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Kristoffer Ealy is a political scientist, political analyst, and professor in Southern California. He teaches American Government and political behavior, with a focus on political psychology, voting behavior, and political socialization. Subscribe to his Substack, The Thinking Class with Professor Ealy [ [link removed] ].
One of the most common things people ask me—or wonder about me—is where I’m at on the political spectrum.
Don’t get me wrong: people know I’m left. The confusion is usually how left, and whether I’m “consistent” when I don’t behave like an online political influencer who has to pick one lane and never deviate, like my ideology is a GPS route that can’t handle a detour.
Because yes: in one article I can be admonishing Bernie Sanders [ [link removed] ] about the way he talks to and about Black people when the topic of race comes up. And in my very next article I can be agreeing with Bernie Sanders [ [link removed] ] about the fecklessness of Democrats and the way they constantly seem to capitulate to Republicans. To some people, that might look like I’m all over the place.
I’m not.
The easiest way to describe me is: I’m pragmatic, and I want Democrats to win elections. Real simple. If I criticize a Democrat, it will always be followed with the caveat: still vote for them. I can hate a Democratic candidate during a primary and still understand the importance of that same candidate needing to win the general election—because there’s a 99.999% chance they’re running against a MAGA Republican who treats democracy like an expired coupon.
And I’m one of those Democrats who proudly admits to being a Democrat … not because I always love being a Democrat. Trust me, I don’t. But from a psychological perspective, team alignment matters. Politics is coalition work. It’s coordination. It’s collective action. It’s the difference between having a governing project and having a group chat full of righteous vibes.
That said, I completely understand why people who often vote for Democrats don’t want to align with the party.
Maybe you’re tired of being taken for granted. Maybe you’ve watched Democrats run like they’re going to be bold and then govern like they’re afraid of their own shadow. Maybe you don’t trust the consultant class that keeps selling “unity” like it’s a policy platform. Maybe you’re exhausted by the way Democrats sometimes scold their own voters harder than they ever scold Republicans. Maybe you just don’t want to claim a party label when you feel like your lived experience has been met with a shrug more than once.
Trust me: I get it. And you’re not wrong for feeling the way you feel.
What annoys me are the so-called “uber-progressives” who seem to go out of their way to derail Democrats and guarantee Republican wins—then act shocked when the right does exactly what the right always does once it has power.
Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility.
I’m talking about the Cenk Uygur-types who spent 2024 badmouthing Biden every chance they got, then tried to cosplay a presidential campaign even though he’s constitutionally ineligible for the office because he wasn’t born in the United States. And yes, that guy is exactly why I wrote, I Don’t Negotiate With White Supremacists [ [link removed] ] after he decided it was cute to break bread with Charlie Kirk at a Turning Point rally. That’s not “building coalitions.” That’s laundering extremism with a selfie and calling it strategy.
I’m talking about Nina Turner in 2020 calling Joe Biden “half a bowl of shit”—as if politics is Yelp and the presidency is a brunch spot that forgot her side of toast.
I did not appreciate Marc Lamont Hill’s lukewarm endorsement energy for Kamala Harris in 2024. I definitely did not appreciate Susan Sarandon talking shit, because some people treat elections like they’re auditioning for the role of “Most Morally Pure Person in the Room,” and they don’t care who gets hurt when the credits roll. And Amanda Seales did not become the patron saint of Blackness and political know-it-all-ism by being right all the time. She became that by being loud all the time. Those are not the same skill.
What’s nuts is I share the views of a lot of these people on substance. I’m not allergic to progressive ideas. I’m allergic to political illiteracy—especially from people my age or older, because I know you had to have seen Schoolhouse Rock [ [link removed] ] at least once. Which means, at minimum, you’ve had a cartoon teach you that government is not magic, power is not symbolic, and elections are not performance art.
Voting is not a favor to the person running for office. It’s not a Valentine’s Day card. It’s not a personality endorsement. It is an exercise of civic responsibility. I’ve voted in several elections. There have been several candidates I voted for that I did not particularly love, but I understood I have a list of things I want and need done—and most of the time the Democrat is the candidate who is going to do more of what I need done than the Republican.
