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As Millions March Against Fascism, NYT Warns Against Progressives Julie Hollar ([link removed])


What does this political moment in our country call for? The MAGA president and right-wing Supreme Court are shredding the Constitution at lightning speed, with the full acquiescence of Trump's merry band of sycophants in Congress. Masked men are kidnapping people off the streets, disappearing them to detention centers across the country, and deporting them to countries our State Department warns travelers ([link removed]) not to visit. Meanwhile, protesters against this lawlessness are attacked ([link removed]) by federal troops with "less-lethal" weapons.

An estimated 7 million peaceful protesters took to the streets on October 18, in the second-largest ([link removed]) demonstration in US history (after the first Earth Day in 1970), demanding accountability and a return to democracy and the rule of law. In a system of government where citizens can only use the ballot box every two to six years to show how they feel about their electeds, that's something you'd think would warrant journalistic attention.

Yet at the nation's paper of record—whose headquarters sat literally a stone's throw away from the New York City No Kings march route—the protest was deemed not important enough for a front-page story. Two small below-the-fold photos were offered instead (10/19/25 ([link removed]) ), with the accompanying article buried on page 23.
"No Kings Rallies Oppose Trump"

The day after the largest protests in half a century, the New York Times' front page (10/19/25 ([link removed]) ) featured two small photos of the demonstrations that gave no sense of their scale.

It's true that the New York Times has a history of downplaying protests (FAIR.org, 9/24/25 ([link removed]) , 9/12/25 ([link removed]) , 1/25/24 ([link removed]) ). But it's also true that it's only certain kinds of protests that they downplay. When right-wingers under the banner of the Tea Party movement held in 2009 what the Times (9/12/09 ([link removed]) ) described as "the largest rally against President [Barack] Obama since he took office," they drew a crowd two orders of magnitude smaller than No Kings, but its coverage got the same placement from the paper: front-page photo ([link removed]) , article inside. Just one month after the Tea Party rally,
a major LGBTQ march of equal or possibly even double the size was not noted on the paper's front page at all (Extra!, 12/09 ([link removed]) ).

The Times isn't exactly an outlier in that respect; nearly all corporate media have a long history of downplaying major protests over women's rights ([link removed]) , war ([link removed]) , genocide ([link removed]) and the climate crisis ([link removed]) , while offering much more ink and airtime to right-wing rallies like the Promise Keepers ([link removed]) and the Tea Party ([link removed]) .

But the Times deserves special attention—partly because it's seen as the standard-bearing "liberal" newspaper in the country. And as the standard-bearer, it sees its role as establishing the ideological boundaries ([link removed]) of the Democratic Party, most notably by drawing the line in the sand on the left that the Democratic Party must not cross. And this in turn is why, two days after the massive pro-democracy marches, the New York Times editorial board published a forceful message of its own—not against fascism, but against progressivism.


** 'The center is the way to win'
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New York Times graphic: "What do they have in common? They're all moderates."

The New York Times (10/20/25 ([link removed]) ) declares all the congressional candidates who won in districts where their party's presidential nominee lost to be "moderates"—based solely on PAC support, ignoring other measures such as voter perceptions.

In both its news and opinion sections, year after year, the New York Times' mantra has been that for electoral success, Democrats have to move to the right, and any electoral losses must be caused by excessive progressivism (Extra!, 7–8/06 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 5/27/15 ([link removed]) , 7/6/17 ([link removed]) , 11/14/19 ([link removed]) , 7/16/21 ([link removed]) ). In a sprawling new iteration of this "move to the center" motto, the paper's editorial board (10/20/25 ([link removed]) ) announced: "The Partisans Are Wrong: Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win."

The piece frames itself as talking to "partisans," but it makes only the faintest nods to Republicans, and the last 2,000 of its 3,000-odd words are directly targeting Democrats. It opens:

American politics today can seem to be dominated by extremes. President Trump is carrying out far-right policies, while some of the country’s highest-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists. Moderation sometimes feels outdated.

You could probably just stop right there, based on the absurdity of comparing the "extremes" of Trump's unprecedented authoritarianism ([link removed]) to democratic socialist Democrats. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani ([link removed]) , the highest-profile of the latter at the moment (and certainly top of mind for the city's largest newspaper), has focused his campaign ([link removed]) on freezing the rent, making city buses free and adding 2% to the tax bills of the wealthiest 1%.

But even if you make it past that to the paper's evidence for its centrism argument, it's full of holes. The main argument is that "candidates closer to the political center, from both parties, continue to fare better in most elections than those farther to the right or left."

The centerpiece of their evidence is an analysis of swing districts where a Democratic congressional candidate won and Harris lost. The Times looked at what PAC endorsements the winning candidate received, and came up with the result that all could be classified as moderates. "No progressive won a race as difficult as any of these," the paper declared. It also says its analysis shows that "moderates" outperformed Harris, while "nonmoderates" underperformed. Ergo, moderation must be the key to success.


