Authenticity matters more than ideology

A new piece from me in the Boston Review

Over the last year, there’s been an ongoing debate within the Democratic Party about whether candidates should moderate their policy positions.

I’ll say it point blank: This is an extremely dumb argument.

As I’ve written about at length before: Authenticity is what voters care about because it is what enables trust.

One can’t dictate exactly what candidates should say or believe and also push them to be their most authentic selves — those two things are, in fact, mutually exclusive (especially if you’re not someone doing candidate recruitment in the first place…)

So when the Boston Review came to me and asked me to write a piece for a forum on this topic, I was admittedly a bit wary.

But I asked the editor if I could say exactly what I thought about why the debate itself is stupid, and since he said yes, well, here you go!

I’ve excerpted the gist of my piece below — click through to read the full argument, along with the original piece that kicked off the debate and the other responses. Some of them are good! Some of them are stupid! You let me know what you think in the comments.

"Candidly, I find the debate about moderation mostly exhausting and the armchair agonizing over what candidates “should” do in order to win mostly pointless.

First, what does “moderate” even mean? ... There is no clear definition, no set of values you could point to, no singularly defined list of positions that one could take that would mark you as moderate. You can rhetorically punch left or right, but even those advocating for moderation as electoral strategy cannot clearly articulate what that looks like in practice. …

Second, even if one accepts the premise that the national Democratic Party brand needs to be more moderate in order to help Democrats win elections in red states—a premise I’m not sure I agree with—what is anyone supposed to do with that knowledge? There is no secret cabal behind a curtain that can meaningfully control what candidates and electeds say or do, nor can anyone control what activists do. …

Third, the debate seems to miss how the vast majority of candidates actually exist in the world—and how voters experience them. andidates are not just walking policies and talking points (although I’ll grant, perhaps the bad candidates sound like that); they are people with personal stories and roots in the community. Policy positions—and the values those policies reflect—are just one component of what makes up a candidate’s broader brand. ...

Finally, perhaps the biggest reason I find this argument exhausting is that most of the people having it have never tried to convince someone to run for office, and boy does it show. There are very few people eager to get in the arena only to run on a platform of “better things aren’t possible.” ...

The inconvenient truth of politics is that most voters don’t consistently position themselves on an ideological spectrum: if you’re talking about a cohesive frame for your politics, you’re absolutely not the normal American voter. Rather, voters have problems; they want solutions. They want people they can trust to get things done, and they want to not think about any of this so much.

The key word in all this is trust—which is why authenticity matters. …

The good news is that trust can be lost—Trump’s approval ratings right now are plummeting—and it can be earned, or re-earned. But Democrats won’t build it by chasing some mythical ideal ideology, much less by arguing about which public opinion poll we should really be listening to. We have to focus on the connection: Do voters in this person’s district or state trust that this candidate will do what they say? If so, they’re a good fit. If not, why—and what can we do differently? Getting that right, above all else, is how we win in the deep red places we need in order to have governing majorities."

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I wrote a ton about how to perform authenticity and why it matters in When We’re in Charge. Get it in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) — anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else, including your local library. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.

Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.

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