Is it because the Democratic Party sucks ass?
The centrist agenda, which is based on the primacy of the private sector and private markets and the importance of the military and law-enforcement, has left us with a public-health system utterly unable to handle the COVID pandemic. It’s left us with a legacy of racist policing and incarceration. It’s why Black families have only a tiny fraction of the wealth of white families. It’s created the most economically unjust and unequal society in the developed world. It’s come so close to destroying the planet that it’s almost too late to save our species. It’s why we have so many homeless people in the streets of our cities, why college is so expensive that it’s out of reach for many families, why we are engaged in expensive and pointless wars all over the world.
This has happened with Democratic presidents and Democratic Congresses, with Democratic presidents and Republican Congresses, with Republican presidents and Democratic Congresses.
If there is no difference in Ideology, then what the fuck is your platform? You can create a more humane crack epidemic? Funnel money to female Contras at a rate equal to males? Dukakis, like Mondale before him, was running a race not for the future but the present. The thought process being if a high enough margin of voters switch teams, the presidency is theirs. And how better to appeal to voters than by mimicking what they already like?
And with that you’re admitting to the base of your party, and to the country as a whole. That your entire electoral strategy is predicated upon a few percentage points of “moderates” feeling good about the minute differences in policy that separate you from the opposing candidate.
Moderates are defined by the time they exist in. A moderate from 1960 would be considered progressive by 1990. Up until recently the entire American electorate had shifted so far to the right, half of the Overton Window was covered by a black-out shade.
How many “moderate” Republicans made good on their Never Trump promises? How many “moderate” Democrats gleefully clap like seals when more means testing is forced onto welfare programs? Why, in this era of American Neo-Fascism do we give a shit about what a moderate thinks? Moderates are comfortable, moderates are safe, and moderates will side with whatever political party allows them to maintain their exact level of comfort with the least amount of headache.
Moderates don’t just play by the rules, they’re addicted to them. And look at where the rules have lead us.