Their big problem is not a lack of moderates, it's nationalization of party brands. And: A new era for the exit poll; The end game of partisan gerrymandering; and how Substack's AI works. + more!
I think the argument that elections are nationalizing is not the same thing as having a discussion about moderation.
If voting is strongly nationalized, then the question of national party identity becomes extremely relevant-- how are voters perceiving the party based on it's national identity, as seen in it's elected members and candidates for office?
If anything, strong nationalization argues that an ideologically extreme candidate or elected official in a 'safe' district can be damaging to a candidate in a moderate district, if that candidate or elected official is influential through nationalized media or social media. If voters perceive that the party is moving away from their ideological disposition because an ideologically extreme candidate or elected official is pulling the perception of the national party further to that extreme, then that is damaging to the party as a whole, because the median and average district/state is going to be closer to the average, and there are going to be be more moderate districts than ideologically extreme districts.
So yeah, if nationalization is real-- and it very much appears that it is-- then it becomes important for a Party (either party) to begin to police it's ideological extremes even in 'safe' districts so that the national perception of the party is closer to the median ideological disposition. An extreme ideologue even in a 'safe' seat can then have a deleterious effect on campaigns in districts that are much closer to the national average, because the idealogue can have an outsize effect on the national perception of the Party.
Diversifying or trying to regionalize through some sort of multi-party system isn't really going to cut it either, because that ignores how and why things got nationalized so strongly-- which is to say that this correlates with internet access. Media of all forms has nationalized because access is no longer regional through regional distributors like local newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. Now all media is available everywhere. It's the Spotify problem, where a vanishingly small single percentage or less of creators generate the vast majority of actual media consumption.
And you can see this in our election cycles over this period too-- this has essentially been an incumbency pendulum. G. W. Bush was perceived as too conservative, so then along comes Obama. Obama is eventually painted as too liberal, and along comes Trump. Trump is too conservative, so Biden. Biden is painted as too liberal, so back to Trump. Trump is too extreme, so 2028 will swing to Democrats. The center is gravity, but momentum will keep the pendulum swinging back and forth; this back and forth *is* the steady state outcome.
What this really demonstrates is that the incumbent Presidency is the single defining factor of perceived ideological extremism. The more candidates and elected officials a Party has who are more ideologically extreme than the last incumbent president of a Party, the more the party will be be perceived to be ideologically extreme, which will impact the party's performance on a national basis.
That explains why Republicans were so successful in 2024; most of the Republican ticket was perceived as 'less extreme' than Trump himself. In a nationalized environment, the ideal is for the President to be toward the ideological extreme with the bulk of candidates being towards the center from the President. A nationalized media is always going to be characterizing the President as to the ideological extreme. Bill Clinton was the last president who could successfully characterize himself as 'moderate,' because he was the last president before the collapse of traditional, pre-internet media, which is the driving factor of the nationalization of politics.
I agree with having candidates backed by more than one political party. However, we must increase voter education at the same time. I saw two Twitter accounts, Gen Z age pod bro types trying whip up fury & foment election fraud conspiracies in the NYC mayoral race because Zohran Mamdani’s name appeared twice in the top row of the ballot, while Cuomo’s name was all the way down at the bottom right. Ofc Mamdani was a Democratic Party candidate, as well as the Working Families Party candidate. Cuomo is independent. Oh! Eric Adams is still on the ballot as he withdrew too late to be removed. Have they never voted in NYC before? They could also have asked any of the poll workers. But no they’d rather generate clicks & confusion.
"Call it whatever you want — polarization, nationalization, “Balkanization,” factionalism, etc. It is simply true empirically that individuals moderating their issue positions, but sticking within the same party label, is not a solution to that problem."
I have a empirically better answer than fusion voting or multi-member districts or any of this. Because the other argument against moderation as a solution is that there is a massive gulf between the two parties, in both their policy positions and their representation of their opponents.
Shut down Fox News and its ilk. Make intentionally lying to voters on matters of public interest illegal. Hold corporate media monopolies subject to the law on all platforms, including social media platforms. Enforce existing hate speech laws.
