Category: Political Strategy

A Promise to America Worth Hearing

Six balanced stones labeled with Promise to America’s principles—growth and shared prosperity, safety and human dignity, fiscal discipline, effective government, free speech and common purpose, and confident patriotism—set before the U.S. Capitol and Washington Monument.

A couple of days ago, I heard Felix Frisch discuss Promise to America with Elie Honig on SiriusXM. I came away thinking that we had found an organization that belongs on CIVPAC’s list of centrist resources.

Promise to America is an effort to give moderate Democrats something they have often lacked: a simple, affirmative statement of what they believe. It was developed by a group of young political organizers working with Democratic Representatives Tom Suozzi of New York and Adam Gray of California—the only two Democrats who captured Republican-held House districts won by Donald Trump in 2024.

The organization is directed by Felix Frisch, the 20-year-old son of former Colorado congressional candidate Adam Frisch. Felix worked on his father’s two campaigns and says he drove more than 50,000 miles through western and southern Colorado. That experience appears to have taught him something national political organizations sometimes forget: candidates must listen to the voters they need to persuade, not merely repeat the views of the activists.

Promise to America asks Democratic candidates and elected officials to embrace six broad principles:

  • Growth, competition and broadly shared prosperity
  • Safety, security and human dignity
  • Fiscal discipline
  • Government that works
  • Free speech, respect and common purpose
  • Confident patriotism and national renewal

The pledge summarizes those principles in unusually direct language:

“We are capitalist, not socialist.”

“We want safety, not lawlessness.”

“We are responsible, not reckless.”

“We believe government should solve problems, not create them.”

“We are mainstream, not extreme.”

“We are proud, not ashamed of America.”

CIVPAC agrees with all six statements.

That does not mean that slogans are a substitute for policy. Saying that government should be fiscally responsible is easier than identifying which programs should be reduced, which taxes should be increased or which promises should be reconsidered. Supporting secure borders does not by itself tell us what a workable immigration system would look like. Supporting capitalism does not relieve government of the responsibility to preserve competition, protect opportunity and address genuine market failures.

But political organizations need both policies and an identity. Voters want to know not only what a candidate proposes to do, but also what kind of person—or party—they are being asked to trust.

Promise to America offers a recognizable identity: economically pragmatic, socially tolerant, patriotic, serious about public safety, supportive of effective government and willing to persuade people who do not already agree.

That is a useful answer to the impression that Democrats must choose between offering no clear governing philosophy and adopting the philosophy of the democratic socialist left.

The pledge’s emphasis on persuasion may be especially important. American elections are not won by assembling the purest possible collection of beliefs. They are won by building coalitions. That requires candidates to speak respectfully to voters who may disagree with them on abortion, guns, immigration, taxes, policing, climate policy or cultural questions.

A political party that treats disagreement as evidence of moral failure will steadily shrink the number of people it can represent.

The Democratic Party needs people who understand that defeating MAGA politics requires winning voters outside safely Democratic cities and districts. The party cannot build a durable national majority by telling culturally moderate, working-class, rural and suburban voters that they must accept every position favored by the progressive left.

Centrists should not limit themselves to warning Democrats about what they must reject. They need to describe what they are for.

Promise to America has made a promising start.

Its principles do not constitute a complete governing program, but they describe a political temperament that is badly needed: confident without being arrogant, patriotic without being uncritical, market-oriented without being indifferent, and moderate without being timid.

We are therefore adding Promise to America to CIVPAC’s list of centrist organizations. We hope its candidates and supporters will move beyond a pledge to develop specific, credible policies. It took CIVPAC years to develop our current portfolio of centrist public policies. Promise to America has existed for only a few weeks.

We also hope Democratic leaders will listen to people such as Tom Suozzi and Adam Gray, who have demonstrated that they can win voters in places where elections are genuinely contested.

And we will be watching Felix Frisch. It is encouraging to hear a young political leader speak about persuasion, pluralism and coalition-building with a maturity that is often missing from American politics.

A Bigger Tent Needs Stronger Stakes

Democrats can win everywhere without accepting everyone who can win somewhere.

Large open canvas tent filled with people, anchored by stakes labeled liberal democracy, constitutional government, pluralism, public safety, regulated market economy, individual rights, and democratic allies.

A bigger political tent can welcome many people, but only if it is firmly anchored by shared democratic principles.

I am not a Democrat. CIVPAC is not a Democratic organization. We support Democrats, Republicans, and independents when we think they represent a more responsible, centrist, democratic, and politically realistic alternative.

So any advice I offer Democrats is, by definition, unsolicited. But the Democratic Party is one of the two major governing parties in the United States. Its internal arguments matter even to those of us who do not belong to it.

Two Ideas in Tension

Right now, Democrats seem caught between two ideas that are both partly right.

