A Conservative Is A Conservative, Whether He Calls Himself A Republican Or A Democrat And It Doesn't Matter If He Passes Himself Off As A "Moderate"-- They Own All Society's Problems

The two parties aren't "the same." Democrats aren't the same as Republicans. There are some good Democrats. There are no good Republicans. The identity politics Democratic politicians play-- pro-woman, pro-gay, anti-racism, for example-- is better, way better, than the identity politics Republicans play. As for corruption... well corruption is part of, and even lionized by, conservatism. Liberals at least feel guilty about their own corruption, for whatever that's worth.

When he was younger than I am now, my grandfather told me that the only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican. I'd say he hit that one out of the park. A few days ago, The Independent published an OpEd by North Carolina academics Kevin Singer and Alyssa Rockenbach, People worry that 'moderate' Democrats like Joe Biden are the same as Republicans. Our study suggests they may be right. They offered a new set of criteria to look at politicians. It helps explain why there is so much energy around the Republicans for Biden movement right now and so much more enthusiasm from that direction than from progressives, who generally dislike him less than they dislike Trump and will hold their noses and vote for him, deceiving themselves into thinking they will be able to have an impact on his neoliberal agenda after he's in the White House.

Friday, we put together a ritual denunciation of consevative Democrats-- misnamed "moderates" by the media and misguided academics like Singer and Rockenbach-- who had just accepted, and celebrated, endorsements by the very right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Singer and Rockenbach, though, address the idealization of "moderatism" as the ultimate political virtue. "When it comes to addressing climate change," they wrote, "Eric Levitz of New York Magazine argued that 'a major [obstacle] is the tendency of moderate Democrats to mistake their own myopic complacency for heroic prudence.' Political researcher David Adler found that across Europe and North America, centrists are the least supportive of democracy, the least committed to its institutions, and the most supportive of authoritarianism. Furthermore, Adler found that centrists are the least supportive of free and fair elections as well as civil rights-- in the United States, only 25 percent of centrists agree that civil rights are an essential feature of democracy. This finding dovetails with observations made by Martin Luther King Jr. in his letter from Birmingham Jail: 'I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the… great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Klu Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.' Even Arthur Books, a self-avowed moderate, admits to 'the failure of the mainstream, moderate, progressive formula for how to create a more equal pluralist America,' adding, 'I’m a moderate guy, but the evidence doesn’t support moderation when it comes to racial equity.' That’s all well and good. But what does the data show?"

They reported on a study of beliefs and attitudes of college students across the country (IDEALS) and found that "as America battles a global pandemic and an economic collapse and reckons with systemic racism, IDEALS suggests that moderate men may be the least likely to make a positive difference. When broken down by political leaning, IDEALS found that moderate male students in their senior year were time and again the least likely, or among the least likely, to somewhat or strongly agree with the following statements":

Strikingly, in almost every case, the responses of moderate men are very similar to conservative men and women. Their level of agreement with the statements above is as much as 14 percent lower than moderate women, who are more likely than men to lean Democratic, or liberal men and women.

This IDEALS finding is on par with a recent Gallup study encompassing over 29,000 interviews with American adults, which revealed that moderates and conservatives remain closely aligned in their ideological preferences.

This raises important questions heading into the election: Is a moderate male candidate a bait-and-switch for Democratic voters? Are they actually casting their votes for a conservative?

That moderate men most resemble Republicans has been confirmed, of all places, on dating apps. Brittany Wong of HuffPost writes, “It’s almost become a coastal cliche at this point: If someone lists their political views as ‘moderate’ on a dating app, the thinking goes, go ahead and assume the person is a conservative.” One interviewee noted, “It’s just in my experience, even ‘moderate’ guys tend to have extremely different views on topics that matter to me, like gun control, women’s reproductive rights and immigration.” Sometimes, moderate men who appear to bend liberal turn out to be “faux woke,” according to one interviewee who was initially attracted to someone whose profile featured photos at a women’s march. Eventually “he slowly started to drop his facade,” revealing behaviors inconsistent with his professed political beliefs.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has grown increasingly frustrated with moderate Democrats during her tenure, saying at a recent event, “The Democratic Party is not a left party. The Democratic Party is a center or a center-conservative party.” Her [ex] chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, recently deleted a tweet comparing two moderate Democrat coalitions-- consisting mostly of men-- to Southern Democrats who favored segregation and opposed civil rights. During this election cycle, a recurring criticism of Vice President Biden has been his record on school desegregation.

To be sure, Vice President Biden also aligns with more progressive Democrats on key policy issues, prompting Paul Waldman of the Washington Post to assert, “Biden is getting more progressive in substance, yet it has done nothing to change his image as a moderate.”

Nevertheless, Biden’s popularity among Republicans has grown consistently in recent months. A number of prominent former GOP officials, and even some of Trump’s ex-staffers, have voiced their support for Biden, including former Governor John Kasich and former Senator Jeff Flake. Their support, however, seems less driven by the good things they believe Biden will do, and more by the bad things they believe Biden won’t do. In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, for example, Kasich remarked that Republicans and Independents may fear that Biden will “turn sharp left and leave them behind,” but assured viewers, “I don't believe that.”

Let's take San Diego City Council president Georgette Gómez, a congressional candidate-- running for an open seat being contested by an hereditary multimillionaire conservative Democrat-- as an example. Gómez has been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, while the Wall Street-owned and operated New Dem Caucus has embraced and endorsed her opponent, Sara Jacobs, granddaughter of mega-GOP donor Irwin Jacobs, whose money is largely financing her campaign against Gómez. Jacobs stands for nothing at all except getting elected. In the primary, she pretended to be a progressive-- a laugh-- and now she is showing her true colors as another corporate suck-up, opposing everything and anything that will help working families.