Protect the First Amendment from those who would reserve its protection to only those viewpoints they like.
We have always had low info voters and low turnout elections. What we didn't have then was a right-wing media bubble in service to a white Christian prosperity nationalist agenda. We didn't have people selling their opponents as demonic and evil. We still supported democracy from both sides.
I don't believe that the moderate-centrist Democrats are realistic at all. One problem with their idea of how to succeed in the Senate is for Democrats to join with "moderate" Republicans to forge centrist policies that the American people will like and support. The first problem with that is there are no "moderate" Republicans in the Senate. There are a couple of play-acting moderates -- Collins and Murkowski who talk a lot more moderation than they vote. Often, even their "moderate" votes are not real. Rarely, will they ever join Democrats where their votes make the difference between the Democrats winning and the Republicans losing. That is a strategic decision that allows them to present themselves as moderate for the home state voters, while making no difference in the outcome. I don't think the GOP cares at all about those votes.
So, who exactly are the moderate-centrist Democrats joining with to pass centrist legislation. Look at the ACA fifteen years ago, before things got as bad as they are today. The Democrats courted Republicans endlessly, offering and giving concessions weakening the legislation in order to attract a few Republican votes, which would allow them to call the legislation "bi-partisan." How many Republican votes did those concessions attract in the end. Zero. Republicans are always willing to talk and extract concessions from gullible Democrats, but they don't deliver anything.
The second problem with the idea of centrist legislation is, in my opinion, that the major problems this country faces have been neglected for so long that there are no moderate solutions to those problems. Look back again at the ACA. It was designed to deal with the severe problem of millions of uninsured Americans. Was it successful? Yes and no. It did reduce the number of uninsured, which was a good thing. However, it didn't eliminate the uninsured problem and, so, today, fifteen years later, before the current GOP assault, there are still millions of uninsured Americans and unpaid medical bills are still the single greatest cause of personal bankruptcy. Democrats like to laud the ACA as a success, but it was only a partial success that may not become a complete or almost complete failure.
Another serious deficiency of the ACA was that it used the same entities to provide insurance that do so much to make our health care system as bad as it often is. In one sense, the first word in health care in the U.S. is insurance. Insurance companies prevent people from getting care they need and even if it is ultimately provided, it is significantly delayed, which can cause a patients health to deteriorate during the wait. It is standard practice for insurance companies to deny coverage, especially for expensive drugs like biologics. Deny, appeal, deny, appeal, and maybe if the patients and doctors persevere long enough the treatment will be approved. I have had that happen both ways -- final approval and final denial.
It should be obvious now that the answer to the problem of uninsured Americans is the same answer to many other problems of American health care. We need a well-designed universal care system that is not dependent on the greed of for-profit insurance companies. Tinkering, which was essentially what the ACA was does not solve the problem and because it is a partial solution for some people, it will always be vulnerable.
I'm going to end this already long comment by saying that climate change, affordability, and other severe, potentially catastrophic problems we face would all be better addressed by major changes in both thinking and policies and neither of those are characteristic of the moderate-centrist Democrats. The advantages of having Democrats winning elections from a policy standpoint are greatly diminished if all they do when in power is pass a bunch of minimalist legislation that won't solve any problems, though they might make some improvements, all of which can be undone as soon as the GOP regains power. Our biggest problem today, the one that got Trump elected both times is the dismal quality of our electorate, which is poorly informed, ignorant, gullible, and fickle.
We've got to find a way to deal with that or we'll never be able to rely on elections to protect democracy and install competent administrations that aren't overwhelmingly corrupt.
I will summarize the Dem problem in one sentence: many Americans think Dems stand for democracy, equality, and inclusion, and those things are evil. The single most important thing the DNC could be doing is protecting the brand - making sure people know basic American principles and that's whatwe stand for. But they're too busy asking for money to do anything useful.
I wonder if the lack of local news in "rural" area contributes to the effect of nationalization of party brands? Which has been exacerbated by the defunding of NPR!
