Copyright The New York Times
The most obvious thing in politics is often the hardest to admit: If you lose an election, the best thing that you can do to make sure you win the next one is to find a message that puts you closer to the median voter than you were the last time around. This is not the only way to win, because your message may turn out to be less important than macroeconomic conditions or a cascade of scandals or an unexpected U.F.O. invasion. But repositioning is one of the most important things that you can actually control, the clearest means of showing the public that you’ve learned from the rebuke, and the natural way to persuade a swing voter to swing the other way. However, to move to the center is, by definition, to move in the direction of the other party, toward the hated enemy and away from your most passionate supporters. Nobody wants to do that! Which is why, in times of political defeat, there is a bottomless appetite for prescriptions that reassure the defeated party members that they just need to be truer to themselves, more effective, more ruthless. And no ambitious politician wants to be the first to throw cold water on these hopes. This is the psychological spot where many Democrats find themselves today. It is completely obvious that the party lost in 2024 because it overcommitted to a range of unpopular left-wing positions, some of which yielded disastrous policy results (like the Biden migration wave) while others merely persuaded constituencies that had voted Democratic in the past (like blue-collar Midwesterners or culturally conservative Latino men) that the party now cared more about climate change and various academic fixations than cheap energy and good-paying jobs. If for some reason you don’t find this obvious, I recommend spending some time with the new report “Deciding to Win,” from the center-left group Welcome, which tries to make an exhaustive data-driven case for the diagnosis I’ve just offered. But since I already think that case ought to be plain to anyone with eyes, I’ve been more struck by the response from the authors’ fellow Democrats — and not just from professional activists, but from pundits and pollsters and academics, often extremely intelligent people, who are deeply committed to telling any other story besides the obvious one. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
