You Can't Build a Better Politics on Bad History

Sarah Longwell is a leading anti-Trump conservative and a co-founder of The Bulwark. Before this turn, she was a Republican political consultant. In her new book How to Eat an Elephant, she assesses a variety of voters that Democrats need to reach: swing voters, independents, low-information voters, and even Trump voters who are not MAGA true believers. Longwell then establishes a set of principles for how to win over these voters and eat away at the power of the MAGA-fied Republican Party. She ultimately believes that with the right strategy, the Democrats can inflict enough electoral pain on the current GOP to “burn MAGA to the ground and then salt the earth,” enabling American politics to return to some kind of normalcy (How to Eat an Elephant, loc. 348).

While this is an insightful book in many ways, Longwell’s analysis suffers from two shortcomings. First, she is insufficiently skeptical of how voters represent themselves in focus groups, leading her to an overly sympathetic view of their behavior. Second, and more importantly, Longwell’s selective, somewhat rose-tinted account of the history of the GOP leads her to overstate both the differences between the pre- and post-Trump Republican parties and the likelihood of dismantling the MAGA movement. 

The painful reality is that any semblance of a responsible GOP is dead and buried, and Democrats cannot succeed if they focus on rehabilitating this cadaver. MAGA, or some form of nationalist-populist politics, is driven by deep structural forces, and so MAGA is going to define the GOP for decades. Democrats will have to fight it out on this line for the foreseeable future.

A handbook for Democrats

Longwell is a true believer in the focus group, and from them she derives many interesting insights about swing-voter perspectives that Democrats should heed. Talking about threats to democracy, for example, has limited effectiveness: while it fires up the liberal base, most swing voters don’t view Donald Trump as a menace to democracy. After all, they voted him into power, out of power, and back in again. Instead, Longwell emphasizes that Democrats need to stress their love of America, which is more concrete to voters, and their laser-focus on affordability and economic well-being, which drives most voter behavior (loc. 2394–2422). Facts and figures about the economy already being good, actually, do not work for voters.

Longwell also blasts Democrats for falling behind in the communications game (loc. 929). The right has constructed its own information ecosystem, of podcasts, news channels, and social media accounts, that relentlessly defends Trump and prevents counter-narratives, or even basic reality, from penetrating through to voters. Democrats have constructed no such counter-system, allowing Trump to achieve “narrative dominance” over key issues like immigration. 

It is time, Longwell declares, for Democrats to meet voters in the media spaces they actually inhabit instead of hoping that good legislation and smart policy will automatically break through. She praises New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, for instance, not because she agrees with his policy views but because he communicates effectively with voters by relentlessly and charismatically hammering the theme of affordability (loc. 1152).

Finally, I appreciate Longwell’s advocacy of a new relationship between Democratic politicians and the activist class on the left. Democratic politicians have support from many activist groups that often press them to take unpopular positions, which reinforces the larger public’s perception of Democrats as too beholden to niche interests (loc. 2047–2122). Instead of focusing on pressuring Democrats, Longwell suggests that activist groups must do the harder work of shifting public opinion so that Democratic politicians have more space to take progressive positions, holding out the gay rights movement as an exemplar of how to do this (loc. 2030–2043).

What we can’t learn from focus groups

This book, however, has two considerable problems, each of which cast doubt on Longwell’s core belief that MAGA can ultimately be vanquished and some sense of normalcy returned to the GOP.

The first problem is her excessive reliance on focus groups. From that narrow evidence base, Longwell concludes that a great number of Trump voters and Trump-curious voters are coming from a good place: they have justified resentment of “the establishment,” they feel betrayed by lackluster Democrats, they are bewildered by the modern information environment, and they share Trump’s assertion that everyday life in America is in decline (loc. 1313, 3401). 

Longwell is defensive of these voters’ motives, reflecting her own upbringing in small-town America (loc. 597–733). In focus groups, these people don’t endorse Trump’s bigotry and often see him as buffoonish (loc. 1848). They are shocked that he launched a new war with Iran after promising peace. They frequently denounce his cruel immigration policies, claiming they wanted enforcement but not ICE raids on schools. Longwell believes that a crushing anti-MAGA coalition can be assembled from these voters if the Democrats choose the right messaging and tactics. As she writes at one point: “we must find a way to appeal to the better angels of their nature and coax them off the authoritarian ledge” (loc. 285).

