Nice Politics vs. Asshole Politics

Back during the 2020 primary, I wrote a Reddit post on called, “ Bernie Bros, you lost because you’re assholes. ”

Some context: During the 2016 Democratic Primary, Bernie Sanders developed a group of supporters whose passion for the democratic socialist’s agenda outstripped their own social sense for propriety and goodwill. On social media, and indeed in real life, they became known for a religious devotion to their candidate, spreading his word with the zeal of the converted.

On Reddit, this metastasized as endless slop regurgitating the same handful of talking points rising to the top of r/all every day. Did you know Bernie marched with Martin Luther King Jr.? Have you heard that millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share? Do you think the time has come for Medicare for All? Over and over, for months.

Annoying enthusiasm is table stakes for Reddit. Where Bernieism distinguished itself was in the rudeness, aggressiveness, and obnoxiousness of its principal proponents. In a word, they were assholes.

It was into this world that the subreddit Enough Sanders Spam was born, originally a big tent haven for anyone annoyed by the newly christened Bernie Bros, it became more of a standard-issue Democratic base community when a socialist takeover of the subreddit led to a splinter entity (as these things often do). In 2020, it roared back to life for obvious reasons.

But back to that post, written in the aftermath of the now historic Super Tuesday Biden surge.

Opposing Asshole Politics

In it, I articulated a theory of politics that I hadn’t entirely understood at the time. In truth, I still don’t. And, if I’m being totally honest, I’m not sure it really even holds up in our modern reality.

Here’s how I defined the problem:

“Since midway through the 2016 primary, Bernie’s supporters have taken on this sense of grievance and entitlement. It has festered, over time, into a movement where cynicism, rage, bullying, and ugliness aren’t just emotional outbursts, they’re the entire strategy. In fact, it’s become so acute that being mean is seen as an important part of the identity of being a Bernie supporter online. The fact is, that’s just not what the Democratic Party wants.”

And, to conclude, I posited this thesis:

“That movement will never happen, and it certainly won’t happen when its members can’t even get people like us on their side. Ugliness, darkness, rage, anger — those things don’t build movements among Democrats. That’s a Republican thing. And the disconnect between those two ideas, the ugliness and the alleged movement, is why voters turned against Bernie.”

I know this was true in 2008. I think it was still true by 2020. But I’m less sure this is true today.

In fact, I think the evidence shows that it’s definitely not true as of 2026.

Asshole Politics are Dangerous

As we see in Democratic fora online, in contested primary battles from Maine to Michigan, and even in certain polling, Democrats are more or less done with nice politics. It’s time for the assholes to reign.

But while I have come to think I’m wrong about what Democrats want, I don’t think I’m wrong about the corrosive nature inherent to Asshole Politics. It is alluring, to be sure. But absolute assholery corrupts absolutely.

Look at the GOP.

Now, I’m not going to argue that Republicans were ever particularly nice. But politicians as a rule had to at least convince ordinary people of their own humanity. Nixon and LBJ might have been cantankerous pricks, but on the stump, they exuded a kind of deeply human charm — even if much of it was projected onto them.

Donald Trump showed this was not necessary. You could insult the press, the public, your own supporters — it didn’t matter. Like an insult comic derives more laughs from ever crueler material, Trump unlocked new ways of being your favorite Asshole’s favorite Asshole.

And what have we seen of the GOP since then? A never-slowing descent into base cruelty and childish mockery. Take their attacks against Democratic senate candidate James Talarico — a rare bulwark of Nice Politics. They’re debasing themselves trying to create ever meaner insults, challenging his masculinity, his diet, his relationships. It all feels a bit JV, but high school is when assholes ruled the world.

Since giving themselves over to Asshole Politics, the GOP has not come for air. Even proto-Assholes like Mitt Romney and Thom Tillis were not quite Asshole enough for the modern movement. Policy be damned; the voters want pricks.

Everything is Gender, and Gender is So Much More

Much has been made on BlueSky and elsewhere of the Everything is Gender maxim. And there is an awful lot of truth to it. We see this play out in the Lakoff x Contrapoints theory of Mommy Politics vs. Daddy Politics, where Democratic theory is coded as feminine and nurturing — peace, welfare, equality — whole Republican theory is lumped in as masculine — assertive, realist, tough love.

I’m not here to refute that theory. I subscribe to it.

But I think our current politics are actually a bit downstream of gender — still hugely colored by those hues, but not exclusively using pink and blue.

Asshole Politics is, essentially, a flavor of Daddy Politics. Its most potent practices — swearing, weaponized ignorance of the policy process, refusal to apologize, maximalist with-us-or-against-us posture — are mostly unavailable to female politicians. But not exclusively so: women like Majorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Pam Bondi broke the Glasshole Ceiling to be sure.

Nice Politics, then, is a relative of Mommy Politics — built on mutual respect, honest assessment of tradeoffs, and a healthy respect for disagreement and nuance. Asshole Politicians break things, Nice Politicians try to understand the asshole’s motivations and create a solution for rebuilding that placates both. This asymmetry is why we’re here today.

Nice Politics is Harder, But Good Things Usually Are

Asshole Politics practitioners argue the only solution to the asymmetry is to give up on Nice Politics entirely. People like Pete Buttigieg and Mallory McMorrow, to this view, are vestigial beings unstuck from time. Now, they claim, we need brash truth tellers who may lie while they tell the truth, but that’s ok, because they’re brash. I guess.

And it might also be true that this is what Democratic voters want right now, cowed by a decade of Hall of Fame Assholery on display at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave each day. Fight assholes with assholes.

I get the desire. I do. And I understand that right now, winning is really all that matters.

But we cannot let Nice Politics die. We must not. The world where Nice Politics was dominant was the better world. Its practitioners are better at governing. Its principles and values are more aligned to those we on the left claim to uphold: equality, humanity, liberty, empathy.

Social media and Donald Trump have made the world a world of Assholes. It seems like we’re heading down a path where they will make Assholes of the Democrats too.

My only hope is that we don’t let our soul die in the process, and that we can fight for the Nice Politics to sprout up once more when it finally can — perhaps long after the field has been razed to the ground by the others.