Editor’s note: I’ve been covering politics for more than 15 years now. One advantage to having watched so many election cycles, so many turnings of the tide, is it helps inoculate you against buying into the recurring hype about How Things Have Changed or Vibes Have Shifted or Politics Has Been Upended. The more things change, I’ve found, the more they really stay the same.
My latest YouTube video is about one such phenomenon: the idea that was promoted by a lot of pundits earlier this year that the key to political success in 2026 was attention, and that it no longer mattered whether candidates were accruing attention for good reasons or bad. All that matters now, we were told, is that candidates are getting eyeballs.
I happen to think this thesis has been proven wrong this cycle, not right, for reasons I explain in the video below. I hope you’ll give it a watch:
Today’s newsletter is about another one of these rules of politics we’re sometimes told has been shattered. Once again, I’m not so convinced.
To moderate or not to moderate?
This same question ricochets around political circles every two years, as party figures debate whether their candidates would be best served by moving to the middle or by doubling down on party orthodoxy.
On the left, dueling teams of political scientists have marshaled different sets of data to offer competing answers. On the right, Donald Trump is firmly on Team Double Down (hosting a whole party convention in his image, urging Republicans to stay in lockstep with his administration), while some operatives are openly wondering whether it’s time for their clients to jump ship.
In today’s newsletter, I won’t pretend to settle this question once and for all, producing a new piece of electoral math proving either that candidates benefit from moving to the center or from firing up their base.
Instead, I’ll merely suggest that this debate appears to be a largely academic one. As various pundits and professors go round and round, out in the real world, Democratic and Republican candidates both seem to have settled on the same answer: trying to moderate as fast as they possibly can.
Just consider the sheer number of examples from the past few weeks.
According to Punchbowl News, in 2024, as Republicans pummeled their opponents with ads on transgender policy, not a single House Democratic candidate ran an English-language ad rebutting the attacks. (Texas Rep. Vicente Gonzalez did run one such ad in Spanish.) Following Kamala Harris’ lead, most Democrats either refused to budge on the issue, or remained studiously silent. This year, however, several battleground Democrats are rushing to proactively paint themselves as moderates on gender issues.
“I voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools, because parents know what’s best for their kids,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), seeking re-election in an R+5 district, said in a new ad this week. “And boys should not play in girls’ sports.”
“I oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness,” Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico told Fox News last month, a reversal from his past position. “I just think girls’ sports are for girls and boys’ sports are for boys,” Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, recently told Politico.
Alaska Democratic Senate candidate Mary Peltola has broken with her party in support of expanding oil production. Amy Acton, seeking the Ohio governorship, has come out for voter ID. Will Lawrence, locked in a key House race in Michigan, says he no longer supports defunding the police or opening the border.
Even Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee who spent his primary contest insisting moderation was a fool’s errand, no longer seems to buy into his own theory. “It’s always funny to me that people want to say that this state votes for moderates when it voted for Donald Trump twice,” he told CBS News in August.
And yet, El-Sayed has been unmistakably sanding down some of his sharper edges lately. One of the biggest flashpoints during the primary was El-Sayed’s association with the leftist streamer Hasan Piker; at the time, when asked if he condemned any of Piker’s controversial comments, El-Sayed refused to do so. “I’m not here to disavow people’s views,” he told Politico in April.
But four months later, now locked in a close general election battle, El-Sayed did exactly that, disavowing Piker’s past statement that “America deserved 9/11.” He then issued a statement distancing himself from Piker after the streamer said that “eventually someone’s going to come around and take action” against American Jews if they “keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel.” El-Sayed, who appeared repeatedly with Piker during the primary, now says he will not campaign with him.
El-Sayed similarly apologized last month for saying “hurt people hurt people” after a Michigan synagogue was attacked during the primary, while also distancing himself from his past stances on gender policy and the Green New Deal. None of this means that El-Sayed is suddenly a moderate, but it shows where he is moving — towards the center — after previously dismissing the need to do so.
In case you thought it is only Democrats making this late-stage calculation: think again. We are seeing some fascinating moves from Republicans as well.