The problem here is that people in focus groups are subject to social desirability bias, or the tendency to frame their beliefs in actions in as acceptable a light as possible. Voters in those settings are not going to admit to prejudice against immigrants, transgender people, or whatever marginalized group. They are going to tell you that they see cultural issues as a distraction from the economy because that’s how they want to be seen. They are going to express outrage at Trump locking up migrant children or attacking Iran because to do otherwise would be an admission of being duped. Voters in focus groups and polls, moreover, want to portray themselves as independently minded, even though most self-identified independents consistently vote for one party or the other. 

Voter behavior, though, tells a darker story. We are three election cycles into the Trump era, and the vast majority of Trump’s coalition, including many of the voters Longwell profiles, have stuck with him in spite of repeated, manifest cruelty, conspiracism, and downright insanity. Trump is no longer an unknown commodity, if he ever was one. Trump had an entire first term, four years in which he passed legislation favoring the rich, brutalized migrants, and launched risky foreign gambits. He was also perfectly clear about his intentions for his second term, including promises of mass deportation, “retribution” against his enemies, and pardons for insurrectionists. 

This gap between what voters say in a controlled setting and how they behave suggests that this body of Trump-curious people may not be as gettable for Democrats as Longwell thinks they are. For example, voters profiled in this book who continue to think, in the year 2026, that Trump is a “good businessman” may simply have a priori beliefs that are unshakeable (loc. 502). Longwell may have created a useful playbook for Democrats to shave off enough low-information and independent voters to swing a few elections, but that is a far cry from her belief that these voters represent a bloc that can be turned decisively against MAGA.

The old GOP is dead, dead, dead

The larger problem with this book is Longwell’s selective use of history to serve her political argument. Longwell’s depiction of the pre-Trump GOP is overly rosy. She asserts, for instance, that this was a party “defined by ideology,” especially free markets, U.S. leadership in the world, and limited government (loc. 3359). 

But identity-based appeals and the toleration of bigotry have been integral to the GOP brand for decades. The last time a Democrat won the majority of white voters was 1964, not coincidentally the peak of the Civil Rights movement, which drove a massive influx of white voters to the Republican Party as it signaled its hostility to that movement. The party realigned in the mid-late 20^th century as a mostly white, culturally conservative body. 

Mainstream Republicans from William F. Buckley to George H. W. Bush to John McCain did distance themselves, somewhat, from the most egregious racists, anti-Semites, and whack-jobs. At the same time, they tried to harness those groups’ energy with coded outreach to their fears and prejudices. For instance, Longwell admires McCain as a principled, rational figure (loc. 675–707), and so he was in many ways. But McCain also made the radically irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate in an open sop to the identity politics of the party’s base. This book makes only one reference to Palin, and it does not mention McCain’s decision to make her his running mate, reflecting its larger failure to grapple with how the mainstream Republican Party in large part created the MAGA monster (loc. 687).

Longwell also states that Republicans, unlike Trump, had been the champions of the post-World War II international order (loc. 3441). This also draws too sharp a line between post and pre-Trump Republicans. Earlier Republicans may have had a rock-solid devotion to NATO and U.S. military superiority, but they also chafed at international laws and institutions, as burdens on America’s freedom of action, or even as liberal conspiracies. George W. Bush, for instance, was quite like Trump in his conviction that the United States could act unilaterally on the global stage and exempt itself from international laws and norms on torture, indefinite detention, and preventive war.

The claim that Trump represents a stark discontinuity from the earlier GOP does not hold historical water. Longwell highlights the party of George H. W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, which certainly existed. But the GOP, and the conservative movement as a whole, was also the realm of Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell. They and other odious figures were key elements of the “fusionist” coalition that defined the mid-late 20th century American right. The more moderate Republicans gambled that they could control the hard right and use them to gain electoral victories, knowing that identity trumped ideology in electoral politics. With the arrival of Trump, they lost that bet, and after the crazies seized the helm of the party by nominating him in 2016, the moderate Republican establishment capitulated almost entirely.

