Q&A of the Day –Are there any “moderate” Democrats running for President?
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
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Today’s entry: You piqued my interest with your story about Pete Buttigieg being no moderate but characterized as such by media. Are there any “moderates” in the Democrat’s presidential field? How would you rank them based on most to least moderate?
Bottom Line: This is a complicated question to answer – in part due to the periodic changing of positions that’s happened during the campaign process with some of the candidates. Those who are members of Congress, or have been recently, are among the easiest to quantify. For everyone else we have to take key positions at face value. For the purpose of this exercise, progressive policy positions – meaning government intervention over private solutions- will be the determining factor I use for ranking the candidates.Indivisible is the leading progressive activist organization in the country currently. They’ve ranked the candidates based on the percentage of the progressive agenda adopted in the views of each candidate. Here are how the top six Democrats in national polling rank based on the percentage of their platform being “progressive”:
- Bernie Sanders – 97
- Elisabeth Warren – 94
- Pete Buttigieg – 71
- Amy Klobuchar – 42
- Joe Biden – 40
Bloomberg wasn’t scored by Indivisible, however his policy positions most closely align with Amy Klobuchar which would place him around 40% give or take. Here’s what this means – a solid majority of Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg’s positions favor government intervention over free market solutions. This also backs up my assertion that Buttigieg is anything but “moderate” as numerous news outlets have misleadingly characterized him. A slight majority of Biden’s, Bloomberg’s and Klobuchar’s positions favor private solutions over government. This creates two very clear lanes of candidates for Democrats. Three highly progressive candidates and three candidates you might refer to as moderates...though in my mind that’s only on a relative basis. For comparison purposes, President Obama’s rating was 66. This shows Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg are substantially further left than Obama, with Biden, Bloomberg and Klobuchar meaningfully less progressive. Now, how does all of this compare with our current President? President Trump’s Indivisible rating is zero. This means Biden’s 40% to the left of Trump while Sanders is 97%to the left of Trump. There almost couldn’t be more distance between the two.