Americans Aren’t Left or Right. They’re Heterodox.

new video loaded: Americans Aren’t Left or Right. They’re Heterodox.transcripttranscriptHow can the Democratic Party win over voters who don’t fit neatly into one ideology? On “The Ezra Klein Show,” the political strategist Adam Jentleson says that politicians should model “heterodoxy.”So this is a word that I would like people to model, but I don’t ever want to hear a candidate say, I don’t know what it means. It’s the opposite of orthodoxy. It is getting away from purity tests and getting away from rigid ideologies, and just thinking for yourself and developing a mix of policy positions that reflects the heterodoxy of the American voter. And the reason this is important is that the American people do not form their worldviews strictly from a liberal perspective or a conservative perspective. They look at the world and they take a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B, and they smush these positions together and they get an incredibly unique mix. And one of the most educational things you can do if you’re interested in politics is just to watch focus groups, because you will have a voter who says, “I think every CEO who was involved with the great financial crisis of 2007 should be thrown in jail,” right. And then in the same breath, they will say, “I believe everybody who came to this country illegally should be deported, regardless of whether they’re a law abiding citizen.” And those views are not moderate. These are immoderate positions. But when you put them together, they form a heterodox mix. What’s happened in recent decades is that politicians on both sides have stopped reflecting that unique way of thinking that is characteristic of the American people, and they’ve lost a connection with that critical middle group of voters. So my argument is that the way to connect with these voters is to break away from rigid ideologies, to be a maverick, to be an independent thinker. And you can do that by mixing together a little from column A and a little from column B, just like the American people do.Americans Aren’t Left or Right. They’re Heterodox.How can the Democratic Party win over voters who don’t fit neatly into one ideology? On “The Ezra Klein Show,” the political strategist Adam Jentleson says that politicians should model “heterodoxy.”November 10, 2026AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTToday's VideosU.S.PoliticsImmigrationNY RegionScienceBusinessCultureBooksWellnessWorldAfricaAmericasAsiaSouth AsiaDonald TrumpMiddle East CrisisRussia-Ukraine CrisisVisual InvestigationsOpinion VideoAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT