The Shifting Meaning of “Moderate”

24:58There is in at least some polls like majority or at least strong plurality support for abolishing ICE altogether. And that leads to views that some people I'm sure would in conventional parlance call extreme. But then, you know, if you listen to Abdul El-Sayed going around saying he wants to abolish ICE, again, that sounds like the sort of slogan that Francesca Hong was being, you know, called to account for from a few years ago, just the kind of latest iteration of it. I'm sure some people would see it in those terms. But if Aviva is super popular, then how can it actually be that extreme? Yeah, and not only that, because, you know, I think even if 50%, 50 plus 1 % of people supported literally no immigration enforcement.

25:39I guess the other 49 % could say that is really extreme and we're not going to accept that. And, you know, the small majority have lost their minds. But that's not what people like Abdul El-Sayed are saying. What they're saying is, you know, we enforced immigration policy in the United States for decades before ICE was invented. ICE is a relatively recent invention of the kind of post-9-11 homeland security compact, as it were. And the agency's behavior, if you look at it killing people in the streets of Minneapolis, if you look at, you know, many things about the way it's behaved, I don't need to sort of outline in recent months.

26:12I mean, a lot of people would say that's extreme by sort of any definition of the term. And therefore, what El-Sayed is proposing might sort of register as extreme in kind of pundit speak. But is it actually? I mean, I think, you know, when you dig below the surface, you could argue that's a fairly moderate position if you're saying that this agency that's gone road needs to be dismantled. But at the same time, you know, we do need some form of immigration enforcement. So, yeah, it just sort of shows, I think, how when the ground moves fast underneath the politics that we have in common, the meaning of these terms becomes very slippery with it.

26:45How often these days are politicians running as moderates and like using that as part of their campaign as opposed to that being something that is imposed on them either by the media or by voters. Like, I guess I'm wondering if it's still something of a virtue or something that people kind of like aspire to or pretend to be, even if they're not, or if this is just like the way that we are thinking about certain candidates. Yeah, it's super interesting, isn't it? I mean, you do have some politicians who go around essentially saying, look at me, I am a moderate, right? And sort of like proudly embracing that as a self-definition.

27:22I mean, I think there is, that I mentioned in the piece, a political action committee affiliated with, I think, 10 or so Democratic senators that calls itself the Mod Squad, right? So, you know, for some people, it is absolutely a badge of honor. At the same time, you know, it is striking how you will see examples of people who are very much on the left trying to, at least on a kind of issue-by-issue basis, claim the issue of moderation or at the very least downplay the idea that they're extreme. You know, Graham Plattner, before dropping out in Maine, said that he sees abolishing ISIS is the moderate position.

27:54I quoted in the piece from a spokesperson for Zoran Mamdani who said, you know, in response to, you know, a self-described moderate democratic group, essentially calling Mamdani's allied candidates in those New York primaries we discussed earlier, essentially calling them extremists. This spokesperson replied by saying the only thing that's extreme is, you know, not providing for working families. I think most people want to show that their politics are or claim that their politics are, you know, sensible, right? Because that's the way that you win people over. It's that you project that what you stand for is something that is reasonable, can be achieved.

28:28All you're asking for is healthcare as a right. All you're asking for is the economy to be unrigged. At the same time, clearly we are in a moment of profound and volatile backlash against the status quo. And so to the extent that moderate is kind of coded as a word that is, I'm generally okay with the status quo, or at least we don't want to change things too quickly because that's risky. And especially if you're on the ballot this year, I don't think you want to appear to be part of the status quo or the establishment. You want to be seen to be fighting at least against Trump's excesses, even if you are otherwise presenting yourself as middle of the road on policy, pro common sense, whatever that means, you know, a bipartisan dealmaker under normal circumstances.

29:09You want to be seen to fight. And yeah, I included this detail in the piece as well. But Catherine Cortez Masto, the senator who is, I think, the honorary chair of the Mod Squad PAC that I just mentioned, someone who was like very involved in trying to end the government shutdown that many Democratic senators forced last year. This year did take something of a leading role in shutting down DHS over the lack of guardrails on ice and use quite pugnacious language when doing so. So, you know, there clearly are lines for, even for people who are self-described mod squad types. I'm curious about, I mean, we've mostly been talking about moderate and how that term maps onto certain politicians.

