Moderate Politics

While I don't think the Democrats' slide further towards the left has been as rapid or has become as extreme as the rightward drift we've seen out of the Republicans in the last decade, I'm still not exactly happy to see it. In fact, I think some of the lessons we supposedly learned from the 2016 election about what left wing ideas get people fired up and about the value (or lack thereof) of compromise aren't actually going to serve us very well in the long run.

That means I'm very happy to see stories like this one from NPR. I don't necessarily think it's important for some of the more strident progressives to lose, because I think the Democrats are going to need a lot of that energy in order to win elections. But the fact that we're also nominating and selecting more moderate candidates, particularly for the closer races, is a good sign of our ability to balance the enthusiasm of the left wing with the ability to compromise the moderates bring.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether the Democrats will continue to slide to the left, or what a Democratic government that promised single payer healthcare and fully funded college will actually be able to do along those lines. I certainly could see Democratic populism disappointing me in the future... but for now, I'm satisfied with our current direction.