Median Voter

 Ezra Klein in his most recent op-ed for the New York Times warns Democrats that they are at risk of losing their own base: "Democrats are this unpopular because their own side is losing faith in them."

He therefore calls on them to try something risky: dig in their heels on this year's spending bill. Demand real concessions—even at the risk of triggering a government shutdown. 

Sure—you might lose some of the "moderate" or "independent" voters by a show of party intransigence. But you would get your own team enthusiastic again. You would show you were willing to fight. 

Here we see a version of the perennial debate in electoral strategy: "mobilization" theory vs. "median voter" theory. 

On the mobilization theory—the way to win elections is to motivate your own partisans to come out and support you. Above all you have to mobilize your base and get them to actually vote.

And for this—"enthusiasm" is required. 

But to this argument, the "median voter" theorists—the Nate Silvers and David Shors of the world—reply: your base will vote for you no matter what; the people you need to convince are the ones in the middle.

And this, in turn, is why "the base" always feels betrayed by every government in power. 

It's like: they vote for this party, only to see it start to ignore them as soon as it's in office, and devote all its energy to trying to message to their opponents—or at least, to the people who didn't vote for them. 

James Russell Lowell observed the phenomenon all the way back in the 1840s, in the Biglow Papers: 

 [E]very fool knows thet a man represents

Not the fellers thet sent him, but them on the fence,—

Impartially ready to jump either side

An' make the fust use of a turn o' the tide,—

Thus, we see Democrats who seek a national profile (Gavin Newsom, e.g.) spending all their time hosting right-wing influencers on their podcasts and "trying to message to young men."

This is infuriating to the people who voted the Democrats into power—"We put you in office, and now you're trying to figure out how to reach out to everyone but us?" they ask. 

But so it goes. That's politics. That's median voter theory. The politician in office represents not "the fellers thet sent him"—not his "constitooents"—but "them on the fence." 

Ezra Klein's argument is: this time is different; Trump's policies have gotten so overtly authoritarian that the old playbook doesn't work anymore. We have to do something for the base. 

But the fact that Trump is being an authoritarian doesn't mean the median voter sees it that way. 

And, alas—as incomprehensible as that person still is to the base—that is still the person we have to reach.