** 'Zero additional seats'
------------------------------------------------------------

The question of the impact of ideology on electoral outcomes is hotly debated among academics and pollsters. Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica, who runs the site On Data and Democracy (10/20/25 ([link removed]) ), ran the numbers and found that "even using the editorial’s own data, Democrats would have gained zero additional seats by running more moderates in competitive seats."

Part of this is due to the fact that Democrats most often run right-leaning candidates in swing districts already. But there are other factors that are probably more important. Bonica's own research has found that incumbency matters far more than "moderation" for election outcomes. Looking at a range of measures of ideology, rather than the Times' single indirect measure of PAC support, he found that

the electoral benefit of a major ideological shift to the center is either small or statistically insignificant. The advantage provided by simply being an incumbent, by contrast, is a reliable 2–3 percentage points.

Using the most straightforward measure of all—voter perception of ideology—he found the benefit of moderation was exactly zero.
Electoral Effects of Ideological Moderation vs. Incumbency

Chart: On Data and Democracy (10/20/25 ([link removed]) )

Bonica then analyzed every competitive district race from 2016–24, using the composite measure of ideology. "If every progressive candidate on the list had been replaced by a moderate in 2024," he found, "the expected net change in Democratic seats would have been zero."

The Times also argues that progressives "cannot point to a single member of Congress or governor from swing districts or states" who has won by "quietly retaining their unpopular positions and emphasizing economic issues." Meanwhile, they say, look at Wisconsin, for instance, where Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Gov. Tony Evers "won by running to the middle."

But Bonica points out that in surveys, Baldwin was actually perceived by voters as "progressive." Wisconsin Capital Times associate editor John Nichols (10/21/25 ([link removed]) ) agrees, writing that Baldwin, the first openly LGBTQ member of the Senate, hardly ran to the middle, as the Times claimed, but defended trans rights (an issue Democrats are "out of step" on, according to the Times) and "borrowed heavily from a progressive populist tradition." Baldwin and Evers, he wrote, were portrayed by their opponents as "radical." It's an example that undermines, rather than supports, the Times' argument, and also shows that defining and measuring ideology is a tricky thing—which the editors acknowledge, right before proclaiming that they possess the "true picture."


** 'Too liberal, too judgmental'
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Bernie Sanders smiles

Supporters of Bernie Sanders are "not nearly numerous enough," the New York Times (10/20/25 ([link removed]) ) claims—ignoring polling ([link removed]) that finds Sanders is the most popular active politician in the country (photo: TMZ, 8/7/22 ([link removed]) ).

But if the New York Times' evidence is hardly convincing, its diagnosis of why moderation wins is even less so. The piece insists that the main problem is that "many Americans see the Democratic Party as too liberal, too judgmental and too focused on cultural issues to be credible, and voters are moving away from it."

The popularity of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, the Times says, is simply too niche; their fans "are not nearly numerous enough to flip the places required to win the presidency and Congress."

Legacy media regularly work to say this until people believe it; in the 2020 Democratic primaries, Sanders won many early states, and not just deep blue ones, despite concerted media efforts to downplay and diminish his campaign (FAIR.org, 8/15/19 ([link removed]) , 1/28/20 ([link removed]) , 1/30/20 ([link removed]) , 5/1/20 ([link removed]) ). When Biden eventually overtook him, exit polls showed voters still preferred Sanders' political position, suggesting they were responding not to Biden's ideology, but to the incessant media narrative of his electability (FAIR.org, 3/16/20 ([link removed]) ). According to a recent YouGov poll (4/16/25
([link removed]) ), Sanders is currently the most popular active politician in the country by a substantial margin.


** NYT's ideal platform
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Gallup: Trend in Opinions of Socialism, by Political Party

The New York Times (10/20/25 ([link removed]) ) suggests the Democratic Party should adopt a pro-capitalist, anti-socialist message, even though socialism is 24 percentage points more popular than capitalism among Democrats (Gallup, 9/8/25 ([link removed]) ).

Now, as then, the Times claims that moving to the center will make voters "see [Democrats] as credible." What does that look like, concretely? The Times attempts to establish what moderation looks like in this crucial paragraph, which sets forth much of the paper's own ideology in clear terms:

America still has a political center. Polls show that most voters prefer ([link removed]) capitalism to socialism and worry that the government is too big—and also think that corporations and the wealthy have too much power. Most voters oppose both the cruel immigration enforcement ([link removed]) of the Trump administration and the lax Biden policies that led to a record immigration surge ([link removed]) . Most favor robust policing to combat crime and recoil at police brutality. Most favor ([link removed]) widespread abortion access and some restrictions late in pregnancy. Most oppose ([link removed]) race-based affirmative action and support
([link removed]) class-based affirmative action. Most support job protections for trans people and believe ([link removed]) that trans girls should not play girls’ sports. Most want strong public schools and the flexibility to choose which school their children attend.

