Do moderates actually have a theory of politics?

Ever since the election, there has been a spike in conflict between the leftist and centrist wings of American politics. I have often come into conflict with both, but I have increasingly become frustrated with the centrist wing as I feel like they have been making, what feel like to me, unrigorous arguments and inaccurately justifying them in the name of pragmatism.

Here is what I mean. The typical centrist frame is something like “We are just absolutely committed to winning elections, and the left's insistence on ideological purity will only lead to their perpetual failure.”

This argument is perfectly reasonable on the face of it but it has a couple of assumptions that seem unsubstantiated. One is that ideological ambition and electability are incompatible goals. They are framing it almost like a game of blackjack where they are cunningly getting just enough progress without going bust. But that doesn’t seem correct to me.

Like it has become a cliché at this point to note that voters do not have particularly conventional ideological views. They have a bunch of heterodox cross-cutting and sometimes contradictory views. Now this does mean they don’t have heterodox leftist views, but they don’t have heterodox centerist views either. There seems to me very little evidence that more moderation = more votes on all issues, at all times.

This leads me to my second point. It seems like moderates don’t really have a theory of politics, centrist or otherwise. What I mean by a theory of politics, is a vision for the world that they are striving toward. The product that they are offering to voters. The thing they would do if they were given a magic wand. Like in the 80s, the general thing Reagan was about was “Morning in America”; The country should be strong and free, not looking for handouts, and we should be tough patriots who fought commies and loved apple pie and mom. I feel like the center-left just doesn’t have that anymore.

They talk a lot about incremental progress, but incremental progress towards what? They talk about compromise, but compromise in service of what? It seems like there is no more theory of what the end goal is, it is just a bunch of maybe good policies floating in space, not part of any broader project.

Like I remember there being this comedy skit back in the day about the McCain vs Obama election about what would happen if either side wins. The Republican world was one where kids learned about Jesus riding a dinosaur with guns and the Democrat world was one where kids were encouraged to watch porn and smoke joints. It was funny because it was an exaggeration of the actual real ideological tendencies of both sides. I don’t think I could make a similar satire today because I don’t think centrist democrats want anything bad enough to make fun of, they have no ideology to satirize.

And they keep justifying it by calling it practical. And as someone who calls myself a “pragmatic progressive,” it is frustrating to me because it doesn’t seem practical on either an intellectual or political level. Pragmatism is about following steps towards a particular concrete goal. It isn’t about taking random steps towards…progress? as a vague undefined concept.

What do you think?