With the midterms barreling down on them like a blind date and 2020 not far behind, Democrats find themselves in much the same situation that Republicans did in 2010, with grassroots activists setting the agenda for the party elite. Just as the GOP establishment incorporated Tea Party demands into its official platform, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and other presidential hopefuls have begun to parrot talking points from the most extreme sectors of progressive politics. Firebrands like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley are rapidly replacing the Democratic old guard—think Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden—and this in turn has fueled the perception that the American Left is at a crossroads. It can either double down on starry-eyed idealism, and against capitalism, or it can swing back toward the center, advancing pragmatic, attainable reforms that fall well within the Overton Window.

In one sense that perception is accurate. Yet framing the dilemma as a “crossroads” also has the unfortunate effect of implying that the Democrats’ travails are somehow new or unprecedented when they are anything but. 

After the 2016 election, progressives understandably began to move away from the technocratic elitism of the Clinton clan, opting instead for younger, socialist candidates like Ocasio-Cortez. But both models—party-based oligarchy and grassroots activism—have deeper roots than many realize. The origins of the technocratic Clinton model trace back to Walter Lippmann, founding editor of The New Republic and a student of Harvard pragmatist philosophers George Santayana and William James. In his 1914 classic Drift and Mastery, Lippmann argued that in order to preserve harmony in an increasingly complex state, power must be entrusted to a technocratic few, whose specialized professional knowledge and political tact would both ensure stability and promote the general good. The legacies of Drift and Mastery were many; progressives today have Lippmann to thank for being conscious consumers, valuing organized labor, and having faith in science.

By contrast, the origins of the grassroots model trace back to the student movement of the 1960s, which cast itself as a democratic antidote to an entrenched establishment. The New Left took shape on campuses in Berkeley, California and Port Huron, Michigan. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the fresh-faced movement led by college undergrads and organized labor, endowed progressivism with a newfound moral dimension. Students vowed to “put their bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels” of oppressive systems of power. Uncompromising in its demands for a better world and unequivocal in its moral beliefs, the SDS’s 1962 “Port Huron Statement” brought “participatory democracy” to the forefront of progressive rhetoric.

Why has the SDS ethos won out, at least for the moment? Part of the answer is that both parties—Democrats and Republicans—have weakened themselves with a series of ill-conceived reforms. In a recent essay for The American Interest, Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro argue that by expanding the role of primaries in the presidential nomination process party establishments lost their ability to serve as institutional gatekeepers. Downgrading the role of superdelegates within the Democratic Party had a similar effect. As Rosenbluth and Shapiro put it, the problem with both reforms is that “bottom-up decision-making is not the same thing as democracy. Political parties are the core institution of democratic accountability because parties, not the individuals who support or comprise them, can offer competing visions of the public good.” Having undercut their own disciplinary mechanisms, Democrats began to find it much more difficult to fend off populist challengers.

But the problem is ideological as well as institutional. Hillary Clinton was all policy and no vision, the standard-bearer for a cold and bloodless liberalism that would have made even Lippmann cringe. As a result, Lippmann’s brand of politics has fallen out of style. Although Lippmann is often heralded as the father of American progressivism, these days technocracy is most frequently associated with “the swamp,” a deep-state of Ivy League policy wonks making backroom deals. These criticisms of Lippmann’s technocratic program are somewhat justified, and the demise of Clinton demonstrates the dangers of moving too far in the Lippmannian direction.

This means the progressivism pendulum is unlikely to swing back toward the center anytime soon, as long as the New Left 2.0 holds the establishment under its spell. Liberal leaders have been unable to push back, to say “no” to some of the demands of young progressives. Unlike establishment conservatives, who have at least made a stab at resisting the xenophobic alt-right forces sweeping their ranks, establishment liberals have embraced radicalism. There is little difference these days between the impassioned rhetoric of an Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker and an idealistic college campus liberal. The crisis in leadership is compounded by the generational differences between older and younger progressives, with older Dems favoring technocrats like Clinton and “woke millennials” flocking to idealists like Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley who champion radical participatory democracy. On the right, extremism remains (barring Trump) on the fringe, while on the left, it is much closer to the mainstream of party politics. The progressive left has shown itself unwilling to crack down on its own radical populism, thereby alienating voters who still prefer the stay-the-course pragmatism of Lippmann to daydreams of an American Sweden.

There is, however, a crucial difference between today’s progressives and their SDS predecessors. In 2016, voters perceived (correctly I think) that Clinton lacked the moral message and grassroots appeal; they were right to demand a politics of morality that went beyond rank technocracy. But any sort of democratic reform movement must contain a positive spiritual or moral message, making a claim on the ultimate dignity and power of the individual. The Port Huron Statement, somewhat forgotten by modern-day progressives, did just that. “We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love,” the statement proclaimed. Values like hope, charity, and community—the glue holding together the 64-page document—were once the rock-bed of progressive rhetoric, keeping its technocratic leaders spiritually grounded. But that is no longer the case: From universal healthcare and free education to sweeping protections for illegal immigrants and transgendered people, the current progressive agenda reads more like a hodgepodge of special interests than a unifying moral narrative. It has something for everyone, but stands for nothing.

To make matters worse, this bloated wish list is coupled with an arrogant complacency. An idealistic attitude of political “fair play” has led to political suicide, a fact nowhere more evident than during the Kavanaugh hearings, when Democrats seemed unwilling to ask substantive questions and preferred instead to soapbox. As the columnist Dave Barry once said: “Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.” Add to this the solipsism of carrots, the self-righteousness of cabbage, and the political extremism of rhubarb. In October, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt felt moved to tell Democrats to “get involved” in politics, demonstrating the extent of complacency on the progressive Left. Put another way, Lippmann’s professional class seems unwilling to wield the power it has, for over a century, believed itself justified in holding. Conservatives, for their part, have been able to achieve (albeit with many compromises along the way) their own ideological ends.

With the midterms just days away, the Democratic Party must either jettison its more idealistic progressives or reinvigorate their ranks with a Lippmannian commitment to the here-and-now of political mobilization. Otherwise they are doomed to become the “wet-rag” party, swept along by forces that, as Lippmann wrote, “move beneath the troubled surface of events.” Rather than treating the current conservative dominance as an unprecedented and dangerous takeover, Democrats should also show less hubris toward their political opponents, remembering that having morality on your side does not guarantee political success. Finally, establishment progressives must begin to lay down the law within their own party, leading from the top-down to suppress intra-party squabbling.

But the stakes go well beyond the midterms. In 2016, a combination of institutional weakness and ideological radicalism brought us Donald Trump. More than a few commentators argued that this was a distinctively Republican problem; Hillary Clinton herself said that political polarization has not been symmetrical, a clear jab at the GOP’s perceived extremism. But after Clinton’s defeat, Democrats have arguably become every bit as extreme and un-pragmatic as their opponents. Their party institutions have arguably eroded even more than those of the Republicans—a trend that shows no sign of slowing down. Without a healthy synthesis of strategy and vision—one that encompasses both starry-eyed millennials and security-conscious middle-aged voters—the risk isn’t just that Democrats will lose to Trump; it’s that they will end up with a Trump-like figure of their own.

Let’s hope we don’t get there.