In short, there is virtually nothing left of the old, sane GOP, if such an entity ever existed. Longwell admits as much, stating that “the old, basically healthy Republican Party ain’t never coming back” (loc. 3441). But there is a disjunction between that recognition and Longwell’s belief that the electorate can be turned “against Donald Trump and Republicans with such force that the entire MAGA movement is viewed as a catastrophic failure” (310). 

There are two problems with that latter belief. First, there is little hope for such a change within the GOP itself. The likely post-Trump successor battle, as Longwell notes, will be between the “MAGA Establishment,” or transactionally driven chameleons like Marco Rubio, and the “America Firsters,” or true-believer nationalist-authoritarians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson (loc. 3442–3456). This is plausible, but Longwell overlooks that both of these factions will be competing for the mantle of Trump, for the populist-nationalist energies of the now-radicalized Republican base. Both factions are less likely to attack Trump and MAGA ideology than to portray themselves as its true heirs, ensuring that MAGA will keep its grip on the party for the foreseeable future. After all, in the 2024 Republican primaries, Trump’s ostensible opponents bizarrely refused to criticize him, to the absurd extent that Trump later told Florida governor Ron DeSantis: “You should have attacked me. You never attacked me.” 

Longwell hopes that decisive electoral defeats will “dismantle the MAGA movement” (loc. 310–350). But not only are “decisive” defeats vanishingly rare in modern U.S. politics, the GOP could easily become more radicalized by defeat, as occurred after the Democrats’ seemingly-decisive victory in 2008. Moreover, the logic of polarization will likely ensure that many right-leaning voters who do not like Trump or the full-on MAGA ideology will continue to vote for Republicans, thus preventing a Waterloo-style vanquishing of MAGA.

Second, Longwell’s hope of crushing MAGA overlooks the profound systemic forces driving the MAGA phenomenon. In this book, she depicts Trump’s success as a result of keen strategic posturing, effective communications, and the cowardice of GOP and media elites (loc. 700, 1715–1740). MAGA, however, has deeper roots than that. MAGA is part of a worldwide nationalist backlash against increased immigration and increasingly diverse sources thereof, the erosion of industrial and manufacturing employment, free trade deals, transnational terrorism, and other forces that make members of dominant but declining groups seek the restoration of an idealized past. 

Trump matters as an individual. He channeled these forces in a uniquely effective way, but he did not create them. These factors are driving nationalist-populist politics from Brazil to Germany to Israel. MAGA, or something like it, is quite simply not going away, and the structure of American politics makes it unlikely that the Democrats can win crushing victories even if they adopted Longwell’s playbook—which, largely, they nonetheless should. 

Conclusion

I wrote this critique in a spirit of intramural rigor, not hostility to Longwell’s aspirations for the United States. She cares deeply about this country and is a principled, astute opponent of Trump. As a tactical manual for swinging close elections in the Democrats’ favor, the book has many important points, and it is pithy, funny, and easy to read.

Tactics, however, are valuable only in the service of a realistic strategic vision, which is lacking in this book. Longwell wants to return the country to the relative normalcy of the Bush, McCain, and Romney-era GOP. I sympathize with that, as I believe a responsible conservatism did exist to some extent, and I would much rather face a GOP defined by Romney than Trump. 

Unfortunately, Longwell’s hope is based on excessive faith in what voters say, as opposed to cold examination of what they do, and on a selective view of the past. The darker truth is that a major portion of the electorate has abandoned the basic responsibilities of citizenship in favor of authoritarianism, conspiracism, and white nationalism. They have made this choice over and over again, and in so doing they have helped bury the old GOP. Longwell’s tactical insights can help defeat MAGA at the ballot box; they cannot relegate it to the dustbin of history. For the foreseeable future, MAGA will be part of the political landscape.

Featured Image is Sarah Palin, by Gage Skidmore