“Why do all of these rich tech bros think Donald Trump is a moderate? They spend all this money. pushing a right-wing agenda and then people actually believe it’s moderate.”

This was the prompt of a recent conversation I had, and well, it’s a fascinating one. Donald Trump did have a lot of rich “moderates” behind him, didn’t he? Hillary Clinton was simultaneously beat on by alt-left dead-enders for basically being Dick Cheney, and also viewed as too left by a lot of voters. Kamala Harris is about as “normie Democrat” as you can be on policy at this point, but she was viewed as the extremist by a lot of voters, not Trump. Why did this happen?

I tend to not really want “big change” policy moves, and so I have a tendency to like and support actual moderate policy. I think it’s highly important that we don’t mistake actual fairly moderate policy for being a political moderate though. There is no real pocket of voters out there giving you credit for say, taking a moderate position on abortion rights, for example (codification of Roe in it’s original, two-trimester form that allows some regulations of procedures and when you can access care). Not many voters gave Senators any credit for moderate positions on immigration or gun control in the past 15 years. Taking actual moderate policy positions often times leaves you in the bullseye of your own party’s activists and gets you no credit from the opposition.

One of the key reasons both parties (and not at all the only reason) could not properly handle Donald Trump is that both are fairly ideologically homogeneous. Democrats fight over how to get people health insurance, they don’t fight over whether or not to do it. Voters don’t really view you as more moderate for preferring the Affordable Care Act over government Bernie-care for All (it’s not Medicare, really). Same on the Republican side, they have some disagreements over how far to go on deporting illegal aliens and whether or not they’ll allow bare minimum background checks for all gun sales. No one is literally arguing for a path to amnesty or for blocking some gun sales in the GOP. Both parties have their positions, and there are degrees of separation in them, but even a moderate is still basically a member of one or the other. Voters don’t really see moderates as different.

Most of the reason is that lower information voters and honestly voters in general are far less ideological than voters who are activists, staffers, or candidates. They personally hold views that are not always consistent. For instance I know friends that vote regularly and are pro-gay marriage (and lgbtq rights in general) and pro-life. Anti-war and love going to the shooting range. Anti-immigrant and pro-marijuana. Many non-politically active voters actually very commonly hold views that are ideologically contradictory. When they think of a moderate, they think of someone who breaks out from party orthodoxy, like they do. And there’s a lot of them- a third of Americans identify as moderate and 43% consider themselves an independent.

When faced with Trump’s sometimes bizarre campaign positions- being for mass deportation, but against any foreign military action, or being pro-life while also being for ending taxes on tips and social security- a lot of these voters feel more comfortable with that. Very disciplined candidates like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris actually pay a price for not saying anything all that shocking. Voters who want “moderate” are often times just telling you they want something different, and an ideologically consistent candidate isn’t it.

Obviously identity plays into how a candidate is perceived, and some portion of the public understands the “left-right continuum” in a traditional way. Part of this is just a basic disconnect though. Political people are thinking about moderates as actually being moderate. Normal voters are thinking of moderates as more free wheeling and less careful. That fits Trump perfectly. It’s also now his biggest vulnerability, as he governs. How long until the public realizes he’s the definition of a conservative?