This is a good question. Republicans not moderating post-2020 cost them badly. It meant that they flopped hard in 2022 and failed to flip the Senate, because they pursued the most extreme abortion agendas possible and ran repellant J6 challengers in battlegrounds. Politics never only works one way.
@lauren-egan.bsky.social @lakshya.splitticket.org Wondering why there's so much ink spilled on how and why Democrats should moderate but when Republicans were in the minority post-2020, there was little (no?) such writing about the GOP. Is the GOP free from the need to moderate? Why?
The Democrats spill a lot of ink on electability and spend a lot of time wailing over their failures, but as a result, they also consistently picked the more electable candidates, especially in swing states and swing seats. Polls suggest Trump won by way less in 2024 than folks like Haley would have
If 2024 was a football (soccer) match, the Democrats basically played 2024 down a man, 11v10, given the macro conditions and how badly Biden crippled the party. They still nearly flipped the House despite Trump carrying 230 districts.
Trump still convinced a lot of voters he was "more moderate" than Harris, especially because he triangulated on abortion and Medicare/Medicaid, which helped with lower-propensity voters who were furious at Biden/Harris. But he had his own baggage — data suggests another R would likely do better.
Thanks! But I think my question was more about why the _media_ didn't relentlessly publish pieces on the GOP needing to moderate like they do now about Democrats. The current level of discourse around that question as it applies to Dems is way higher than I recall it being applied to the GOP in 2021
they sort of did in 2022, but the big reason is that the story of 2020 as written was that the democrats blew it by not winning by more. trump nearly winning came as a shock to everyone.
May 13, 2025 23:07
