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The New York Times Argues “Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win.” But the Data Shows the Strategy Is Tapped Out.
(data4democracy.substack.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2025
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politics
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I think there may be more opportunity for success here than your argument seems to suggest.
I agree with the focus on inequality. The sense that society is fundamentally unfair has a corrosive and a radicalising effect on politics. People can react to it in very different ways, from redistribution to out-group scapegoating, but the underlying motivation is that people see that there is vast wealth available in our society and they're still struggling.
Where I may disagree is that most people are non-ideological. Not everyone, but a healthy majority. They aren't focused on the philosophical roots of a candidate's policies. They care that the candidate
Many people can find that in candidates with a variety of ideological positions. The overlap between people who supported Bernie after the great recession, and went on to support Trump is bigger than one would expect.
So the equation is much less zero sum. You don't lose one reactionary for every radical you bring into your camp. There really aren't that many committed radicals and reactionaries.
The most toxic message today is the economic moderate. "Hey, it's not so bad. Things could be a lot worse." This is the zero sum relationship. You can't keep both the people who are doing well and like how things work, and the people who are struggling and want the life they deserve. The material difference isn't left vs right, it's status quo versus change. There's a lot more room for flexibility in the change camp.
Yes, but not everyone who wants change wants the same change, and so not every change candidate is going to appeal to every voter, even if most of them are looking for some kind of change.
I would agree that both Bernie and Trump were change candidates, but their differing levels of success shows which change message spoke more to the American people.
I agree that a political campaign promising change is the way to go (that's been true since Obama in '08), but which one? I think it's reasonable to assume that a change campaign built on economic populism is the way to go, but Bernie tried that twice and he lost twice.
Denial of the plain fact that society is fundamentally unfair makes it impossible to come up with solutions, or at least mitigations.