Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing holds a special place in the hearts of nearly every consumer of American political media. It’s hard not to admire the fast-paced dialogue, the earnest idealism and the morally upstanding characters who populate the Bartlet administration. The show was a masterpiece. But no matter how real it seemed, it was fiction — a beautiful ideal that America never achieved, and that’s OK. Ideals are meant to make us strive, but they’re not meant to disillusion and they’re certainly not meant to make us naive to the harsh realities of our time.
Yet for all its charm, The West Wing did something truly unfortunate: it warped the Democratic Party’s sense of reality. A burgeoning political class absorbed its idyllic mythology, leaving them unprepared for the very real political war of this moment — the battle between democracy and authoritarianism.
Instead of readying for war, Democrats doubled down on neoliberalism, a political and economic ideology that prioritizes free markets, deregulation, privatization and limited government intervention. It favors technocratic management over mass democratic mobilization.
To be clear, I’m not blaming The West Wing for everything — after all, it was my favorite show. Aspirational fiction has its place; it’s part of how we get to a better world. But the show is a useful lens for a larger point.
The authoritarian turn we’re witnessing is as swift and brazen as it is distant from how TV taught us politics were supposed to work. I never imagined a reality where an unelected quasi-governmental billionaire oligarch could flash a Nazi salute on television without consequence, or where pardoned January 6 rioters proudly wear “6 Million Wasn’t Enough” shirts in public without facing condemnation from both parties. The once unthinkable hasn’t just been normalized, it is now celebrated.
So here we are. And because we are here, we must respond.
The myth of noble compromise
The West Wing taught Democrats that power could be won through moral appeals, that compromise would always be possible, and that the right words could always defeat the wrong ideas. At the heart of the show is the belief that politicians and political operatives are, at their core, decent people who can be reasoned with.
The show’s best moments hinge on scenes where ideological opponents find common ground through clever arguments and heartfelt appeals. In the Sorkinverse, the right monologue or set of statistics can win over even the staunchest adversaries. This has left too many Democrats clinging to the notion that bipartisanship, in and of itself, is a virtue. And while there may be virtue in compromise, finding common ground with bad actors is not the same thing.
In the real world, the Republican Party has increasingly embraced anti-democratic tactics and bad-faith negotiations. The insistence on meeting them halfway has often led to diluted policies, or no policy, and squandered opportunities for meaningful change.
Neoliberalism leads to stagnation because it doesn’t incentivize confrontation or real struggles for power. It conditions leaders to believe that stability is the ultimate objective, that market interventions should prioritize balance over wealth redistribution, and that bad actors will eventually lose if they’re simply out-argued. Rather than mobilizing aggressively against threats, Democrats have been trained to wait them out, assuming the arc of history will bend in their favor.
But history does not bend on its own — it is shaped by those willing to seize power. So when the Tea Party erupted in 2009 — openly fueled by racial resentment and billionaire-backed extremism — Democrats dismissed it as just a phase. They assumed it would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. But it didn’t. It metastasized.
By 2015, Trump’s rise should have shattered any remaining illusions, yet Democratic insiders laughed him off as a reality TV stunt gone too far. The Washington Post published smug analyses about why he could never win, while Clinton’s team eagerly boosted him in the primaries, convinced he’d be the easiest opponent to beat. The entire party was caught flat-footed when he bulldozed his way to power — not through high-minded debate (because he could never), but through sheer brute force, understanding something Democrats refused to: politics is about power, not procedure.
The West Wing rhetoric trap
The problem isn’t just structural — it’s also rhetorical. Even as institutions fail to constrain modern threats, Democrats seem convinced that the right combination of words can turn the tide. That the perfect speech, the airtight argument, the most well-reasoned case will be enough to win. But politics isn’t the debate club many seem to think it is, and power isn’t awarded for eloquence.
While Democrats obsess over messaging, the GOP has mastered emotional appeals and fear-mongering to rally its base, leveraging xenophobia and dog whistles — what I’ve termed the Dark Arts of politics. I don’t condone this behavior, but it’s worth noting that it will always notch the professorial instincts of our party, which means our approach must be revamped to be effective.
People crave rhetorical clarity — mental shortcuts that resonate — because they simply don’t have time for dissertations. This isn’t a call to abandon intellectual rigor, but we can’t expect busy, working Americans to always absorb the high-minded scripts that underpin our positions. Worse, we tend to alienate people with academic jargon and then chastise them for not knowing any of it. Nuance matters, but not every issue needs it.
Our current approach — what I’d call high-horse politicking — has created a crisis of relatability, leading to a more serious crisis of credibility, pushing voters toward the plainspoken, faux-populist movements on the right that offer simpler appeals, even if they’re rooted in deception.
