THERE MAY BE NO MIDDLE

What Happens When Compromise Becomes Surrender

THERE MAY BE NO MIDDLE

What Happens When Compromise Becomes Surrender

By Jim Reynolds | www.reynolds.com

August 11, 2026

Editor’s Note

This essay examines the political logic of positions publicly advanced by DSA and allied activists. Terms such as “oppression,” “complicity,” “exploitation,” and “genocide” are used here to describe that movement’s own framing, not to endorse it. The purpose is to show how changing the moral description of an issue can change what positions are considered acceptable inside a political coalition.

Part I left us with a rather inconvenient discovery.

The Democratic Party is fond of describing itself as a big tent, which is an agreeable metaphor so long as one does not inquire too closely into where its occupants propose to go when they leave it.

Political coalitions have always contained quarrelsome people. Indeed, without quarrelsome people there would be little need for politics. One Democrat wants to spend $100 billion, another only $50 billion, and after the customary speeches, threats, television appearances and lunches nobody admits attending, they settle on $75 billion and announce that statesmanship has prevailed.

This is called compromise.

But some disagreements resist arithmetic.

Josh Gottheimer wants immigration enforcement reformed. The Democratic Socialists of America want ICE abolished.

Elissa Slotkin has drawn a distinction between offensive weapons for Israel and defensive systems such as Iron Dome. DSA wants American military assistance to Israel ended.

Chuck Schumer has spent much of his career defending an American commitment to Israeli security that he has called ironclad. DSA regards precisely that commitment as something to be dismantled.

And then there is the Senate, which DSA proposes to abolish.

Chuck Schumer, unless developments have escaped his attention, runs it.

One is tempted to suggest a compromise under which the Senate is abolished on alternate Tuesdays, but even Washington has not yet perfected that arrangement.

The problem is not that these people prefer different percentages.

They disagree about the continued existence of the thing being negotiated.

There is no especially useful midpoint between ICE and no ICE. There is no mathematical average between military assistance and none. One cannot abolish the Senate while keeping the nice parts — like the senators.

At some point compromise ceases to be arithmetic.

The question becomes:

What exactly is supposed to survive the compromise?

That is the question now working its way through the Democratic coalition.

REFORM AND ABOLITION

Consider immigration enforcement.

Gottheimer has hardly been an apologist for ICE. He has proposed training requirements, de-escalation standards, body cameras, constitutional safeguards and congressional oversight.

One may quarrel with the details, but his premise is unmistakable: immigration enforcement is a legitimate function of government, and the institution charged with carrying it out should therefore be made more professional, restrained and accountable.

The abolitionist begins somewhere else.

If ICE is not merely badly administered but inherently oppressive, reform is almost beside the point. Why improve the administration of an institution whose very existence is regarded as unjust?

The reformer says the institution is necessary but defective.

The abolitionist says its supposed necessity is the defect.

There is considerable political distance between those propositions, and no amount of cheerful discussion about the dimensions of the tent shortens it.

Israel presents the same structural problem.

Slotkin and Jon Ossoff have already moved left on weapons policy. Part I examined them precisely because they occupy the territory where ordinary compromise ought to work: restrictions on some offensive weapons while preserving assistance for Israeli defensive capability.

That position rests upon a distinction.

Israeli conduct may deserve restraint while Israel’s ability to defend itself remains a legitimate American interest.

DSA rejects the distinction.

Its endpoint is not fewer bombs, tighter conditions or additional humanitarian safeguards.

It is the termination of American military assistance.

At which point the argument is no longer about the thermostat.

It is about whether the furnace belongs in the house.

And this brings us, rather sooner than one might have expected, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

THE AOC PROBLEM

If DSA were merely complaining that Chuck Schumer or Brad Schneider failed to meet its ideological standards, there would be nothing especially interesting about it.

One does not ordinarily expect Chuck Schumer to pass a socialist purity test.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another matter.

AOC arrived in Washington by defeating a powerful establishment Democrat and quickly became the national symbol of the insurgent left — democratic socialist, Green New Deal champion, advocate of abolishing ICE and frequent antagonist of the old Democratic hierarchy. Even DSA publications celebrated that original insurgent identity.

One might reasonably have supposed she possessed sufficient progressive credentials to survive inspection.

Apparently not.

In 2024, DSA’s National Political Committee made its national endorsement of Ocasio-Cortez conditional. Among its requirements were that she publicly oppose all funding to Israel, including Iron Dome, support BDS, and oppose efforts it believed conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism. DSA subsequently withdrew the endorsement and described some of her actions as a “deep betrayal.”

There is something almost exquisite about the episode.

For years Republicans had pointed to AOC as evidence of how far left the Democratic Party was traveling.

DSA examined the alleged radical and discovered a moderate.

But the joke conceals something much more consequential.

Political movements do not merely hold opinions.

They establish boundaries.

Once the boundary exists, politicians can be measured against it.