29:46But I'm wondering if we can talk about, like, how it maps onto the voters themselves and whether the moderate voter actually even exists, given that, you know, we were talking earlier in this conversation about, like, all of the, you know, Republican voters who, I don't know, maybe a Democrat would think that some of their views are extreme when it comes to certain, you know, social issues or something, but then, like, you know, they seem to agree on the point of data centers with Francesca Hong, and so it kind of scrambles this idea of, you know, someone who's a moderate or, you know, someone who's like in the middle trying to figure out what it is they want to vote for.

30:21Yeah. I mean, it won't surprise you to hear that. I think the answer to this question is it depends on how you define the term moderate, right? But to sort of oversimplify it, you know, there is, I guess, a criticism that what many academics and journalists think of as moderate is a voter who might actually have views that are like completely all over the place, right? Like they might believe in like very left-wing ideas on some policy issues and like very right-wing ideas on others. And I don't think this is that uncommon. You know, I think the media and like political world have settled on this kind of quite detailed, like left-right schema for defining things.

30:59But I don't think that like most people who pay limited attention to politics or form their political views based on their personal experience think that way. And so it would, you know, it's hardly surprising they take positions issue by issue. And it's hardly surprising that those might not necessarily map onto each other. But one of the, you know, one such person might, if they have a matching number of very far left, very far right views, on some definition be called a moderate or a centrist if the kind of aggregate point of all their opinions is like in the middle of that sort of imagined spectrum.

31:28This is kind of a wild card question, but, you know, I'm just curious since we're talking about, you know, this word moderate. There's been a lot of reporting that suggests that men, usually straight men, often lie on their dating app profiles and list themselves as moderate when they're actually conservative, because studies show that women are less likely to swipe right on conservative men. And obviously there's like a lot of weird stuff that happens on dating apps where people also list themselves as being like several inches taller than they are. But do you think that there's something to this idea that people who tend to identify as moderate are probably just kind of conservative or more right-leaning and therefore it's probably going to be more difficult for Democrats to win them over than it's worth?

32:08Like if that term is actually code for something and then, you know, the search for a moderate candidate is actually kind of misguided to begin with. If like that person is almost always just going to go for like the redder candidate. Yeah, I love the idea that like some people are, you know, moderating, as it were, their descriptors on dating apps to, you know, get like they would with their height. I mean, I guess the sort of implication of that is that these people know they're not really moderates. And I guess that would then map over into politics as well. I do feel like anecdotally, even though a lot of people like, you know, I grew up in Arizona.

32:45And like often if you talk to someone and you say like, you know, how do you feel about Trump? They'll say like, you know, I'm a moderate. So I wonder if like it's just in a time where like back in the day, like being a Republican, you know, it's still half the country, more than half the country. But like there's such a stigma to the MAGA brand that, yeah, we're kind of like orienting ourselves around these terms and in pursuit of voters who ascribe to these terms when actually the terms are just cover for something. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to try and steer the conversation as quickly away from dating apps as possible.

33:17My sense would be that people who are like proudly on the left or even just proudly Democrats, right, not even necessarily people who have particularly left wing politics on issues, but see themselves, you know, as absolutely opposed to Donald Trump, disgusted by him, disgusted by Chuck Schumer, you know, kind of normie MS now watching Democrats, for example. you know I think maybe they would be more likely than the equivalent people on the other side to reject a label like moderate because they see how it applies to people in their party that they have completely lost faith in and they see it as you know kind of mushy they see it as not standing for anything and and you know they might be willing to embrace you know a label like progressive maybe more than someone on the other side would I think just generally most people even if they wouldn't say I am a moderate because they don't understand themselves to be that in terms of how the media uses that term in US politics at this moment.

34:16Most people think their views are sensible. I think most people think their views are mainstream. You know, I'm sure there are some who don't. But again, like political candidates want to make themselves look as if they are reasonable people. And so, yeah, I don't know if these people would describe themselves as a moderate necessarily, but they might see those views as moderate if you're sort of going to use that as a kind of small m adjective. I definitely think there are people on the MAGA side of things who would describe views that you and I might think are fairly extreme as being just kind of common sense and moderate.

34:47Yeah, I'm sure that is absolutely a thing that happens. In a minute, I want to talk more about the moderate versus progressive battle and how it might continue to play out for the rest of primary season. And then I also want to talk about AOC. This is the political scene from The New Yorker.

