I think there’s a challenge to Matt’s vision of an alternative moderate position, stemming from his long term observation that we should expect political power to oscillate between the two parties.
Favoring performance pay for teachers, or treating border security as a genuinely important state function, is functionally very close to "support something that will be misused by the next opposition administration to attack your supporters."
Literally what I mostly want from my politicians is tactical moderation. My primary issue with the far left isn't that I disagree with them on values -- let's help the poor, stop global warming, stop suffering in Gaza, it's that they seem more interested in signalling those values in ideologically pure ways than they do in doing what it takes to fix the problems. The ability of a politician to stand up and commit themselves to acting tactically shows me they care more about results than their ideological image.
And while yes, some people won't vote for them if they fear their moderation is merely tactical I think many others would find that kind of honesty relatively refreshing.
I would say you’re wrong about Iowa. In the ‘70’s, Iowa had two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor. By the ‘90’s, Iowa was a reliably conservative state, and notwithstanding Obama’s success has largely been so ever since. My guess is that it’s about an R+7 state.
I certainly think you have Spanberger pegged correctly as merely tactically moderate, which to me is disappointing. I grew up and lived in Virginia for more than half my life (now I live across the river in Maryland, much to my chagrin) and so follow Virginia politics closely. I was so enamored of Spanberger when she was in the House that I rooted enthusiastically for her to win the VA governorship, and hoped it would be a stepping stone for her to run for president in 2028 . No more.
That bubble has burst for me. She may be checking some of the progressive impulses of the Virginia legislature, but not many. I've been what I'd call a traditional Republican - a breed that's disappearing rapidly - who loathes Trump. Until 2020, I'd last voted for a Dem for president in 1976, but went for Biden the "moderate" in 2020 (I voted 3rd party in 2016, and again in 2024). Of course, Biden turned out to be anything but a moderate, overreaching in so many areas I lost count.
That brings me to the problem I have with tactical moderates: IDENTIFYING them early, because once free of the constraints that suppress their true progressive nature, they run amok. When Kirsten Gillibrand represented a right-leaning district in northern NY, she was a moderate. As a Senator she's been anything but.
The problem here is partisan gerrymandering and political nationalization, no? Fixing the former and cracking down on out of state money via campaign finance reform would arguably move politics towards a more moderate direction
Partisan gerrymandering isn't new, though it's rapidly on the increase now that the Supreme Court has declared it a political issue that's nonjusticiable. But Virginia has never been especially gerrymandered, and the state's recent attempt at it was thwarted by the state supreme court. Virginia is simply a formerly red, now purple, and slowly shifting to blue state due to changing population patterns.
The Northern Virginia region where I grew up was solid Republican back in the 70's and 80's, but that began to change in the 90's. Arlington is almost urban at this point, and so are parts of Fairfax. Tyson's Corner (Fairfax) has more rentable office space than Richmond and Norfolk combined, and is basically a small city. With that growth came a more highly-educated population, and thus one that leans liberal with a substantial progressive component. I live in Montgomery County across the river, and it's so progressive I sometimes want to choke. Arlington followed suit two decades ago, and now Fairfax is emulating MoCo, with Loudoun not far behind. Spanberger didn't really have to hide her progressive instincts to get elected governor, especially facing a candidate as weak as Sears. But as bad as Sears was, the race probably would have been a little tighter had Spanberger let her true colors fly. I suspect she picked a few votes up in the ex-urban counties like Spotsylvania, and even maybe a few rural ones by posing as a moderate.
Recall that by playing up the "I'm a moderate centrist" theme she beat Dave Brat for her first Congressional seat. Brat was a Tea Party right-winger who managed to beat then-House whip Eric Cantor, who wasn't deemed conservative enough (lol). She had to hew to the moderate line to get re-elected, especially when Virginia redrew her district.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "political nationalization".
Political nationalization basically refers to the phenomena where regional/local identities (Blue Dog Dem/Rockefeller Repub) have withered away in favor for the national party brand creating more coherent political parties but also serving as a positive feedback loop for political polarization and dysfunction
I was underwhelmed with the R's candidate for governor, but reluctantly held my nose as I did not think Spanberger would hold the line. Especially with such strong Dem representation in RIchmond. The Rs in VA seem dedicated to putting forth non-viable/weka candidates. We had Youngkin as a brief flash of red who flamed out, and the state party is just...not great. Not CA bad yet, but headed there.
Yeah, you can run candidates like Sears, and that Miyares could lose to a guy as bad as his opponent tells you something. Miyares did some good stuff, but I think he really mishandled the Bijan Ghasar thing.
I generally agree with what you said yesterday about the conflation of the progressive establishment and the insurgent left, and that you think more criticism should be levied at the establishment's progressive policies.
However, I want to provide some explanation for the danger the prog establishment likely sees with the insurgent left, because this is the way I, as a moderate, view this faction. I think you are underestimating the danger of the insurgent left faction. I don't think, as you say, that they will just acquiesce into the prog establishment over time. I think they will be a consistent thorn in the side of the party, attacking the party establishment the whole time while the establishment feels unable to fight back (largely due to a permission structure where "punching left" is seen as an unproductive thing to do). Now I largely agree that the punches left would be *more* effective if we were actually critiquing progressive policy, which the prog establishment doesn't do, but it still needs to happen, otherwise we risk the left insurgency taking over the whole party.
You mention this as a possibility, but I don't think you've fully thought out how catastrophic this would be. It would simply be *much* worse than the existing establishment, because the ideological core of this faction is fundamentally illiberal. They may not all govern this way, but they express illiberal, anti-capitalist viewpoints constantly, and given actual sway over the party apparatus, they will (potentially) convert us into an illiberal party. That's why I think the progressives are rightfully scared of this faction.
Of course, your advice to moderate would actually greatly help in this regard, and so I think your prescription is still correct.
I think this post and the previous one correctly identify and describe some current divisions in the Democratic party, but the framing is too focused on specific practical policy choices to clarify what should be done about those divisions.
We have to start a few steps back:
1. What do we believe? (about the world, the country, people, etc.)
2. What are our values?
3. What should we do about our values given our beliefs?
Policy only comes in at step 3. It has to be grounded in beliefs and values. Once, I thought it was the case that most disagreements among Democratic factions were only on the policy level. Now, I'm less sure. I think we need to reestablish the earlier levels, also to make it clearer when we really are just disagreeing about different ways to accomplish the same goal.
