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Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is part of a dwindling breed — he co-chairs the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate Democrats, which counts just 10 members in the current Congress. 

The ideological middle was a different place when he interned at the Capitol in the 1990s, according to Gonzalez.

“Back then, there were 50 or 60 Vicente Gonzalezes … where now, sometimes I feel like I’m almost totally alone,” he says.

As a law student, Gonzalez spent a summer as an intern for Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, who represented Corpus Christi, Texas. 

Two words get invoked so often in American politics that they have nearly lost their meaning: bipartisan and pragmatic. You’ll find them in press releases, cable hits, and campaign mailers. Politicians reach for them because they reflect something real, and what most Americans actually want from their government. But for the most part, it’s not what they’re getting.

"In 2017, Democratic leaders denounced the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville chanting 'Jews will not replace us.' In 2022, Democrats took Donald Trump to task for having dinner with Nick Fuentes, an antisemite and a white supremacist.

"A new movement is emerging that could bridge the gulf between mainstream Democrats — still dwelling too much in the rarified air of urban meritocracy — and the practical concerns of working folks and rural dwellers. If successful, this third way offers moderate voters an escape from Trump’s self-aggrandizing, fake-populism while popping the air out of the Democrats’ pie-in-the-sky agenda."