Two recent developments from deep inside Democratic politics strike me as important barometers for those of us interested in the future of the party.

First, the New York Times opinion writer Mara Gay published a revelatory story about Barack Obama’s quiet admiration of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York mayor, whose left politics have received an icy reception from the party establishment.

While New York Democrats were nervously chewing their nails after the primary, Obama called Mamdani—both to congratulate him, and to offer him governing advice. Several weeks later, Hakeem Jeffries, the New York-based House minority leader, still has not offered his endorsement, even though, as Gay notes, Mamdani won Jeffries’s Brooklyn district by almost 20 points.

Second, Democratic-aligned and adjacent data analysts are embroiled in a math controversy over whether the party has been systematically overestimating the electoral value of fielding and running moderate candidates.

The Substack-based election forecaster, G. Elliott Morris, built a new, open-source model of candidate performance, which can be used to estimate how variables like moderation affect candidate odds of winning. He calls it “Wins Above Replacement in terms of Probability,” by contrast to the standard measure party strategists use: “Wins Above Replacement.” As it turns out, his model finds that moderation yields candidates a much smaller dividend than the proprietary WAR model published by Split Ticket, which has had a ton of influence over Democratic strategists.

It’s an important corrective. Though it does not support the progressive notion that ideological purity juices turnout, while moderation deflates it, it does make the Democratic Party’s years-long, multi-front panic over issue positioning look a little silly. If, as Morris writes, “moderates do not substantially outperform their party's average member,” do Democratic elites like Jeffries really need to keep Mamdani contained as if he were a biohazard?

MOD CONS

All else equal, in a close head-to-head race, you’d rather be the more moderate candidate. To be more precise about it, you’d rather be the one the electorate perceives to be more moderate.

In Democratic laboratories, this insight typically reduces down to the notion that Democrats should take further-right positions on the issues of the day, particularly issues that either fleetingly or generally play to Republican advantage.

But of course:

1. All else is never equal, and;

2. A candidate’s perceived moderation is a function of much more than just their issue positions.

You can campaign comfortably along almost any part of the Democratic ideological spectrum, while developing a moderate image, by, e.g.:

• Describing your agenda as “common sense” rather than revolutionary;

• Being white and/or male rather than black and/or female;

• Being “folksy”;

• Having good propaganda, and good responses to oppositional propaganda;

• And, yes, emphasizing heterodoxy on an issue or a small number of issues.

Voters perceived Joe Biden to be more moderate than Donald Trump, whom they perceived to be more moderate than Hillary Clinton, even though Biden ran to Clinton’s left, and Trump is a fascist who feigns heterodoxy on a small number of issues.

All of which raises the question: If the dividend of issue moderation is so easily overwhelmed by non-substantive factors and tactics, what is the point of all this factional war?

I suppose the answer depends on where you sit. If you find progressives annoying, the point is to make the professional climate of liberal politics more hospitable. If, more reasonably, you think gaining ground by one percent nationally might mean the difference between democracy and fascism, you’d want to put some effort into making the party at least seem more moderate.

But it becomes very hard to accept that the effort should entail blowing up the party and starting over.