Since I started paying attention to American politics in high school, one trend has dominated the news cycle, the conversation, and the day-to-day realities of government: the Republican Party keeps moving to the right [1]. Since the Tea Party’s emergence in 2009, research has repeatedly shown the Republican Party rapidly growing more conservative [2]. Once this ideologically extreme wing of the Republican party realized their power to move the needle, they swung the whole pendulum to the right.
Donald Trump’s election in 2016 only made this more evident. On the campaign trail, Trump’s flamboyance caused an uproar, but in addition to his extreme behavior and personality, he supported extreme policies that made his moderate opponents balk. Most of these were populist in nature: the border wall, the so-called “Muslim ban”, the tariffs on trade partners.
Since his election, this far-right section of the Republican Party has been increasingly referred to as the party’s base. These are the folks who participate in primaries, donate to campaigns, and fly flags in their grass. Thanks to their high participation and turnout, they have garnered a massive influence on Republican politics and party operations. Because the base tends to be more radically right-wing than less-involved, moderate Republicans, their political power has pushed the party in a more conservative direction.
And it’s not just the voters who have figured out how to move the ideological needle with their political power. Legislators who represent the far-right base also control the direction their party swings in Congress [3]. The obvious example is the Freedom Caucus, which has been making headlines all year for holding up the Republican party’s efforts to elect a speaker [4], pass spending bills, and secure the border. Though relatively small and lacking seniority, the Freedom Caucus draws enormous power from its members’ tolerance for chaos as they refuse to support any policies or co-partisans that seem too moderate to them. Nothing can pass without their votes, so often their requests are granted. At the very least, they attract publicity that generates conversations for the right-wing issues that matter most to them.
And so it goes: on the right, the most extreme wing determines the party’s direction, while the moderates fall in line. Yet the left follows an opposite pattern. The more ideologically progressive sector of the party has consistently been asked to fall in line, while moderates dominate party politics. For decades,
the Democratic party’s political calculus has suggested that far-left voters can always be counted on to vote blue. While progressives may remain unsatisfied with foreign policy or income inequality, they have historically voted for moderate Democratic candidates who are closer to their ideals than Republicans.
This logic was on full display in the 2020 Democratic primary. The field was crowded with candidates who wanted to take on Donald Trump; more than 25 vied to become the Democratic nominee. This group spanned a variety of ages, demographics, and ideological stances. One was campaigning for universal basic income; several proposed some type of universal health care; many supported the Green New Deal. Yet despite the attention they garnered, these candidates eventually realized that they were pushing moderate voters away and splitting the remaining Democrats, leaving an opening for an even farther-left candidate to win. Bernie Sanders had moderate Democrats particularly worried. Ahead of Super Tuesday, 3 candidates dropped out of the race to rally around Joe Biden, who was seen as a moderate and electable candidate.
Sanders remained in the race, but he and his supporters faced a constant stream of complaints. While extreme Republicans became the face of their party, winning the presidency and claiming their place as “the base”, the Bernie Bros were called traitors, hated for drawing away would-be Democrat votes.
This year, that pattern started to change. In the 2024 primary, progressive voters have finally threatened to withdraw support from a moderate candidate. Across the country, hundreds of thousands of Democrats are voting “uncommitted” in the primary to protest Biden’s support of Israel in their war against Hamas [5]. It’s a threat not to vote for Joe Biden in a close election, a high-stakes bet on an issue that would almost certainly polarize moderate voters.
This display of political power has already started to change their party’s policy. In the days following the first “uncommitted” votes, Vice President Harris publically called for a ceasefire, which the Biden administration had avoided saying before. The United States upset Israel by allowing the UN to pass a ceasefire resolution, and the Biden administration has been sending more humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Of course, even without the protest, the brutality in Gaza has become impossible to ignore. Even moderate voters are increasingly concerned about Israel’s conduct in its war, which has destroyed infrastructure, introduced a horrific famine, and claimed the lives of over 31,000 Palestinians (as of March, 2024) [6]. It’s also possible that the Biden administration is just giving lip service to these protesters to dispel concerns. Perhaps no substantive policy changes will come out of it.