The New York Times editorial board’s latest push for Democrats to “move to the center” has run into a rare kind of resistance: the data crowd. After the board’s Oct. 20, 2025, editorial made the case that moderation is “the way to win,” analysts rushed out rebuttals arguing the Times’ centrism prescription misreads elections — and mismeasures what “moderate” even means.
Why centrism is under fire
Critics say the “move-to-the-middle” playbook assumes there’s an untapped bloc of persuadable centrists waiting to be won — and that Democrats aren’t already trying. In a data-driven response, Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica argues the evidence points the other way: When ideology is measured by how voters actually perceive candidates, moderation shows no meaningful advantage. He adds that even using the editorial’s own framing, Democrats would have gained zero additional seats by running more moderates in competitive districts — and that among Democratic incumbents who lost tough races since 2016, only one was progressive.
That’s the centrist trap the rebuttals keep circling: If the party is already leaning moderate in the places where it’s most desperate to win, “more centrism” becomes brand management, not a strategy. And it risks turning every loss into an ideology blame game instead of an autopsy on what actually failed.
Centrism’s data problem: what the rebuttals highlight
Much of the backlash is less ideological than methodological. In a detailed critique of the editorial’s math, journalist and statistician G. Elliott Morris argues the Times inflates a “moderate advantage” by treating correlation as causation. His core point: if the candidates tagged as moderates are disproportionately incumbents and better funded, their overperformance can’t credibly be assigned to centrism. Control for the big drivers — money and incumbency — and the “moderation bonus” shrinks dramatically.
Media watchdog FAIR attacks the Times’ framing as well as its metrics. In its critique, FAIR argues the editorial board leaned on PAC endorsements as a proxy for “moderation,” then used that proxy to elevate centrism while repeatedly positioning progressivism as the main electoral risk — even as the piece devotes comparatively little attention to the GOP’s rightward lurch.
Other rebuttals go beyond spreadsheets. In a broader argument against the case for centrism, Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson questions the premise that parties should treat electability as the only standard. In that framing, centrism isn’t just a strategy — it becomes a permission slip to sand down commitments, dodge hard trade-offs and call the result “pragmatism.”
This isn’t the first time the “center” got sold as salvation
Older critiques read like a script the political class keeps misplacing. A 2011 Truthout piece warned that media calls for “compromise” and “moving to the center” often amount to pressure for Democrats to adopt center-right economics — wrapped in the language of bipartisanship (Media Malpractice on Debt Ceiling). And FiveThirtyEight’s 2019 “The Moderate Middle Is A Myth” argued the “moderate” label can hide a messy, issue-by-issue electorate that doesn’t behave like a neat, persuadable bloc of centrists.
Where the centrism fight goes next
The most damaging part of the new rebuttals isn’t the insult — it’s the implication that centrism can’t substitute for fundamentals. Candidates still need credibility, district fit, money, organization and a message that feels like help people can touch. If the center is being treated as an all-purpose fix, the analysts’ challenge is simple: show it in the data — or stop selling it as destiny.
