Ezra Klein's Centrist Sandwich

Democratic voters go moderate (yet again) in Oregon, while NYT Opinion reluctantly catches up

You know the “feedback sandwich” thing where your boss starts your review by telling you something nice, then provides the difficult truth before closing with another nice point?

Ezra Klein did that to his readers this week. The New York Times opinion writer explored Seven Theories for Why Biden Is Losing (and What He Should Do About it). Like all sensitive mentors, Klein slips the two tough truths - voter anger over rising prices and “Voters think Biden is too liberal” - into the middle of his seven theses, and goes vague on prescriptions despite the headline’s promise of what Biden should do.

You’ve read about those two tough truths plenty of times in this newsletter, way back when it was Time To Calmly Freak Out. And Welcome co-founder Lauren Harper Pope has previously covered the shortfall of Klein’s approach, which eschews talking to swing state winners while prioritizing leftists like Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal about why Biden’s leftward drift “worked”.

More below on this somewhat hopeful shift from the paper of record, but first an update on the Oregon race we previewed over the weekend in GOP Fills in for the Warren Wing.

Flopping, Not Flipping

Cutting to the chase, here’s the Politico headline: Progressives flop in Oregon. One of our first Win The Middle case studies, the Oregon Fail in 2022 featured progressives knocking out a moderate Democratic incumbent in a primary - and then subsequently losing the seat in November.

Here’s Jonathan Chait:

If the left is going to take control of the Democratic Party, the Pacific Northwest, with its oversupply of culturally progressive, college-educated white people, is where it would happen first. It is therefore notable that voters in Oregon struck a devastating blow against the left in three elections Tuesday.

In one primary, mainstream Democrat Janelle Bynum defeated progressive favorite Jamie McLeod-Skinner to face off in a winnable purple district. In another, Representative Maxine Dexter prevailed over Susheela Jayapal in a primary in a heavily Democratic district. And most revealingly, Nathan Vasquez unseated progressive prosecutor Mike Schmidt in Portland, one of the most left-wing cities in America.

It is well-established that progressives do not flip seats from red to blue. Less well-known than the lack of flipping is the constant flopping in primaries, as Democratic base voters revolt against progressive overreach. While progressives stepped back this cycle - including Elizabeth Warren not renewing her endorsement - the GOP stepped into their role as symbiotic partner to progressives in defeating centrist Democrats by running progressive ads. (Yes, the GOP again picked up where “Warren Democrats” left off).

It is also worth driving home, as the headline of Jonathan Chait does this morning, that Republican Moderates Went Extinct. But Democratic Moderates Keep Winning.

Cheers to Janelle, who our community was lucky to spend time with in November - she’s the real deal. For more context, check out our Win The Middle launch, and celebrated her pragmatic NewDEAL Leader ascension in Flywheel Optimism.

We asked two years ago Has The Far Left Peaked? Sure seems so.

Ezra Klein’s Slow Pivot to the Center

Last post, we discussed some rough polls for Biden. While it’s clear Biden is not down and out, the data is concerning. New York Times opinion writer Ezra Klein examined why that might be the case in a recent piece.

After dismissing a number of explanations, such as “the polls are wrong” and “it’s the media’s fault,” Klein finds an explanation with more data:

Voters think Biden is too liberal. The Biden administration has worried about shoring up its left flank, particularly since the war in Gaza. But the Times/Siena poll found that while Biden is losing only 2 percent of his “very liberal” voters from 2020 to Trump, he is losing 16 percent of his supporters who described themselves as moderate and conservative.

Tacking to the center is an old move in politics, and it’s long been core to Biden’s identity as a politician. You can find video on C-SPAN of Biden, in 1995, coming out in support of a constitutional amendment to keep the federal budget balanced. That’s a horrible idea fiscally, but it reflects instincts Biden used to have about how to win over more conservative voters.

