"ANGRY MODERATE" SOUNDS OKAY TO ME

I often disagree with Ezra Klein and the people he chooses to interview, but I think his latest interviewee -- David Shor, a Democratic data consultant -- makes a few good points. for instance, I'm pleased to see that Shor, who tested ads on voters to determine how much they affected voting intentions, doesn't believe "wokeness" was the major reason Democrats lost in 2024.

From the convseration (Klein is in bold):

If you look at punditry about the election, that if everybody agrees on anything, it’s that the election was a huge verdict on wokeness.

Famously, one of Trump’s higher testing ads was “Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” I’m not saying you’re saying diversity, equity and inclusion programs are popular. But I’m not seeing it emerge as a major explanation for 2024 here.

I’m curious how you think both about the election and about the role it’s playing in the postelection narrative.

The “they/them” ad that everybody talks about was a good ad, but in our testing it was a 70th percentile ad.

When you look at Donald Trump’s best-performing ads, it was basically the economy, gas prices, immigration and crime. There has definitely been an overemphasis on D.E.I., wokeness and trans issues.

I assume that when Shor calls this "a good ad," he means that it was effective -- but he doesn't think it was greatly effective. Among his interviewees, it shifted support for Trump less than ads about other subjects, particularly the economy.

Which would suggest that the commenter here who said last week, "Last November, Kamala Harris lost because of her unabashed left-wing positions on social issues" was wrong.

Shor does note that 49% of voters in his surveys thought Harris was more liberal than they were; 39% thought Trump was more conservative. Shor says that there was a similar gap in 2016, but Trump was seen as more ideologically extreme than Joe Biden in 2020. However, note how the numbers change over time:

But in our polling, we would ask: Do you think that Joe Biden is too liberal or too conservative? And we saw that over the course of 2021, as his approval ratings dipped, the perception that he was too liberal also went up.

So Trump seemed ideologically extreme when he was in office, on his way to defeat, and the same thing happened to Biden, on his way to a likely defeat, and an actual defeat for his party. It seems to me that, for many voters, ideologically extreme really means not making my life better.

And while voters imply that they want ideological moderation, Shor's surveys got this result:

Klein says:

On the one hand, we see lines like ["what is needed is a major change and a shock to the system"] outpolling the incremental change. On the other hand, if you look at the new split-ticket ratings for who overperformed in the election, very moderate House Democrats did very well.

There does seem to be a tension there between two forms of political wisdom.... Voters want huge, massive change. And the optimal political strategy is Joe Manchin, Jared Golden, Ruben Gallego or Susan Collins — who are not the people who promise unbelievably shocking change. They are moderates who kind of tack between the parties a little bit and try to represent a center that wants something a little bit less dramatic than either side is offering.

How do you reconcile them?

Shor replies:

... I think what this is really saying is that voters were very angry about the state of things. And what they wanted tonally was someone who acknowledged that anger. Ruben Gallego did a lot of criticism of the status quo and was able to outperform.

So people want an angry moderate.

I think that’s exactly right.

I don't agree with this completely -- I don't think every Democrat needs to tack to the center -- but I would like the Democrats who think the thing to do now is to punch left, people like Gavin Newsom and James Carville, to take it seriously. Progressives and moderates ought to be downplaying their differences on, say, trans rights, while coming together angrily on the need to preserve and strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and also questioning the way the economic status quo hurts ordinary people, a message that moderate voters clearly agree with.

How hard is it for moderate and progressive Democrats to find common ground when the Trump administration is doing things like this?

The Social Security Administration is considering adding a new anti-fraud step to claims for benefits that the agency acknowledges would force millions of customers to file in person at a field office rather than over the phone, according to an internal memorandum.

The change would create major disruptions to Social Security operations, the memo said, and could cause particular hardship for elderly and disabled Americans who have limited mobility. The proposal also comes as Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service has announced plans to cut thousands of agency jobs and close dozens of regional and local Social Security offices.

Those applying for retirement and disability benefits by phone would be required for the first time to authenticate their identity through an online system that the memo refers to as “internet ID proofing.” But if a claimant can’t verify their identity online, they would have to provide documentation in person at a field office, according to the memo....

The memo estimates that 75,000 to 85,000 customers per week would be diverted to local field offices because many of the elderly and disabled people that Social Security serves would be unable to complete a new identity verification requirement online.

Progressive and moderate Democrats need to form a popular front in opposition to policies like this. In this moment of crisis, they should be focusing on areas of agreement, not disagreement -- or, to put it another way, they should be focusing on areas of shared disagreement with Trump and the GOP. And they should be looking for agreement on policies for the future that make life in America seem less precarious, on the off chance that we have free and fair elections in the future.