What Are These Freaks Doing?

Centrist think tanks running to the press aren't helping

Author

mister mix
January 15, 2026

Steve M has a typically good piece on the centrist freak out over “Abolish Ice”. Here’s the key point but the whole thing is worth a read:

Is this bad messaging? Would "abolish abuses, not ICE" be better messaging? And while maybe it would be politically risky to advocate abolition without replacement, what's the difference between saying "abolish abuses, not ICE" and saying "ICE should be burned to the ground and replaced with an entirely new agency"?

But that's not the point I'm here to make. What I really want to say is that if Searchlight and Third Way care about the electoral propsects of the Democratic Party, they should shut the fuck up about this.

Is saying "Abolish ICE" bad for Democrats' future electoral prospects? Under these conditions, I suspect not. But I could be wrong! However, I'm not wrong to point out that it hurts the Democratic Party electorally every time a centrist think tank races off to the press saying, "Look how radically left-wing the Democrats are! No wonder they can't win elections! They're out of step with the American public!"

On ICE in January 2026, angry Democrats don't appear to be out of step with the American public. But when the press reports that Democrats are out of step, that reinforces a narrative that is very harmful to Democrats. Yet centrist think tanks spread these harmful messages as often as they possibly can. Why, you'd almost imagine that they want to hurt Democrats' electoral prospects. You'd almost imagine that they want Democrats to lose elections.

There's a Munchausen-by-proxy quality to the centrist think tanks' incessant attacks on Democrats. The think tanks harm the health of the party, then proclaim that they're the cure for the party's ailments.

I think we’ve beaten centrists to death in the posts and comments here, yet there’s no smaller group that has a bigger impact on the DC press than groups like Searchlight and the Third Way. They have no natural constituency. Normal people don’t think like they do. But they are the self-appointed wet blankets of the Democratic Party. Anytime the base gets excited about anything — and they’re certainly excited, angry and motivated by the murder of a mom in Minneapolis — this group decides they need to tell us all to calm down. And they do it with complex messaging and complex proposals.

Of all the bad things that are happening in the Trump Administration, having masked thugs roaming the streets and dragging mostly innocent people into their vans is the one that’s making the most news and getting the most political traction. People want it to stop. It’s simple: if Democrats can say “give us power and we’ll make it stop” it really doesn’t matter too much what mechanism we’re going to use to make it stop. To use Obama’s (correct) metaphor, the poetry is “make it stop” and the prose is abolishing ICE, breaking up Homeland Security, whatever. The prose can come later. Stopping needs to come first.

It’s typical of the complexity mentality that dominates centrist politics that Ritchie Torres proposed that ICE agents wear a QR code that can be used to identify them if scanned. I wonder how many consultants are sitting around dreaming of getting the contract to implement this over-complicated Rube Goldberg scheme. Instead, how about this: no more masks, and mandatory last name and id # on the front and back of every ICE agent in big block letters. There’s a proposal that can literally be implemented in a day using $100 worth of Sharpies. Next step: wear a fucking uniform.

The complexity of centrist messaging and proposals is on purpose. It muddies the water. It slows down progress. It kills excitement. It puts the wonks in charge. It makes normal people hate the government because they never seem to get from point A to point B without going through points A.1, A.2, A.3 and A.4 first. I agree with Steve M: it appears that they really want Democrats to lose elections.

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