AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTYou have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.Guest EssayJune 10, 2026Credit...Gwendal Le BecListen · 7:23 min By E.J. Dionne Jr.Contributing Opinion writerThe values voter became a hot political commodity some two decades ago.
A catchy rebranding of the religious right, the label was inspired by a controversial exit poll question in the 2004 presidential election finding that 22 percent of voters cast their ballots on the basis of “moral values” and 80 percent of them supported George W.
Bush. The assumption took hold that Americans who cared about values were conservatives animated by opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.The 2026 campaign is reminding us that this narrow view of how voters think about values is out of step with a long American tradition that gave rise to moral appeals for improving society as a whole, particularly at times of great economic and technological change.
We are witnessing the return of a politics of morality organized around the injustices of the economic system and an array of related problems: the costs of technological change, the unraveling of community, civil rights, and financial and work-balance issues confronting families.These themes are powerful in the campaigns of Democrats this year across the party’s philosophical spectrum — and it’s about time.
In his 2022 history of the Democratic Party, “What It Took to Win,” the Georgetown professor Michael Kazin argues that “the most fruitful strategy for Democrats over time” has involved criticizing the failures of the status quo in the name of an alternative “moral capitalism.” The underlying causes of the country’s unease speak to the demand for a larger moral argument.The rapid development of artificial intelligence raises big questions about the future of work and the nature of being human that have begun to seep into conversations at dinner tables, taverns and over back fences.
Early in his searching encyclical on A.I., Pope Leo XIV offered a query that is on many minds: “Where are we going?”Moral engagement with the economy, social justice and technological revolution has deep American roots, both secular and religious. At the high tide of the Progressive Era, Walter Rauschenbusch, a Protestant pastor and theologian, gave voice to the social gospel movement in his 1907 book, “Christianity and the Social Crisis.” The civil rights movement of the middle of the 20th century, like the abolitionist movement before it, highlighted the moral urgency of equal rights and linked their defense to religious values.
This tradition has been kept alive by religious progressives and the Black church.In 2026 the resurgence of a Christian left is most explicit in James Talarico’s Senate campaign in Texas. Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, speaks often about his faith and regularly invokes Scripture.
He is inspired by Jesus’ overturning of the money changers’ tables outside the temple, described in all four Gospels. The top of his campaign website features Mr. Talarico’s signature line, “It’s time to start flipping tables.”Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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