35:08I'm Jesse Sefcek. And I'm Shulpa Oskoukowicz. And we're senior Tuskogen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident and curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept that we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

35:41And this month, we're making plum cheesecake karpatka. It is a spectacle of a giant Polish dessert, and it is so fun. Head on over to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us here on the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.

36:16So, John, I'd love to circle back to the woke one was crazy comment that we were talking about at the top of this conversation. And kind of like how you think that that comment was functioning both in that initial moment when AOC kind of cited it, talking about Hong's old tweets, and how you think that might become the narrative going forward or sort of like, you know, become like sort of like a rhetorical device, assuming that she does end up running for president, as a lot of people think she's going to. Like, do you see that that comment is like marking a shift on the part of progressives like AOC toward moderation?

36:50Or is it more of like an acknowledgment that some progressive positions and statements are just going to be alienating to the average voter? Yeah, I think it's important to first of all say that like even the DSA left, not to mention the progressive left more broadly, and obviously that would include people who don't even define as DSA members. That is itself a broad spectrum. That is a broad church. And AOC is as close as they have, bar Bernie, to a unifying figurehead. But obviously, she is someone who has been controversial to some extent within DSA circles. I mean, I think she would still be the choice for president.

37:25But like there are definitely people on the left who think that she has moderated to an unacceptable extent since, you know, getting into Congress in 2018. Someone who has started to sell out or not been sort of, you know, vocal enough on issues that progressives consider kind of totemic. So, you know, I want to sort of embark upon this point with a recognition that like she doesn't necessarily speak for everyone on that side of the firmament. But yeah, I think she's clearly speaking to a broader recognition among some people on the progressive left that they at the very least have a political problem with some of the slogans that were thrown around, particularly in the summer of 2020.

38:04right and i think obviously like defund the police would be foremost among those and yeah i think that when asked which they are asked about this a lot by the media because there seems to be a complete media obsession despite everything else being completely on fire everywhere they are going to many of them including aoc in this instance going to try and distance themselves from at least the language they used right what was quite interesting about the aoc comment on ABC was that, yeah, she said, you know, Woke One was crazy, but she was really talking about like the language, the rhetoric that was used.

38:39I think she also said in that same point that she felt that some of the actual discussions that were had around policy during that time were fruitful. I think she sort of made a point that was a little bit unclear and confusing, but seemed to be gesturing towards the idea that, you know, like the issue of fighting crime, policing had sort of moved to the left substantively as a result of some of that discourse. So, you know, I think it would be a mistake to see her, you know, or to the extent that I've seen other candidates from that sort of part of the spectrum address it, anyone else really kind of like completely disavowing, you know, quote unquote, woke one.

39:17I think there is an effort to move away from slogans that are now considered to be politically toxic by many people. But like, yeah, I don't think it necessarily reflects a total break with the underpinning ideas. Or at least I think I would need to see more public evidence that that is a retrenchment that is happening. You know, I have sort of like more broadly complicated feelings about this because like on the one hand, obviously, I do think that politicians are responsible for the language they use. And if you're going to throw around slogans like defund the police or even now abolish ICE, I don't think it's like I don't even necessarily blame voters for hearing that as there will be no more police and no more immigration enforcement, even if, as we discussed earlier, the actual kind of substance behind some of those ideas is quite often meant in a much less radical way.

40:02You know, defund the police can be code for let's move some funding away from police departments to instead fund like mental health responses in a way that happens in other countries that are not communist dictatorships. Right. And as we discussed earlier, the idea of abolishing ICE isn't necessarily let's do away with immigration enforcement. It might just be let's move it into a different agency that hasn't become kind of rotted to the core with violent extremism. But again, if politicians are going to have the benefit of clear ideas that cut through a go on a bumper sticker, you know, I think you have to sort of live with some of the misunderstanding that's going to follow.

40:33So at the same time, it seems like there is obviously an effort on the part of Republicans to like pigeonhole the most extreme version of some of these things and sort of make Democrats answer for it, even as they themselves take unbelievably extreme positions on lots of other things with, you know, I mean, a lot of public blowback. It looks like at the moment, but without sort of seeming to feel any kind of political shame about it. And the media, many people in the media, particularly the kind of anti-woke sort of priests who seem to think that the sort of language policing that occurred on social media in 2020 is the most unjust and upsetting thing ever to happen to them.

