Is there a liberal center? Should there be?

Back in July, Nate Silver asked “12 questions for the center-left,” raising a bunch of tactical, strategic, and even moral questions about the political faction he (and I) most closely identify with. Soon after, I offered a very narrowly tactical reply about the kind of center-left 2028 presidential primary campaign that I believe can persuade the Democratic Party base and win a general election handily. But in a sense that response ducked the larger questions Silver was raising.

This week on the pod, Nate and Jeremiah Johnson from “The New Liberal Podcast” joined Jerusalem and me to think about the big picture.

One of the core divides you’ll hear us discuss is the relationship between moderation as a political brand and liberalism as a philosophy. We can all agree, I think, that these are distinct things. But the nature of the relationship is harder to parse. Jerusalem is strongly critical of flattening the distinction, arguing for liberalism as an ideology with moderate implications on some issues and radical ones on others.

I see this as largely accurate as an account of liberalism’s history. But 2026 is not 1826, and core liberal views about electoral democracy, equal rights, and the rule of law are not radical notions in the contemporary context. Instead, contemporary liberalism finds itself stuck with the dreary task of largely defending established institutions that reflect liberal ideas and liberal influence, and that in practice means fighting for the idea of the liberal center of American politics.

Nate makes the observation that in multiparty European systems, liberal parties tend to be located near the center of the ideological spectrum, but they are also relatively small — in that context, there is a difference between a “moderate” ideological orientation (which signifies willingness to work with either left-wing or right-wing parties depending on the circumstances) and the idea of majoritarian politics, where you’re trying to be broadly popular all the time.

We dive into all of this and more over the course of an in-depth conversation that I hope you’ll enjoy.

Later this month on the pod, Jerusalem and I will be reading Friedrich von Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” If you have thoughts or questions about the book you’d like us to discuss, drop a line in the comments below!

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New episodes post every Thursday.