Dems don't agree on 1. and 2., so it's only natural they'd be so far apart on 3. I'm not sure I agree with this step-by-step process though. There may be other grounds to form a modern political party. At no point before 2008 did Democrats agree on anything. It's only after that we've thought they *should*. We can't (and shouldn't) recreate Tammany Hall, but we've got to get creative.
Jesse Ewiak was right when he said that Matt Y keeps wishing that the Democratic electorate wanted different things than they do actually want.
For the record, I actually agree with most of the items on the "moderate" list! A+++ on housing abundance, clean energy abundance, and taking crime control and border control seriously. The deficit reduction question is genuinely hard, because it is the right thing to do *and* it would require raising taxes or cutting social services, both of which are about as popular as genital herpes (see the Churchill quote about democracy).
But, for the n-th time, can we (Democrats/liberals) close ranks here and focus on what unites us, not what divides us? I think an ok-ish compromise can be reached on most of these issues, and I'm fine with running an anti-abortion candidate in Louisiana if the alternative is a MAGA wingnut. But the important thing is, both the moderates and the lefties mostly want to work for what they see as *the common good*. (Sure, the far-left DSA types are all "fuck America, it's an evil colonialist imperialist oppressive hegemon that deserves to DIE IN A FIRE," but I'm talking about the lefties who are too lefty for Matt's liking but still consider themselves Democrats.) MAGA is a personality cult that has jack and shit to do with the common good, they have screwed people (including their own followers) over in too many ways to count. And just as importantly, Democrats, both lefties and centrists, are for respecting the democratic process and do not pull shit like "we refuse to acknowledge the results of this election."
Like I said before, using the analogy to "Cobra Kai" - yes, Johnny and Daniel are very different in their temperament and life philosophy, and they disagree about a ton of things, but they agree on some key things that matter. They both work hard to teach their students and they want their students to fight with honor and not be bullies. Cobra Kai under Kreese and Silver is a bunch of sociopaths who enjoy hurting those weaker than themselves and who are ok with fighting dirty. Johnny ought to work with Daniel to take down Cobra Kai, not punch Daniel publicly in the face to prove to undecided onlookers that he's not a pussy.
The piece shows the lie of the idea of a "big tent." Nobody wants a big tent. They want a political party that uniformly reflects their own beliefs. MY wants a party where Congressmen from Hawaii run on and enact austerity, law and order, and war, just like the left wants socialists in Kentucky. In the end, we'll just have to fight it out.
I think people can and do benefit from having friends and family that disagree, even disagree by a lot, but that's not a party. I think everyone who wants a "big tent" party in theory chooses their own beliefs when they think about what that party should run on and do, and they imagine the other faction surrendering unconditionally and voting with them forever. It's politics! That's what everyone wants.
Re: "focus on what unites us" - the problem then is to define the common set of ideas and priorities that unites Democrats. Of the ones you listed, I think the moderate faction would be happy if that was the common set but I don't think the progressive faction would be ok if that was the only set of ideas on the table.
As an aside, I wouldn't be too worried about factional infighting - its just what happens to the party out of power.
Everyone just lists their own ideas and priorities and presents them as "common." MY's is just a pro-business, law and order one. Trouble with the Democrats is there isn't a substantial list of policies they DO agree on, let alone prioritize.
There’s some truth here. The Dems are more like the Indian National Congress than British Labour— extraordinarily diverse without much to share other than institutional genealogy, memory. Both have proven highly pluralistic and of late extremely unsuccessful because they can’t present a consistent agenda and are trying to market to opposite ends of the economic spectrum.
Agreed except on "border control," which is an utter nonsense in this day and age. What matters for immigration control is work authorization and financial services, not whether someone has physically crossed an imaginary line. Attempting to defend the latter is the immigration equivalent of France building its defenses around the Maginot Line in 1940.
>What matters for immigration control is work authorization and financial services
So, would you be ok with unlimited numbers of people entering the U.S. as long as they had no work authorization (could only work illegally "under the table) and no financial services? I wouldn't.
Yes. The physical presence of people here is economically irrelevant until they take actions that materially influence the economy.
This is not a new thing. The modern concept of "border control" is an exceptionally recent innovation that basically only started to make sense with trains and steamships and stopped making sense again once the automobile was invented. The only reason it has persisted in the public mind is that that era happened to overlap with the era in which most of the modern democratic polities were constructed.
This simply isn't true - again, Kamala lost by a couple points after 9% inflation and taking over 100 days out. We're competitive in races from Texas to Ohio to Alaska to Iowa. Warnock could run on Kamala's exact platform in 2028 and probably win 320 EV's.
I'm sorry, Matt's POV is the Dem's are doomed unless we move farther to the right on everything but Social Security & abortion & Israel has no actual proof in the pudding.
Maybe, maybe if Larry Hogan & Charlie Baker were the future of the GOP, there'd be an argument it's a worry, but the best reasonable candidate the GOP has in 2028 is the guy whose been cheerleading for the Iran War.
"This simply isn't true - again, Kamala lost by a couple points after 9% inflation and taking over 100 days out. We're competitive in races from Texas to Ohio to Alaska to Iowa"
You keep forgetting what a historically bad candidate Trump was (among other things).
Additionally, the voters you're talking about would push the party significantly left of Harris' campaign.
I think the idea Trump is a historically bad candidate on a purely political level is something people have to get over actually being true - this is true of centrists who didn't like Kamala and my lefties who didn't like Hillary, Biden, or Kamala and thought Bernie would've won in a blowout.
I'll put in more bluntly - Kamala beats DeSantis.
Now, she'd lose to Haley (assuming no Trump eats the wrong cheeseburger and isn't around for 2024), but even that'd be closer than the polls because Haley's actual quite right-wing views on a lot of things would be brought up.
Even if you're right, none of that means the Dem's are turning into a regional party.
Cards on the table: yes, I do admit that I have a hard time caring about people who hate and disdain me, who think I'm inferior because I'm a Democrat/atheist/liberal/woman who works outside the home, who post hideously, rancidly racist/sexist/antisemitic/generally hateful garbage on social media, who venerate douchebags like Trump and Tate, who laugh when Trump posts AI-generated images of himself dumping shit on protestors, etc.
