The 2018 Midterms Could Kill the American Moderate for Good

Even Oscar Wilde, socialist and anarchist that he was, would likely bristle at the radical dysfunction of American politics today. Wilde famously preferred “everything in moderation, including moderation.” But 2018 may be the year that lawmakers and voters alike crystallize their preference for a slight spin on the playwright’s words: a Congress in which nothing is in moderation, except for moderation.

This shift has been some time coming. In the last midterm elections, in 2014, only about 4 percent of congressional candidates were ideologically moderate, according to data compiled by Danielle Thomsen, a political-science professor at UC Irvine, who categorized candidates by their campaign donors. The proportion of moderates on the campaign trail “has been steadily declining since the 1980s,” Thomsen told me. “It takes a lot of guts to run for Congress as a moderate in the current environment.”

This is not only because campaigns tend to favor personalities over policy goals and apocalyptic rhetoric over good-faith debate. It’s also because Congress itself disincentivizes reaching across the aisle. Work with a Democrat? Bid your perfect Heritage Action Scorecard farewell. Consider a GOP judicial nominee? Hope you weren’t too attached to that committee gavel.

It’s worth exploring, then, how moderate candidates today—however few they may be—manage to survive, and how they're pitching themselves in the final days of their midterm campaigns. The candidates and political strategists I've spoken with believe that constituencies that value compromise still exist, as well as voters who feel invested in issues rather than parties. Candidates have tailored