It’s not “the lesser of two evils.” It’s a job. And sometimes when you’re hiring for a job, your choices are not perfect—but you still understand: these are the candidates. If none of them are great, you ask questions like:
Who is trainable?
Who almost understands but isn’t quite there yet?
Who will hire competent people?
Who can be pressured by voters and coalitions after they’re elected?
Who will sign the legislation you need signed?
Who will protect rights instead of auctioning them off for applause?
And here’s the one too many people pretend doesn’t matter until it’s already too late: Who will shape the judiciary?
I’ve heard several people say it’s okay not to vote for president but to vote in state and local races. That chorus included educated people like Eddie Glaude Jr. [ [link removed] ], who in 2016 encouraged leaving the top of the ticket blank when it was Hillary vs. Trump because his feelings were hurt that Sanders didn’t win the democratic primary.
Glaude is a brilliant man but this was the height of political illiteracy. When Michael Eric Dyson [ [link removed] ] heard his logic, he basically responded the way your auntie responds when you tell her you’re thinking about paying rent by “manifesting abundance.” Like, sir … are you okay? Do you need water? Should I call somebody?
Because there are so many issues to vote for outside of what’s in the immediacy. So many things that don’t trend. Things you don’t “feel” until they hit you in the face.
And one of the biggest of those issues is the last thing too many people did not take seriously in 2016: the Supreme Court.
Trump got two Supreme Court justices early—then lucked into getting a third pick with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And after that, Democrats still didn’t treat Supreme Court expansion like the five-alarm emergency it was.
It was talked about during the 2020 election season. In the 2020 vice presidential debate, Mike Pence and Kamala Harris even had a back-and-forth about court expansion and “court-packing,” but the problem was that nobody took the possibility of Supreme Court expansion seriously—like it was a weird theoretical question instead of a looming structural crisis.
And when Biden won in 2020—God bless him—he thought we were still playing by the old rules. In his defense, maybe he didn’t think Supreme Court expansion was needed. Maybe he was banking on a second term. Maybe he figured he’d get a couple retirements. He did get one excellent pick with Ketanji Brown Jackson, and maybe he thought he’d get at least two more picks in a second term.
Then 2024 happened, and Democrats managed to pull off a truly special form of self-sabotage after Biden’s horrible debate performance. Watching the party respond to that moment was like watching people trapped in a sinking boat decide the most important thing is arguing about who brought the wrong life jacket—while the water keeps rising.
And with the party’s reluctance to fully get behind Kamala Harris, here we sit in Trump’s second nonconsecutive term with the stakes getting uglier by the month. Trump is poised to get at least two more Supreme Court picks if the two oldest justices—Justice Thomas and Justice Alito—don’t make it out of this term due to retirement or an act of God. I’m not wishing anything on anyone, I’m just acknowledging what time does to human beings. Time is undefeated. And it does not care about your jurisprudence.
We are still in the fuck around stage. But if we don’t get a Democratic president who prioritizes expanding the Court, we’re going to be in the find out stage so fast it’ll feel like we time-traveled.
And yes—before Democrats start flinching like they just heard an “angry swing voter” sneezed on a focus group, let’s talk about language.
We are past exploratory committees. By 2029 and beyond, Democrats don’t need to explore anything except a spine.
When I say Democrats need to expand the Supreme Court, I do not mean pack the Supreme Court. Pack is something you do to a sack lunch. Pack is luggage. Pack is what you do when you’re trying to zip a suitcase that’s clearly begging for mercy.
The language has to be court expansion—and in the Democratic primary this has to be the language. Democrats cannot do what they usually have a penchant for doing and run away from this. They have to be bold and eloquent and make the case for why court expansion is necessary. They have to explain to voters that the rules have changed—and why they have changed.
Because “court-packing” is a propaganda frame. It’s meant to make Democrats sound like they’re doing something sneaky or corrupt—like they’re “rigging” the system—when the reality is that the system has already been bent out of shape by hardball politics and institutional capture. “Court expansion” is accurate. It’s clean. It refuses the right’s framing. And it keeps the argument where it belongs: legitimacy, democratic stability, and consequences.
