Unlike columnist Eric Sondermann, I have rarely been referred to as a “radical moderate.” And, unlike Eric Sondermann, I’m not sure I would take it as a compliment if I were. Last week, the Colorado Politics columnist penned an ode to the merits of political moderation, starting it with a nod to the “radical moderate” label bestowed upon him by anti-gun control advocate Dave Kopel.
What followed was, in Sondermann’s words, both a “definition and defense” of political moderation. Unfortunately, the definition he provided was wobbly, and the defense turned out to be more of an indictment. I take no issue with Sondermann personally, and believe he means well, but disagreed with his ode to moderation strongly enough that I felt compelled to respond. Rather than lobbing potshots on social media, though, I wanted to take the time to disagree at length, and to provide my own defense of partisanship – not to one major party or the other, but to a set of values and ideals which inform my vision of a hoped-for society.
Sondermann described moderates as those who “evaluate issues on their individual merits” and “understand and respect contrary arguments.” He also attempted to defend the determinedly milquetoast from allegations that their views are “mushy, supple, [or] content-free,” or that their politics are “devoid of principle or ideology.” How he read my mind is a question for another day.
Moderates, according to Sondermann, are those who rise above the fray, “occupying the middle ground in an overly divided time,” as he put it. But what Sondermann describes as moderation strikes me instead as a sort of self-satisfied naivete. It is a description of engaging in politics without a functioning memory or guiding principles, and being quite proud of it. More than that, his vision of moderation appears to be completely free of ideology or values, failing to take into account the actual reasons people engage in politics.
For starters, Sondermann’s defense of moderation is rooted in a false equivalency. Early in his piece, he starts by claiming that Republicans will deride any conservative who is not “fully, unenthusiastically, and unreservedly on board with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement” and that Democrats will lambast any Democrat who “still adheres to some marketplace principles.” The comparison is nonsense on its face: Republicans have been run out of congress, censured, and relentlessly harassed for failing to support Donald Trump – that part is true. But the idea of Democrats turning their backs on anyone who still adheres to marketplace principles is a fantasy. Two years ago, the majority of House Democrats voted for a resolution condemning socialism. Last month, a socialist won the Democratic primary for the New York City mayoral race, and still has not been endorsed by any party leaders.
Despite claiming that the appreciation of complexity is a trait of moderates, Sondermann felt the need to build his own defense of moderation on the obliteration of shades of gray, taking no degrees or gradation into consideration. In reality, both major parties are deeply flawed – but they are not equally flawed. Of course, to praise the middle, you need the poles to be equal, even if they are not.
Then there’s the problem of knowledge. For Sondermann, moderation means evaluating every new political claim on its face, seemingly without the ability to retain any information about the political parties, actors, or movements making those claims. Tabula rasa, every time. Sondermann has worked in and around politics for decades, and yet he still seems to view “Team Red” and “Team Blue,” as he calls them, more as sports franchises than as complex coalitions pushing certain positions, animated by certain beliefs. Nor does he seem to appreciate that knowledge of the past actions, positions, and professed beliefs of those coalitions can contribute to our understanding of them in an ongoing manner.
This spring, when Republicans promised not to cut Medicaid in their pursuit of additional tax cuts for billionaires, did Sondermann take those claims at face value, or did he remember every other time they have cut social programs to pay for tax cuts even after promising not to? Was he surprised when they inevitably cut Medicaid? And, if so, would it be un-moderate to factor-in that knowledge next time they make a similar claim?
In Sondermann’s view of politics, there are the mindless drones of Team Red and the mindless drones of Team Blue, and, between them, the enlightened ubermenschen of Team Gray: demigods capable of approaching every issue as pure arbiters with the wiped-clean memory of goldfish.
Sondermann himself does not seem immune to the mind-wiping powers of moderation. A little over a week ago, he posted a column rightly decrying the Trump administration’s authoritarian use of ICE, calling out the “grim dehumanization” at the heart of the administration’s immigration policies. Then he turned around and penned a ballad to bothsides-ism equivocal enough to prompt this response, seemingly having internalized no lessons from the conclusions he reached only a week ago.
Sondermann is correct when he says that there is merit in understanding the views of those we disagree with – like some Trump voters who Sondermann rightly argues “have been ill-served and left behind by economic and cultural changes” – but the difference between understanding and respect is vast, and Sondermann fails to wrestle with it at all. I can understand how people become radicalized, I can understand the vital importance of pathways to deradicalization. But Sondermann would have us pretend they were never radicalized in the first place, all things outside of the center being equal. Problem solved.
It’s an example which shows the narrowness of Sondermann’s frame of reference. He’s clearly thinking of some middle-class Trump voter with standard conservative politics and a creeping sense of economic anxiety. But would he apply the same standard of understanding and respect to Nick Fuentes, or the Nazi Party, or the Khmer Rouge? I certainly hope not; in doing so, he would be substantially shifting the location of the middle ground towards their noxious ideologies.
It’s easy for Sondermann to tell his audience to “find the middle ground” and embrace the “now discredited idea of compromise,” but he chose not to struggle with what it means for moderates to decide where that mythical, vaunted middle ground lies, or with the reality that the middle ground can be moved by the movement of either of its poles, holding no territory of its own. Nor does he wrestle with what, exactly, the compromise should be between, say, “trans people have a right to exist” and “no they don’t.” He simply praises moderates’ ability to stand on that middle ground and look down at everyone else.
And that’s where the ultimate problem at the heart of Sondermann’s version of moderation lies: it seems to value nothing whatsoever but moderation itself. It does not come complete with a set of beliefs or convictions. It is moderation for moderation’s sake, an outdated country club sensibility transplanted to the realm of electoralism.
As an ideological, values-driven participant in politics, I navigate political issues with one eye towards my values and the other towards my understanding of political reality. I am not attempting to float forever upon the political seas; I’m trying to reach a destination. I believe that is how most people conceive of political endeavors. To Sondermann’s telling, moderates should navigate those seas with an eye towards finding the middle, certain that it’s the enlightened place to be, and then remain there in perpetuity, making small adjustments as needed. In fact, he ended his own column by saying that he “will take satisfaction in being somewhere in the vicinity of that moderate, centrist, middle ground,” so long as “partisans on both sides are displeased.”
The real tell in Sondermann’s piece is the extent to which he attempts to synonymize moderation with traits like empathy, nuance, and agreeability – traits which anyone with sufficient lived experience will tell you can be found in some human beings of any ideological stripe. To hear Sondermann tell it, though, these traits are not available to the partisan hoi polloi, they are not innate human qualities which can be either enhanced or suppressed by political expression. For Sondermann, empathy, nuance, and agreeability are the hallmarks of the goldfish-minded demigods of Team Gray.
The subtext, of course, is that moderation is not simply the most enlightened political approach, but that it is synonymous with morality itself. A pox on both their houses and bless both their hearts. Forgive them, father, for they know not what they’ve done, et cetera.
To make moderation a virtue in itself is to make all other considerations secondary; to reduce ideology, values, and a vision of a hoped-for society to second place. Unlike Sondermann’s Team Gray demigods, I am not willing to do that.
I did not get into politics because it seemed like fun, or because it struck me as a stable and rewarding career ladder. I got into politics because, as political theorist Richard Rorty said, without the loyal pursuit of that hoped-for society, “the ideal has no chance of becoming actual.”
I understand that many people in politics do not share that approach, that they got into politics to seem more interesting than they are, or to get invited to the best parties on the cocktail circuit, or because they weren’t quite handsome enough for show business. Perhaps some of them might enjoy the long, asymptotic trudge towards the ever-shifting middle. But me? I’m content with the heading I’m on.