Acceptable or unacceptable.

Ally or disappointment.

Faithful or betrayal.

And eventually:

Who must move?

DSA did not simply disagree with AOC.

It established a standard, attached an endorsement to compliance with that standard, and withdrew the endorsement when its conditions were not met.

That is not merely philosophical disagreement.

That is enforcement.

And notice what was being enforced.

The dispute was no longer whether Netanyahu could be criticized, whether offensive weapons should be restricted, or whether Israel should face conditions on its conduct.

It included Iron Dome.

A defensive system.

Indeed, AOC herself had publicly joined a 2024 statement opposing additional offensive aid while explicitly supporting strengthening Iron Dome and other defensive systems.

The remaining argument had therefore become quite simple:

Some military assistance.

Or none.

DSA drew the line.

AOC stood on the wrong side of it.

And now we can see something larger.

THE PLAYBOOK

Here we need to be especially precise.

These are not our descriptions of ICE, Israel, capitalism or the Senate.

They are descriptions and premises employed by the ideological movement we are examining.

That distinction is essential because it reveals the mechanism.

Once a movement successfully changes the description of the thing — from flawed to oppressive, from controversial assistance to complicity, from unequal capitalism to exploitation — it also changes what counts as a morally respectable response.

Change the description, and you change the moral frame.

Change the moral frame, and you narrow the range of acceptable compromise.

That is the playbook.

It need not be written down as a set of instructions. It need not be coordinated in some room. It is more powerful than that because the sequence follows naturally from the premises.

First, redefine the issue.

Then moralize the definition.

Then narrow the range of acceptable responses.

Then measure politicians against the new range.

Finally, punish those who remain outside it.

Consider ICE.

If it is merely inefficient, reform it.

If it is abusive, restrain it.

If it is badly administered, replace the administrators.

But if the institution itself is defined as oppressive, reform becomes morally suspect.

Why improve oppression?

The same structure appears in the argument over Israel.

A Democrat who believes Israeli military conduct has become excessive can condition weapons, restrict particular transfers or demand humanitarian safeguards while still believing that the underlying U.S.-Israel relationship is legitimate.

But DSA describes U.S. support for Israel through the language of genocide and rejects exceptions even for Iron Dome; in 2025 it again criticized AOC for opposing an amendment that would have cut $500 million in Iron Dome funding, saying its arms-embargo position allowed “no exceptions.”

Again, that is DSA’s premise, not ours.

But once the premise is accepted, the available moral choices change.

Compromise no longer looks prudent.

It looks complicit.

Twenty percent complicity is not a particularly inspiring campaign platform.

The same mechanism extends elsewhere.

If capitalism merely produces excesses, regulate it.

If capitalism itself is exploitation, regulation perpetuates exploitation.

If the Senate is merely dysfunctional, reform it.

If the Senate itself is fundamentally illegitimate, reform rather conspicuously misses the point.

• The description changes first.

• Then the moral frame changes.

• Then the permissible response changes.

• And finally the politician must change.

• That is what makes this more than rhetoric.

It is political leverage.

Once the middle has been morally redefined, occupying it carries a cost.

And now return to AOC.

AOC MOVES

In 2024, she still publicly distinguished offensive military aid from systems such as Iron Dome.

DSA rejected the distinction.

In 2025, it publicly rebuked her again over Iron Dome.

Then, at a DSA forum in 2026, Ocasio-Cortez said she would oppose future military aid to Israel even when asked specifically about defensive capabilities. She subsequently confirmed that Israel should finance systems such as Iron Dome itself.

We should be precise.

We cannot demonstrate that DSA caused the change.

Politicians change their minds. Wars change facts. Constituencies change. Moral judgments change. Occasionally politicians may even examine an issue and arrive at a different conclusion, a possibility political science should probably preserve for completeness.

That does not prove causation.

It does, however, oblige us to notice that AOC moved further left as DSA’s influence within the Democratic coalition was becoming more consequential.

For our purposes, that is the more interesting fact.

The standard was real.

The enforcement was real.

The movement was real.

And even AOC was not exempt from it.

If an ideological movement is willing to find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez insufficiently aligned, exactly how much room does its definition of the big tent ultimately leave for Brad Schneider?

Or Gottheimer?

Or Jacky Rosen?

Or Schumer?

These are not Republicans peering nervously through the tent flap.

They are Democrats who have spent careers inside it.

THE FLOOR MOVES

Political labels applied to the Left have an odd tendency to migrate.

Conservative labels, by comparison, seem remarkably stationary. A conservative of twenty years ago may be called many things today, but usually not because the definition of conservatism has traveled several exits down the highway.

On the Left, the floor moves — seemingly always in one direction.

Moderate.

Liberal.

Progressive.

Radical.

We imagine little marks painted permanently on the floor.

But they are not permanent.

Yesterday’s radical can become tomorrow’s moderate without changing a single opinion.

