Few movements in American politics fascinate me more than MAHA. I’ve sometimes joked that I identify as MAHA-lite: I avoid ultraprocessed foods and plastics; you won’t find nonstick pans or black spatulas in my house; I think we should ban glyphosate, ban many food dyes, ban junk foods in schools and food advertising to children, and require food companies to prove their products are actually safe, similar to how the EU regulates food. I think the way Americans feed children in schools is a national shame. I think the way many of us feed ourselves and the children in our homes is a national shame.
I am also pro-vaccine, and utterly horrified by rising rates of measles and other preventable diseases. And as I’ve watched the rise of MAHA and seen many of my own long-held values go mainstream on the American right, I’ve wondered: Can the majority of the movement that just wants fairly common-sense changes to food and agricultural policies grab the MAHA mantle back from the anti-vaxxers? Or can the Democratic Party peel off what I would qualify as “reasonable MAHA” from the fringe forces that have disproportionate power within it?
I recently wrote a piece for Mother Jones about the gender politics of MAHA, which have taken shape as the movement made common cause with MAGA. The story is essentially this: MAHA has been a woman-led and woman-powered movement, but as it followed RFK Jr. over to Trumpworld, the men took over inside the White House. And as the men came into political power, they focused on more masculine-coded aims. Instead of taking on the top causes of the MAHA moms (food safety, pesticides, fighting Big Food and their ultraprocessed products), they’ve focused on things like changing the food pyramid to emphasize protein and diverting contraception funding to pay for testosterone therapy and treat erectile dysfunction. In the meantime, the Trump White House has been flat-out hostile to some of the MAHA women’s top priorities. Trump sided with the maker of the pesticide glyphosate in a Supreme Court case, and has ramped up domestic production of the poison. He has made it easier for Big Food and Big Ag to operate without oversight or consequence for decisions that harm humans and the environments in which we live.
In reporting the piece, I read a lot of MAHA voter polls, and talked to several MAHA leaders and adherents. And what I noticed — and what’s clear in the polling data — is that hostility to vaccines is not actually a top MAHA issue. That isn’t to say that many MAHA people aren’t also vaccine opponents; a sizeable minority obviously are. And many more MAHA adherents basically keep their vaccine opinions to themselves or fall back on the language of “choice,” happy to accommodate the anti-vax among them. But I think it’s a mistake for Democrats, and the broader left, to write off MAHA voters as reactionary anti-science dummies; it’s even worse to negatively polarize ourselves into opposing the MAHA views that aren’t so different from what you might have heard from 2012 Michelle Obama.
Here’s a good example of what MAHA priorities actually look like, from Politico (dark purple is “core view,” light purple is “not a core view”):
I’ve been asked whether I think the MAHA movement has done more good or more harm, and that’s a tough question to answer. The anti-vax component of the movement has objectively done more harm, and I’m not sure it’s done any good at all. But MAHA more broadly has brought the virtues of healthy eating and physical movement back into the conservative sphere, breaking the bizarre political polarization over health. When Michelle Obama fed vegetables to schoolchildren and encouraged them to exercise, conservatives went nuts — you will pry my child’s tater tots out of their cold dead hands. Now many Republicans are pushing a back-to-basics view of food. It’s not exactly Michael Pollan — the right-wing nutritional philosophy is masculine-coded by way of maximal protein, not “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” — but it’s definitely better than insisting that ultraprocessed foods and Type 2 diabetes are as American as McDonald’s deep fried apple pie.
MAHA voters are also disproportionately young, female, and politically disengaged. These are gettable voters for Democrats. And a lot of existing Democrats would be thrilled to see the party take on Big Food and Big Ag, and to see progressive leaders insist that Americans deserve healthier, safer foods on our grocery store shelves and in our schools. I would certainly be thrilled to see the broader left talking about holistic health, and understanding that how we eat and how we move shape how well we are — and that healthcare should of course treat disease, including with pharmaceuticals (many of which are nothing short of miracles), but that a health system reliant on identifying symptoms and then whack-a-moling them with drugs is missing a big part of what “health” means. Now that MAHA has broken through on the right, a lot of this will sound like common sense, not left-wing elitism from oat-milk-latte drinkers packing heirloom tomatoes into their New Yorker bags at the farmer’s market. That’s a good thing.
But the one component of MAHA that will absolutely not fly with Democrats is the anti-vaccine stance. So one question is: Can Democrats have MAHA without the anti-vaxxers?
And: How did the anti-vax movement and the MAHA movement become so intertwined in the first place?
And finally: How and why did the Democratic Party move away from its stance against ultraprocessed food, against Big Food and Big Industry, and away, even, from the scientific consensus on food and health?
I have my theories.