That being said, the government ought to be in the business of promoting flourishing and wellbeing for all Americans, not just those I like or agree with. I may dislike some MAGAsshole in a Red state, but I still want him to have affordable health care and unemployment insurance, I don't want his children to go hungry, and if his state is hit by a hurricane/tornado/flood, I want FEMA to help him.
I think you are allowed to hate people that hate you. At the least, dislike them. :D
I'm more talking about the communities that, themselves, feel abandoned. Yes, some of them have been captured by lies as to what Democrats actually do and want. But the complete blindside so many online folks have for what is actually happening in places that are not NYC, LA, or SF is surprising.
It would really help if we could somehow nationally focus on a system that encouraged going back to a lot of places. Right now, what a lot of rural places see is we have a HUGE incentive system to pull valuable workers out of their towns into colleges, and then never really give them a reason to go back. Quite the contrary, they get then sucked into the current major cities and are lucky if they build up a nest egg to take back someday.
The median Trump voter is not a 50 year old former union worker in a dying town in the Midwest.
The median Trump voter is a 50 year old small business owner in the Atlanta suburbs who hate unions, taxes, and is mildly racist and bigoted toward non-straight people.
The people in 'forgotten America' don't hate Democrats because we abandoned thme, they hate Democrats because we're OK w/ women having reproductive rights, think LGBT should be equal, don't want to deport every brown person, and so on.
I'm sorry, I grew up just above white trash in a 'dying' city in the Northeast. I know these people and while I want to give them health care, they don't want that if the [slur] across town gets it too.
Biden plowed taxpayer money into building chip fabs in places like Texarkana, precisely the kind of Forgotten Man's Land that you say Democrats have abandoned. The people of Texarkana voted for Trump by a bigger margin in 2024 than they had in 2020.
Jess Piper of Missouri has a Substack where she writes how, if Democrats won more state-level elections in Missouri, the state could have better education for children and better infrastructure and stuff, but the voters of Missouri won't have it, because Democrats are evil godless baby-eating woke Communists.
Yes, I agree that we ought to do... something... to help people in the forgotten areas, but a) I'll be darned if I know what would be both effective and feasible within the American political system, b) at some point, you can't help people who won't help themselves.
Right - I am A-OK w/ running JBE in Lousiana or a pro-gun anti-abortion basically Republican but on Social Security/Medicare type in South Carolina, but that person would lose for the same person a Democrat but except on say taxes or health care Republican would lose in Oregon - because Democrats and 'independents' who vote Democratic 90% of the time know what happens when Republicans get in power and they don't want to help that happen and vice versa.
The real reason the moderates aren't pushing what Matt wants is they realize their voters don't want that anymore than I bet there are still plenty of older Republicans w/ Dubya-like views on immigration but they know their voters don't want that.
At a certain point, the voters do decide what a party stands for.
I'm not sure that the voters are as left as you think they are. The big issue is a lot of Democrats prioritize winning but this is really hard to measure as people are guessing about how other voters will react to the candidates and everything is based on running counterfactuals that there is no way to actually evaluate (would Bernie have beaten Trump, would Platner beat Susan Collins).
The amusing thing is I have to fight w/ lefties other places the voters aren't as left-wing as they think.
I mean, I don't think the median Democrat is a DSAer but like, yes, under-45 Democratic voters are just far more progressive in general on a wide variety of issues and 10 years ago, it was under-35 voters and also as a result, a lot of things Democratic voters might've been OK w/ 2012 they simply aren't in 2026, the same way Democratic politicians in 1992 could say things they couldn't in 2012.
For example, it doesn't mean that all Dem primary voters are now open border types, but yes, the median Dem primary voter is now just far less supportive of tough internal immigration enforcement than they were even in 2012.
At one level you are clearly correct that the median Democrat is more progressive than in 1992 (or in 2012) but I'm arguing that most beliefs are weakly held and winning matters a lot. If Dan Osborn wins in Nebraska, democrats in Nebraska are going to be thrilled and a lot voters will decide they are ok with his guns and abortion opinions and give him cover the way leftist are giving Mamdani cover for his centrist takes (or the way the pro-life movement grants cover to Trump).
It might be easier for true believer moderates if they had some actual data to work with. I’ve often thought about this in terms of climate policy. It shouldn’t be very hard to show that Manchion’s “all of the above” energy abundance approach would lead to both lower emissions and lower average global temperatures over the medium- and long-term compared to the current progressive NGO recommendations. I would certainly donate to an effort to commission such a study. Then moderates could wave thick pamphlets around like leftists and progressives.
“The country would be better off today if Democrats had embraced his permitting legislation more fulsomely.”
I thought fulsome praise meant insincere praise so I looked up fulsome. It has two meanings, primarily it means excessively or insincerely flattering. But recently it’s come to mean full or abundant. Matt rode the newer meaning of the word while invoking the lingering connotation of the old and taught me a bit about my native language. Well done.
I post this because Claude does not share my fulsome attitude towards this sentence, it thinks Matt was straightforwardly using the new meaning but I think he’s too erudite for that and would have said “fully” if he didn’t intend the dissonance.
Advocacy is increasingly professionalized (“the progressive NGO blob” and on the conservative side, wingnut welfare) and foundation-funded. This is mostly bad. Someone ought to have an explicit policy agenda for reversing it.
Some very technical changes to tax treatment of charitable contributions and foundation structure and the like would probably have a big impact.
The alternative to foundation funding is mass fundraising, which is IMO often worse. The ACLU's turn away from principled civil liberties into generic blobism is substantially because blobism has a larger donor base.
Even if you completely eliminate the charitable deduction for anything advocacy-ish, I don't think that would change much. If you're a true-believing billionaire, having your advocacy cost 1.5-2x more net probably isn't enough to stop you. And donations to political campaigns are already nondeductible, but that certainly hasn't stopped them from having bad incentives.
It seems like the core idea here is that national parties need to tolerate the level of variance in individual politicians' positions that make sense for a very diverse country where different states and voting districts are radically different. You can imagine a world where there are Democrats who are competitive in Utah senate races, but they'd be pro-life, pro-gun Democrats.
The issue here is the median Democrat in Utah is a lib from Salt Lake City. Like, voters want to vote for people who agree w/ their values and their are lots of Democratic Utahans who basically have the same values as somebody from Boston or Los Angeles.
But here's the thing - I think CA GOP voters are morally wrong, but if you truly believe abortion is murder, getting a Senator who might vote for something you care less about such as tax cuts and judges isn't worth supporting someone who is in their view, OK with killing babies.
A lot of Democratic voters don't want to put their vote behind somebody they think will support morally abhorrent things.
I expect this depends on whether you are a single-issue voter. Abortion and gun control are topics that have many single-issue voters, but even there, I think most Republicans and most Democrats are willing to compromise somewhat on those to get other things they want. But this is an empirical question--maybe I'm wrong.
I am disappointed Obama didn't step forward as a leader of the moderate to left against Trump, and to create center around which Democrats could coalesce. As Bernie demonstrates, one doesn't have to be really viable as a POTUS candidate to inhabit that role.
I agree with you about the substantial moderate preference slate but I think it’s a mistake to conflate that with a vision. A compelling vision that can elicit ideological zeal needs to be cast in terms amenable to *heuristic maximization*: a dial you can intuitively turn up all the way to 11 and pursue.
I agree with Matt that the moderates need to fight the Progressive Establishment on the grounds of ideas, and the centrist agenda he lays out is a good one. But in the attention economy that is going to be weak beer. People don't care about neo-Brandeisian economics while performance pay for teachers is an abstract thing that doesn't get the blood moving.
The way to win the fight is to take on the big cultural issues. It's to take on Woke 1.0. It's to take on affirmative action (and careful with that in the South Carolina primary!), it's to bemoan all the pronoun craziness and, yes, it's to denounce the worst exemplars of crazy woke progressives like DAC. Heck, you can go after student loan forgiveness too because of its culture war salience.
I like Matt's agenda but it seems to suffer from the belief that people really care about substantive policy. They don't. Give them a good economy and avoid apparent chaos (at the border, in the Persian Gulf) and they're fine with whatever you are doing. But make them feel that you're too different from them culturally or, God forbid, look down on them or are lecturing them and you've dug your own grave.
But large swaths of the Democratic electorate are actually much culturally different from a lot of American's and they get a choice who represents them too. Sorry, but progressive people in Seattle aren't going to send a pro-oil, anti-kids trans in sports representative to Congress, even if it'll supposedly help some candidate in Iowa by 0.1 points according to a single poli sci paper.
By the same token, a lot of evangelical Christians are much different from other Americans and that R+30 district isn't going to send somebody whose overly friendly to LGBT people or cares much about helping immigrants even if it'd help the GOP win votes in New Jersey.
But the Democratic primary electorate largely thinks most of woke 1.0 was good - like DEI still polls incredibly highly among Democrats, regardless that Substack that has turned on it.
I'm sure there's some random woke excesses a Democrat could turn on and I'm sure the 2028 nominee will basically have the Biden WH view on transgender kids in sports, but no, a Democratic nominee is not going to come out as anti-affirmative action, anti-minoriy owned business priority in contracting, anti-DEI, or whatever Matt thinks might magically move votes by 4%.
After the 2022 and 2024 debacles the Democrats, my Party, still has the same leadership and is dominated by the NY/Cali connections. So the upside is limited. But if the Democrats take back both Houses let see them address inflation, affordable housing, and other issues that play well when you are the opposition but need real answers when in power. First step new leadership in the Senate.
I think the strongest idea here is the distinction between tactical moderation and substantive conviction, but I wonder if “True Believer” is quite the right category. The more interesting distinction may be between tactical moderation and genuine heterodoxy.
A politician can be moderate on one issue, progressive on another, and tactically positioned on a third. What matters is whether they are willing to tell their own coalition, “You’re wrong about this,” and then argue the merits even when there’s no obvious electoral payoff.
That also makes the Manchin discussion particularly interesting. The point isn’t simply that Manchin was secretly a moderate True Believer. It’s that representing a constituency over many years can actually produce substantive convictions. If you’re the guy defending coal communities against environmental groups for a decade, you’re going to learn things about energy policy and eventually conclude that some of the environmental movement’s arguments are genuinely wrong. Tactical positioning can evolve into genuine heterodoxy.
I also think the essay is strongest near the end, where it argues that moderates need to offer a positive governing philosophy rather than merely a politics of “no.” Abundant housing, faster economic growth, clean-energy deployment, permitting reform, better public-sector performance, crime control, and so forth are much more interesting than simply saying “we’re not as left-wing as those guys.”
But there’s a tension here. The essay sometimes treats the proposed centrist agenda as if it were simply “the merits,” while treating the progressive agenda as an ideological choice. It isn’t that cleanly divided. Housing abundance, performance pay, fossil-fuel policy, deficit reduction, etc. are themselves substantive ideological positions, with reasonable arguments on both sides. If the argument is that Democrats should argue from conviction rather than tactical positioning, that standard should apply to the author’s preferred policies too.
Ultimately, I think the most compelling version of the thesis is not “Democrats need more moderates.” It’s that Democrats need more politicians with the freedom and willingness to be genuinely heterodox. If Democrats start winning more purple and red territory, that heterodoxy will become structurally inevitable. And some of those politicians will be moderates, while others may actually be more progressive than the party establishment.
The important thing isn’t where they sit on the spectrum. It’s whether they’re willing to say, “My coalition is wrong about this,” and defend that position on the merits.
Right - the actual problem for moderates is simple - many Democratic voters disagree w/ the notion of what Matt claims is 'good policy', sometime correctly (continuing to be overly friendly to Big Oil) and incorrectly (NIMBYism).
I think there’s a challenge to Matt’s vision of an alternative moderate position, stemming from his long term observation that we should expect political power to oscillate between the two parties.
Favoring performance pay for teachers, or treating border security as a genuinely important state function, is functionally very close to "support something that will be misused by the next opposition administration to attack your supporters."
Literally what I mostly want from my politicians is tactical moderation. My primary issue with the far left isn't that I disagree with them on values -- let's help the poor, stop global warming, stop suffering in Gaza, it's that they seem more interested in signalling those values in ideologically pure ways than they do in doing what it takes to fix the problems. The ability of a politician to stand up and commit themselves to acting tactically shows me they care more about results than their ideological image.
