Moderation Is Not a Real Political Strategy

One of Matt Yglesias’s defining political positions is that Democrats should be more moderate in order to attract more votes. This is generally invoked as a critique of the Left and so naturally attracts left-wing ire, which Yglesias seems to enjoy. One issue I’ve long had with this moderation-or-not discourse is that it’s a moving target. If we define “moderate” as something like the median of the current distribution of political views (ignoring all the complications with that concept), then…