The Democratic Party’s brand is toxic. Voters started to sour on Joe Biden last summer, and things have only gotten worse since: Inflation is out of control; the stock market is tanking; the economy may be on the verge of a recession. The only question about the upcoming midterm elections, now only four months away, is just how bad the Democrats’ shellacking will get.
With the party at a crossroads, which direction should Democrats veer? In The New York Times Magazine’s “The Vanishing Moderate Democrat,” reporter Jason Zengerle looks at the party’s wheezing moderate wing as one possible balm to the party’s ailments. Zengerle and some of the Democrats’ best-known centrists, such as New Jersey’s Josh Gottheimer and Florida’s Stephanie Murphy—recently famous for helping to sabotage Biden’s legislative agenda—lay out a basic theory of the case. Voters, they claim, think Democrats are too focused on social issues and are beholden to corporations and the rich. (Oh, really?) Additionally, they believe the party’s progressive wing is too powerful, but its ideas aren’t popular.
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