Center Left Evolution

Reality comes for the Far Left, and the realists move to the center.

A new piece out yesterday from

Matthew Yglesias

explains “How I went from left to center-left.”

The shift doesn’t mark a change in values, but a rational response to today’s major problems - and to problems with the current progressive movement that are, in Matt’s words, “making it hard for people who share my values to govern effectively.”

While the piece centers on challenges with the Far Left, it wraps with a bigger challenge for the Center Left (bold added):

… the most profound way that my political views have changed over the years is that I’ve become a lot more skeptical that mainstream progressive epistemic institutions are functioning properly.

At this point, everyone and their mother has disavowed the “defund the police” movement, which is great. But how is it that when this activist rallying cry came up — often backstopped by a lot of inaccurate budgetary claims — the impulse among so many sensible mainstream liberals was to lay low or sane-wash rather than actively contextualize bad analysis? Fortunately, very few Democratic Party elected officials hopped on the bandwagon, despite the pressure to do so. But that meant an opportunity to enact reforms that made sense was lost, and a lot of us were left — reasonably, I think — doubting whether the progressive movement is actually up to the job of thinking things through as novel issues land on the agenda.

Blue State Blues on the Center Left

The Center Left’s response to the “Defund The Police” movement is worthy of consideration. It is as important, and more actionable, than what sparked it on the Far Left in the first place. How is it that “the impulse among so many sensible mainstream liberals was to lay low” instead of pointing out inaccurate budgetary claims?

One piece is a particular type of incentive - an asymmetric fear factor, whereby progressives take on criticism as fuel for fighting while centrists too often hunker down while being pummeled from both left and right. But, as we noted in one of our earliest posts, momentum accelerates for moderates as soon as you reach escape velocity towards winning. There is a market for Team Normal.

Another dynamic is the silliness to misuse data. As the subhead of this stirring piece from Jerusalem Demsas out in The Atlantic today notes, “Many advocates wrongly presume that gloom and doom is the only way to motivate change.” The subject is maternal mortality, but it echoes another recent piece from Rachel Cohen at Vox, The child care cliff that wasn’t, with the similar subheadlined “We don’t need apocalyptic economic predictions to advocate for better family policy.”

On both fear and facts, an aggressive counterweight from the Center Left is not only necessary, but welcomed once instigated.

Massachusetts Case Study

Our Centrist School series hit on Massachusetts as the ideal test case for this, where Priorities For Progress started pointing out the inconvenient political reality during the peak of progressive ascendance in the Bernie/Warren era. This as a useful national test case because Massachusetts epitomizes a few distinct problems on both policy and politics: Far Left actors tainting the national Democratic Party brand; Far Left overreach would face electoral blowback even in deep blue states, and policy pragmatism has real-world impact.

And the case study continues to unfold in real time. Here’s Fox News this week, hitting Democrats for answers to a questionnaire from a Massachusetts progressive group three years ago:

In 2021, filling out the policy questionnaire from the cross-issue leftist group Progressive Mass felt mandatory on the left. But by 2022, the Politico (correctly) hyped up the fact that “Maura Healey declined to seek the endorsements of two major progressive groups in another sign she doesn’t plan to run a gubernatorial campaign tailored to the left.”

How to replicate this? We explored in the first Centrist School that addressing the fear asymmetry with community is essential:

Healey’s pragmatic ascendance was dominant but quiet, refashioning the state’s political landscape not just in her image, but in that of the voters – resulting in a durable model for Democrats everywhere, one that wins a clear majority and governs effectively. 

This is not to say that the center has won - only that the Far Left has lost. In order for the Center Left to win – sustainably, long-term, and everywhere – candidates, campaigns, and those who support them would benefit from learning the lessons of how the Far Left once punched so far above its weight. 

We need a “we” – a community that integrates insights like those we have learned from Massachusetts, and has fun doing it. 

As we’ve written before, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is not as far to the left as she is portrayed. But as an ascendant blue state politician in the Bernie-Warren zeitgeist of the late 2010s, the incentives clearly pointed that way.

And all Democrats trying to win tough seats around the country continue to pay the price for the Center Left not changing the incentives more aggressively back to reality.

The Missing Student Debt Cancelation Fight

As Matt notes, “Defund The Police” is now widely accepted a missed opportunity for workable policy change that also had political costs.

Student debt cancelation has similar resonance today. And it came out of Massachusetts.

We often quote a line from a 2017 Elizabeth Warren line Mount Holyoke College (tuition: $86,702):

One audience member questioned Warren about concrete solutions to the array of problems that were brought up at the event. “Whether it’s about student debt or the ninety percent who are being left behind, what can be done in this current administration?” she asked. 

In response, Warren cited the GOP’s thwarted efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act as an example of a political win achieved despite the Democrats’ house and senate minority. According to Warren, grassroots organizing and engagement by citizens drove this victory. 

“I’ll tell you this,” said Warren. “Getting into these fights is not like draining a battery. It’s like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.” 

Warren’s point is that even when you lose fights advancing unpopular, counterproductive policy measures, your faction gets stronger (like how the Tea Party strengthened the Far Right).

Few could have expected student debt to actually get so high on the Democratic agenda by 2020¹. But even more surprising is how few Democrats spoke out against it - as Matt mentioned earlier on Defund the Police, “the impulse among so many sensible mainstream liberals was to lay low.“

While Democrats have known for years that student debt cancelation polls poorly, only two Democrats in Congress voted as such: Jared Golden and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Both have been harassed by the Far Left.

President Biden and Democrats continue to struggle with working-class, non-college voters of all races, who mostly don’t benefit from student debt cancelation. Student debt cancelation also doesn’t seem to be helping Biden win progressive activists, who have quickly moved on from student debt cancelation to Gaza.

Warren took a lesson from the Tea Party’s attempts to tear down Obamacare. The Center Left cannot copy their faction playbook, but we can learn from them. More evolution to the Center Left will beat revolution - if we stand up for those who do.

1. Warren emphasized a losing fight from the Tea Party as a model because, like repealing Obamacare, canceling student debt combined bad policy with bad politics. But even in defeat, it would make an extreme faction stronger within its own party.