Do I have this right: that voters who vote R [almost] solely because they are Rs follow this practice because Ds are seen as [unacceptably] urban-?? That is, even J Tester and S Brown solely because of "national" Ds-? If so, these unmovable R voters are rejecting [voting against] not only the urban D candidates but also against the [urban] voters who do support the D candidates. How, if at all, is this conflict addressed?
The Democrats are just as beholden to corporate donors as Republicans are and will always do what they are told by the wealthy even if it doesn’t help their constituents. Get rid of the money in politics.
At the risk of being too simplistic, on issues and the public’s views of their issues, don’t Democrats have a progressive problem on social issues and a moderate/centrist/business/establishment problem on economic issues?
To be clear, I’m not talking about individual candidates, I’m talking about the party as a whole. We have been in a nationalized environment for at least 20 years (which I would start with the second Iraq War when NE Republicans and the last white southern Democrats were losing or switching parties or Karl Rove’s intention to use culture issues to flip the Appalachia corridor between West Virginia to Arkansas Red).
Also strategically, Democrats need to look for 10 Osborn like independents to run for Senate in 2028 and not run a Democratic Senate candidate in Idaho, Utah, ND, SD, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, & Missouri so that there is a chance for some surprises in these safe Red seats.
WelcomePAC had a great memo called, "Deciding to Win". While it does spend a lot of time shooting down progressive talking points, it ALSO has a brilliant section called, "What it Does and Does Not Mean to be a Moderate".
Basically, the moderate approach is ALSO flawed. While progressive candidates waving around unpopular ideas isn't ideal, having a boring moderate who just picks centrist positions on EVERYTHING (even popular ideas like healthcare) is also a bad move.
Basically, Dems need to pick unorthodox candidates with different positions than the mainstream party. Maybe going left on healthcare, a bit to the right on immigration, etc.
Excellent article - on point with a recent conversation with my son - both of us still registered democrats only because we want to vote in primaries, both of us wishing there were either more parties or no parties. Multiple parties are the advantage of parliamentary systems (which have their own problems) but I thought it might be impossible to get multiple actionable parties here. Our smaller parties have always functioned as creators that slowly evolve and push their ideas to one of the major parties, before big changes are actually made. My three millennial grandchildren are almost completely disaffected independents. They still vote - but they wonder why, because they see both parties as two faces of the same corrupt corporation. Everyone in our multi generational family are variously progressive to lefter than thou. Nobody is happy with the national party. We all wish for parties and viable candidates that are a better fit. Everyone still knows their local elections are really important, so there’s that. Is it possible to have serious smaller parties here, supporting a greater number of impressive candidates, with real primaries open to all? Or is that a pipe dream?
To your point on nationalization, research on the impact of the decline of local news parallels your findings. From The state of local news and why it matters from the American Journalism Project:
"Research shows that the loss of local news is having an insidious effect on our democracy — contributing to polarization, decrease in voting, and government accountability. Local news is an essential lever to a healthy democracy; it helps communities understand what’s at stake in local elections, equips them to get involved in the political process by voting, contacting officials and running for office, reduces political polarization, and holds public officials accountable."
Fusion balloting could possibly also overcome the inherent bias our system has towards a two party system, and bring us c closer to the type of "coalition" governments seen in many other countries. Could it be accomplished by a change in the PARTY rules rather than requiring legislative changes? That would make it much simpler to implement.
I think the diagnosis makes sense, but I'm less sure about Drutman's prescription here. He has a tendency to constantly rediscover some esoteric electoral reform concept as the next silver bullet, most typically from the rare B-sides of US history (fusion voting has never really been a thing outside of the US). This is often to the exclusion of much more evidential models of well functioning multi-party democracy across the modern world.
And, of course, no red-state legislature would ever enact any of these proposals to de-nationalize Senate and House elections.
I wince whenever I see otherwise lucid analyses of our present predicament careen in their last paragraphs to election reforms that make sense to political scientists but which actual politicians would never enact.
Amen to that. Proportional representation might be too hard to reach, but a) a larger House, and b) mandatory ranked choice would be two great steps forward. And of course, make DC and PR states.
I think the argument that elections are nationalizing is not the same thing as having a discussion about moderation.