So how do we counter this? It’s actually quite easy: let’s just call a spade a spade. We don’t need to hesitate to name racism when we see it or dance around the truth to sound diplomatic. Call it what it is — and immediately follow with real, actionable solutions. Plainspoken language doesn’t mean dumbing things down; it means meeting people where they are. We can be powerful, effective and morally clear without delivering a lecture.
Neoliberalism’s halo effect
But clarity in language is only part of the battle — clarity in tactical leadership and vision matters even more. That’s where Democrats, beholden to an elite-driven model of governance, have failed spectacularly through their lionization of neoliberal technocracy.
The Bartlet administration, with its wonkish staffers and their impeccable credentials, embodies the idea that politics is best left to brilliant, rational elites who always get it right. While there is most certainly a role for smart people in politics, we have come to see Ivy Leaguers as the only people who could possibly come up with answers (inflating the God complex that comes standard with the degree), seeming to forget that these elite pedigrees often come with a certain bias toward the predilections of the ultra-privileged and affluent.
This worldview has pushed the Democratic Party toward a top-down donor-centric approach that prioritizes expert management and incrementalism over grassroots organizing and bold change — approaches you might find praised in Harvard Business Review and cautioned against in Rules for Radicals. But working people don’t need “management.” They need advocates who understand their struggles firsthand, who have navigated the broken systems they seek to fix. Instead, they are given polished politicians who see hardship as an abstraction rather than a lived reality, which reinforces the impression that the Democratic Party governs for working people, but not with them.
Part of AOC’s popularity among working people stems from her relatability — she came to office having actually lived the working-class experience. Her rise offers a contrast to the traditional Democratic model of leadership, built on elite validation rather than grassroots mobilization. Watching her trajectory will be telling. Can someone who challenges the existing power structure sustain and grow their influence without being absorbed or sidelined by the establishment? Her career may hold answers to whether a bottom-up movement can genuinely reshape the Democratic Party.
Barack Obama was a unicorn, a once-in-a-lifetime figure whose unique talents allowed him to transcend some of the limitations of neoliberalism although not all. While he also came from a working class background, his professional ascent was shaped by proximity to elites. But he was the exception, not the rule, and his rise reinforces the belief that Ivy League pedigrees and donor-class politics are the only path to power in the Democratic party.
If The West Wing was the guiding myth for the neoliberal Democratic elite, and Obama was its real-world avatar, then the Pod Save America bros can be considered the PR firm, repackaging the same elite-driven politics in a cooler, more digestible format for the social media age. This cadre of white affluent insiders, who are undoubtedly smart and well-intentioned, is far removed from many of the realities faced by the Democratic base. And because of this, building the resistance around their posh, punchy neoliberalism feels dangerously unwise yet it appears as though that’s where the party is headed. By neutralizing critiques of neoliberal technocracy, they provided cover and validation for its perpetuation.
While their contributions may have value, their ideological framework does little to address the systemic challenges we face. Their credibility was Barack Obama, who was a magician. No one in the party can reproduce that kind of political sleight-of-hand. So we’re trapped in a negative feedback loop where neoliberals dominate the party’s institutions, messaging, and donor networks. Through what Gramsci called cultural hegemony, they shape not just policy but the very way Democrats understand politics. When things go wrong, it’s not seen as a failure of the paradigm, but proof that incrementalism just needs more time. And so, nothing changes.
Some might argue that Biden’s administration was the most progressive since FDR’s — and they’re probably right. But if that’s true, it’s not a flex; it’s an indictment. It speaks less to bold leadership and more to how catastrophically low the bar has been set. And Joe Biden did govern far to the left of where anyone — himself included – ever expected. But let’s be clear: this didn’t happen because he suddenly embraced leftist politics. It happened because grassroots activists pushed him and because the crises of our time left him no other choice.
Additionally, a policy can be progressive and still be incremental — helping without truly transforming. Take student loan forgiveness. Biden attempted to cancel massive sums of debt, but without structural reform, the system remains just as broken as before. Policy isn’t transformational just because we say it is. If people have to be convinced it changed their lives, then it probably didn’t.
The problem with this elitist model of governance isn’t just about optics, it’s about outcomes. Its leaders, however well-intentioned, often view politics as a negotiation among experts rather than a struggle for power between classes. This has had devastating consequences for people and democracy.
Consider the 2008 financial crisis. Millions of working people lost their homes and savings due to reckless speculation by Wall Street. Yet when Obama had the opportunity to hold the financial sector accountable, he surrounded himself with economic advisors who came from the very institutions responsible for the collapse. Larry Summers and Tim Geithner saw their job not as restructuring the economy in favor of ordinary people, but as stabilizing the existing order. There was no New Deal moment, no FDR-style reckoning with the failures of capitalism. Instead, the banks got bailed out, and working people got foreclosed on.
