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Arguing that “culture war is class warfare,” Mr. Vance has repeatedly encouraged Republicans to use the machinery of government to reclaim institutions that he sees as wholly captured by the left.

In Mr. Vance’s telling, his perspective has been shaped most by his own biography: as a son of Middletown, Ohio; a veteran of a war defined by Washington’s mistakes; an author who was feted by coastal elites whom he came to despise

“You hear European elites and American elites talking in frightened tones about threats to democracy,” he told an interviewer this year. “Isn’t it a greater threat to democracy if people keep voting for less migration but don’t get it?”

He has said that Alex Jones, the Infowars conspiracy theorist, is a more reputable source of information than Rachel Maddow

Mr. Vance recently contributed an admiring blurb for a book co-written by the far-right activist Jack Posobiec, who promoted the “Pizzagate” hoax. He is also listed as the author of a foreword for an upcoming book by Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation and a leader of the Project 2025 initiative

People whom Mr. Vance has cited to explain his worldview or detail who helped shape his thinking include Patrick Deneen, a professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who has suggested that conservatives must harness the power of the state to counter “liberal totalitarianism”; Peter Thiel, the billionaire venture capitalist for whom Mr. Vance worked; and Curtis Yarvin, a prominent voice on the New Right who has argued that American democracy has devolved to the point that the country needs a monarchical leader.

Mr. Vance would not necessarily disagree, those who know him said. He has spent his recent years at the four-way intersection of intellectual debates, campaign rhetoric, outright trolling and actual policy —

Mr. Rufo described Mr. Vance’s intellectual evolution, “somewhat tongue-in-cheek,” as a journey “from the pages of National Review to the fever swamp of right-wing Twitter.”

“In the past, the political right operated under the illusion that institutions could be neutral,” Mr. Rufo said in an interview, “that any use of state power was illegitimate and that the only rightful policy would be to try to roll back or reduce the size of government.”

said the move from a traditionalist like Mr. Pence to Mr. Vance exemplified “how the Republican Party is going to think about power moving forward

Christopher Rufo

He speaks bluntly about what he sees as the limits of America’s reach and resources abroad — “Those days are over,” he has said of the 20th-century “glory years” of American hegemony — and even more forcefully about the prospect of right-wing victories at home if conservatives could only summon the requisite gumption.

MAGA has replaced Reaganism as the chief operating system of the Republican Party.

If Democrats hope to win in the near future they have to take the MAGA worldview seriously, and respectfully make the case, especially to working-class voters, for something better.

In a volatile world, MAGA offers people security. It promises secure borders and secure neighborhoods. It offers protection from globalization, from the creative destruction of modern capitalism. It offers protection from an educated class that looks down on you and indoctrinates your children in school. It offers you protection from corporate predators.

the problem with MAGA — and here is where the Democratic opportunity lies — is that it emerges from a mode of consciousness that is very different from the traditional American consciousness.

we saw ourselves, as the dynamic nation par excellence. We didn’t have a common past, but we dreamed of a common futur

“the Spirit of America is best known in Europe by one of its qualities — energy.”

Americans have a zeal for continual self-improvement, a “need tirelessly to tinker, improve everything and everybody, never leave anything alone.”

Americans can’t be secure if the world is in flames. That’s why America has to be active abroad in places like Ukraine, keeping wolves like Vladimir Putin at bay.

Through most of our history, we were not known for our profundity or culture but for living at full throttle.

MAGA, on the other hand, emerges from a scarcity consciousness, a zero-sum mentality: If we let in tons of immigrants they will take all our jobs; if America gets browner, “they” will replace “us.”

MAGA is based on a series of victim stories: The elites are out to screw us. Our allies are freeloading off us. Secular America is oppressing Christian America.

MAGA looks less like an American brand of conservatism and more like a European brand of conservatism. It resembles all those generations of Russian chauvinists who argued that the Russian masses embody all that is good but they are threatened by aliens from the outside

MAGA looks like a kind of right-wing Marxism, which assumes that class struggle is the permanent defining feature of politics.

The American consciousness has traditionally been an abundance consciousness.

If Democrats are to thrive, they need to tap into America’s dynamic cultural roots and show how they can be applied to the 21st century

My favorite definition of dynamism is adapted from the psychologist John Bowlby: All of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base. If Democrats are to thrive, they need to offer people a vision both of the secure base and of the daring explorations.

MAGA is a fortress mentality, but America has traditionally been defined by a pioneering mentality. MAGA offers a strong shell, but not much in the way of wings needed to soar.

Americans can’t be secure if the border is in chaos. Popular support for continued immigration depends on a sense that the government has things under control.

Americans can’t be secure if a single setback will send people to the depths of crushing poverty. That’s why the social insurance programs that Democrats largely built are so important.

offer people a vision of the daring explorations that await them. That’s where the pessimistic post-Reagan Republicans can’t compete

champion the abundance agenda that people like Derek Thompson and my colleague Ezra Klein have been writing about. We need to build things. Lots of new homes. Supersonic airplanes and high-speed trains.

If Republicans are going to double down on class war rhetoric — elites versus masses — Democrats need to get out of that business

They need to stand up to protectionism, not join the stampede.

Democrats need to take on their teachers’ unions and commit to dynamism in the field of education.

Democrats need to throttle back the regulators who have been given such free rein that they’ve stifled innovation.

tap back into the more traditional American aspiration: We are not sentenced to a permanent class-riven future but can create a fluid, mobile society.

The economist Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute has offered a telling psychic critique of MAGA economic thinking: “The economics of grievance is ineffective, counterproductive and corrosive, eroding the foundations of prosperity. Messages matter. Tell people that the system is rigged, and they will aspire to less

Champion personal responsibility, and they will lift their aspirations. Promoting an optimistic vision of economic life can increase risk tolerance, ambition, effort and dynamism.”

t aspiration is not like a brick that just sits there. Aspiration is more like a flame that can be fed or dampened

“The problem is desire. We need to *want* these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things.”