There are coalitions everywhere for the eye to see.
What is a set of "strange bedfellows" in American politics who could achieve progressive policy success if they worked together?
For several decades, the two national political parties were composed of voting blocs that existed in more or less stable “marriages.” In spite of their differences, the working class, big-city liberals, and ethnic minorities were joined in union under the aegis of the Democratic Party. The GOP, meanwhile, officiated a happy partnership between the capitalist class, suburban homeowners, and former segregationists.
Over the last decade, though, we’ve seen a series of political annulments and separations. College students and assimilating immigrants can’t decide if they would rather ghost each other or get together. On the other side of the (wedding) aisle, wealthy suburbanites are coming around to the idea that there isn’t much separating them from their urban counterparts. Cultural issues may be replacing class interests as the country’s major cleavages. As a consequence of shocks, stresses, and shifting vibes, we’ve moved from enduring political marriages to something else. It’s every interest group for itself—fuck, fuck up, fuck around and find out. (Can we say that on Substack?) No strings attached. American politics is in its situationship era.
The volatility of the dating game—frequent excitement, predictable disappointment—can blind us to the truth behind an internet profile or bus-stand advertisement and turn us into cynics about the whole thing. Will their industry association betray us in a vote on loosening pollution regulations as long as they get a tax break in exchange? Building trust is hard, demolishing it is easy—especially when you’re paranoid about where your current bedfellow is going to be sleeping tomorrow.
This is where we step in. Today we’re bringing in three (political) relationship counselors par excellence to dispense some advice on which interest groups might benefit from pairing up. Djezson Kid reminds us to go back to the basics of campaign finance and ethics reform: Honesty is the best policy. Bacteriophage suggests that it might be time for cities and universities to get a little toxic (by exploring a kink or two in the tax system). John Brown argues that mining-sector workers and public transit stakeholders have more in common than they might think. Even if the times have changed, there’s always room for an enemies-to-lovers arc.
What is a set of "strange bedfellows" in American politics who could achieve progressive policy success if they worked together?
I. Djezson Kid
A small revolution is brewing in ruby-red Montana. Far beyond the churn of DC’s politics, bipartisan organizers are doggedly attempting to put a unique reform on the November ballot: a prohibition on corporate dark money in Montana elections. Whether they know it or not, these reformers may just have unlocked the blueprint to long-term progressive policy success.
Dubbed the Montana Plan, this response to Citizens United―which essentially allowed corporations the right to spend unlimited sums of money in elections―plans to employ an innovative legal strategy to go after corporations’ power to involve themselves in elections. But the legal argument, while fascinating, isn’t the point. Instead, it’s the movement. In a state that went for Donald Trump by 20 points, this “good-government” initiative has 70 percent support. By necessity, only a movement consisting of strange bedfellows could even have a chance of pulling this off. There’s a lesson to be learned here: Campaign ethics and finance reform must be the bedrock of any future progressive movement.
Broadly, Americans hate being screwed over, especially when those who get ahead are those who brazenly flout the rules.1 That sentiment helped fuel Donald Trump’s rise―but it’s a double-edged sword. He once promised to drain the swamp; now Donald Trump’s kleptocratic and kakistocratic cronies are plundering the government, inviting corruption and cronyism across the board, and almost certainly scheming to cover up the President’s pedophilia.
Progressive-minded reformers need to seize the moment. Americans of all political stripes are still fed up. Ethics and campaign finance reforms are a natural, necessary, and relatively non-politicized foundation upon which progressive and non-progressive groups can build trust and muscle memory working with each other, while making it harder for megadonors to oppose progressive-coded initiatives later down the road.
Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie are certainly reading those tea leaves. Together, these strange bedfellows are holding Trump’s feet to the fire on the Epstein files. Their partnership also shows the power of pursuing ethics reform as a means of building trust that branches into other policy spheres: After weeks of collaboration on Epstein, Khanna and Massie together brought a War Powers Resolution against President Trump’s military strikes in Iran.
On issues from education to the environment to immigration, there are coalitions everywhere for the eye to see. But imagining nominally opposed leaders working in concert is the easy part. Building a durable coalition that can eventually deliver progressive change across multiple policy dimensions will take more than cobbling together two strange bedfellows.
Instead, progressives need to seize on Americans’ cross-partisan distaste for corruption and unfairness. Government corruption is already Americans’ top public worry; the left can find partners who agree, foster trust on ethics reform, and expand their collaboration into other issue areas. In short: Stay on message and don’t let philosophical differences on other issues divide you. It’s hardly groundbreaking stuff, but the implications of this playbook are important.
There probably isn’t a latent set of “strange bedfellows” looming beneath America’s political surface, waiting to be activated. The bonds between “strange bedfellows,” to the extent they are strange at all, need to be forged through shared advocacy and iterated trust. A Montana-style populism grounded in campaign finance and ethics reform―a movement that promises a government responsive to citizens and not to the billionaire class―can give rise to the coalition that progressive policy success demands.
