Watch what they do

Progressives claim their agenda wins elections, but decline opportunities to prove it

There’s an old expression: “don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do.” For the past few days, election Twitter has been ablaze with a near interminable debate: do moderates perform better in elections?

The debate started with a new model from G. Elliot Morris that analyzes how much Democrats overperform relative to what a “generic” Democrat might perform. Morris’s model critiques the model of Split Ticket’s Lakshya Jain analyzing “Wins Above Replacement.” Morris claims the impact of moderation on electoral success is overstated.

Jain’s model has proven that Blue Dogs overperform and progressives underperform. Morris's model also suggests that moderates overperform, but he couches this by saying they do not “substantially” overperform.

Charlotte Swasey previously wrote about this motte-and-bailey: all of the data show that moderates overperform, so progressives now claim that the overperformance is not sufficiently large or that they aren’t even moderate.

However, as Patrick Ruffini points out, the benefit of ideological moderation that progressives have dismissed as small would have been enough to swing the 2024 election. And, as Eric Levitz points out, it would have also swung the 2016 and 2020 elections. Republicans won the House by three seats, and there were 6 seats decided by less than a point.

Earlier this year, Greg Casar claimed that, “If the Democratic Party was a little more like Chairwoman Jayapal and a little less like Joe Manchin, I think we would have won this election.” (The Wins Above Replacement model from Jain finds that Jayapal underperformed by 15 points in 2018, 11 points in 2020, 7 points in 2022 and 9 points in 2024, while Manchin overperformed by 27 points). Casar argued that a progressive agenda would help Democrats win tough elections.

The recent Republican redistricting effort gave Casar a unique opportunity to prove the potency of the progressive agenda. Casar’s current district was obliterated by the new map. He has two natural districts to run in. One option is to seek to represent the San Antonio parts of his district that were redrawn into a new TX-35 district that Trump narrowly won in 2020 (by 2 points), Cruz won by less than a point in 2018 and Cruz won by 4 in 2024. Alternatively, he could seek to represent the Austin parts of his district that were drawn into a district (TX-37) that Lloyd Doggett currently represents 68% of.

No doubt the San Antonio district that is now Texas 35 is a tough district, but certainly a district that an overperformer would be able to win (Trump won by 10 points in 2024). Even better, it’s a midterm election where Democrats lead the generic ballot (recall Cruz won the district by only 0.4 in 2018). So would Casar take the opportunity to show the potent progressive agenda? Earlier this week, Casar made his intention clear. Instead of running in the new district, he will mount a primary challenge to Democrat Lloyd Doggett.

How hard is winning a district like Texas 35? Well, take two overperformers: Jared Golden from Maine and Henry Cuellar from Texas. In 2024, Trump won Golden’s district by 9 and in 2020 he won it by 6. In 2024, Trump won Cuellar’s district by 7 points and in 2020 Biden won by 7. Trump won the new 35th by 10 points in 2024 but 2 points in 2020. The district is tough, but has a history of voting more Democratic downballot: Cruz won by less than 5 points in the last two Senate elections. A Cuellar or Golden level of overperformance would be enough to win the election.

Casar’s decision to primary a fellow Democrat instead of running in the more competitive district is a telling decision. While progressives are happy to talk about how a progressive agenda “can” win, they aren’t willing to prove it actually “will” in a tough environment.

Which is why Welcome is excited to invite a moderate Democrat to take on the challenge. The district is within the bounds of competition. Moderate Democrats Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez represent similar districts.

This all leads us to the question of models. It’s said that all models are wrong, some are useful. Sadly, the model suggesting that moderates don’t overperform simply doesn’t work in the real world. Even progressives don’t believe it.