In J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan,” Tinkerbell, the little blond fairy you might picture from the 1953 Disney adaptation, can only live if others believe in her existence. In the play, she’s revived from near death by the audience’s applause. To my knowledge, no production has ever denied her that ovation. Luckily for her, it’s in the script — she survives to the final curtain whether the audience truly believes or not.

A variation of this “Tinkerbell effect,” the idea that believing hard enough can make something true, shows up in both academia and popular culture. Now, I’ve started to see a political version of it in Democratic politics. (I’ll note it may exist in Republican politics as well, but I know progressive politics best, having worked in that space for years.)

This progressive “Tinkerbell politics” holds that electoral losses happen because we either didn’t nominate a true........

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