional oversight is, at best, inconsistent
That combination should concern people across the political spectrum.
A System Built on Assumptions
The American constitutional system relies heavily on informal constraints:
norms
expectations
and assumptions about behavior
When those constraints weaken, the formal powers written into law become far more consequential.
Tariff authority is a clear example.
What was intended as a flexible tool for advancing U.S. interests can, under different assumptions, become a mechanism for imposing broad and unpredictable economic costs—both at home and abroad.
Conclusion
The debate over tariffs is often framed in terms of whether they are “good” or “bad.” That is not the most important question.
The more important question is how much discretionary economic power we are comfortable placing in the hands of any President—and what happens when that power is exercised without discipline or consistency.
If the assumptions that justified delegating that power no longer hold, then the structure of the system—not just the current policy—deserves a second look.
Click on the link to see CIVPAC’s position on the broader issue of Trade Policy.
I have not been posting much this year. Every time Trump, or members of his administration, take some bizarre position, they either reverse directions in a day or two or advance some even more bizarre position a day later that diverts my attention. Sometimes, I think he seems evil. At other times, I think he is just stupid. Often, he seems petty and vindictive. On many occasions, he appears to be cognitively impaired. But as I search for a unifying principle to explain his actions, and those of his administration, I keep coming back to the simple question: What would Vladimir Putin want?
Putin’s View of the World
Vladimir Putin has a world view stuck somewhere in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, in which Russia is a great power that shares the world stage with other great powers. In his view he should be allowed to control, either directly or indirectly, all of Eastern Europe, much of Central Europe and perhaps Western Europe, too. The United States can, in return for deferring to Putin in Europe, control the Western Hemisphere. China, in Putin’s mind, is entitled to control Asia and the Western Pacific.
Trump’s Apparent World View
Donald Trump seems to share Putin’s world view. His “peace” proposals for Russia’s war against Ukraine lean heavily in favor of Russia’s long-term objectives. His efforts to undermine NATO, by waffling about America’s commitment to the organization and to Europe’s defense, fit nicely into this interpretation. His saber rattling about Greenland and Canada, alienating our NATO allies, and his intervention in Venezuela, including a stated intention to run the country, are spot on in reflecting the kind of division of world power that Putin envisions.
The Make America Small and Mean Spirited Movement
The net effect of all of this is to take America from a respected world leader to a greedy regional power. It is the opposite of making America great. Sadly, Trump is not alone within his administration, or the MAGA movement in general, in following this path. JD Vance, who I once had high hopes for, has embraced this world view. Pete Hegseth has tilted America’s vast military power away from the support of our allies and toward an aggressive, and most likely illegal, attempt to impose Trump’s will within the Western Hemisphere.
The tilt towards Putin-friendly positions in foreign policy is fairly obvious, but it does not stop there.
Immigration
America, unlike Russia, has been a much admired country. This is in part because of our role in defeating the Axis powers in WWII (in which the Soviet Union, admittedly, played a role), rehabilitating post-war Europe with the Marshall Plan and successfully containing the Soviet Union until it collapsed under the weight of a bankrupt political and economic system. It is also because we used to embrace values that others admired: constitutional democracy, including freedom of religion, speech, and of the press, and the rule of law (including relatively limited corruption).
JD Vance has asserted that being an American is not, principally, about embracing these values but rather about a shared culture and history. By this line of reasoning new immigrants, even legal ones who have been here for a generation, can be viewed as less than fully American.
Almost all developed countries face a demographic decline that threatens their economic and political stability. America, because it used to be an attractive place to emigrate to, was far less at risk to this phenomenon than Russia. The Trump administration, through its campaign against illegal immigrants and by its anti-immigrant rhetoric, has signaled that America is not a welcoming place to new immigrants (legal or illegal). With that door closed we begin to look more demographically threatened, just like Russia.
Trade Policy
The benefits of trade are well established. Russia, by virtue of its aggressive military actions, has been repeatedly sanctioned and has had much less access to the benefits of trade. They have, for example, had to sell their oil at steep discounts to distant countries. Trump’s on again/off again tariffs have limited America’s access to the gains from trade, a sort of self-imposed sanction. Pushed hard enough, they could hurt America as much as Western sanctions have hurt Russia.
Civil Discord and the Challenges of True Democracy
Trump, through his rhetoric and actions, has enraged Americans on the right against their fellow citizens: through false claims about election fraud and exaggerated claims about the damage done by illegal immigration. He has enraged the left and the center, by the head spinning, more or less daily violations of political norms, including threats to use the military against U.S. citizens and his wholly unnecessary use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to intimidate whole communities. Through his outrageous and repeated lies and misinformation he has made civil debate increasingly difficult, since he has armed his supporters with their own set of Trumpian “facts.” I can only imagine the delight that this gives the likes of Putin and Xi, since it demonstrates the weakness of true democracy. Why should the Russian or Chinese people long for democracy when Trump makes American democracy appear to be a sham and does everything he can do to make democracy itself appear synonymous with chaos.
Climate Change
Climate change is generally thought to adversely affect the entire world. But the impacts are not uniformly harmful. Russia has vast territory, in Siberia, that is largely uninhabited and under-developed because it is too cold. Russia’s northern ports and sea lanes are often impassible because of ice. It does not take much imagination to see that Putin would applaud Trump’s denial of climate change and Trump’s efforts to undermine attempts to combat climate change. Maybe Trump’s seemingly nutty attitude toward wind turbines has an actual rational intent. Russia is also almost totally economically dependent on the export of oil and gas. What could be better, from Russia’s point of view, than to have America work hard to slow the transition away from fossil fuels?
Elections
For many years Russia, under Putin, has held sham elections in which the outcome is never in doubt. Trump, with his false, and often ridiculous, claims of voter fraud has created the impression among his supporters, and perhaps others around the world, that America is no different from Russia. I can only imagine the pleasure it gives Putin every time Trump repeats his malign claims about American elections.
The next time you encounter absurd behavior from Trump, you should ask yourself . . . What would Putin want?
