Middle American Left Wing Radicals?

Horseshoe Theory reflections on a local election in Purple America.

Official Allegheny County results from the November 4th, 2025, election for Indiana Township District 5 Supervisor.

Of all the dark prophets of late 20th-century America, few were darker or more prophetic than Samuel Francis. One of the many “conspiracists and con men” of the early 1990s profiled by John Ganz in When the Clock Broke, Francis was arguably the most notorious proponent of right-wing nationalist paleoconservatism, a movement that emerged from the fringes to become the dominant political force shaping our nation during the Trump Era. The writings of Samuel Francis both predicted and produced this dark reality, embracing unabashed white racial consciousness, trade protectionism, virulent anti-immigrant xenophobia, and the glorification of a Caesarist presidency capable of crushing the bureaucratic, corporate, and educational establishment.

In his 1982 essay, Message from MARs, Francis advocated appealing to what he regarded as an emerging social formation, a large segment of the American population he labeled “Middle American Radicals,” MARs for short. For Francis, Middle American Radicals were the disaffected and neglected white middle class, those whose standing in American society and material conditions had been “sandwiched” by the interests of an upper-crust cosmopolitan establishment and the urban poor who were the unworthy beneficiaries of welfare state pampering. Francis saw the limousine liberalism of Boomer Democrats and the stodgy, stuffy conservatism of the Old Right as being completely unfit to tap into the restive political energy building within Middle America. In Francis’s eyes, only a New Right could channel this growing rage and resentment. Breaking from the old guard of the Republican party, Francis declared, “The New Right is not a conservative force but a radical or revolutionary one.”¹ It is not hard to hear a prophetic prediction of the institutional destruction wrought by the Second Trump Administration when Francis states, “the New Right should make use of the presidency as its own spearhead against the entrenched elite and should dwell on the fact that the intermediary bodies - Congress, the courts, the bureaucracy, the media etc. - are the main supports of the elite.”² Sam Francis may have died two decades ago. But he is more alive than ever in the radical New Right spirit of a MAGA movement that has pushed our country to the brink of authoritarianism and social chaos.

Francis thought the populist, nationalist New Right that has culminated in the second Trump administration would be the balm to soothe the wounds of the Middle American Radical. The past year of incompetence, betrayal, and deepening economic inequality has proven Sam Francis to be far more astute at diagnosing than at relieving the pain of the average small-town American. Rather than being the Caesarist conqueror of the oligarchic establishment, Trump has created an administration run by and for the billionaire class, with a who’s who of the world’s richest men standing at his inauguration. Rather than being a defender of traditional Middle American values and a crusader against global pedophile rings, Trump’s clumsy suppression of the Epstein files has exposed him as a pedophile defender in chief, and quite likely a pedophile himself. All the while, lawless immigration enforcement, erratically aggressive trade protectionism, and the reckless dismantling of federal bureaucracy show no signs of improving the conditions of Middle American Radicals, who are suffering more material hardship, more collapse in community spirit, and more psychic despair than before the Trump era began. Sam Francis’s New Right dream has become a reality, but it has only worsened the waking nightmare that has been the fate of Middle America over the past half-century.

While campaigning for my re-election as Supervisor of Indiana Township District 5, I found the spirit of the Middle American Radical still restless in my purple Western Pennsylvania community, where Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans. Knocking on hundreds of doors and talking to voters from both parties, my interactions often brought to mind Sam Francis’s assessment of the fears that haunt the Middle American psyche: “perceived injustice, unrelieved exploitation by anonymous powers that be, a threatened future, and an insulted past.”³ Tapping into this frustration did not require a compromise of my principles; if anything, the spirit of the Middle American Radical dovetailed neatly with my passion for fighting the corrupting corporate influences that threaten the fabric of my community. Anyone who has read this Substack knows that my stances on national economic policies track with the Far Left, positions barely represented in the current Democratic Party. I believe in Universal Healthcare, a Universal Job Guarantee, an aggressive Wealth Tax to expropriate the Billionaire class, and whatever is left to salvage from the much-neglected Green New Deal. With these left-wing beliefs in mind, it strikes me as odd that I captured not only a large segment of my District’s Republican voters, but also had many registered Republicans put my signs up in their yard or join me in knocking doors during my campaign. The Horseshoe Theory (the idea that the far left and far right are often closer in agreement than they are to centrists) seemed to have played out in the results of my election. The key to successfully employing this Horseshoe Theory was not in watering down my beliefs but rather presenting my deep-felt anti-corporate, anti-establishment views in a manner that appealed to the Middle American Radical who has been betrayed by Samuel Francis, Donald Trump, and the entire New Right.

