Moderation Still Wins

This week’s debt limit deal was a huge victory for the political center. But there are still lots of folks on the hard edges of either side who believe that the key to their future success is to fire up the base with more extreme positions. I’ve never bought that argument.

One of our recurring themes around here is that the Democrats could become the long-term governing party in the United States and in Wisconsin if they would move to the center.

More evidence of that comes from the New York Times’ Nate Cohen in his newsletter, The Tilt. Cohen presents data showing that every demographic group moved to the right (meaning they voted more Republican) between 2012 and 2020. That runs counter to other stories that claim that younger generations are not growing more conservative.

Both observations can be correct. It’s just a question of whether you look at different people of a certain age at a given time or you look at cohorts of the same people moving along over time. In other words, 20-year olds today are more liberal than 20-year olds were ten years ago. But people who were 20 ten years ago are still more conservative now that they’re 30.

It’s explained by the graph below.

What this shows is that someone who was born in, say, 1990 and was 22 when Barack Obama was on the ballot in 2012 was part of a cohort that voted almost 70% Democrat that year. But those same folks in 2020, now 30-year olds, shifted several points toward the Republicans (even with the extreme conservative Donald Trump as their standard-bearer) eight years later. They’re still very liberal, and individuals may be further to the left than ever, but as a group they’re moving rightward.

And, of course, as people age, they tend to become more reliable voters, amplifying the influence of moderating voters.

Not so long ago liberal Democrats believed that they didn’t have to change a thing because a rising Hispanic wave would lift their boat. Instead, what’s happened is that Hispanic voters have become more Republican. Now, the idea is that the party doesn’t have to become more moderate because young people will remain liberal. But Cohen’s data suggests that this might not hold up either.

Any way you look at it the better strategy for Democrats is not to double down on ever more liberal policies but to moderate and to find the sweet spot that allows them to win more elections in more places.