Left Turn on a Red Light? Challenges and Decisions Facing Liberals and Progressives After 2016

Abstract

The Democratic Party in the United States, like other left-leaning parties around the world, is struggling to counter the rise of right-wing populism. The premise of this symposium is that the party’s challenges have deep historical roots and are problems of modern liberal governance more generally. Despite their different perspectives on the sources of, and their different solutions for, the Democratic Party’s difficulties, the essays are united in arguing that a more robust, substantive public philosophy is needed to generate a governing majority.