41:07You know, yeah, seem to be very keen on relitigating this a lot. So it is a conversation that's going to continue to recur. We'll have to see what happens. I have a hard time thinking that just sort of laughing this kind of thing off and saying, oh, it was just crazy. I don't think that's necessarily going to convince anyone because it sounds like a minimization of things you were saying, which suggests that you can't be trusted or just willing to say anything for political expediency to people who are critical of that sort of speech. But also, you know, if you're going to premise a kind of expansion of progressive political power on base energy, it's pretty insulting and alienating to people who still believe very deeply in the, you know, racial justice and other movements that surged in 2020.

41:50It's pretty, you know, it's not necessarily a great message to them to kind of laugh about it and imply they were crazy. And I've seen some columns that, you know, have made, I think, what I consider to be some fairly cogent points to that effect. Absolutely. I mean, part of what I found interesting, too, is like, I feel like we've reached a moment where we're not even necessarily penalizing certain candidates or, you know, writing them off because of views that they had in the past that we may have seen as extreme. Whereas, you know, like several years ago or decades ago, that was absolutely something that was happening.

42:20I feel like now, you know, we don't even mind so long as they're able to then talk about those views after the fact in a way that kind of like pleases us. Like, I feel like that was a lot of what was happening in Wisconsin, where it's just like the way that Hong was like not really able to play off the Thanksgiving thing in a way that like Mom Donnie would have been able to do that, you know, so well. And for all the people who were kind of upset at like the woke one was crazy stuff. And, you know, for good reason, as you were just explaining, there were also a lot of people who were like actually just being able to kind of say that and acknowledge that like is to AOC's benefit, given that there are lots of other progressive candidates or DSA candidates who might, you know, struggle to to say that, even if it's like what you need to say in order to win whatever election it is that you're in.

43:04Yeah. And I think that, again, something that can get lost in these kind of programmatic discussions of like progressive versus moderate is that loads of other things that are kind of external to that matter a lot as well. And just like candidate quality and basic charisma is like super, super important, right? I think it's not totally related to what we're talking about, but Mandani like managing to kind of stride into the Oval Office and like defang Donald Trump when that was just not something that like anyone would have necessarily predicted he'd be able to do. I'll say it in Michigan as well.

43:36I guess we'll find out if voters there buy it. And he is obviously facing a much tougher electorate than Mandani faced in New York City. But he's not – if you actually listen to him on the stump, he's someone who definitely speaks in a kind of aspirationally radical way but is also quite good at like diffusing attacks about wokeness or sort of like flipping things like that on their head, right? Like regardless of what you think about Hassan Piker and I'll say its decision to campaign with him a few weeks ago or a couple of months ago even. And, you know, I'll say its response to critics inside the Democratic Party saying this guy's totally toxic.

44:12He's an anti-Semite and misogynist. You should go nowhere near him. It was essentially to say, you know, I thought we were over cancel culture, right, which I thought was a fairly sort of deft inversion. If you're going to engage in that type of politics of those sort of 2020 related talking points. I guess what I'm trying to say is there are better and worse ways to deflect these kinds of things. And just because seemingly Francesca Hong in Wisconsin was taken down by some stuff that she said and then sort of struggled to justify a few years later, I really don't think it's inevitable that that is going to be the case for every single candidate.

44:43And certainly, you know, I think there is a mismatch between the media's obsession with these sorts of talking points and Republicans' obsession with them and what voters most care about, which is clearly affordability, the war in Iran. You know, there are other issues that are going to override this kind of stuff. I'm not saying it's irrelevant at all, but because things that are in the media discourse are relevant for better or worse. But, you know, it's sort of a fluid and malleable picture. I don't think we should just assume that, like, anyone who tweeted defund the police in 2020 is going to be politically captured and sort of neutered by that in perpetuity.

45:16I mean, John, I know that this whole conversation has been devoted to, like, the murkiness of this issue and kind of like whether the moderate versus progressive battle is even like a legitimate framing. But if we were to accept that framing, I guess I wonder, what should we be on the lookout for in the coming months? Like, are there any races that might give us a sense of, like, who's up, who's down, what appeals to the voters that Democrats need to win over or perhaps win back? I think very simply it's going to be the result of the midterms themselves. I mean, we're talking on Tuesday, the 18th of August.