And while yes, some people won't vote for them if they fear their moderation is merely tactical I think many others would find that kind of honesty relatively refreshing.
I would say you’re wrong about Iowa. In the ‘70’s, Iowa had two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor. By the ‘90’s, Iowa was a reliably conservative state, and notwithstanding Obama’s success has largely been so ever since. My guess is that it’s about an R+7 state.
I certainly think you have Spanberger pegged correctly as merely tactically moderate, which to me is disappointing. I grew up and lived in Virginia for more than half my life (now I live across the river in Maryland, much to my chagrin) and so follow Virginia politics closely. I was so enamored of Spanberger when she was in the House that I rooted enthusiastically for her to win the VA governorship, and hoped it would be a stepping stone for her to run for president in 2028 . No more.
That bubble has burst for me. She may be checking some of the progressive impulses of the Virginia legislature, but not many. I've been what I'd call a traditional Republican - a breed that's disappearing rapidly - who loathes Trump. Until 2020, I'd last voted for a Dem for president in 1976, but went for Biden the "moderate" in 2020 (I voted 3rd party in 2016, and again in 2024). Of course, Biden turned out to be anything but a moderate, overreaching in so many areas I lost count.
That brings me to the problem I have with tactical moderates: IDENTIFYING them early, because once free of the constraints that suppress their true progressive nature, they run amok. When Kirsten Gillibrand represented a right-leaning district in northern NY, she was a moderate. As a Senator she's been anything but.
The problem here is partisan gerrymandering and political nationalization, no? Fixing the former and cracking down on out of state money via campaign finance reform would arguably move politics towards a more moderate direction
Partisan gerrymandering isn't new, though it's rapidly on the increase now that the Supreme Court has declared it a political issue that's nonjusticiable. But Virginia has never been especially gerrymandered, and the state's recent attempt at it was thwarted by the state supreme court. Virginia is simply a formerly red, now purple, and slowly shifting to blue state due to changing population patterns.
The Northern Virginia region where I grew up was solid Republican back in the 70's and 80's, but that began to change in the 90's. Arlington is almost urban at this point, and so are parts of Fairfax. Tyson's Corner (Fairfax) has more rentable office space than Richmond and Norfolk combined, and is basically a small city. With that growth came a more highly-educated population, and thus one that leans liberal with a substantial progressive component. I live in Montgomery County across the river, and it's so progressive I sometimes want to choke. Arlington followed suit two decades ago, and now Fairfax is emulating MoCo, with Loudoun not far behind. Spanberger didn't really have to hide her progressive instincts to get elected governor, especially facing a candidate as weak as Sears. But as bad as Sears was, the race probably would have been a little tighter had Spanberger let her true colors fly. I suspect she picked a few votes up in the ex-urban counties like Spotsylvania, and even maybe a few rural ones by posing as a moderate.
Recall that by playing up the "I'm a moderate centrist" theme she beat Dave Brat for her first Congressional seat. Brat was a Tea Party right-winger who managed to beat then-House whip Eric Cantor, who wasn't deemed conservative enough (lol). She had to hew to the moderate line to get re-elected, especially when Virginia redrew her district.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "political nationalization".
Political nationalization basically refers to the phenomena where regional/local identities (Blue Dog Dem/Rockefeller Repub) have withered away in favor for the national party brand creating more coherent political parties but also serving as a positive feedback loop for political polarization and dysfunction
I was underwhelmed with the R's candidate for governor, but reluctantly held my nose as I did not think Spanberger would hold the line. Especially with such strong Dem representation in RIchmond. The Rs in VA seem dedicated to putting forth non-viable/weka candidates. We had Youngkin as a brief flash of red who flamed out, and the state party is just...not great. Not CA bad yet, but headed there.
Yeah, you can run candidates like Sears, and that Miyares could lose to a guy as bad as his opponent tells you something. Miyares did some good stuff, but I think he really mishandled the Bijan Ghasar thing.
I generally agree with what you said yesterday about the conflation of the progressive establishment and the insurgent left, and that you think more criticism should be levied at the establishment's progressive policies.
However, I want to provide some explanation for the danger the prog establishment likely sees with the insurgent left, because this is the way I, as a moderate, view this faction. I think you are underestimating the danger of the insurgent left faction. I don't think, as you say, that they will just acquiesce into the prog establishment over time. I think they will be a consistent thorn in the side of the party, attacking the party establishment the whole time while the establishment feels unable to fight back (largely due to a permission structure where "punching left" is seen as an unproductive thing to do). Now I largely agree that the punches left would be *more* effective if we were actually critiquing progressive policy, which the prog establishment doesn't do, but it still needs to happen, otherwise we risk the left insurgency taking over the whole party.
You mention this as a possibility, but I don't think you've fully thought out how catastrophic this would be. It would simply be *much* worse than the existing establishment, because the ideological core of this faction is fundamentally illiberal. They may not all govern this way, but they express illiberal, anti-capitalist viewpoints constantly, and given actual sway over the party apparatus, they will (potentially) convert us into an illiberal party. That's why I think the progressives are rightfully scared of this faction.
Of course, your advice to moderate would actually greatly help in this regard, and so I think your prescription is still correct.
I think this post and the previous one correctly identify and describe some current divisions in the Democratic party, but the framing is too focused on specific practical policy choices to clarify what should be done about those divisions.
We have to start a few steps back:
1. What do we believe? (about the world, the country, people, etc.)
2. What are our values?
3. What should we do about our values given our beliefs?
Policy only comes in at step 3. It has to be grounded in beliefs and values. Once, I thought it was the case that most disagreements among Democratic factions were only on the policy level. Now, I'm less sure. I think we need to reestablish the earlier levels, also to make it clearer when we really are just disagreeing about different ways to accomplish the same goal.
Dems don't agree on 1. and 2., so it's only natural they'd be so far apart on 3. I'm not sure I agree with this step-by-step process though. There may be other grounds to form a modern political party. At no point before 2008 did Democrats agree on anything. It's only after that we've thought they *should*. We can't (and shouldn't) recreate Tammany Hall, but we've got to get creative.
Le sigh.
Jesse Ewiak was right when he said that Matt Y keeps wishing that the Democratic electorate wanted different things than they do actually want.