If voting is strongly nationalized, then the question of national party identity becomes extremely relevant-- how are voters perceiving the party based on it's national identity, as seen in it's elected members and candidates for office?
If anything, strong nationalization argues that an ideologically extreme candidate or elected official in a 'safe' district can be damaging to a candidate in a moderate district, if that candidate or elected official is influential through nationalized media or social media. If voters perceive that the party is moving away from their ideological disposition because an ideologically extreme candidate or elected official is pulling the perception of the national party further to that extreme, then that is damaging to the party as a whole, because the median and average district/state is going to be closer to the average, and there are going to be be more moderate districts than ideologically extreme districts.
So yeah, if nationalization is real-- and it very much appears that it is-- then it becomes important for a Party (either party) to begin to police it's ideological extremes even in 'safe' districts so that the national perception of the party is closer to the median ideological disposition. An extreme ideologue even in a 'safe' seat can then have a deleterious effect on campaigns in districts that are much closer to the national average, because the idealogue can have an outsize effect on the national perception of the Party.
Diversifying or trying to regionalize through some sort of multi-party system isn't really going to cut it either, because that ignores how and why things got nationalized so strongly-- which is to say that this correlates with internet access. Media of all forms has nationalized because access is no longer regional through regional distributors like local newspapers, television stations, and radio stations. Now all media is available everywhere. It's the Spotify problem, where a vanishingly small single percentage or less of creators generate the vast majority of actual media consumption.
And you can see this in our election cycles over this period too-- this has essentially been an incumbency pendulum. G. W. Bush was perceived as too conservative, so then along comes Obama. Obama is eventually painted as too liberal, and along comes Trump. Trump is too conservative, so Biden. Biden is painted as too liberal, so back to Trump. Trump is too extreme, so 2028 will swing to Democrats. The center is gravity, but momentum will keep the pendulum swinging back and forth; this back and forth *is* the steady state outcome.
What this really demonstrates is that the incumbent Presidency is the single defining factor of perceived ideological extremism. The more candidates and elected officials a Party has who are more ideologically extreme than the last incumbent president of a Party, the more the party will be be perceived to be ideologically extreme, which will impact the party's performance on a national basis.
That explains why Republicans were so successful in 2024; most of the Republican ticket was perceived as 'less extreme' than Trump himself. In a nationalized environment, the ideal is for the President to be toward the ideological extreme with the bulk of candidates being towards the center from the President. A nationalized media is always going to be characterizing the President as to the ideological extreme. Bill Clinton was the last president who could successfully characterize himself as 'moderate,' because he was the last president before the collapse of traditional, pre-internet media, which is the driving factor of the nationalization of politics.
This time period also maps very closely to the emergence of social media….
I agree with having candidates backed by more than one political party. However, we must increase voter education at the same time. I saw two Twitter accounts, Gen Z age pod bro types trying whip up fury & foment election fraud conspiracies in the NYC mayoral race because Zohran Mamdani’s name appeared twice in the top row of the ballot, while Cuomo’s name was all the way down at the bottom right. Ofc Mamdani was a Democratic Party candidate, as well as the Working Families Party candidate. Cuomo is independent. Oh! Eric Adams is still on the ballot as he withdrew too late to be removed. Have they never voted in NYC before? They could also have asked any of the poll workers. But no they’d rather generate clicks & confusion.
"Call it whatever you want — polarization, nationalization, “Balkanization,” factionalism, etc. It is simply true empirically that individuals moderating their issue positions, but sticking within the same party label, is not a solution to that problem."
I have a empirically better answer than fusion voting or multi-member districts or any of this. Because the other argument against moderation as a solution is that there is a massive gulf between the two parties, in both their policy positions and their representation of their opponents.
Shut down Fox News and its ilk. Make intentionally lying to voters on matters of public interest illegal. Hold corporate media monopolies subject to the law on all platforms, including social media platforms. Enforce existing hate speech laws.
Protect the First Amendment from those who would reserve its protection to only those viewpoints they like.
We have always had low info voters and low turnout elections. What we didn't have then was a right-wing media bubble in service to a white Christian prosperity nationalist agenda. We didn't have people selling their opponents as demonic and evil. We still supported democracy from both sides.