45:49I think there are primaries in Alaska and Florida today that, to some extent, speak to these same kind of moderate and progressive storylines, albeit without the kind of blockbuster head-to-head drama that we saw in Wisconsin and Michigan. And, you know, yeah, primary season is just generally kind of coming to an end. And so I think in the midterms, it will be interesting to see whether it's a Democratic blowout or not. But also within that, like, again, I guess especially if it's not a Democratic blowout and therefore not everyone wins, what is the profile of the candidates who are successful?

46:24You know, are these kind of DSA-aligned candidates even in blue districts in New York and Colorado? Clearly, they look very favored to win. But what sort of percentages are they winning with? What sort of turnout are they winning with? The El-Sayed election in Michigan is clearly going to be like super, super important and is obviously going to get held up as a referendum on the wisdom of selecting a presidential candidate from the more progressive wing of the party, given that you do have to go and win in places like Michigan, where Trump, of course, has won twice, including at the last election.

46:56And I'm sure that when that level of analysis happens, whether I'll say it wins or loses, I will find myself very annoyed about it as an oversimplification of one race with kind of, you know, unique dynamics and unique candidate profiles. But, you know, at the same time, that result is going to be made to bear a lot of weight in arguments about which sort of direction the party should look to, you know, as it heads into this presidential cycle. Personally, and this is sort of like a thing that I'm interested to look at that like is a little bit against conventional wisdom and could turn out to be like totally wrong.

47:25but I guess I'll put it on record now in case it's right, which is that I'd be interested in the balance between how the Democrats do in the House and the Senate and what the profile of candidates that do well in those races looks like. Because I think there's this assumption Democrats will have a huge blowout in the House. And I think that polling and the huge unpopularity of Trump would make that a reasonable expectation. At the same time, gerrymandering has altered the map there in a way that I think has not necessarily filtered through to people who are not like politics obsessives and made it certainly not impossible for the Democrats to have what would I think constitute a wave by, you know, in this era of like, pretty extreme gerrymandering across the board, a wave is not going to look like it did in the past.

48:09But you know, something I think you could reasonably call a wave within that diminished context. Yeah, it's not impossible that could happen at all. But like, it would not surprise me if the margin there is closer than people expect. Conversely, and even in the same election, I wouldn't be surprised if you see Democrats like at least being very competitive in pretty stretchy Senate targets or races that, you know, would have seemed very stretchy a year ago, say the primaries in Alaska today, Mary Peltola, who used to be the Democratic congresswoman for Alaska for a term and a bit after she won a special election in 2022, is running for Senate.

48:44Obviously, she did lose Alaska's lone House seat at the last election when Trump was also on the ballot, but is now up against Dan Sullivan, who also wrote a piece for Talk of the Town recently about the multiple Dan Sullivans in this race. So just to clarify, I mean the incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan, you know, who is a fairly obviously very well-known figure in Alaska, but I would say maybe lacks the appeal of like Lisa Murkowski, his colleague who is not on the ballot this time, is someone who's not particularly well-known outside. It doesn't seem unlikely to me that Peltola could win that race.

49:12Ditto Sherrod Brown in Ohio, even though that state has seemingly got redder and redder. Ditto even Cooper in North Carolina. Obviously, if these sorts of candidates win, you will get an avalanche of takes that this proves that, you know, quote unquote, moderates can win across the board for the Democrats. And that's where they should go with their presidential pick. Again, an El-Sayed victory would maybe muddy that analysis. So yeah, I think that's now the thing to watch for. And yeah, going to have to wait a few months to find out. Thank you so much, John. Thank you for having me.

49:45John Alsop is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. You can find his latest piece, What Does It Even Mean to Be a Moderate, at newyorker.com. This has been The Political Scene from The New Yorker. I'm Tyler Foggett. This episode is produced by John LeMay with mixing by Mike Kutchman and engineering by Pran Bandy. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton-Brown. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday.

50:19I'm Jesse Sefchak. And I'm Sholpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident and curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on BonAppetit.com that introduces a baking concept that we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

50:52And this month, we're making plum cheesecake karpatka. It is a spectacle of a giant Polish dessert, and it is so fun. Head on over to BA.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on Substack. Join us here on the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking.