The Weekly Sift

Labor Day is the traditional signal for Democrats — but usually not Republicans these days — to abandon their edgier positions and “move to the center”. In some situations this is common sense. In others it’s dangerous.

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A classic business-school homework problem concerns where to place snack shops on a popular beach. If there are two competitors, where should they set up to get the most business? The best solution for customers — assuming the beach is evenly populated and nobody wants to walk further than necessary to get a Sno-Cone — is to put one shop 1/4 of the way from the left edge of the beach and the other 1/4 from the right edge. That way, nobody has to cross more than 1/4 of the beach to get served.

But now imagine you’re running leftmost shop. If you nudge a little to the right, you may pick up some of the other shop’s customers, while losing few of your own (i.e., only the ones at the far left end who look at the longer walk and decide they’d rather do without). Of course, the same logic motivates your competitor to shift left, and the process continues until your two shops are side-by-side in the center. Customers overall are worse off, but that’s market capitalism for you. Nobody ever said the market produces ideal solutions. (Oh, wait. I guess some people do say that. Never mind.)

For a lot of political professionals (especially Democrats, for some reason), that homework problem frames their fundamental thinking about campaigns. Politics happens on a left/right spectrum, and the ideal marketing position for your candidate is in the center. If you’re unfortunate enough to be working for a left-leaning candidate, you need to nudge him or her to the right as far as you can. Doing so puts your political shop closer to more of the electorate, so it’s just common sense.

Arguments against this way of thinking revolve around what the model leaves out. For example, it removes the moral dimension from politics. No one lives or dies because they have to walk a little further to get their Sno-Cones. But lives clearly do hang on decisions about war, healthcare, abortion, foreign aid, and many of the other issues decided by our political process.

The Right clearly understands this. Take the abortion issue for example. If you believe that every fertilized ovum has a soul that is sacred to God, then abortion is murder and is always wrong. (I critiqued this position several years ago.) Republicans know this position is far outside the American mainstream, but they never move left in any serious way. (Thought experiment: How much support could you raise on the Right for a compromise that capped the number of legal abortions in America, establishing some criteria for who gets those abortions? If a million baby-murders is unacceptable, how about 100,000? I’m guessing the answer is no support at all.) One Republican position after another is rooted in Christian nationalism, with its underlying frame of spiritual warfare between Good and Evil. Compromise with Evil is wrong, even if it could win you a few votes.

Another factor left out of the snack-shop model is authenticity. People who get to the front of the line never doubt that the shop wants to sell them the items on its menu. But when politicians say things that are popular but out of sync with their previous positions, do you believe them? If Mike Johnson announced that government spending cuts had gone too far, or if AOC promised to get tough on illegal immigrants, would you buy that? Even if you liked the new position, would you be more likely to vote for them? Or less likely, because you might doubt that they had any authentic beliefs at all?

And finally, what do “left” and “right” mean, anyway? Free trade used to be a conservative position, but now tariffs are. If I defend San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies, is that a left-wing position (because it’s globalist rather than nationalist) or right-wing (because I’m defending local control against federal intervention)? If you want to stop corruption and keep inflation low, are you liberal or conservative?

The primary “center” position is that you are willing to “work across the aisle” to “get things done”. But what things?

So here’s the point I’m trying to make: Calls for Democrats to move to the center do have a logic to them. But to evaluate the wisdom of those calls, you need to reconsider the factors the beach-snack-shop model leaves out. What particular positions are we being asked to change? Would anyone believe us if we did announce those changes? And who are we abandoning when we do?

Let me suggest a list of people to bear in mind when you ask that third question.

