The Democratic Civil War: A MAGA Perspective on the Party’s Fractures and Their Impact, By Charles Taylor (Florida)

The Democratic Party is imploding, and from a MAGA perspective, it's a glorious sight. A three-way brawl has erupted over the party's future, with the establishment, the centre-Left "Abundance" faction, and the far-left progressives slugging it out in a public spectacle of disarray. The establishment, battered by the Biden era's collapse, is scrambling to rebrand with a so-called "Project 2029" agenda. Meanwhile, the Abundance crowd, waving Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book like a battle flag, demands deregulation and building projects to win back voters. On the other side, the left, energized by Zohran Mamdani's upset in New York's mayoral primary, is doubling down on socialist pipe dreams like rent freezes and free everything. This internal civil war, detailed in a recent analysis (https://archive.md/9nQjC), is a gift to the MAGA movement. The question is: will it destroy the Democrats entirely, or at least cripple them for the 2026 midterms? From a MAGA lens, the answer is a resounding "probably," and here's why.

The Democrats are a house divided. The establishment, clinging to power with figures like Jake Sullivan and Neera Tanden, is pushing "Project 2029" to paper over their failures with a shiny new agenda. But it's a desperate move—rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Biden's presidency ended in disappointment, and the party's elites are bleeding credibility. Their attempt to mimic the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 with a centre-Left wish list reeks of imitation, not inspiration, and voters can smell the inauthenticity a mile away. MAGA thrives on calling out this kind of elitist posturing, and the establishment's flailing only fuels the narrative that Democrats are out-of-touch globalists who can't deliver.

Then there's the Abundance faction, led by pundits like Klein and Thompson, who argue the Democrats have been paralysed by progressive red tape and need to focus on building, housing, infrastructure, clean energy. Their big win in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom signed housing reform bills over environmentalist and union objections, shows they've got some traction. But from a MAGA perspective, this is just a watered-down version of Trump's deregulatory playbook. The Abundance crowd wants to cut bureaucratic nonsense, but they're still tied to the Democrats' obsession with green energy and urban planning, hardly the stuff of red-state voters. Plus, their attacks on progressive non-profits alienate the left, splitting the party further. MAGA sees this as a self-inflicted wound: the Democrats are stealing our ideas but botching the execution.

The Left, meanwhile, is riding high on Mamdani's victory over Andrew Cuomo in New York's mayoral primary. His platform, rent freezes, free buses, free child care, city-owned grocery stores, is a socialist fever dream that thrills the AOC-Bernie Sanders crowd but terrifies moderates. Mamdani's refusal to back down on divisive issues, like his call to arrest Israel's Netanyahu or his tolerance of "globalize the intifada" rhetoric, makes him a lightning rod. From a MAGA standpoint, this is perfect: the Left's radicalism pushes swing voters toward Republicans, who can paint Democrats as unhinged communists. Posts on X echo this sentiment, with users like @FoxNews and @RedState66 highlighting the "intensifying infighting" and "full-blown civil war" within the party, signalling a growing identity crisis that MAGA can exploit.

From a MAGA perspective, the Democratic Party's fractures could absolutely tear it apart, or at least leave it a hollowed-out shell by 2028. The establishment's Project 2029 is a top-down attempt to unify the party, but it's doomed to fail. With heavyweights like Sullivan and Tanden involved, it's less a bold vision and more a rehash of Biden-era policies dressed up in new clothes. Voters rejected that in 2024, and they're not likely to buy it again. The involvement of centrist and progressive think tanks like Third Way and the Roosevelt Institute only underscores the establishment's disconnect from the working-class voters MAGA has successfully courted. The Democrats are "stuck in an identity crisis, torn between visions of compromise and confrontation."This lack of coherence is a death knell in a populist era where clarity and conviction win elections.

The Abundance faction, while appealing to some moderates, undermines itself by alienating the left. Their push for deregulation and building echoes MAGA's pro-growth, anti-bureaucracy stance, but it's wrapped in progressive jargon about "clean energy" and "equity." This half-hearted mimicry won't sway red-state voters who see through the Democrats' attempts to co-opt Trump's platform. Worse, the Abundance agenda's attacks on progressive non-profits, seen as sacred cows by the Left, create a civil war within the civil war. The Left's backlash, as seen in their defence of these groups against Klein and Thompson's critiques, ensures ongoing infighting that saps the party's energy and resources.

