Related Articles
There’s a new centrist Democratic think tank in Washington, D.C., and its leaders think progressive groups have too much influence on the Democratic Party politicians who instinctively ignore the left.
The nation’s capital already has plenty of organizations designed to marginalize the largely powerless left. The Searchlight Institute intends to do it differently. The group, according to its website, will be “guided by Supermajority Thinking.” As such, it says it will “defy ideological boxes and embrace a mix of positions from across the spectrum,” positions that will theoretically have broad-based support.
“Ideas matter,” the organization says. “Throughout history, new ideas have spelled the end of one era and the beginning of another, rearranging political coalitions and sparking realignments. Today, we at the Searchlight Institute believe that a realignment is not just possible, but necessary.”
The Searchlight Institute is led by Adam Jentleson, a former top aide to Democrats’ most frustrating senator, John Fetterman, as well as the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Jentleson told The New York Times the group plans to utilize a “Shark Tank-style policy generation process” to produce ideas that move the Democratic Party’s thinking.
“We are going to produce products that call into question a lot of these assumptions we have been operating on for a long time,” he added.
The pitch has landed with billionaire donors: According to the Times, the Searchlight Institute expects to have an annual budget of $10 million. But its central objective — realignment — is a lofty one, and it’s hard to envision this group meeting it.
The institute talks on its website of refusing “to accept as gospel what the current ideological lines are,” and instead designing policy to produce “abundant housing, energy, and health care; a government capable of delivering for the people it represents; an economy where workers enjoy the fruits of their labor and big corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share; the world’s best schools.”
Its policy page, however, gives little hint of how the Searchlight Institute expects to help workers enjoy the fruits of their labor — let alone vastly expand the Democratic tent to spark political realignment.
The website does not contain policy proposals, per se, but rather consists of sets of questions regarding topics like artificial intelligence, education, energy, health care, housing, immigration, and national security, tax policy, and trade.
On housing, the Searchlight Institute asks: “How do we build housing rapidly to stop population decline and put a real dent in homelessness? What barriers exist to building more housing? What tradeoffs are people willing to accept as housing development ramps up?”
The group seems to accept as gospel that building more housing is the necessary solution. But it only anticipates, for some reason, that this new housing will encourage Americans to have more babies, or reduce (not even end) homelessness. Why would anyone think so small? Isn’t the obvious, broader goal to lower housing costs?
Elsewhere on its website, the organization says it will conduct “transparent and intellectually honest polling,” as it works to build “a pro-growth, pluralist, all-terrain populism.”
Some interesting things turn up in the institute’s first poll: A supermajority of Americans, 79 percent, think housing costs are too high. Only a quarter of Americans think building more housing will help lower housing costs.
When asked to name the biggest causes of high housing costs, the most common reasons given were that investors are buying up housing to turn a profit, materials used to build homes are too expensive, and landlords are raising rents faster than necessary. The least common answer, according to the results, was that it takes too long to build housing.
Despite the information gathered through this survey, the institute nonetheless writes at the end of the polling memo: “Voters rightly recognize that the cost of housing is too high and only getting higher. … The issue is supply. Making additional supply seem beneficial to others is critical.”
The memo adds, “Keep the policy relevant by connecting it to people’s bottom lines: More housing makes things cheaper for everybody.”
What happened to Supermajority Thinking? Did the survey results not call into question any assumptions that went into it?
Over the weekend on X, the Searchlight Institute’s vice president for public policy, Tré Easton — another former Fetterman staffer — responded to a post about how young people won’t trust the Democratic Party if it capitulates on abortion rights.
“If you think it’s ‘capitulation’ to make the party acceptable to people who may not share 100 percent of your views on a given issue, then what you’re asking for is a very small party that rarely wins elections and never gets the chance to act on a given issue,” Easton wrote.
Of course, abortion is one issue where a supermajority of Americans agree with Democrats. According to Pew, 63 percent of Americans now believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. People in red states keep voting in favor of abortion rights, even as they reject Democrats.
Easton soon conceded that abortion may not be the best issue to make the point that capitulation is necessary. “Guns, immigration, [and] trans folks in sports would probably have been better for this particular thought experiment,” he wrote.
Here’s an idea: Why not call this project the Capitulation Institute?
Sharks!
One can practically hear the investments rolling in.