• Asylum seekers. In the wake of the Holocaust, the nations of the world recognized that people who are facing dire situations in their home countries need to have somewhere to go. We signed those treaties and implemented their principles in law. Currently, our asylum system is swamped, and its delays create opportunities for immigrants to game the system. But the right solution is to fix the system, not abandon the principles embodied in our laws and agreements. We shouldn’t turn people away just so they can be killed back home.
• Women with problem pregnancies. Laws that protect fetuses often endanger pregnant women. In some states, a pregnant woman’s life needs to be in immediate danger before she can get an abortion. Even if that danger is predictable, it can’t be acted on until it arrives. And sometimes doctors wait too long.
• Trans people. Something I know from my own friend group (and their children) is that trans people are real. They aren’t making it all up, and they’re not looking to gain some advantage. To move to the center, do I have to pretend that they’re not real? Do I have to support laws that solve no problems, but mark them for harassment? Do I have to stop parents from using their best judgment about what medical treatments their children need?
• The working poor. Many Americans who have jobs and work full schedules can’t afford health insurance for themselves and their families. Do I need to become OK with that?
• Victims of ICE’s crimes. The world saw the murders of Rene Good and Alex Pretti. Nothing has been done to bring the murderers to justice or reform the organization that employed and shelters them. Seldom does a week go by without some shocking abuse of ICE’s power. Do we just ignore this, or blame it on a few bad apples (who nonetheless must be protected)?
• People in poverty. In poor countries, the cost of saving lives is fairly small. Elon Musk’s destruction of USAID seems likely to result in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of deaths. The endangered people are also real. Should we not care about them?

A final question to ask about reaching compromise in the center: Who are we compromising with? Are they offering some actual compromise, or just demanding our approval for their abusive policies?

An important article to read when thinking about this question is A. R. Moxon’s “Soon You Too Will Be a Commie“. Moxon puts a completely different frame on the Right: They’re not a rival snack shop on the other side of the beach, they’re bullies looking for people that they can abuse without consequences. He recalls his own childhood bullies accusing him of being gay, him denying it, and them beating him up anyway.

[B]ullies seem to have a finely tuned awareness of where the margins of permission lie as regards abuses, and choose their targets based on whose suffering will be most broadly acceptable to others. Seems to me bullies always seek to expand the margins of permission for their violence, and one of their standard tactics is expanding the definition of whatever group is broadly acceptable, to include more and more people. Seems to me that when you insist that you aren’t in that group, or take pains to demonstrate that you aren’t in that group, you appease the bully’s premise that a person who [is] in that group deserves abuse. Seems to me that when you get the abuse anyway, the bully has successfully completed the expansion of permission wherein that group now includes you. In a bully’s world, where gay means a beating is deserved, eventually you’ll be gay, too.

Moxon is focused on a somewhat different issue — the pressure Democrats are under to denounce “far-left” allies. (See Abdul El-Sayed and Hassan Piker, which I’ll say more about in the weekly summary.) But the same principles apply to many of the groups on my list above. One complaint I have often heard about Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign is that she shouldn’t have talked so much about trans rights. But here’s the problem with that critique: During her 2024 campaign, I don’t believe Harris talked at all about trans rights. It was the Trump campaign that relentlessly raised the trans issue: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Trump (falsely) accused a Olympic medal-winning boxer of being trans. But Harris had defended trans rights in the 2020 primaries (making up for a mixed record previously), and that was all it took. No number of speeches about kitchen-table issues could make the trans issue go away.

What would she have had to do? Come out against trans rights? Repeat some anti-trans framing, the way Rep. (and current Senate candidate) Seth Moulton did after the 2024 election? (“I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”) Become a bully herself?

With regard to protecting any of the groups I listed above, what is the compromise position? (Restoring half of the money Musk took from USAID? Funding fewer ICE concentration camps?) Who would those compromises appeal to, and how many votes would they be worth?

It won’t work to just stop talking about those issues, because Republicans have a lot of money to keep raising them. That’s the lesson of the Harris campaign. And no maybe-you’re-right rhetoric will be strong enough. I don’t think you can split the difference between bullies and their victims. You can either defend the victims or join the bullies.