I don't believe that the moderate-centrist Democrats are realistic at all. One problem with their idea of how to succeed in the Senate is for Democrats to join with "moderate" Republicans to forge centrist policies that the American people will like and support. The first problem with that is there are no "moderate" Republicans in the Senate. There are a couple of play-acting moderates -- Collins and Murkowski who talk a lot more moderation than they vote. Often, even their "moderate" votes are not real. Rarely, will they ever join Democrats where their votes make the difference between the Democrats winning and the Republicans losing. That is a strategic decision that allows them to present themselves as moderate for the home state voters, while making no difference in the outcome. I don't think the GOP cares at all about those votes.
So, who exactly are the moderate-centrist Democrats joining with to pass centrist legislation. Look at the ACA fifteen years ago, before things got as bad as they are today. The Democrats courted Republicans endlessly, offering and giving concessions weakening the legislation in order to attract a few Republican votes, which would allow them to call the legislation "bi-partisan." How many Republican votes did those concessions attract in the end. Zero. Republicans are always willing to talk and extract concessions from gullible Democrats, but they don't deliver anything.
The second problem with the idea of centrist legislation is, in my opinion, that the major problems this country faces have been neglected for so long that there are no moderate solutions to those problems. Look back again at the ACA. It was designed to deal with the severe problem of millions of uninsured Americans. Was it successful? Yes and no. It did reduce the number of uninsured, which was a good thing. However, it didn't eliminate the uninsured problem and, so, today, fifteen years later, before the current GOP assault, there are still millions of uninsured Americans and unpaid medical bills are still the single greatest cause of personal bankruptcy. Democrats like to laud the ACA as a success, but it was only a partial success that may not become a complete or almost complete failure.
Another serious deficiency of the ACA was that it used the same entities to provide insurance that do so much to make our health care system as bad as it often is. In one sense, the first word in health care in the U.S. is insurance. Insurance companies prevent people from getting care they need and even if it is ultimately provided, it is significantly delayed, which can cause a patients health to deteriorate during the wait. It is standard practice for insurance companies to deny coverage, especially for expensive drugs like biologics. Deny, appeal, deny, appeal, and maybe if the patients and doctors persevere long enough the treatment will be approved. I have had that happen both ways -- final approval and final denial.
It should be obvious now that the answer to the problem of uninsured Americans is the same answer to many other problems of American health care. We need a well-designed universal care system that is not dependent on the greed of for-profit insurance companies. Tinkering, which was essentially what the ACA was does not solve the problem and because it is a partial solution for some people, it will always be vulnerable.
I'm going to end this already long comment by saying that climate change, affordability, and other severe, potentially catastrophic problems we face would all be better addressed by major changes in both thinking and policies and neither of those are characteristic of the moderate-centrist Democrats. The advantages of having Democrats winning elections from a policy standpoint are greatly diminished if all they do when in power is pass a bunch of minimalist legislation that won't solve any problems, though they might make some improvements, all of which can be undone as soon as the GOP regains power. Our biggest problem today, the one that got Trump elected both times is the dismal quality of our electorate, which is poorly informed, ignorant, gullible, and fickle.
We've got to find a way to deal with that or we'll never be able to rely on elections to protect democracy and install competent administrations that aren't overwhelmingly corrupt.
I will summarize the Dem problem in one sentence: many Americans think Dems stand for democracy, equality, and inclusion, and those things are evil. The single most important thing the DNC could be doing is protecting the brand - making sure people know basic American principles and that's whatwe stand for. But they're too busy asking for money to do anything useful.
I wonder if the lack of local news in "rural" area contributes to the effect of nationalization of party brands? Which has been exacerbated by the defunding of NPR!
Do I have this right: that voters who vote R [almost] solely because they are Rs follow this practice because Ds are seen as [unacceptably] urban-?? That is, even J Tester and S Brown solely because of "national" Ds-? If so, these unmovable R voters are rejecting [voting against] not only the urban D candidates but also against the [urban] voters who do support the D candidates. How, if at all, is this conflict addressed?
