By Abe Greenwald
Monday, October 20, 2025
In today’s New York Times, there’s a long and
genuinely interesting editorial arguing that ideological moderation remains the
most successful strategy for winning elections across the country. The piece,
aimed at Democrats, notes that most Americans believe the Democratic Party has
become too extreme, and socialists and other radicals don’t win tight races.
“Candidates closer to the political center, from both parties, continue to fare
better in most elections than those farther to the right or left,” the
editorial board writes. The piece is very convincing on these points. So
convincing, in fact, that you have to laugh. Because the Times has for
years done everything in its power to turn radicals into national superstars.
The paper has consistently championed or made excuses for
every crazy, far-left idea that’s been mainstreamed over the past decade. It’s
arguably served as the country’s chief conduit for absolving and normalizing
radicalism. Gender-affirming care for minors, males in female sports, Black
Lives Matter, defunding the police, socialism, anti-ICE fury, and anti-Israel
hysteria—the Times was on board every step of the way.
And the paper has run one slavish profile after another
of each of these causes leading lights. A few days ago, the New York Times
Magazine published “Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far)
Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani,” an exhaustive masterpiece of hero-worship
by Astead W. Herndon that takes a full afternoon to read. And just in case you
missed the point, the newspaper followed it up with “Five Takeaways From the
Magazine’s Profile of Zohran Mamdani.”
Well, that was last Tuesday, anyway. Today, the Times
declares: “If Democrats were willing to be less ideological—less beholden to
views that many liberal activists, intellectuals and donors genuinely hold but
that most Americans do not—they would have the opportunity to build the
country’s next governing majority.” In other words, if you would just stop
believing in what we believe, you might start winning.
That’s a strange piece of advice, isn’t it? Yet you see
it echoed across liberal media these days. Left-leaning pundits are asking
Democrats to do what they themselves never will: Drop the crazy.
Outlets like the New York Times are telling
liberal politicians to do as they say, not as they do, because media organs and
politicians face different incentives. The Times has to sell
subscriptions, and it’s found a winning formula in repackaging radicalism as
liberalism for a statistically niche audience. Politicians have to win
elections, and they’ve been getting creamed using that same formula.
Do you even think liberal media would praise Democrats
for taking their advice and moderating? Just look at how they’ve treated those
Democrats who have already shown conviction in rejecting aspects of leftist
orthodoxy. Today’s editorial notes the electoral savvy of former West Virginia
Senator Joe Manchin. But when the moderate Democrat blocked a few liberal
Biden-administration initiatives, he was savaged for it. And for breaking with
his party’s radicals and unapologetically standing by Israel, John Fetterman
was subjected to the cruelest smear campaign I’ve ever witnessed.
Expect the Times and others to do the same to
liberals who buck leftist trends in the future. Which is a real conundrum for
those who want to win elections. The media is full of messaging advice for
Democrats these days, but it’s nowhere near reckoning with how large a role
it’s played in the party’s deterioration.
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