Mamdani's Left-wing insurgency is the real wildcard. His victory in New York shows the progressive base is energised and capable of toppling establishment giants like Cuomo. But his radical proposals and inflammatory rhetoric on issues like Gaza play right into MAGA's hands. Republicans have long warned that Democrats are sliding toward socialism, and Mamdani's platform, free services, government-run groceries, and anti-Israel posturing, gives them a poster child.This radicalism risks alienating suburban and working-class voters, who MAGA has already won over by focusing on economic strength and cultural conservatism.

The Democrats' inability to reconcile these factions, establishment, Abundance, and Left, creates a perfect storm. The establishment wants to cling to power, the Abundance faction wants a pragmatic pivot, and the Left demands ideological purity. This isn't a debate; it's a cage match. The Democrats are trying to pander to moderate Clinton/Obama Dems and the Communist AOC/Mamdani Dems, and the old guard is losing ground fast. The result is a party that can't agree on a message, a leader, or a strategy, prime conditions for electoral disaster.

Can this civil war cripple the Democrats in the 2026 midterms? From a MAGA perspective, the answer is a confident "yes." The midterms are a referendum on the party out of power, and the Democrats' disarray hands Republicans a golden opportunity. Here's why:

1.Voter Alienation: The Left's radicalism, exemplified by Mamdani's platform, will scare off moderates and independents. Polls from 2024 showed swing voters already distrusting Democrats on economic and cultural issues. Mamdani's calls for free services and divisive foreign policy stances will only deepen this distrust, driving voters to GOP candidates who promise stability and common sense.

2.Resource Drain: Internal fighting diverts money, time, and energy from campaigning. The establishment's Project 2029 will suck up donor funds for think-tank exercises, while Abundance and Left-wing factions compete for grassroots support. This splintering weakens the party's ability to mount a unified midterm campaign, leaving vulnerable seats — especially in purple states — ripe for Republican pickups.

3.Messaging Chaos: The Democrats' inability to coalesce around a single agenda means their messaging will be incoherent. Are they the party of pragmatic building (Abundance), socialist revolution (Mamdani), or Biden-era continuity (establishment)? Voters hate confusion, and MAGA's clear, populist message—low taxes, strong borders, America First, will cut through the noise.

4.MAGA Momentum: Republicans, unified under a Trump-inspired platform, are poised to capitalise on Democratic disarray. The GOP's focus on economic growth, energy independence, and cultural conservatism resonates with voters frustrated by inflation, crime, and progressive overreach. The Democrats' civil war hands MAGA a narrative: the opposition is too busy fighting itself to govern effectively.

Historical parallels bolster this case. After Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss, the Democrats' leftward lurch and internal debates weakened their 2018 midterm performance in key swing districts, despite a House majority. Today's fractures are deeper, with three factions pulling in opposite directions. The establishment's Project 2029 might try to bridge the gap the Democratic Party's current dynamic is untenable, potentially leading to its dissolution. Even if the party survives, it's hard to see it mounting a cohesive challenge in 2026.

Looking beyond 2026, the Democrats' civil war could set them on a path to irrelevance. The establishment's grip is slipping, as seen in Cuomo's defeat and the rise of figures like Mamdani. But the Left's ascendancy risks making the party unelectable outside urban strongholds. The Abundance faction, while offering a more voter-friendly vision, lacks the grassroots passion to overtake either rival. This stalemate could fracture the party into competing splinters, perhaps a socialist wing and a corporatist wing, leaving a vacuum for MAGA to dominate.

The Left's embrace of figures like Mamdani also plays into MAGA's long-term strategy. His radical policies and rhetoric on Gaza align with the GOP's narrative that Democrats are out of step with mainstream America. Meanwhile, the Abundance faction's flirtation with deregulation and building could siphon off moderate voters, but only if they abandon the Democrats' progressive baggage, which seems unlikely. Project 2029, with its recycled establishment figures, is too tied to the failures of the past to inspire confidence.

