Democrats need more combative centrists

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is under fire from progressives for not having a clear plan to fight President Donald Trump. He certainly deserves some criticism — but for an entirely different reason: He doesn’t have a clear plan to help Senate Democrats regain a majority.

For House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the path to a majority is simple. Republicans hold a very narrow majority. If Democrats can get their frontline incumbents reelected and recruit good candidates for the handful of Republican-held districts that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in last year’s presidential race, he will become speaker in 2027. Of course, this plan will take hard work, skill and a little luck. But it’s clear what the plan is.

In the Senate, things look different. In 2026, there is only one GOP-held seat in a Harris state up for grabs, that of Susan Collins of Maine — arguably the hardest-to-beat incumbent in Congress. Democrats’ next-best opportunity is in North Carolina, a state that Trump has won three times in a row.

Meanwhile, Democrats need to defend seats in Georgia and Michigan. Even if they won all four races, Democrats would still be two seats short of a majority. And 2028 isn’t much better. Democrats have a pickup opportunity in Wisconsin, and North Carolina is on the map again. But the party will need to defend seats in Pennsylvania, Georgia (again), Arizona and Nevada. This is the political equivalent of hoping to draw an inside straight twice in a row.

So: Under current conditions — an important caveat — the Senate map looks bad for Democrats for the next couple cycles.

It’s possible to argue that, considering these fundamentals, the party has actually done pretty well in winning elections. Schumer is a smart tactician who has recruited better candidates than Republicans, raised more money and ran better ads.

But tactics only get you so far. What Democrats need is a strategy for winning a Senate majority — a strategy that would put states like Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Florida back on the map, while adding Texas. This is the only way to make Democrats systematically competitive in the Senate.

What the Democrats need, in other words, is not just more moderate candidates. They need a more moderate ideology.

Democrats are currently rallying around time-honored progressive ideas like a defense of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. These stances can indeed help them return to power in the Senate — but only if they are accompanied by more eclectic and heterodox positions on everything else. A party that’s against the domestic production of fossil fuels is not going to win in Texas, Alaska or Ohio. On a range of cultural issues such as the death penalty, late-term abortions, trans people’s participation on women’s sports teams and immigration enforcement, Democrats have let themselves get persistently on the wrong side of national public opinion — to say nothing of opinion in red states.

This isn’t brain surgery. Schumer knows how to count votes and read polls. He was deeply involved in Democrats’ successful big-tent recruiting strategy in 2006. But he has not thus far done anything to lay the groundwork for a repeat performance.

Of course, neither have any of his intraparty critics. But that should be the first responsibility of anyone making an argument for new leadership: What is the new leader supposed to do? What is the plan to win a majority? Tellingly, the progressives calling for Schumer’s head have no strategy of their own to offer, because the only strategy that would work is one they don’t like. Schumer, meanwhile, seems paralyzed by fear of further angering the left and unwilling to articulate the plain truth.

There is a way forward for both sides: Listen to the party’s base. As pollster Patrick Ruffini points out, while 80% of Democrats say they want the party to be more combative against Trump, when asked about ideology, "move to the center" beats "move to the left" by a two-to-one ratio. The synthesis of these two positions would be what Ruffini (who is a Republican, but don’t hold that against him) calls "combative centrism" — candidates who take moderate, mainstream positions on key issues while also vowing to block Trump nominees and otherwise hold the administration accountable.

What exactly this looks like would vary from state to state. But it would be a lot easier to pull off if Democratic candidates weren’t required to distance themselves from a toxic national brand. The leadership of the party itself needs to articulate more moderate positions. This would allow a candidate moderate enough to be competitive in Iowa or Ohio to also be a solid Democrat.

If you think that sounds unrealistic, let me remind you that Barack Obama won both of those states (and Florida!) twice in the not-too-distant past. The kind of Democratic Party that could win in those states would be meaningfully different from the current one, but not unrecognizable. And it would be exactly the same on the core questions of health care and retirement programs that Democrats of all factions recognize to be their best issues.

Yes, it would be hard for Schumer to sell the left on all this. But the pitch for combative centrism would also let him credibly tell his critics that he has a real plan not just to fight Trump but to beat him. Right now he’s stuck preaching patience and pragmatism while having no plausible path to victory. Getting out of the current rut would involve some risks. But staying stuck in it is certain to bring frustration and defeat.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Matthew Yglesias is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A co-founder of and former columnist for Vox, he writes the Slow Boring blog and newsletter. He is author of "One Billion Americans."

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