Crockett vs. Talarico. Progressive vs. Moderate. Right?
Ever since President Trump’s 2024 victory, progressive and moderate Democratic pundits and activists have been arguing over whether the party should move toward the left or the center. But for the voters actually casting ballots in primary elections, the choice is usually much more complicated. Most primary contests don’t offer a simple left-versus-center ideological choice. Even when there is a clear ideological contrast, there’s a lot more to choose from than two sets of issue positions. The Democratic Senate primary in Texas on Tuesday is a great example. At first glance, the contest between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico looks like the perfect early test of the fight between progressives and moderates, with Ms. Crockett, a congresswoman, as the progressive and Mr. Talarico, a state representative, as the moderate. Better still, it touches on the all-important question of electability, with Ms. Crockett seeking to mobilize new voters while Mr. Talarico promises to appeal to moderates in a state Democrats have been hoping to turn blue for decades. But in a lot of ways, Crockett vs. Talarico is not an ideological fight like Sanders vs. Biden in 2020, or Mamdani vs. Cuomo in New York last year. Ms. Crockett is not a socialist; Mr. Talarico is not necessarily a moderate. In fact, several polls show Mr. Talarico fares best among liberals, while Ms. Crockett fares better among moderates and conservatives. The candidates differ in important ways, but it’s not clear that ideology is one of them. Where do they differ more clearly? In areas that can be even harder to measure and untangle: superficial and subjective characteristics like political style, or objective but fraught categories like race, gender and religion. All of these issues are extremely important in politics, but they’re not necessarily what Democrats have been arguing about for the last year. The Texas result may not say as much about the direction of the party as it may appear.
Is this really about ideology?Here’s something that might be surprising: By many measures, Ms. Crockett is not an unusually progressive Democrat. Her voting record in Congress, as estimated by metrics like the DW-Nominate system, puts her in the mainstream of the Democratic Party — more aligned with the party’s congressional leadership than with the Squad, the group of progressive Democratic congresswomen. She doesn’t identify as a democratic socialist, and she’s not a member of or endorsed by Justice Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. To be sure, she is absolutely a progressive. She supports Medicare for all. She’s a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But everything thus far can also be said for Shontel Brown, the “establishment” candidate who defeated Nina Turner, the national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign, in a relatively high-profile House primary in Ohio in 2021. Something similar could also be said for John Fetterman in Pennsylvania or Ruben Gallego in Arizona when they ran for Senate: They were progressives and they supported Medicare for all. Ms. Crockett, however, is often treated as further to the left. It’s harder to say as much about Mr. Talarico’s ideological position, since he doesn’t have a lengthy voting record, but some of his stances put him left of center. For example, while some Democrats like Mr. Gallego and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California have expressed skepticism about trans women in women’s sports, Mr. Talarico opposed efforts to ban their participation. And Mr. Talarico also says he supports Medicare for all. His version sounds more like a so-called public option for now, but by championing the Medicare for all label, he can’t exactly be said to be running toward the center. The lesson is that “ideology” is very hard to measure. Over the last year, there have been a lot of debates about whether moderate Democrats tend to do better than progressive candidates. No matter how you cut it, it seems they do. But the difficulty of measuring ideology clouds the debate even further. If ideology is measured imperfectly, the attempt to measure its effect will be imperfect as well. And in general, it would tend to lead analysts to underestimate its effect on elections. Or is it about style?If the difference between Ms. Crockett and Mr. Talarico is fairly muted on the issues, it’s stark on persona and political style. Ms. Crockett is often called a firebrand or a fighter. She’s adopted a combative style on social media and cable television, and most of her viral moments stem from personal attacks on her Republican foes — like feuding with Marjorie Taylor Greene or calling Greg Abbott “Governor Hot Wheels.” (She has said she was referring to the Texas governor’s policies, not his use of a wheelchair.) Mr. Talarico offers a more moderate persona. He leans into a “politics of love.” He hasn’t had viral moments like Ms. Crockett’s face-off with Ms. Taylor-Greene. Style and substance often go together, as more ideologically extreme politicians tend to embrace extreme rhetoric and tactics more often than ideological moderates. But strictly speaking, style and substance are not the same thing, even if they’re correlated. There are buttoned-up ideologues; there are brash moderates. The significance of style is another problem in the debate over ideology and electability. Many of the measures showing that moderates perform much better than progressives might do so in part because they’re capturing both style and ideology. The so-called Blue Dog Democrats, for instance, aren’t just moderate on the issues, but also in their style. If the Blue Dogs perform well, is it because of ideology or because of other characteristics — including but not limited to style? It’s challenging to say. Or is it about identity?There’s another factor that shapes perception of ideology, and it might be even more important in shaping the decision of actual primary voters: identity. Mr. Talarico doesn’t just preach a “politics of love,” he’s a Presbyterian seminarian. He’s also a white man; Ms. Crockett is a Black woman. Identity can play an important role in how voters perceive ideology. Black and female candidates tend to be seen as relatively liberal. White and male candidates tend to be seen as relatively conservative, and Mr. Talarico’s religiosity only adds to that impression. Add in the stylistic differences, and suddenly there are a lot of reasons voters may perceive Ms. Crockett as the progressive and Mr. Talarico as the moderate. In any particular contest, it can be very challenging to say how race, religion and gender affect the outcome. But all of these issues have been front-and-center in the Texas election, including a high-profile skirmish over whether Mr. Talarico called Colin Allred, another Texas Democrat, “a mediocre Black man.” (Mr. Talarico says he called Mr. Allred’s 2024 candidacy mediocre but did not mention his race.) Some polls show Ms. Crockett leading among Black voters with around 90 percent of the vote. Most polls show Mr. Talarico leading among white and Hispanic voters, sometimes by wide margins. Ms. Crockett’s overwhelming strength among Black voters is an enormous advantage that the perceived progressive candidate in a Democratic primary doesn’t usually have. In recent cycles, Democratic establishment candidates have tended to win by carrying Black voters by a wide margin. Without that advantage, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton would have found it much harder to defeat Mr. Sanders, including in Texas. If Mr. Sanders had won Black voters by the lopsided margin that Ms. Crockett holds in the polls today, he would have won the state in 2020 and nearly won it in 2016. With this important strength, it’s easy to see how Ms. Crockett might prevail. It also helps explain why she fares well among self-identified moderates and conservatives, as Black voters are likelier to identify as moderate or conservative than white Democrats. But it makes it even harder to interpret the contest as an ideological referendum. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Have feedback? Send me a note at dear.upshot@nytimes.com.
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