. So explain Mamdani?
The Democrats are just as beholden to corporate donors as Republicans are and will always do what they are told by the wealthy even if it doesn’t help their constituents. Get rid of the money in politics.
At the risk of being too simplistic, on issues and the public’s views of their issues, don’t Democrats have a progressive problem on social issues and a moderate/centrist/business/establishment problem on economic issues?
To be clear, I’m not talking about individual candidates, I’m talking about the party as a whole. We have been in a nationalized environment for at least 20 years (which I would start with the second Iraq War when NE Republicans and the last white southern Democrats were losing or switching parties or Karl Rove’s intention to use culture issues to flip the Appalachia corridor between West Virginia to Arkansas Red).
Also strategically, Democrats need to look for 10 Osborn like independents to run for Senate in 2028 and not run a Democratic Senate candidate in Idaho, Utah, ND, SD, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Indiana, Louisiana, & Missouri so that there is a chance for some surprises in these safe Red seats.
WelcomePAC had a great memo called, "Deciding to Win". While it does spend a lot of time shooting down progressive talking points, it ALSO has a brilliant section called, "What it Does and Does Not Mean to be a Moderate".
Basically, the moderate approach is ALSO flawed. While progressive candidates waving around unpopular ideas isn't ideal, having a boring moderate who just picks centrist positions on EVERYTHING (even popular ideas like healthcare) is also a bad move.
Basically, Dems need to pick unorthodox candidates with different positions than the mainstream party. Maybe going left on healthcare, a bit to the right on immigration, etc.
Excellent article - on point with a recent conversation with my son - both of us still registered democrats only because we want to vote in primaries, both of us wishing there were either more parties or no parties. Multiple parties are the advantage of parliamentary systems (which have their own problems) but I thought it might be impossible to get multiple actionable parties here. Our smaller parties have always functioned as creators that slowly evolve and push their ideas to one of the major parties, before big changes are actually made. My three millennial grandchildren are almost completely disaffected independents. They still vote - but they wonder why, because they see both parties as two faces of the same corrupt corporation. Everyone in our multi generational family are variously progressive to lefter than thou. Nobody is happy with the national party. We all wish for parties and viable candidates that are a better fit. Everyone still knows their local elections are really important, so there’s that. Is it possible to have serious smaller parties here, supporting a greater number of impressive candidates, with real primaries open to all? Or is that a pipe dream?
To your point on nationalization, research on the impact of the decline of local news parallels your findings. From The state of local news and why it matters from the American Journalism Project:
"Research shows that the loss of local news is having an insidious effect on our democracy — contributing to polarization, decrease in voting, and government accountability. Local news is an essential lever to a healthy democracy; it helps communities understand what’s at stake in local elections, equips them to get involved in the political process by voting, contacting officials and running for office, reduces political polarization, and holds public officials accountable."
https://www.theajp.org/news-insights/the-state-of-local-news-and-why-it-matters/
So one clue to remedying the move to nationalization is to increase differentiation that can come through strengthening local news.
Fusion balloting could possibly also overcome the inherent bias our system has towards a two party system, and bring us c closer to the type of "coalition" governments seen in many other countries. Could it be accomplished by a change in the PARTY rules rather than requiring legislative changes? That would make it much simpler to implement.
I think the diagnosis makes sense, but I'm less sure about Drutman's prescription here. He has a tendency to constantly rediscover some esoteric electoral reform concept as the next silver bullet, most typically from the rare B-sides of US history (fusion voting has never really been a thing outside of the US). This is often to the exclusion of much more evidential models of well functioning multi-party democracy across the modern world.
And, of course, no red-state legislature would ever enact any of these proposals to de-nationalize Senate and House elections.
I wince whenever I see otherwise lucid analyses of our present predicament careen in their last paragraphs to election reforms that make sense to political scientists but which actual politicians would never enact.
To be fair, I imagine the proposal is to enact these reforms through federal legislation.
Amen to that. Proportional representation might be too hard to reach, but a) a larger House, and b) mandatory ranked choice would be two great steps forward. And of course, make DC and PR states.