For the record, I actually agree with most of the items on the "moderate" list! A+++ on housing abundance, clean energy abundance, and taking crime control and border control seriously. The deficit reduction question is genuinely hard, because it is the right thing to do *and* it would require raising taxes or cutting social services, both of which are about as popular as genital herpes (see the Churchill quote about democracy).
But, for the n-th time, can we (Democrats/liberals) close ranks here and focus on what unites us, not what divides us? I think an ok-ish compromise can be reached on most of these issues, and I'm fine with running an anti-abortion candidate in Louisiana if the alternative is a MAGA wingnut. But the important thing is, both the moderates and the lefties mostly want to work for what they see as *the common good*. (Sure, the far-left DSA types are all "fuck America, it's an evil colonialist imperialist oppressive hegemon that deserves to DIE IN A FIRE," but I'm talking about the lefties who are too lefty for Matt's liking but still consider themselves Democrats.) MAGA is a personality cult that has jack and shit to do with the common good, they have screwed people (including their own followers) over in too many ways to count. And just as importantly, Democrats, both lefties and centrists, are for respecting the democratic process and do not pull shit like "we refuse to acknowledge the results of this election."
Like I said before, using the analogy to "Cobra Kai" - yes, Johnny and Daniel are very different in their temperament and life philosophy, and they disagree about a ton of things, but they agree on some key things that matter. They both work hard to teach their students and they want their students to fight with honor and not be bullies. Cobra Kai under Kreese and Silver is a bunch of sociopaths who enjoy hurting those weaker than themselves and who are ok with fighting dirty. Johnny ought to work with Daniel to take down Cobra Kai, not punch Daniel publicly in the face to prove to undecided onlookers that he's not a pussy.
The piece shows the lie of the idea of a "big tent." Nobody wants a big tent. They want a political party that uniformly reflects their own beliefs. MY wants a party where Congressmen from Hawaii run on and enact austerity, law and order, and war, just like the left wants socialists in Kentucky. In the end, we'll just have to fight it out.
>Nobody wants a big tent.
I do! So, at least one person does!
I think people can and do benefit from having friends and family that disagree, even disagree by a lot, but that's not a party. I think everyone who wants a "big tent" party in theory chooses their own beliefs when they think about what that party should run on and do, and they imagine the other faction surrendering unconditionally and voting with them forever. It's politics! That's what everyone wants.
Re: "focus on what unites us" - the problem then is to define the common set of ideas and priorities that unites Democrats. Of the ones you listed, I think the moderate faction would be happy if that was the common set but I don't think the progressive faction would be ok if that was the only set of ideas on the table.
As an aside, I wouldn't be too worried about factional infighting - its just what happens to the party out of power.
Everyone just lists their own ideas and priorities and presents them as "common." MY's is just a pro-business, law and order one. Trouble with the Democrats is there isn't a substantial list of policies they DO agree on, let alone prioritize.
Also, Liberalism doesn't believe their is one "common good." Pluralism is a feature, not a bug.
There’s some truth here. The Dems are more like the Indian National Congress than British Labour— extraordinarily diverse without much to share other than institutional genealogy, memory. Both have proven highly pluralistic and of late extremely unsuccessful because they can’t present a consistent agenda and are trying to market to opposite ends of the economic spectrum.
Agreed except on "border control," which is an utter nonsense in this day and age. What matters for immigration control is work authorization and financial services, not whether someone has physically crossed an imaginary line. Attempting to defend the latter is the immigration equivalent of France building its defenses around the Maginot Line in 1940.
Hard disagree, jumping the fence is bad, actually! I don't want unaccounted for illegal aliens entering without the proper vetting
There is no "fence." That's my point. It's a nonsensical concept as applied to any country larger than Monaco.
My point is that I don't want people illegally crossing the border into my country, you apparently don't care about that. We're at an impasse
>What matters for immigration control is work authorization and financial services
So, would you be ok with unlimited numbers of people entering the U.S. as long as they had no work authorization (could only work illegally "under the table) and no financial services? I wouldn't.
Yes. The physical presence of people here is economically irrelevant until they take actions that materially influence the economy.
This is not a new thing. The modern concept of "border control" is an exceptionally recent innovation that basically only started to make sense with trains and steamships and stopped making sense again once the automobile was invented. The only reason it has persisted in the public mind is that that era happened to overlap with the era in which most of the modern democratic polities were constructed.
Jesse's right, but the primary electorate is pushing the Democrats towards a future in which it's only a regional party.
This simply isn't true - again, Kamala lost by a couple points after 9% inflation and taking over 100 days out. We're competitive in races from Texas to Ohio to Alaska to Iowa. Warnock could run on Kamala's exact platform in 2028 and probably win 320 EV's.
I'm sorry, Matt's POV is the Dem's are doomed unless we move farther to the right on everything but Social Security & abortion & Israel has no actual proof in the pudding.
Maybe, maybe if Larry Hogan & Charlie Baker were the future of the GOP, there'd be an argument it's a worry, but the best reasonable candidate the GOP has in 2028 is the guy whose been cheerleading for the Iran War.
"This simply isn't true - again, Kamala lost by a couple points after 9% inflation and taking over 100 days out. We're competitive in races from Texas to Ohio to Alaska to Iowa"
You keep forgetting what a historically bad candidate Trump was (among other things).
Additionally, the voters you're talking about would push the party significantly left of Harris' campaign.
I think the idea Trump is a historically bad candidate on a purely political level is something people have to get over actually being true - this is true of centrists who didn't like Kamala and my lefties who didn't like Hillary, Biden, or Kamala and thought Bernie would've won in a blowout.
I'll put in more bluntly - Kamala beats DeSantis.
Now, she'd lose to Haley (assuming no Trump eats the wrong cheeseburger and isn't around for 2024), but even that'd be closer than the polls because Haley's actual quite right-wing views on a lot of things would be brought up.
Even if you're right, none of that means the Dem's are turning into a regional party.
The problem you are going to hit, fast, is that what you need is a way to unite with people that currently think you don't care about them. At all.
And, sadly, sometimes I don't think they are wrong.
Cards on the table: yes, I do admit that I have a hard time caring about people who hate and disdain me, who think I'm inferior because I'm a Democrat/atheist/liberal/woman who works outside the home, who post hideously, rancidly racist/sexist/antisemitic/generally hateful garbage on social media, who venerate douchebags like Trump and Tate, who laugh when Trump posts AI-generated images of himself dumping shit on protestors, etc.