In 2020, Biden ran as the moderate alternative in a Democratic primary contest in which Bernie Sanders led many of the polls. Biden vocally opposed ideas like defunding the police. But after the primaries, Biden welcomed the left into his coalition and his government. On the substance, I prefer the Biden of 2024 to the Biden of 1995, but the shift might have cost him a political identity that was once central to his success.

As it happens, Klein’s new diagnosis is similar to ours:

Biden’s problem is not primarily his age, but the view among voters that he is seen as too left wing. That’s why Biden is losing, and it tells us how he can turn it around. Biden should embrace his own record: bipartisan action on the deficit, America’s aging infrastructure, and historic domestic energy production. His campaign should let Biden be Biden, and not immediately backtrack when he expresses his earnest views on abortion and immigration, since these views are much closer to the median voter’s than activists’. 

This explanation also finds support in the data:

Rather than being driven by weakness among progressives due to foreign affairs, Biden is losing the moderate, independent voters that delivered him the 2024 election. The chart below shows the change the high-quality Fox News polls (Fox News uses both a Democratic and a Republican firm who collaborate) taken immediately before the 2020 election and this month’s poll. The 2020 poll had Biden leading by 8 (he won by 4.5) and their most recent poll had him trailing by 1 point. As the chart shows, Biden is losing the most ground with moderate and conservative voters, not liberals. 

Ezra’s Sister Souljah Moment

How to do this? We recently covered how politicians show cross-pressured swing voters they are different than the caricature of their party. The shorthand Sister Souljah Moment references Bill Clinton’s electorally successful approach, but can be deployed by both parties.

Having diagnosed the patient, Klein invokes Trump’s own triangulation to prescribe a treatment: moderation. He writes:

I found myself last week watching Trump’s May 1 rally in Waukesha, Wis. Most of it features his constant stream of overstatement, false nostalgia, wild braggadocio and barely veiled threat. But the tenor changed when Trump turned to abortion. Here he swung suddenly to the left of his base. The goal, he said, was “to get abortion out of the federal government. Everybody wanted that. That was uniform. Then about 10 years ago, people lost their way. They started talking about — how many months?”

This is Trump’s pivot on abortion. Unlike other Republicans, he’s saying the goal wasn’t, and isn’t, a nationwide abortion ban. The goal was to let states decide for themselves, and now they can.

“There are some very conservative states that voted a very much more liberal policy than anybody would’ve thought,” Trump said. “Very liberal policy, a couple of states. I won’t mention, but a couple of states really surprise people. But basically, the states decide on abortion. And people are absolutely thrilled with the way that’s going on.”

Thrilled? The one time you can hear the crowd boo Trump is during his abortion spiel. But he doesn’t back down. I don’t know if Trump’s effort to run to the center on abortion will work, but he’s definitely going to try, even if it offends his base. Is there any issue on which Biden is doing the same?

As we’ve written before, this is exactly correct. While it’s been memory-holed, Biden ran on the idea of uniting the country against Trump’s anti-democratic, hateful agenda. While much of Biden’s governing agenda has embraced this approach, such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan, his bipartisan gun control legislation and the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, many other areas of policymaking have not, such as student debt cancelation. Too often, Biden has been seen as a vehicle for the Far Left, and this is being reflected in his dismal polling numbers. 

To win, Biden needs to remind voters why they put him into office in the first place. He represents the America we aspire too: one led by those who want to make our nation strong, not sell it to the highest bidder. An America led by those who work to unite us, not bitterly divide us for partisan gain. An America led by those who believe in the promise of individual liberty, dignity, justice and opportunity for all. He must reject those on the left who say America is a force for evil in the world and condemn those who want to defund the police.

The path to victory is denouncing radicals on both sides, while acknowledging the frank reality that the right has gone further right than the left has gone left.

As the 2020 primary showed, The New York Times opinion section is often the last to know what voters are thinking. And Klein cannot bring himself to offer a specific suggestion of what Biden can do to move to the center. Maybe Ezra should call the Democrats Who Win over swing voters by offering “rare dissent” on progressive overreach.

Or better yet, Biden should.