“The developers, land speculators, and frackers have all been put on notice…as well as all their collaborators in all levels of government. If you try to make a buck at the expense of our community’s quality of life, no one will fight you harder than Indiana Township District 5.” These are the thoughts I shared with my constituents while announcing the results of my election on Facebook last week. Sam Francis was not on my mind while writing this. Yet, as I gave it more thought, I realized how my words could resonate with the fears and frustrations of the Middle American Radical that Francis described so vividly in Message from MARs. By aggressively advocating for the rights of my neighbors over the interests of corporate developers, I appeal to my constituents’ “perceived injustice” of watching the other Supervisors callously vote in favor of an unaffordable, unsustainable housing development despite the outcry of over 100 residents and no citizens of the Township voicing their support for the project. By successfully blocking the oil and gas interests (as well as their backroom allies in state and local government) that tried to rezone our Township to frack just a mile from our schools, I have given my constituents hope that we can end “unrelieved exploitation by anonymous powers that be.” By standing up to preserve the natural beauty and small-town charm of Indiana Township that we know and love, I have worked with so many other impassioned citizens to protect our “threatened future” and restore the dignity of our “insulted past.” While my own election was just the tiniest ripple in a blue wave that washed across America on November 4th, it provides hope that the failures of Trump and the New Right will provide an opportunity for those on the Left to craft a populist, anti-establishment platform that not only appeals to the Middle American Radical but actually relieves the root causes of their suffering.

In the weeks to come, I will publish a series of Local Election Reflections, diving deeper into themes drawn from my campaign trail experiences that might guide the Democratic Party in crafting a more effective response to the continued unraveling of our country during the Second Trump Administration. The lessons I’ve learned stand in stark contrast to much of the advice being peddled by the establishment Democratic Party’s consultants, pundits, and Beltway wonks. Democrats must not cynically tinker with their surface-level messaging to appeal to presumed prejudices and assumed ignorance of the Middle American Radical. Zhuzhing up Democratic messaging with the right doses of anti-immigrant xenophobia, transphobia, f-bombs, and woke bashing will not woo the Middle American Radicals, who are often more adept at clocking phoniness than the experts paid by the party to study them. Middle American Radicals know that messaging is just a fancy word for manipulation. Similarly, the pathetic pro-corporate pandering of moderate Democrats’ Abundance Agenda will also prove disastrous, as even Sam Francis placed large corporations on the “enemies list” of the Middle American Radical.⁴ “Playing Dead” like James Carville suggested or meekly surrendering to Republican demands (like the eight Senate Democrats who voted to end the shutdown with little to show for it), will not kindle excitement in the Middle American Radical for the anemic centrism of moderate Democrats. To win the Middle American Radical, Democrats must demonstrate strength, determination of will, and clarity in their policy commitments: the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 only to vote for Zohran Mamdani in 2025 provide a preview of this rapidly evolving political ecosystem. Manhattan and Queens might be a far cry from Middle America. Still, the surprising shift in voters from Trump to Mamdani suggests that the Democrats would be foolish to neglect the Horseshoe Theory in the heartland in 2026 and 2028.

The Middle American Radical knows that our economy is rigged, that our politicians are bought off, that our communities are crumbling, and that the simple dream of owning a home and starting a family is becoming all the more unreachable. They know that the tech oligarchy, the richest men in this country, have made their billions by distracting us from worsening material conditions, tearing apart communities by stoking political differences, and preying upon the insecurities of our children. Now is the time for the Far Left to take the lead and do what the New Right could not: restore the dignity and prosperity of the Middle American Radical by punishing the economic and political elites that are leading this country toward ruin.

In the end, though, the most important factor in shifting the Middle American Radical to the left will be a commodity in scarce supply in the current Democratic Party: sincerity. The success of my little election rested fundamentally on the fact that I sincerely wanted the same things my neighbors wanted: to protect our land, to protect our social fabric, and to protect each other from the for-profit predation of outside influences. My goal was not to make leftists of my neighbors, not to get them to register for the Democratic Party, not to set myself up for a run at even higher office. My goal was to build the political power of my community itself, strengthening our collective resolve to defend each other against not only corporate greed but also the politicians from both parties who have sold out Middle America time and time again. Zooming out to the national level, there is a clear path for a seismic shift in the political orientation of the Middle American Radical as we emerge from the wreckage of the Second Trump Administration. Whether the Democratic Party will run candidates who have the sincerity and determination to lead the Middle American Radicals leftward is not so clear.

1. Francis, Samuel. “Message from MARs.” Beautiful Losers: Essays on the Failure of American Conservatism, University of Missouri Press, 1993. (pg. 76).

2. Francis (pg. 75).

3. Francis (pg. 61).

4. Francis (pg. 69).