DC’s version of “moderate” is not moderate
And how the DC Centrism makes it harder for Democrats to win elections
Ever since I started doing politics for a living, 45 years ago, I have been hearing about how centrism is what wins elections, and how liberalism is killing the Democratic Party. But what I learned when I came to DC in the 1990s was that DC has a peculiar form of centrism, and that DC Centrism actually causes Democrats to lose far more elections than being too liberal.
This cave-in by 8 moderates in the Senate is the latest awful example of this problem. Thank God it happened a year out from the election, which gives us a year for voters to focus on how much Trump and the Republicans are pissing them off rather than on how these Democrats stopped fighting for them in exchange for almost nothing.
DC Centrism as opposed to voter centrism
I am one of those Democrats who think we need swing voters just as much as we need to turn out more base voters; who believe that we need to reach out to independent minded and swing voters who are wary of the national Democratic brand on some issues, especially cultural issues. I think our language needs to be more plain spoken and less politically correct, and that a lot of national Democrats sound too much like college professors and not enough like waitresses, nurses, and construction workers. I think we need to recruit and support viable working class candidates who relate to their districts in rural America and red states as much as we do in big cities and blue districts. I like candidates described as moderate like Amy Klobuchar and Jon Tester, as well as candidates described as progressive like Tammy Baldwin and Keith Ellison.
I also believe that Democrats should talk about the issues that (a) voters care the most about, which are mostly kitchen table economics, and (b) Democrats should talk as much as they can about the policies they believe in that are most popular with voters.
Some would say all of the above makes me a moderate. I think of myself as a progressive, but whatever you want to call me is fine.
However, what I talk about above unfortunately has little to do with what I would describe as DC Centrism, which is Democrats who undercut the rest of the party to do unpopular things, making it harder for Democrats to win elections.
The first time I ran into DC Centrism was on the NAFTA issue when I was on Bill Clinton’s campaign in 1992. The two most important, hotly contested swing states in that campaign were Ohio and Michigan. NAFTA was hated by the working class voters we needed to win in those two states, and by the key progressive institutions, especially unions, that dominated the politics in those states. We were about to do a press event reinforcing Clinton’s support for the NAFTA treaty that President Bush had negotiated, and I was begging everyone in the campaign to change or soften our position on the issue. Word quickly spread through the campaign that I was just an old school labor liberal, and my position was rejected – Clinton endorsed NAFTA. It made no political sense, it made it far harder to squeeze out wins in Michigan and Ohio, but by God it was centrist, and the Clinton campaign wanted to be centrist.
This pattern was repeated over and over again in the years to come, where Democrats would support unpopular policies and hurt Democrats’ political chances by taking unpopular stands on issues, claiming all the while to be centrist. These centrists:
Supported letting China into the WTO
Deregulated Wall Street
Passed a bill to make it harder for working families to declare bankruptcy
Went easy on Wall Street after the 2008 financial collapse, letting them keep their bonuses, while forcing UAW workers to make big wage concessions to save the auto industry
Supported cutting Social Security benefits in a “Grand Bargain” with Republicans
Supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, another unpopular trade deal that fortunately died
Kept Biden and the Democrats from passing legislation providing more affordable child care, elder care, and building more affordable housing
Kept Biden and the Democrats from passing an extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit
Kept Biden and the Democrats from passing a wealth tax on billionaires
And now, these 8 Democratic “moderates” in the Senate caved before we had the chance to force Republicans to extend health insurance subsidies, a wildly popular policy that had just helped us win decisive electoral victories in the 2025 elections.
Winning elections isn’t about defining ourselves as moderates; winning elections is defining ourselves as fiercely fighting for working families
All of the policies I talked about above had one side that was popular with DC Centrists, and the other side that was popular with the general public. The DC Centrists thought their centrist positions were popular because their lobbyist friends from corporate America told them they were the moderate thing to do, and these Democrats thought it was politically advantageous to position themselves as moderates. But we would have won so many more elections over the last 30+ years if we hadn’t done all those “moderate” things.
Democrats win elections when we fight like hell for and pass legislation that will benefit working families’ lives. You know what is popular right now, in addition to keeping those subsidies on health insurance, according to the polling I’ve been seeing?
Stopping monopolistic companies from price gauging
Negotiating all drug prices the way the VA does
Raising the minimum wage to $25 an hour
Breaking up corporate monopolies and making it easier for small business to sue them and compete with them
Driving down housing costs through rent control and building more affordable housing
Free or low cost child care and elder care
Raising taxes on the wealthy and profitable corporations
Stopping the practice of forcing employees, even low level employees, to sign non-compete clauses
Making it easier to organize unions, and empowering those unions in bargaining
Maybe if some centrists were to join progressives in making those policy fights, we would be more likely to win working class voters and thus win some elections. And then, maybe we could stop having fights over why we are losing elections.
Makes sense....just speak plainly about things that matter to human beings and then when you do stay with it reminding people that you're on it and you're not going to give up. What happened with the Dems giving in was a betrayal because they couldn't be counted on to do the hard work. I'm 65 now and have attended all the No Kings rallies, called my congressional representatives, written postcards, posted to social media about the lies and voted. We showed our support and then we won "bigly" in the recent elections and still they couldn't strengthen their spines. It won't stop me from saying no to this hateful, corrupt administration but man do they make it harder.
Thoughtful as always--Those do the same issues and the inside story from the Clinton campaign is revealing. Interestingly in 2,000, activist friends in Ohio had said they were pleading with the Clinton administration or Gore to say something opposing a proposed incinerator with major potential impact and huge local opposition. But they didn't. I had just met Katy McGinty at a gathering she called about how to avoid Democrats bleeding off to Nader. I sent her their contact info asking her to at least talk with them. But she never did.