This is the ideal Democratic platform that Times envisions: an end to affirmative action, refusal to grant women full autonomy over their own bodies, policing trans kids' participation in sports while their very existence is under attack. They want politicians who promise "robust policing" without the police brutality that accompanies it, who talk about curbs on corporate and billionaire power but won't challenge capitalism, who express support for "strong public schools" while allowing private schools to siphon ([link removed]) off the money needed to make those public schools strong.

In other words, they want Democrats to throw their core constituents under the bus while making vague, contradictory promises they can't fulfill. This is the paper's suggested path to credibility?


** Captured by elites
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Jacobin: Why Americans Hate the Democratic Party

Jared Abbott (Jacobin, 10/15/25 ([link removed]) ): "Among Democratic and independent respondents [in Rust Belt states], the most common critique of the Democratic Party was its perceived inability to carry out policies that help ordinary people."

The example the Times offers of how moving to the center will make Democrats more "credible" and "effective" in confronting Trump is that "most voters disapprove of Mr. Trump’s immigration policies—and nonetheless ([link removed]) trust his party on the issue more than they trust Democrats." A more "moderate" position on immigration would make Democrats better able to "combat" him on the issue.

But when the Times itself calls Biden's immigration policies "lax"—when they were far more cruel ([link removed]) and draconian ([link removed]) than any recent president besides Trump—and frames them as the other side of the extremist coin to Trump's "cruel immigration enforcement," it shapes that public perception. It's hardly a surprise that many voters think the Democrats are "too liberal," when that's what all of the country's biggest news outlets have hammered ([link removed]) into their heads for decades ([link removed]) .

In fact, a recent poll shows that the Times' advice is fundamentally self-defeating. The paper is correct that Democrats' approval ratings are abysmal, and also that some polls show voters say Democrats are "too left wing and too focused on niche issues." But those polls give respondents prewritten choices, suggesting to them what the appropriate answer might be, which can skew responses. What happens if you ask voters directly what they think about the party, and let them fill in the blanks themselves? A recent poll ([link removed]) of Rust Belt (read: swing state) voters did just that, and analyzed the unprompted answers. Here's what they found (Jacobin, 10/15/25 ([link removed]) ):

Contrary to many analyses that have blamed Democrats for holding extreme positions on social and cultural issues that alienated swing voters, the dominant theme we observed was voters’ anger at the Democratic Party for failing to deliver. Among Democratic and independent respondents, the most common critique of the Democratic Party was its perceived inability to carry out policies that help ordinary people.

"Wokeness" or ideological extremism was a concern for only small minorities, even among independents (11%) and Republicans (19%). "The evidence suggests," they wrote, that

most voters who hold negative views of the Democratic Party are motivated less by the culture war than by a broader judgment that the party is captured by elites and not delivering tangible gains for working people.

And what happens when you ask them directly about progressive policies? Turns out that, on many issues, voters are much more progressive than the Times would have readers believe. Polls regularly show large majorities in favor of a wealth tax ([link removed]) , a $15 or higher minimum wage ([link removed]) , and Medicare for All ([link removed]) , all key progressive demands that corporate media regularly lambaste.


** Anti-democratic power grab
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New York Times: The Trump Administration’s Campaign to Undermine the Next Election

Brennan Center (8/3/25 ([link removed]) ): "The Trump administration has launched a concerted drive to undermine American elections. These moves are unprecedented and in some cases illegal."

Equally important, the Times' argument imagines that a Democratic push to the center can overcome the structural obstacles to competitive elections that this authoritarian movement is rapidly laying down. Trump and his allies are working furiously to undermine election integrity for their own benefit, using a variety of strategies that the Brennan Center for Justice (8/3/25 ([link removed]) ) details:
* attempting to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems;
* targeting or threatening to target election officials and others who keep elections free and fair;
* supporting people who undermine election administration; and
* retreating from the federal government’s role of protecting voters and the election process.

GOP-controlled states are ramming ([link removed]) through new gerrymandered maps at Trump's behest to generate more safe seats. And the Voting Rights Act is currently before a Supreme Court that seems eager to eviscerate what little remains of it, which would allow further gerrymandering to give the GOP up to 19 more ([link removed]) House seats.

Will it be possible in 2026 for Democrats to win at the ballot box, regardless of ideology? That's very much up for debate. It certainly appears to be Trump's goal to make it impossible, no matter how popular Democratic candidates might be.

Yet nowhere in its lengthy tirade against progressives does the Times mention this anti-democratic electoral power grab. It's a key omission, and it brings us back to the paper's downplaying of the No Kings protests. The Times in its editorial laments that Trump "threatens American democracy," but it imagines the ship can be righted by retaking Congress with centrist Democrats.

If the Democrats have shown us anything under Trump 2.0, it's that seeking to moderate and accommodate—as they did in confirming ([link removed]) his extremist cabinet nominees and failing to block ([link removed]) his first continuing resolution in the spring—only gives Trump and his enablers more power. Stopping the authoritarian machine is going to require all the levers of democracy that can be pulled—not just at the ballot box, but also on the streets.
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ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or via Bluesky: @NYTimes.com ([link removed]) . Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread here.
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