Growth through exclusion: the paradox of widening the tent

Inclusion has limits

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Soon after the 2024 election, I read a flood of takes attempting to explain Democrats’ woes that focused on the economy and DEI. And while each contained grains of truth, none seemed fully sufficient to explain the more fundamental ideological shift to the right America has seen in the last decade.

One thing that kept surfacing in my thinking was the “vibes” discourse that circulated during the Biden Admin. “Vibes” refers to the public’s instinctive perception of what the Democratic Party stands for. These impressions are shaped more by behaviors that reinforce stereotypes than by actual policy.

I’d been grappling with this idea of stereotypes for awhile, but only recently found a way to articulate it—thanks in part to a piece by Matthew Yglesias, in which he wrote:

“Right now, no matter what position [a center-left Democrat] takes on fossil fuels or assault weapons, voters in Texas will be suspicious that he’s part of a secret agenda to help Democrats ban that stuff. If party leaders say, actually, our agenda is health care and tax fairness, that makes it a lot easier.

But this means getting out of the habit of dog-whistle moderation and the perverse obsession with policing the most far-left members of the caucus.

Democrats’ problem isn’t that AOC and Zohran Mamdani are too left-wing on guns, climate change, immigration, and trans issues, it’s that Democrats everywhere are expected to share these positions.”

Yglesias has been urging Democrats to widen their tent. When Elon Musk broke with the Trump administration, for instance, Yglesias was one of the first to suggest welcoming him into the Democratic coalition. Similarly, he tried to call attention to the bipartisan unpopularity of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” as a way to build consensus. A noble effort.

In Yglesias’ view, the party should include more people by becoming more inclusive despite ideological differences.

The problem with this prescription, though, is that widening the tent without setting clear ideological boundaries undermines the whole effort. A coalition possessing a diversity of ideas can occur only when individuals within the coalition are open to being wrong. Those who hold intolerant ideas and refuse to share space with individuals in which they simply disagree must be kept out of the tent at all costs.

Yglesias wants to expand the coalition by increasing tolerance for disagreement, but he seems to overlook how the coalition shrinks when the most intolerant views go unchallenged.

The paradox of tolerance

Since publishing my piece on culture, immigration, and the explanation of an open society, I’ve been thinking a lot about Karl Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance.”

Popper writes:

“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

I think Yglesias is right to advocate for practical coalition-building by recruiting candidates popular in their local contexts, even if they’re not beloved by the broader base. That’s reasonable.

But the real issue isn’t that Democrats have far-left, illiberal members. It’s that those members have become the public face of the party—especially in the eyes of swing voters and moderate Republicans. These voters often don’t see meaningful differences between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and AOC, Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom.

Why is that?

Moderates in the party either stay silent or show public deference to the loudest, most extreme voices. They tolerate what most voters find intolerable. This results in a distorted perception: the extremes are vocal and memorable, while the moderates are forgettable. This problem exists because the party leadership doesn’t set clear standards of toleration.

The bigger problem with widening the tent, then, isn’t just tolerating the far left. It’s doing so without alienating or marginalizing the ideological center.

The far left, not unjustly, has a reputation for purism and policing ideas. If that behavior becomes associated with the entire party, due to the tolerance of those views by moderate members, it’s no wonder swing voters feel they have no place in it.

In my post-election write-up on Medium, I argued that Democrats haven’t been honest—either with voters or with themselves. On topics like abortion, trade, and democracy, they’ve been hesitant to speak plainly in a way most moderate, swing, and non-voters understand for fear of alienating parts of their base.

I saw this firsthand at Biden and Harris events in North Carolina, where progressive activists shouted down candidates for not being "left enough" on key issues. Imagine trying to campaign against MAGA while your own side heckles you. That’s bad vibes. And it reinforces the stereotype that Democrats tolerate intolerance from their own left flank.

The “vibes” problem stems from these real, unresolved tensions within the party. And it’s evident those unresolved tensions has opened a path for the least tolerant in the coalition to become the vibe wielders.

How Democrats widen the tent—and keep it wide

Yglesias’s call for a “big tent” approach sounds appealing—welcoming more ideological diversity and creating room for a wider array of voters and views. But in practice, it falters if there’s no mechanism for addressing internal intolerance.

Yglesias’s answer to this predicament seems to be that the extremists work well for their constituents, and the moderates work well for theirs. But that doesn’t solve the stereotype problem. If either—or both—of these groups hold intolerant views, or are themselves intolerant of others within the coalition, the intolerance will always overshadow the moderate appeals. The stereotype will hold, and the tent will shrink again.

A clear example of this is currently playing out with Zohran Mamdani in New York City. His refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” has led Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Democratic leader, to withhold his endorsement. Jeffries rightly recognizes that this kind of messaging can have negative effects on the broader coalition. The phrase is widely understood to mean, at best, a call for the destruction of the state of Israel, and at worst, an incitement to violence against Jews worldwide. In either case, Jeffries saw that such rhetoric would be unacceptable to many within the Democratic coalition.

So, while in many ways I mostly agree with Yglesias, I also recognize that his plan, as presented, is too idealistic if it doesn’t consider how the views of individuals within the same tent interact—and how that interaction shapes the public’s perception of the party. Yglesias focuses too much on policy. And though policy is important, it ignores how difficult it is to build a big tent when that tent includes people who make others want to leave.

The paradox of tolerance applied to coalition-building: not everyone can coexist under the same roof if it includes too many intolerant viewpoints. Pretending otherwise weakens the entire group—especially when it comes to those looking in from the outside.

It’s not enough to just moderate the policy platform, which has been the bulk of center-left liberal prescriptions. That simply won’t help if the loudest, most visible voices within the party do not call out intolerable, extreme ideas in the coalition.

That’s why the solution can’t just be about “tolerance for its own sake.” It has to be tolerance of tolerance—the idea that Democrats welcome a diversity of views, but only from those willing to genuinely engage with others and willing to be mistaken. Tent members may agree on some things, but if they’re intolerant, their opposing world views will necessarily contradict—and then only one can become the image, the stereotype, the “vibes” of the coalition.