Why ‘moderation’ doesn’t guarantee electoral success for Biden and the Democrats

There is a general theory of how politics works in the United States right now that goes something like this:

Democrats and Republicans advance policy agendas that are covered in a straightforward manner by the media and broadly digested by voters. Based on their views of these agendas, most voters then align themselves with one of the two parties. But there is also a group of voters with views that fall roughly between the parties and therefore are not aligned with either. Those voters “swing” between the parties, usually choosing the one whose agenda is closest to the ideological middle. Thus, elections are largely decided by whichever party wins the most of these centrist voters. Voters will also swing decidedly against a party if a president from that party screws up something big.

This is basically all wrong, or at least badly overstated. And worse, belief in this myth warps our understanding of what’s really going on. We can’t see our system for what it is if our lens for looking at it is distorted. Here are seven better explanations of U.S. politics today: CONTINUED

Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post

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