The movement simply travels past him.

A position begins at the edge. Then it becomes discussable. Then respectable. Then expected.

Eventually failure to adopt it becomes evidence of insufficient commitment.

At which point another position assumes its former place at the edge.

Call it the ideological ratchet.

AOC gives us an unusually clean view because she began as the insurgent.

Then the insurgent herself failed the insurgency’s test.

No order from headquarters was required. Nobody needed to send a memorandum instructing Democratic officeholders to move four degrees left before close of business Friday.

Standards do the work.

Endorsements do the work.

Activists do the work.

Primaries do the work.

Definitions of what constitutes a respectable progressive do the work.

Eventually politicians learn the price of standing still.

And what about another DSA star, Mayor Zohran Mamdani?

Well, he has, among other difficulties, a city to run, finite resources, a mobile tax base and the unpleasant discovery that arithmetic is not especially ideological.

Reality has begun negotiating with him directly.

But our question is not whether individual socialists are capable of negotiating.

Of course they are.

Our question is what happens to a political coalition when certain negotiations are defined as morally impermissible.

WHO MUST TOLERATE WHOM?

This is where the familiar big-tent argument begins to turn inside out.

For years the question has usually been posed in one direction:

Can establishment Democrats accommodate the socialist left?

Perhaps we have it backwards.

Can the socialist left indefinitely accommodate the establishment?

Can a movement that regards Zionism as part of the problem permanently share political power with Brad Schneider declaring, “I am a Zionist”?

Can activists who characterize American military assistance as complicity permanently tolerate Chuck Schumer calling America’s commitment to Israeli security ironclad?

Can abolitionists remain satisfied with Gottheimer’s insistence that immigration enforcement continue?

Can advocates of fundamental constitutional reconstruction coexist indefinitely with politicians whose careers have been spent operating within — and defending — the existing structure?

Perhaps they can.

American political parties have endured stranger marriages.

But a genuine big tent imposes an obligation rarely mentioned by those celebrating its capaciousness.

Tolerance must operate in both directions.

The establishment must tolerate the insurgents.

The insurgents must tolerate the establishment.

Otherwise the big tent is not a settlement.

It is a truce.

And truces have the inconvenient habit of lasting only until one side concludes that it no longer needs them.

THE SPLIT

That is why I believe DSA may eventually split the Democratic coalition.

Not necessarily by forming another party. American party labels are remarkably durable, and our electoral system is exceptionally hostile to third parties.

The more interesting split may happen while everybody continues calling himself a Democrat.

Political separation begins before registration changes.

A constituency loses influence.

A politician once considered acceptable becomes suspect.

An endorsement disappears.

Activists move to another candidate.

The primary electorate changes.

Positions that once enjoyed veto protection inside the coalition lose it.

Eventually one faction discovers that it remains inside the same party but no longer has much say in defining what the party means.

The stationery survives.

The coalition underneath it does not.

Part I already showed that several of the Democratic figures in our sample are moving. But it also established the distinction on which this trilogy depends:

Movement is not destination. We saw that in Part I of this series.

The question is what happens when movement is no longer enough.

MOVE. FIGHT. LOSE.

At that point the choices become increasingly simple.

Move.

Fight.

Lose.

Some will move.

AOC did.

Others will fight.

They will draw the line.

Defend the alliance the insurgents want ended.

Defend the institution the insurgents want abolished.

Defend the constitutional arrangements the insurgents want reconstructed.

Then organize around the refusal.

Recruit candidates. Contest primaries. Raise money. Win party committees.

Make the other side move instead.

That is what an actual ideological struggle inside a political party looks like.

And then there is the third possibility.

Lose.

Remain where you are.

Decline to move.

Fail to fight effectively.

And discover that the party has moved around you.

The endorsement disappears.

The activists choose somebody else.

The challenger arrives.

And eventually the politician receives that most concise of ideological memoranda:

the election result.

Part I established the contradiction.

These differences increasingly concern not merely how far Democrats should travel, but where the road ends.

Part II gives us the mechanism.

First the description changes.

Then the moral frame changes.

Then the range of acceptable compromise narrows.

Then the standard is enforced.

Then somebody has to move.

That sequence is what threatens the old Democratic coalition.

Not because democratic socialists have invented ideological stubbornness. History managed to produce an ample supply before DSA arrived.

The danger comes when one faction no longer regards the other faction’s position as merely mistaken.

It regards accommodation with that position as morally unacceptable.

At that point there may indeed be no middle.

The 50-yard line disappears.

The big tent begins to look less like a permanent home than temporary shelter.

And sooner or later somebody asks who gets to keep the tent.

We are no longer dealing entirely in theory.

The test has been administered.

AOC failed it.

The standard was enforced.

Then AOC moved.

Now elections have begun supplying answers of their own.

Someone has already lost.

Someone else has already taken his place.

That is where Part III begins.

THE CHOICE

The Future Has Already Started.