That being said, the government ought to be in the business of promoting flourishing and wellbeing for all Americans, not just those I like or agree with. I may dislike some MAGAsshole in a Red state, but I still want him to have affordable health care and unemployment insurance, I don't want his children to go hungry, and if his state is hit by a hurricane/tornado/flood, I want FEMA to help him.
I think you are allowed to hate people that hate you. At the least, dislike them. :D
I'm more talking about the communities that, themselves, feel abandoned. Yes, some of them have been captured by lies as to what Democrats actually do and want. But the complete blindside so many online folks have for what is actually happening in places that are not NYC, LA, or SF is surprising.
It would really help if we could somehow nationally focus on a system that encouraged going back to a lot of places. Right now, what a lot of rural places see is we have a HUGE incentive system to pull valuable workers out of their towns into colleges, and then never really give them a reason to go back. Quite the contrary, they get then sucked into the current major cities and are lucky if they build up a nest egg to take back someday.
The median Trump voter is not a 50 year old former union worker in a dying town in the Midwest.
The median Trump voter is a 50 year old small business owner in the Atlanta suburbs who hate unions, taxes, and is mildly racist and bigoted toward non-straight people.
The people in 'forgotten America' don't hate Democrats because we abandoned thme, they hate Democrats because we're OK w/ women having reproductive rights, think LGBT should be equal, don't want to deport every brown person, and so on.
I'm sorry, I grew up just above white trash in a 'dying' city in the Northeast. I know these people and while I want to give them health care, they don't want that if the [slur] across town gets it too.
Biden plowed taxpayer money into building chip fabs in places like Texarkana, precisely the kind of Forgotten Man's Land that you say Democrats have abandoned. The people of Texarkana voted for Trump by a bigger margin in 2024 than they had in 2020.
Jess Piper of Missouri has a Substack where she writes how, if Democrats won more state-level elections in Missouri, the state could have better education for children and better infrastructure and stuff, but the voters of Missouri won't have it, because Democrats are evil godless baby-eating woke Communists.
Yes, I agree that we ought to do... something... to help people in the forgotten areas, but a) I'll be darned if I know what would be both effective and feasible within the American political system, b) at some point, you can't help people who won't help themselves.
Right - I am A-OK w/ running JBE in Lousiana or a pro-gun anti-abortion basically Republican but on Social Security/Medicare type in South Carolina, but that person would lose for the same person a Democrat but except on say taxes or health care Republican would lose in Oregon - because Democrats and 'independents' who vote Democratic 90% of the time know what happens when Republicans get in power and they don't want to help that happen and vice versa.
The real reason the moderates aren't pushing what Matt wants is they realize their voters don't want that anymore than I bet there are still plenty of older Republicans w/ Dubya-like views on immigration but they know their voters don't want that.
At a certain point, the voters do decide what a party stands for.
I'm not sure that the voters are as left as you think they are. The big issue is a lot of Democrats prioritize winning but this is really hard to measure as people are guessing about how other voters will react to the candidates and everything is based on running counterfactuals that there is no way to actually evaluate (would Bernie have beaten Trump, would Platner beat Susan Collins).
The amusing thing is I have to fight w/ lefties other places the voters aren't as left-wing as they think.
I mean, I don't think the median Democrat is a DSAer but like, yes, under-45 Democratic voters are just far more progressive in general on a wide variety of issues and 10 years ago, it was under-35 voters and also as a result, a lot of things Democratic voters might've been OK w/ 2012 they simply aren't in 2026, the same way Democratic politicians in 1992 could say things they couldn't in 2012.
For example, it doesn't mean that all Dem primary voters are now open border types, but yes, the median Dem primary voter is now just far less supportive of tough internal immigration enforcement than they were even in 2012.
At one level you are clearly correct that the median Democrat is more progressive than in 1992 (or in 2012) but I'm arguing that most beliefs are weakly held and winning matters a lot. If Dan Osborn wins in Nebraska, democrats in Nebraska are going to be thrilled and a lot voters will decide they are ok with his guns and abortion opinions and give him cover the way leftist are giving Mamdani cover for his centrist takes (or the way the pro-life movement grants cover to Trump).
well considering immigration was a losing issue for us in 2024, that's a problem!
It might be easier for true believer moderates if they had some actual data to work with. I’ve often thought about this in terms of climate policy. It shouldn’t be very hard to show that Manchion’s “all of the above” energy abundance approach would lead to both lower emissions and lower average global temperatures over the medium- and long-term compared to the current progressive NGO recommendations. I would certainly donate to an effort to commission such a study. Then moderates could wave thick pamphlets around like leftists and progressives.
I guess it's not strictly lower emissions, but lower overall suffering from climate change.
Lower emissions, too, since adoption of clean(er) technologies would be wider spread.
Craft question.
I thought this sentence was good
“The country would be better off today if Democrats had embraced his permitting legislation more fulsomely.”
I thought fulsome praise meant insincere praise so I looked up fulsome. It has two meanings, primarily it means excessively or insincerely flattering. But recently it’s come to mean full or abundant. Matt rode the newer meaning of the word while invoking the lingering connotation of the old and taught me a bit about my native language. Well done.
I post this because Claude does not share my fulsome attitude towards this sentence, it thinks Matt was straightforwardly using the new meaning but I think he’s too erudite for that and would have said “fully” if he didn’t intend the dissonance.
Advocacy is increasingly professionalized (“the progressive NGO blob” and on the conservative side, wingnut welfare) and foundation-funded. This is mostly bad. Someone ought to have an explicit policy agenda for reversing it.
Some very technical changes to tax treatment of charitable contributions and foundation structure and the like would probably have a big impact.
The alternative to foundation funding is mass fundraising, which is IMO often worse. The ACLU's turn away from principled civil liberties into generic blobism is substantially because blobism has a larger donor base.
Even if you completely eliminate the charitable deduction for anything advocacy-ish, I don't think that would change much. If you're a true-believing billionaire, having your advocacy cost 1.5-2x more net probably isn't enough to stop you. And donations to political campaigns are already nondeductible, but that certainly hasn't stopped them from having bad incentives.
