In whose interest should politics ultimately be conducted?

Institutional liberalism has long attempted to elide straightforward binaries pitting ordinary people against elites. Instead it prefers to reject the premise that any meaningful divergence of interest ever separated them in the first place. For several generations of aspiring liberal politicians, the “Third Way” has represented not just a supposed middle path between the New Deal and Reaganism, but also between the competing demands of different factions within the Democratic coalition itself.

While this middle road has always been a self-serving illusion, recent events have brought its contradictions into sharper relief. For the first time in living memory, the 2016 primaries moved the divide between the demands of the Democratic base and its corporate donor class to the forefront of political debate. With Nancy Pelosi already being dismissive about a Green New Deal and several leading contenders already canvassing Wall Street for support ahead of the 2020 presidential race, there’s every reason to believe the conflict will intensify. An embedded class of party elites remains determined to act as the tribunes of the corporate elite while nominally pledging fealty to progressive objectives.