And that’s the problem with an elite-driven party: their first instinct is to protect the system rather than disrupt it. After all, these systems brought them to power. So their trust isn’t in the people — it’s in institutions. And institutions, left to their own devices, serve the powerful. In a moment when the people needed a radical departure from business as usual, Democrats gave them incrementalism. The result? A slow, uneven recovery that left working people disillusioned and angry, creating fertile ground for right-wing populism to flourish.
The false comfort of incrementalism
The West Wing glorified small victories and incremental progress as the pinnacle of political achievement, reinforcing the belief that change should always be slow, negotiated and respectable. While steady progress has its place, this sort of mindset discourages Democrats from pursuing bold, transformative action, even when the moment demands it.
Climate change, systemic inequality and the erosion of democratic norms cannot be solved with half-measures. By prioritizing what’s palatable to the donor class, Democrats have failed to inspire their base or harness the mass movements that could actually lead to change. Incrementalism has become an excuse for meager progress — and worse, a death knell for political courage.
In this moment, courage is non-negotiable. As SNAP benefits are slashed, stripping food from the tables of the most vulnerable; as gun-wielding ICE agents in ski masks rip children from their homes and schools; as authoritarianism inches closer to the mainstream, Democrats cannot afford timidity. They need to summon the kind of courage that gets them into good trouble. That kind of trouble means taking risks. It means standing unapologetically with the oppressed, no matter the cost. To stand down, paralyzed by the fear of seeming like a radical lefty (newsflash, they’re gonna call you that no matter what you do), is to betray both the people and democracy itself. Courage isn’t just an abstract virtue — it’s the fuel that drives real progress. Without it, humanity will suffer.
FDR understood this. Through bold initiatives like Social Security and the Works Progress Administration, he reshaped American politics and built a coalition that delivered lasting change. Post-World War II Europe offers another example. Faced with wide-scale devastation, many nations adopted transformative policies like universal healthcare and aggressive labor protections. These socialist labor-driven initiatives didn’t just stabilize societies, they proved that bold action is both possible and necessary. They showed a good and just society can be built without the sort of capitalism neoliberalism embodies.
The way forward
The harsh truth is that neoliberalism failed. It exploded the wealth gap, eroded public trust in institutions, and left the door wide open for the rise of fascism. The faith that technocracy and rational discourse could hold back the tide of authoritarianism has proven disastrously misguided.
Policies championed by the Left — Medicare for All, student debt cancellation, a $15 minimum wage, aggressive climate action and broader economic justice — were once dismissed as radical, but are now mainstream. These are policies that inspire, that ignite movements, that align with the zeitgeist. They are also the policies that centrists in the Democratic Party continue to sideline in favor of technocratic incrementalism. This disconnect between leadership and the will of the people is nonstrategic and unsustainable. If the Democratic Party hopes to rebuild trust and secure the future, it must embrace these policies — not reluctantly, but with courage and conviction.
The only viable path forward is a democratic socialist movement that deprioritizes party elites and uplifts the people. The party must make way for a new class of leadership, one that is multiracial, multigenerational, and deeply rooted in class consciousness. For all the hand-wringing centrists have done over the past few decades, progressives have been the only group to successfully ignite and mobilize the base and build winning coalitions.
Since power concedes nothing without a fight, reform-minded activists must be prepared to mobilize boldly. This could mean organizing a mass exodus threatening the party’s pursestrings, membership rolls and voter registrations to force the conversation and compel regime change. It could also mean rallying around an outside entity designed to directly challenge Democrats — not just electorally, but morally — in pursuit of its aims. It doesn’t need to be a formal party; in a post-Citizens United world, it could be a 501(c)(4) organization ready to tango with the party’s stubborn machinations. If the Democratic Party refuses to evolve, we must be prepared to out-organize it using the tools available to us — by any means necessary. Whatever the means, the Democrats must become us and fight with us to serve the people and save the country.
We are on war-footing now and our collective survival demands drastic action.
If this essay compels those who still cling to neoliberalism to reconsider their allegiance, then it has done its job. I was once a true believer myself, but I have come to see its shortcomings and they have been utterly ruinous, leaving us dangerously outmatched in the battle for democracy. I hope others will come to see this too. The time for clinging to comforting myths is over. The challenges we face demand a politics that empowers the people and meets this moment head-on. Anything less, and we’ll be writing the obituary for American democracy. The rough draft is already done.
Stacey Walker is a former Linn County Supervisor.