Agreed we ran into the same problems with campaign finance reform
What motivates small dollar, donations, fear and rage
It seems like the core idea here is that national parties need to tolerate the level of variance in individual politicians' positions that make sense for a very diverse country where different states and voting districts are radically different. You can imagine a world where there are Democrats who are competitive in Utah senate races, but they'd be pro-life, pro-gun Democrats.
The issue here is the median Democrat in Utah is a lib from Salt Lake City. Like, voters want to vote for people who agree w/ their values and their are lots of Democratic Utahans who basically have the same values as somebody from Boston or Los Angeles.
This is the same problem Republican voters have in california
But here's the thing - I think CA GOP voters are morally wrong, but if you truly believe abortion is murder, getting a Senator who might vote for something you care less about such as tax cuts and judges isn't worth supporting someone who is in their view, OK with killing babies.
A lot of Democratic voters don't want to put their vote behind somebody they think will support morally abhorrent things.
I expect this depends on whether you are a single-issue voter. Abortion and gun control are topics that have many single-issue voters, but even there, I think most Republicans and most Democrats are willing to compromise somewhat on those to get other things they want. But this is an empirical question--maybe I'm wrong.
I am disappointed Obama didn't step forward as a leader of the moderate to left against Trump, and to create center around which Democrats could coalesce. As Bernie demonstrates, one doesn't have to be really viable as a POTUS candidate to inhabit that role.
I agree with you about the substantial moderate preference slate but I think it’s a mistake to conflate that with a vision. A compelling vision that can elicit ideological zeal needs to be cast in terms amenable to *heuristic maximization*: a dial you can intuitively turn up all the way to 11 and pursue.
I agree with Matt that the moderates need to fight the Progressive Establishment on the grounds of ideas, and the centrist agenda he lays out is a good one. But in the attention economy that is going to be weak beer. People don't care about neo-Brandeisian economics while performance pay for teachers is an abstract thing that doesn't get the blood moving.
The way to win the fight is to take on the big cultural issues. It's to take on Woke 1.0. It's to take on affirmative action (and careful with that in the South Carolina primary!), it's to bemoan all the pronoun craziness and, yes, it's to denounce the worst exemplars of crazy woke progressives like DAC. Heck, you can go after student loan forgiveness too because of its culture war salience.
I like Matt's agenda but it seems to suffer from the belief that people really care about substantive policy. They don't. Give them a good economy and avoid apparent chaos (at the border, in the Persian Gulf) and they're fine with whatever you are doing. But make them feel that you're too different from them culturally or, God forbid, look down on them or are lecturing them and you've dug your own grave.
But large swaths of the Democratic electorate are actually much culturally different from a lot of American's and they get a choice who represents them too. Sorry, but progressive people in Seattle aren't going to send a pro-oil, anti-kids trans in sports representative to Congress, even if it'll supposedly help some candidate in Iowa by 0.1 points according to a single poli sci paper.
By the same token, a lot of evangelical Christians are much different from other Americans and that R+30 district isn't going to send somebody whose overly friendly to LGBT people or cares much about helping immigrants even if it'd help the GOP win votes in New Jersey.
I agree.
You should represent your constituents.
I was referring to the presidential nominee and the contest to win the nomination.
But the Democratic primary electorate largely thinks most of woke 1.0 was good - like DEI still polls incredibly highly among Democrats, regardless that Substack that has turned on it.
I'm sure there's some random woke excesses a Democrat could turn on and I'm sure the 2028 nominee will basically have the Biden WH view on transgender kids in sports, but no, a Democratic nominee is not going to come out as anti-affirmative action, anti-minoriy owned business priority in contracting, anti-DEI, or whatever Matt thinks might magically move votes by 4%.
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/51619-dei-another-day
Yes, it's a tough needle to thread
It needs a very compelling voice.
I hope one of the candidates is up to the challenge.
After the 2022 and 2024 debacles the Democrats, my Party, still has the same leadership and is dominated by the NY/Cali connections. So the upside is limited. But if the Democrats take back both Houses let see them address inflation, affordable housing, and other issues that play well when you are the opposition but need real answers when in power. First step new leadership in the Senate.
I think the strongest idea here is the distinction between tactical moderation and substantive conviction, but I wonder if “True Believer” is quite the right category. The more interesting distinction may be between tactical moderation and genuine heterodoxy.
A politician can be moderate on one issue, progressive on another, and tactically positioned on a third. What matters is whether they are willing to tell their own coalition, “You’re wrong about this,” and then argue the merits even when there’s no obvious electoral payoff.
That also makes the Manchin discussion particularly interesting. The point isn’t simply that Manchin was secretly a moderate True Believer. It’s that representing a constituency over many years can actually produce substantive convictions. If you’re the guy defending coal communities against environmental groups for a decade, you’re going to learn things about energy policy and eventually conclude that some of the environmental movement’s arguments are genuinely wrong. Tactical positioning can evolve into genuine heterodoxy.
I also think the essay is strongest near the end, where it argues that moderates need to offer a positive governing philosophy rather than merely a politics of “no.” Abundant housing, faster economic growth, clean-energy deployment, permitting reform, better public-sector performance, crime control, and so forth are much more interesting than simply saying “we’re not as left-wing as those guys.”
But there’s a tension here. The essay sometimes treats the proposed centrist agenda as if it were simply “the merits,” while treating the progressive agenda as an ideological choice. It isn’t that cleanly divided. Housing abundance, performance pay, fossil-fuel policy, deficit reduction, etc. are themselves substantive ideological positions, with reasonable arguments on both sides. If the argument is that Democrats should argue from conviction rather than tactical positioning, that standard should apply to the author’s preferred policies too.
Ultimately, I think the most compelling version of the thesis is not “Democrats need more moderates.” It’s that Democrats need more politicians with the freedom and willingness to be genuinely heterodox. If Democrats start winning more purple and red territory, that heterodoxy will become structurally inevitable. And some of those politicians will be moderates, while others may actually be more progressive than the party establishment.
The important thing isn’t where they sit on the spectrum. It’s whether they’re willing to say, “My coalition is wrong about this,” and defend that position on the merits.
Right - the actual problem for moderates is simple - many Democratic voters disagree w/ the notion of what Matt claims is 'good policy', sometime correctly (continuing to be overly friendly to Big Oil) and incorrectly (NIMBYism).