Which matters even beyond domestic policy. That’s why I wanted to mention Trump’s lawless capture of Maduro in Venezuela. Whatever you think of Maduro—nobody is obligated to like him—the point is the precedent: a president deciding he can do whatever he wants abroad, whenever he wants, and dare anyone to stop him. A good Supreme Court can help make sure there are consequences for lawless executive behavior, instead of courts becoming a rubber stamp that treats “because I said so” as a constitutional doctrine.
And this is the part Democrats have to understand: you can’t “norms” your way out of an authoritarian project. You can’t commission your way out of a legitimacy crisis. You can’t hold a listening session with a power imbalance.
And this is the part Democrats have to understand: you can’t “norms” your way out of an authoritarian project. You can’t commission your way out of a legitimacy crisis. You can’t hold a listening session with a power imbalance.
You win. And then you govern like you understand what winning is for.
I’ve been consistent about that “winning matters” principle for a long time.
Back in 2020, when the Lincoln Project became a thing, while I have never been anything close to a Republican, I was an early adapter to what they were doing because they sounded like they wanted to win. They ran ads like people that wanted to win. And when I would wear a Lincoln Project shirt in front of older people—especially older Black people—they loved it. They asked questions. To this day, my soon-to-be 94-year-old grandmother loves that I write for Lincoln Square because she understands that they are people who want to win.
I don’t agree with every Lincoln Square writer or op personality on 100% of the issues—and honestly, voters with functioning brains aren’t supposed to. If you agree with everybody on everything, you’re not in a coalition, you’re in a group chat where nobody reads anything past the headline.
Disagreeing on issues isn’t a flaw. It’s evidence you’re thinking. It’s evidence you’re weighing tradeoffs, priorities, lived experience, and strategy instead of just adopting whatever the loudest person on your timeline declared to be “the only moral position” five minutes ago. In a healthy democracy, disagreement is normal. It’s how you pressure-test ideas. It’s how you refine policy. It’s how you avoid turning politics into a church where everyone has to recite the same creed or get excommunicated.
So no, I don’t need ideological uniformity to work with people. I need a shared understanding of what the stakes are, and what it takes to win.
That’s why I don’t agree with every Lincoln Square writer or op personality on 100% of the issues. But the one thing I agree with all of them on is this: Democrats need to win. And I can work with that.
Because politics—real politics—is about compromise. It’s about building something out of competing priorities and coming to a conclusion that most people can live with, even if nobody gets everything they want. It’s about negotiating policy, not negotiating reality.
But—and this is the part MAGA keeps trying to blur—people’s humanity is not up for debate. Basic human rights are not supposed to be treated like a bargaining chip. Your bodily autonomy isn’t a “difference of opinion.” Equal protection under the law isn’t an “interesting conversation starter.” The right to exist safely in public shouldn’t depend on which party won the last midterm.
And too often, that’s exactly how MAGA—and Trump’s activist Supreme Court posture—treats it: like fundamental rights are negotiable, reversible, and subject to partisan preference. Like the Constitution is a menu and they can just send back anything that makes them uncomfortable.
So yes, disagreeing on policy? Normal. Healthy, even. But when one movement keeps acting like human dignity is optional—and the courts keep enabling it—that’s not a “good faith disagreement.” That’s a threat. And that’s why winning isn’t a hobby for me. It’s the baseline requirement for protecting people who don’t get the luxury of treating politics like entertainment.
So when Democrats hear “expand the Supreme Court” and start reacting like somebody just suggested arson, I need them to take a breath and get serious. The question isn’t whether this makes you feel warm inside. The question is whether you want consequences for lawlessness and a Court that can function as a backstop instead of an accelerant.
Because if Democrats keep treating power like it’s tacky, Republicans are going to keep treating power like it’s oxygen.
And I’m not interested in being morally correct in the ruins. I’m interested in Democrats winning—so we can actually do the job.
So here’s the ask: act like winning is the first policy. Stop treating elections like a referendum on your personal purity and start treating them like the hiring decision they are. Vote in every race. Drag two people with you. Donate if you can. Volunteer if you can’t. Show up to the boring meetings. Pressure Democrats in the primaries and then back the nominee in the general like you understand what the alternative is. And when 2028 comes, don’t let them flinch—demand court expansion be said out loud, defended with facts, and pursued with urgency.

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