The first is the “win everywhere” idea. I have argued before that both parties should try to compete beyond their comfort zones. A serious national party should not write off whole regions, classes, religions, or cultures. Democrats should want candidates who can compete in cities, suburbs, small towns, working-class communities, and rural areas. They will not all sound alike, and they should not all sound alike.

A party that wants to govern the whole country should try to understand the whole country.

The second idea is James Carville’s warning about the Democratic Socialists of America and the far-left edge of the Democratic coalition. Carville has argued that Democrats need to consider something close to a schism with some DSA-aligned candidates. His point is blunt but not foolish: if candidates who reject core assumptions of liberal democracy, pluralism, public safety, capitalism, or America’s basic alliances run under the Democratic label, Republicans will use those candidates to define the entire party.

That is not paranoia. That is politics.

But there is an obvious tension. How can Democrats “win everywhere” if they are also drawing sharper boundaries around who belongs in the party?

The answer is that “win everywhere” does not mean “accept everyone who can win somewhere.”

A Big Tent Still Needs a Floor

A democratic political party has to be broad. It has to include people who disagree on taxes, health care, immigration, policing, climate, foreign policy, and cultural issues. It has to make room for candidates who fit their communities. A Democrat running in rural Georgia should not have to sound like a progressive activist from Brooklyn. A Democrat running in Brooklyn should not have to sound like a rural Georgia moderate.

Local variation is not the problem. It is the point.

But a party also needs a floor. It needs some basic commitments that define what the party is and what it is not. For Democrats, that floor should include liberal democracy, constitutional government, pluralism, public safety, a regulated market economy, individual rights, and a foreign policy that does not treat America’s democratic allies as morally indistinguishable from its adversaries.

That still leaves room for a wide range of Democrats. It leaves room for progressives, moderates, labor liberals, suburban pragmatists, Black church Democrats, national-security Democrats, and former Republicans who broke with Trump over democracy and the rule of law.

But it does not require Democrats to treat every anti-capitalist, anti-police, anti-Israel, anti-party, or anti-pluralist candidate as merely one more flavor in the big tent.

That is the mistake Carville is reacting against.

The Fetterman Test

I thought about this while rereading my earlier post, “A Centrist on the Road.” On that trip, I spoke with a Democratic Party activist from a northeastern state. She described herself as left wing but not far left wing. We agreed that Democrats needed to reach voters outside their normal constituencies. But she also reportedly wrote Senator John Fetterman urging him to leave the Democratic Party.

That struck me then, and strikes me even more now, as a perfect illustration of the problem.

It is easy to say the party should broaden its coalition. It is harder to accept the actual people who make a broader coalition possible.

A party cannot become more competitive in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, or Maine if it treats every culturally heterodox Democrat as a betrayal. If Democrats want to win outside safe blue territory, they need candidates who sound plausible outside safe blue territory.

The Fantasy of Purification

There is also a darker suspicion, held in some quarters, that some DSA and far-left Democrats do not mind seeing moderate Democrats lose in competitive districts. Moderate losses weaken the party’s center of gravity. They make it easier for ideological activists to argue that the old coalition has failed and that the party must be remade in their image.

The fantasy seems to be that if the Democratic Party becomes uniformly left wing enough, millions of hidden voters will suddenly emerge from the woodwork and propel it to national power. That theory has always struck me as closer to faith than analysis. It ignores the voters who actually decide competitive elections. It also treats losing winnable seats as an acceptable price for ideological purification.

That is not “win everywhere.” That is lose strategically and call it progress.

Disagreement Is Not Disqualification

The right answer is not to purge the left. Nor is it to purge the center. The right answer is to distinguish between disagreement and disqualification.

Disagreement is normal coalition politics. A Democrat who is more cautious on spending, more supportive of policing, more hawkish on foreign policy, or more skeptical of progressive cultural language should not be pushed out of the party. Such candidates may be exactly what Democrats need in places where they currently lose.

Disqualification is different. A candidate who rejects liberal democracy, excuses political violence, denies basic pluralism, or treats the Democratic Party merely as a ballot line to be captured is not simply a different kind of Democrat. That candidate is challenging the party’s identity.

So the lesson is simple:

Do not purge the center in the name of ideological purity.

Do not absorb the anti-liberal left in the name of coalition unity.

That is not hypocrisy. It is coalition discipline.

The Same Advice Applies to Republicans

I would offer Republicans the same unsolicited advice. There are elements on the far right that seem to have found a home in the Republican Party — indeed, may have seized control of much of it — and they may have permanently damaged the Republican brand. But that is a subject for another post.

The Goal Is a Stronger Tent

The broader principle applies to both parties. A healthy party should be wide enough to hold real disagreement and strong enough not to collapse under the weight of people who do not believe in the core principles of the coalition itself.

The goal is not a smaller tent.

The goal is a stronger tent.