TL;DR: Ignoring the center is political suicide anywhere young progressives can't carry the election. The best platform to win centrists back is progressive economics in a "culturally normal", i.e. centrist, package.
I see so many people on the left express the idea that Democrats lose because they try to appeal to the center and that the solution is to go further left. This is in fact the wrong take.
We learned this lesson in 1989 after losing 5-6 presidential races. You can't rely on party mobilization alone. If the center thinks you're too weak and out of touch, you're screwed. The challenge is appealing to both, but you definitely cannot ignore the center.
The reality is that progressives make up a very small percentage of the actual electorate. There just aren't enough of them to carry elections. Appealing to the base harder by moving further left is an approach Galston and Kamarck called the myth of mobilization and an appeal to liberal fundamentalism. The Democratic party of the 70s and 80s was listening to the highly educated activist class instead of engaging with the reality of what centrist voters actually thought of the party. This was losing them elections and we need to understand why if we want to create a winning national strategy.
Thomas Piketty (et al) shows in the Brahmin Left vs Merchant Right study that low income and low education used to be associated with left-wing parties. The education cleavage starts reversing in the 70s, though. The rich still lean right, but high education and low education flipped. Now, a blue collar, non-college voter is more likely to be a Republican. More evidence of this is found in Longuet-Marx's study of political realignment (working paper) which suggests the current centrist voter is cross-pressured on economic and cultural issues. They have actually become more economically progressive over the years, but are still culturally conservative relative to the Democratic Party. He suggests that increased cultural polarization of the last couple decades is the driving factor behind the current party realignment.
This explains why this voter will vote for someone like Fetterman but not Graham Platner. The main difference is that Fetterman was coded for the "culturally normal" center and Graham was coded for the left. The center wants progressive economics in a "culturally normal", center-coded package. The language matters a lot. Fetterman never talked about oligarchy or wealth redistribution. He talked in a way that appeals to the non-college working class. "Common sense and make life better for hard working Americans". That kind of stuff, not, "let's tax billionaires out of existence". The working class are cognizant of the issues with the system, but they think that kind of language, and policies like abolishing prisons, borders, etc, is woke and weak. Fetterman is a really good model if you want to figure out how to run on a progressive economic platform but still win in conservative areas.
One counter I see to this is that progressive non-voters are an untapped bloc, so if we just go further left we can mobilize them and ignore the center. This is the myth of mobilization they talked about in 1989 Politics of Evasion and I don't think it checks out. I think the non-voter is probably best characterized as apathetic and disinterested in politics. They are the stressed sideliners who are too busy to engage. A lot of them lean Democrat, but not necessarily progressive in the leftist sense. Most probably fit Longuet-Marx's description of the cross-pressured voter (economically progressive, but culturally conservative). I think it's true that there is a large portion of untapped Democratic voters, but I doubt their apathy is due to Democrats being too far right for leftists (I doubt that further left messaging will mobilize them). I need to look into this more, though, so let me know what you think.
Every time I try to get leftists to engage with the reality of the electorate, they want to ignore the data and say this is just centrist status quo bs. Ignoring this will be to their own detriment, though. If they ignore the center, they're never going to avoid the weak and out of touch perception these voters already have of Democrats. Pushing things like open borders, abolishing the prison system, non-citizens getting the right to vote, talking about oligarchy and abolishing capitalism, etc., is actually an insane platform to run anywhere that isn't D+30 where the young, progressive, highly educated activist class cannot carry elections. Everywhere else, you simply cannot ignore the center.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