The Democrats' best hope is a charismatic leader who can unite the factions, but no such figure is on the horizon. Newsom's flirtation with Abundance shows promise, but his California record, high taxes, crime, and homelessness, makes him a weak national contender. Mamdani energises the base but alienates the centre. The establishment's bench, from Sullivan to Tanden, feels like a retread of the Biden era. Without a unifying force, the party risks a death spiral where infighting erodes its electoral viability. Good riddance!

From a MAGA perspective, the Democratic Party's civil war is a godsend. The establishment's desperate rebranding, the Abundance faction's half-baked pragmatism, and the Left's socialist surge create a perfect storm of division. The 2026 midterms look grim for Democrats, as voter alienation, resource drain, and messaging chaos hand Republicans an edge. Long-term, the party's fractures could lead to its collapse or transformation into a fragmented, unelectable mess. MAGA stands to gain by hammering the Democrats' disarray, contrasting it with a unified, populist vision that puts America First. As the Democrats tear themselves apart, the path to 2026 and beyond looks brighter than ever for the GOP. Some good news for nationalist anti-globalists for a change.

https://archive.md/9nQjC

"A three-sided debate has broken out over the Democratic Party's future.

On one side is the party establishment, damaged by the disappointing end to the Biden era but seeking to rebrand itself with a new agenda it hopes will better appeal to voters.

Two main factions have emerged to challenge that establishment, from opposite directions. And they both have some recent news to be happy about.

The first is the Abundance faction. This faction argues that the Democratic Party has become overly focused on pleasing progressive interest groups and nowhere near focused enough on building things like housing, infrastructure, and clean energy. Abundance won a major victory two weeks ago, when California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed new laws loosening restrictions on homebuilding in cities.

The second faction is the left, reinvigorated by Zohran Mamdani's triumph in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. Charismatic, savvy with new media, and armed with sweeping leftist policy proposals — rent freezes, free buses and child care, city-owned grocery stores — Mamdani instantly became the left's new standard-bearer.

Both these factions — each composed of commentators, advocates, operatives, online influencers, and some actual politicians — argue that the Democratic establishment has too often failed to deliver to voters what they actually want. Both want to present voters a much more inspiring vision of the future, and there are some areas of overlap in their proposals — but in practice, many in the two factions have been at odds, presenting rival visions and having heated public arguments.

Meanwhile, the current party establishment isn't planning on going anywhere. A group of prominent Democrats are putting together a Project 2029 policy agenda full of ideas they'd want the next Democratic president to implement. This project is still in its early stages, but since top Biden White House aides and longtime figures in the nonprofit world are involved, it appears to be the establishment's attempt to suss out where the party should go.

What electoral strategies should Democrats adopt? How should they actually govern? And who should have status and influence within the Democratic Party? All of these questions are freely intermixed in this debate — and they won't really be settled until at least 2028. But the debate is on.

Democratic elites' debate over the party's future has, to a surprising degree, been centered on Abundance, a book written by journalists Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.

The book summed up a critique Klein (a Vox co-founder and my former colleague) and Thompson had been making for years. They argued that Democratic governance had become dysfunctional and unable to deliver — that it had become so hobbled by bureaucratic processes, legal restrictions, and the demands of progressive interest groups that it was hard to get anything built.

Klein and Thompson called for a new focus on actually delivering abundant housing, clean energy, new infrastructure, and scientific breakthroughs. But what made their critique bite was that they argued Democrats themselves had been a big part of the problem — that the party needed to be more open to cutting regulatory red tape and less deferential to progressive groups.

Abundance became a surprise best-seller, and the term came to mean more than just the book; it became a sort of banner under which center-left commentators, advocates, and operatives dissatisfied with the Democratic establishment have rallied. In particular, Abundance-world overlaps with a skeptical eye toward "the groups": the progressive nonprofits that have helped push the Democratic Party leftward in recent years.

The book also was met with fierce pushback from many on the left, who argued that the Abundance agenda was too tech- and corporate-friendly — that it isn't focused enough on fighting concentrated economic power and that it's too quick to paint progressive groups as the bad guys when they're, in fact, crucial coalitional allies.

