Our political system sucks right now.
But I’m here to tell you not to lose hope — there’s something significant happening that should make you incredibly optimistic.
Right now, across the world, there’s a political realignment happening. It presents the biggest opportunity liberals have seen in half a century.
In this moment, liberals have the opportunity to lead the conversation and form a lasting coalition that can act as bulwark against authoritarianism for a generation.
We’re launching a project to do exactly this. I want to tell you how.
First, let me elaborate on this “realignment…”
You’ve seen it online. The far right and the far left are converging. There’s a growing “illiberal alliance” that’s forming across the globe. You don’t have to go far nowadays to see both the radical left and far right praising Putin, justifying terrorism, or pushing to elect Trump (for admittedly diverse reasons).
And this is all playing out in the context of the 2024 election. Both of these fringes are lining up behind Donald Trump: a convicted felon who’s taken concrete steps to stop the peaceful transfer of power… a man who seeks to dismantle America’s liberal institutions.
Probably the most prolific political pollster of our time, Nate Silver, recently raised the red flag about the Democrat’s weakening coalition.
In this article, he made the case that our political identities do not fit on a straight line. He echoed F.A. Hayek’s “Why I’m Not A Conservative” essay, calling for Americans to reclaim the “liberal” label by putting it in a clear juxtaposition against socialism and conservatism.
And he said the time to do this is right now.
It’s important to see the big picture…
The Republican Party is transforming. Educated voters — including many former Haley supporters and Reagan Republicans — are leaving the party in droves. With these departures, the GOP has fully transformed into a fringe group of low information authoritarian voters obsessed with revenge.
And the Tea Party movement has totally collapsed. All remaining Tea Party politicians have embraced MAGA authoritarianism. FreedomWorks recently voted to dissolve, citing the GOP pushing them away from their values. The Libertarian Party also recently invited Trump and RFK Jr. to keynote their convention.
And yet, liberals, those who embrace the political philosophy centered around individual rights, equality, the rule of law, democracy, and free-market economics — the philosophy that created the most prosperous, free, and powerful society in human history — find themselves divided, spread across multiple parties and political identities with little electoral power.
Extremists continue to dominate our discourse. This has to change before time runs out.
We cannot cede electoral politics to the extremists and authoritarians.
Here’s why you should be hopeful: with so many abandoning their values or leaving the electoral space, there is an opening in the market for an organization like ours.
But it’s important to understand, the growth potential is not on the right. It’s on the center, center-left. As of today, 71% of Gen Z and 75% of Millennials identify as either “liberal” or “moderate.”
Hiddentribes.us put out a study on the coalitions that make up US politics today. If the US was a multiparty system, it would look like this. This study proved that at least 41% of the electorate strongly embrace liberal values and can be united around a pro-liberty message delivered appropriately.
That’s why we’re launching our first major effort to develop a Liberalism Scorecard.
The goal of this effort is threefold:
- Articulate what liberalism looks like when applied to reality
- Discover the elected officials and candidates in our coalition
- Establish a shared framework for us to decide on who to support in competitive races.
This is more than just a simple ranking on politicians’ votes — it seeks to define their alignment with the values that built America. The way we’ll do this is by looking at more than just a candidate’s votes or policy proposals. The framework takes into account both policy and rhetoric, seeking to understand their broad commitment to liberal values.
The final output is their liberalism score.
This score is calculated by answering key philosophical questions that underpin liberal thought. These are broken into three axis and answer the following questions:
Democracy
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to subvert the democratic process?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to undermine the legitimacy of democratic systems?
Social
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to deny individuals their freedom of speech?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to deny individuals the freedom to live their lives in a way that does not harm others?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to deny equal rights to any individual under the law?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to push public institutions to push adherence to their religious, philosophical, or political positions?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to ban peaceful protests?
Fiscal
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to restrict an individual’s freedom of movement?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to penalize individuals to engage in recreational activities that do not harm others?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to deny individuals their property rights?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to push punitive tax policies or fiscal imbalance?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to promote tariffs or import quotas?
- Have they advocated for or taken steps to support corporate welfare or bailouts?
Be advised, the final framework is still under development but will be fully transparent when it’s released.
Once the rating system is complete, we will boost and defend viable liberal candidates in primaries and general elections from authoritarian opponents regardless of party.
We will take real action — ads, mailers, and events — to defend liberals from extremists.
Understand that we’re a mission-driven organization… that’s unique in the world of Super PACs. We do not have a billionaire backer or special interest funding us.
However, in order to make this real, we need to quickly hire staff to begin research efforts and support our electoral work before the general election in November.
Right now, we’re sitting at $1,500 in monthly recurring small-dollar commitments from members. It’s a good start, but we need at least $10,000 in recurring commitments before we can start hiring staff.
Overall, we expect the entire effort to cost roughly $250,000.
Will you chip in $10, $50, $100, or $1000 now to make this a reality?
We recognize that this is an ambitious effort but it’s existential.
We either build a movement to defend the values that made America great, or we risk them being lost forever.
Remain optimistic. We can do this.