Everything You Shouldn’t Do in Progressive Politics, Taught by Cenk Uygur

When bad-faith outrage becomes the brand, progress takes a back seat.

Every time Cenk Uygur opens his mouth to say Barack Obama should “go away,” I find myself wondering if irony is on vacation—or if it’s just dead and buried under TYT’s crypto-sponsored studio. If you haven’t seen it, Cenk recently went viral yelling into a camera that Obama is the reason for all the Democratic Party’s problems, because of course he did. And if that brand of keyboard-shattering tantrum sounds familiar, it should. That’s basically The Young Turks’ entire business model now: performative rage masquerading as political analysis.

Let me be clear: I’ve never liked Cenk Uygur. Not when he tried to run for Congress. Not when Bernie Sanders had to retract his endorsement of him after less than 24 hours due to public outcry over racist, sexist, and bigoted remarks. Not when his studio accepted funding from Polymarket, a crypto operation linked to billionaire Peter Thiel, who—let’s not forget—bankrolled lawsuits to destroy independent journalism and openly supports nationalist authoritarianism.

And certainly not when Ana Kasparian, whom I consider one of the most consistently unthoughtful people on YouTube, joined in with the anti-Obama chorus, telling the world that Obama “failed us on everything” like she just discovered nuance in a Reddit thread.

These two have become living, breathing examples of the horseshoe theory—the idea that the far left and far right eventually start to sound indistinguishably unhinged. I’m not saying they’re ideologically identical to the right. I’m saying they use the same tactics: inflammatory rhetoric, zero accountability, fake populist rage, and YouTube thumbnails that scream like a toddler who missed nap time.

Let’s talk about this “go away, Obama” nonsense. Did Obama take corporate money? Yes. Is that a flaw in the system? Also yes. Do I hate corporate money in politics? Absolutely. But here’s the thing: politics doesn’t run on vibes and YouTube segments. It runs on money, votes, leverage, and compromise. If we ever want to move past the corporate-dominated system we’re stuck in, we’ll need policy, organizing, and elections—not just loudmouths screaming into ring lights.

What Cenk does is a textbook example of the perfect being the enemy of the good—but make it a grift. He’s built an entire career around attacking Democrats from the left in ways that aren’t just unproductive—they’re dishonest. Because he doesn’t argue in good faith. Neither does Ana. They love to reduce complex political decisions to betrayal and cowardice, as if governing a country of 330 million people is just a matter of yelling the right slogans.

Meanwhile, real progressives—people like Don Lemon, David Pakman, and Brian Tyler Cohen—don’t spend every waking hour trying to cosplay as revolutionaries. They critique when it matters, but they also understand that not every strategic decision is a moral failing. I respect all three of these men, but even they have more patience for Cenk and Ana than I do. They’ve collaborated, appeared on panels, maybe even had a drink or two. That’s their prerogative. But just because you’re cordial with someone doesn’t mean they’re beyond critique—and I’m not here for the TYT brand of rage-baiting dressed up as progressive purity.

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it: there are plenty of Democrats I don’t always agree with. I don’t always see eye to eye with Sam Seder, or the guys from The Vanguard. Hell, I sometimes even find myself in disagreement with people over at Lincoln Square, the very publication I write for. And that’s okay. That doesn’t make any of us bad guys. The goal of politics is never 1000% agreement—it’s to find the places where we can align. That’s what coalition-building looks like. That’s how adults operate in a democracy. You don’t need to surrender your values to work with someone, but you do need to recognize the difference between a difference of opinion and a bad actor.

And that’s the problem with Cenk and Ana. It’s not that they’re progressive. It’s that they pretend to be the only progressives. They don’t argue in good faith. They don’t seek common ground. They seek dominance. They mistake volume for virtue and disagreement for betrayal. And in doing so, they poison the very movement they claim to lead.

Their worst crime, though, is that they’ve turned bad logic into a brand.

Cenk in particular is a walking syllabus of logical fallacies. He specializes in the straw man fallacy (argumentum ad strawman), misrepresenting moderate Democrats as cartoonish villains who wake up each morning thinking, “How can I let down the working class today?” He frequently employs false dichotomies (false dilemma), insisting that any deviation from his purity test means you’re no better than a Republican. And when you call him on it, he’ll resort to argumentum ad populum—appealing to the crowd by yelling louder, angrier, and more frequently, as if decibel level were a substitute for intellectual honesty.

Is there a Latin phrase for the fallacy of being loud and wrong? If not, I propose argumentum ad blowhardium. Because Cenk has built a media empire on being confidently mistaken, loudly. And it works. The algorithm loves a man who sounds like he’s winning an argument even when he’s losing the plot.

And let’s talk about your moral compass, Cenk. Because mine’s pretty clear: I don’t negotiate with white supremacists. That’s the title of an essay I wrote, and it wasn’t hyperbole. It was a declaration. I don’t play footsie with people who dehumanize my community. You, on the other hand? You took money tied to Peter Thiel, the same man who backed J.D. Vance, a candidate who has openly pandered to white nationalism. And you want to lecture Barack Obama?

You don’t get to accept money from billionaires who bankroll fascism and then turn around and call Democrats “corporate sellouts.” You are the sellout. You sold your platform to the very forces you pretend to oppose.

Even Ben Dixon, a former TYT contributor, saw through the grift. He quit, on principle, because TYT was platforming people who wouldn’t hesitate to strip away his rights. Ana then tried to smear him—because that’s what they do when you call them out. They spin, deflect, and pretend the real issue is that you’re just not “tough enough” for their brand of screaming-into-the-void populism.

Here’s the truth: politics isn’t about everyone agreeing. It’s about finding where you can agree. It’s about identifying allies—not perfect ones, not always likable ones—but people you can work with. That’s how democracy works. But Cenk doesn’t want democracy. He wants dominance. He wants to be right more than he wants to be effective. And in the process, he’s alienating the very coalition we need to fight off actual fascism.

I’ve got no time for it. None. Because we are living through an actual crisis. We’ve got a twice-impeached, convicted felon president trying to turn America into a dictatorship with the help of the Supreme Court, and instead of focusing fire on the architects of this authoritarian movement, TYT is out here telling people that Obama is the real threat.

Imagine thinking the man who saved the economy, passed the ACA, and gave Democrats a generation of organizing infrastructure is somehow more to blame for 2025’s problems than the party that’s trying to end democracy. That’s not analysis. That’s sabotage.

And it’s not new. As Newsweek reported, Ana’s been unloading on Obama and the Democrats for years. She once said they “failed us on everything.” Really? Everything? The man saved the auto industry and gave 20 million people health insurance. But sure, let’s throw that away because you’re mad you didn’t get a unicorn and a pony.

I’m not interested in cults of personality. I don’t think Obama was perfect. But I do think he governed like an adult. And adults understand that progress isn’t always pretty. Sometimes you get a foot in the door instead of a revolution—and that still matters.

Cenk Uygur doesn’t understand that. Because if he did, he wouldn’t be out here making Obama the villain while cashing Thiel-adjacent checks and pretending that yelling louder is the same thing as leading better.

So to Cenk, I say: You go away. You and Ana both. Take your crypto cash, your bad-faith arguments, your unearned smugness, and your YouTube thumbnails and fade into the algorithm where you belong. The rest of us have work to do. Grown-up work. Movement-building, coalition-building, democracy-saving work.

And that kind of work doesn’t have time for clowns who mistake microphones for megaphones and megaphones for mandates.