But some longtime members of the party's establishment sound like they're being won over. Barack Obama praised what he called the "quote-unquote abundance agenda" at a fundraiser last week, saying, "You want to deliver for people and make their lives better? You got to figure out how to do it."

Most interesting of all was the conversion of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Klein has been criticizing California's dysfunctional governance and failure to get anything built for years, including to Newsom's face on his podcast this year.

Those critiques seem to have hit home, as Newsom threw his political capital into getting two new housing reform bills passed over the protests of environmental and labor groups — and succeeded. The bills reined in California's environmental impact law, which Abundancers blamed for making housing extremely difficult to build in the state. It was the biggest policy win for the Abundance faction yet — but, as they know well, the next challenge is actually getting all this new housing built.

The other challenge to the Democratic establishment is coming from the left — which, after a period of disillusionment, has finally found a candidate to get excited about again: Zohran Mamdani.

Mamdani's defeat of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York City's mayoral primary last month thrilled the left. He was a fresh face that went up against and defeated an establishment figure that's viewed as corrupt. But more to the point, he pulled it off while standing behind a sweeping left agenda — making bold promises of new free benefits and services, rather than just telling people better things aren't possible.

The team-up of Mamdani and another candidate, city comptroller Brad Lander, against Cuomo was also noteworthy. While Mamdani is relatively new to politics and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who inspires a following, Lander is a wonky progressive who has deep experience with the mechanics of city government.

The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote that the two represent the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wings of the party, respectively, and that, unlike Sanders and Warren in 2020, they managed to unite against the establishment and win.

Furthermore, though Mamdani did not make foreign policy central to his campaign messaging, he did stand strong on the cause that has most animated activists on the left recently: condemning Israel's war in Gaza. He said, for instance, that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to New York City while he was mayor, he'd have him arrested, because of an International Criminal Court warrant. During the primary, he also refused to condemn activists' use of the phrase "globalize the intifada" — though he said this week that he'd "discourage" the phrase.

Mamdani's critics argue that his "free stuff" proposals may not be practical, given budgetary realities and legal constraints, and if he wins the general election, he'll inevitably face a host of governing challenges. For now, though, he's made the left feel hope again — and put forward a model for a winning race they hope can be used elsewhere.

Amid these challenges, leading figures in the Democratic firmament have come together to try and chart the way forward for the party in what they're calling Project 2029.

The name mirrors the Heritage Foundation's infamous Project 2025 initiative, a conservative policy wishlist. Organized by Andrei Cherny, a former Democratic aide and state party leader, the group plans to put together an agenda for the party's next presidential candidate to adopt and roll it out in Cherny's publication, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Project 2029's advisory board includes Biden's top foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, and his top domestic policy adviser, Neera Tanden (currently president of the Center for American Progress). It also includes other prominent figures in the nonprofit world, like Anne-Marie Slaughter (president of the New America think tank); Felicia Wong (former president of the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute); and Jim Kessler (founder of Third Way, a centrist nonprofit).

In other words, it's a big tent of the leading center-left and progressive thinkers and operatives who've influenced the Democratic Party over the past decade (and, in some cases, longer).

A similar debate took place after Hillary Clinton's defeat, as the party grappled with how to respond to both his win and the unexpected challenge from Bernie Sanders. The consensus that emerged was that the party needed to move left, on both economic policy and social issues.

"Democrats should not blush too much, or pay too much heed, when political commentators arch their eyebrows about the party moving left," Sullivan wrote in Democracy in 2018. "The center of gravity itself is moving, and this is a good thing."

Now, the political winds have changed, and progressives have been on the defensive, so it remains to be seen if Democratic elites will come to the same conclusion or push in the other direction — toward moderation.

It's also unclear whether Project 2029 will amount to a genuinely new agenda or whether it will be more akin to an attempted rebranding of the party for better electoral marketing. But it does appear to be, at heart, a consensus-building exercise aimed at uniting the party's existing factions around a plan for the future.

So there's one challenge from the center-left Abundance faction, another challenge from the left, and then there's the existing establishment in between trying to chart its own course. This is just the start of this debate, which will take years to play out. But it's the debate that will help determine whether Democrats can win in 2028 — and what they will do if they regain power.