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II. Bacteriophage
As higher education faces unprecedented attacks from the federal government, from the dismantling of diversity programs to the stripping of millions of dollars of funding over weaponized accusations of antisemitism, progressives might be tempted to stand on the side of universities. But there may be opportunities for progressives to instead leverage these attacks to extract concessions that previously seemed unachievable.
Considering the extreme measures taken by the federal government against prominent schools, progressives might argue that the university system—flawed as it may be—is worth defending at this juncture, especially if the alternative is the Turning Point-ification of higher education. Rather than immediately jumping to defend large private universities, progressives could leverage federal threats to extract tax revenue from these institutions.
Columbia University is the city’s largest private landowner, with New York University close behind it. Despite the wealth they amass through real estate, neither university pays property taxes, costing the city over $300 million in revenue annually. In 2023, arguing that they were exploiting their tax-exempt status to act as real estate developers, then-Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani introduced legislation that would have stripped both universities of their tax-exempt status and redirected funds to public universities. While the legislation ultimately failed, Mamdani now finds himself in the mayor’s seat, which is uniquely positioned to extract payments from universities through an alternative channel: payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOTs.
There is ample precedent for private universities entering into PILOT agreements in the face of legal action. Unique to New York City, the mayor can administer PILOTs without approval from the city council so long as new revenues flow directly into the city’s general fund―meaning that Mamdani would face less resistance to implementing PILOTs than he did at the state level.
To be sure, one can imagine a disturbingly plausible scenario in which the federal and city governments force Columbia and NYU into PILOTs as a penalty for antisemitism or “wokeness.” Of course, extracting tax revenue from universities under a weaponized ideological premise would hardly be construed as a progressive victory, but the alternative possibility of using that tax revenue to win progressive concessions is a tantalizing one, too. For example, what if the mayor’s office could enter into conditional PILOTs with Columbia and NYU that could be paused and replaced with other forms of relief if federal funding were revoked beyond a certain threshold? The city could suspend payments, offer alternative tax credits, and even provide legal support for universities to defray the cost of litigation in such a scenario. Indeed, the city would also be acting in its own interest in mitigating the economic fallout that could result from the gutting of Columbia and NYU. PILOTs would thereby act as insurance against federal attacks: Pay a fee now, but receive the support of the city in the worst case scenario. Less a case of strange bedfellows than a strategy to use the monster under the bed to win concessions.
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III. John Brown
Critical minerals have dominated the news over the last few years as the transition to clean energy and electric vehicles has driven demand for minerals like lithium, copper, and aluminum. With the transportation sector responsible for the majority of US greenhouse gas emissions, decarbonization through investments in EVs and public transit will be critical to meet climate goals. Yet mining for critical minerals often comes with serious social and environmental impacts, including infringement of indigenous sovereignty, poor labor conditions, and land degradation. As a result, we must balance investments in mining expansion with investments in public transportation, minerals recycling, and resource planning.
To envision what a justice-forward clean transportation transition could look like, a recent documentary from Climate and Community Institute (CCI) brought together a set of “strange bedfellows” across the US transportation supply chain: mining justice advocates, battery factory organizers, transit organizers, tribal nation members, United Auto Workers from Chicago and Detroit, Amalgamated Transit Union bus mechanics from DC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, and Teamster delivery drivers from Amazon.
The documentary follows the group as they travel across Nevada, visiting the Thacker Pass lithium mine (one of the world’s largest lithium mines), the Anaconda Copper mine, the Silver Peak lithium mine, and the Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge (currently being threatened by a new mining exploration project). The group set out to understand what a transition to clean transportation could look like if it were centered on the demands of those fighting for justice along different parts of the transportation supply chain—including this group of strange bedfellows.
This is the right approach. Imagine if we could build a coalition of clean and public transit stakeholders, from advocates organizing around mining projects to unionized public transit bus drivers and transit users. Such a coalition puts workers and public transit users at the center of the transition to clean, electric transportation. It could prioritize investments in public transit for the many, over a one-to-one transition from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles, thus shrinking the total amount of critical minerals that we’d need to mine in the first place. It could allow people on the frontlines of the clean transportation supply chain to make decisions about the terms under which mining may be acceptable and for what ends.
We know that mining giants and big automakers are driven by shareholders, who would want to maximize extraction or vehicle sales if it would boost profit margins. But business as usual won’t solve climate change, or the injustices that are part and parcel of a green transition reliant on critical minerals.
By putting the power into the hands of a people- and worker-first coalition, which can parse thorny questions around extraction and the green transition and what a justice-centered clean energy transition should look like, we could build a transit system that works for the many. In fact, such a coalition may not really be strange bedfellows at all―just a group of individuals separated by space and sector but united in their search for justice.
Our next issue will be published on April 15.
If you have thoughts, please respond below or send us a letter to the editor at caravanserai.forum [at] gmail [dot] com.
Some of our country’s most successful and enduring political movements (notably, the original Progressives) were borne out of the realization that the government was working for the haves—Big Business, the wealthy, the elites—at the expense of the have-nots. Needless to say, politicians—such as Bernie Sanders and, of course, Donald Trump—have recently seized on this populist valence to great success.