The theory of centrist electability maintains that when Democrats tack to the center and betray women, or Black people, or queer people, or working people, or urban people, or immigrants, or all of those, they reap massive electoral benefits. Democrats are tarnished by being the party of the marginalized; embrace white male cishet mainstream identity, and Democrats too will flourish and preen like the Christofascist Republican assholes. Sure, maybe some whiney people with principles or targeted loved ones will be upset. But you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do for power.
I have mentioned a time or two that there is a lot of evidence, from Sinema to Fetterman to UK Labour, that heading towards the center does not help liberal parties and candidates but instead undermines their relationship with their base and leads to stunning and humiliating losses. The 2026 midterms provided even more evidence that centrism can be, not an electoral cheat code, but the opposite of that.
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Indie branding went phut
It’s important to acknowledge that virtually all Democrats did very well in the midterms, whatever their ideological stripe. People like Chris Pappas in New Hampshire and Josh Turek in Iowa both come from the rightward part of the party and overperformed polls as did left candidates Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Angie Nixon in Florida. Analyst G. Elliott Morris says that there was basically zero link between ideology and performance in the House and Senate.
Having said that, there were three candidates who specifically and deliberately repudiated Democratic branding and identity in an effort to appeal to Republican voters and centrists. Dan Osborn in Nebraska, Seth Bodnar in Montana, and Brian Bengs in South Dakota all ran as independents. Osborn even promised not to caucus with Democrats. In states with strong partisan Republican majorities, these candidates hoped to win by avoiding negative anti-Democratic partisanship while still picking up Democratic votes.
There was, as we all know, a blue wave tsunami. Democratic candidates won across the board. It was exactly the sort of environment in which you’d hope that this kind of independent strategy in red states might reap big benefits.
And yet, it did not. On the contrary, while Democrats saw sweeping victories in red states like Texas and Arizona, and even in deep red Mississippi and South Carolina, Osborn, Bodnar, and Bengs all went down to solid defeats. Osborn, who had been down only a point or two in polling aggregates, lost by by 6 points, making him one of the few Democratic candidates to significantly undershoot. Fiftyplusone had Nebraska as roughly as likely a win as Florida and Lousiana. In the first, Democrat Angie Nixon lost by 3; in the second, Democrat Jamie Davis lost by under 2 points.
The Montana election results were particularly brutal for the indie branding strategy. Former Montana Democratic Senator Jon Tester recruited Seth Bodnar and they both agreed to have him run as an independent. Unfortunately, Tester and Bodnar did not coordinate well with the rest of the Democratic party, and Alani Bankhead, who won the Democratic primary, stubbornly refused to take her name off the ballot. The final results were Republican Kurt Alme 48.2%, Bodnar 37.7%, Bankhead 12.3%—which means that Bodnar and Bankhead together got more votes than Alme. A single opposition candidate could well have won the state.
There’s no question that Bankhead’s decision to stay in the race was selfish and harmful. But also Tester and Bodnar’s decision not to compete in the primary now looks way too clever by half. A significant number of voters clearly wanted to vote for Democrats, even though Bankhead had no money and couldn’t have had much in the way of name recognition. Eschewing Democratic branding left Democratic votes on the ground.
This highlights the big problem with indie branding. Democrats want to vote for Democrats, and when you give them a candidate who is not a Democrat, you are creating confusion and quite possibly undermining enthusiasm. It’s true that Bodnar might have won without Bankhead in the race…but also maybe Bodnar could have won if he’d just entered the contest as a Democrat.
Certainly, the evidence we have suggests that Democrats like Nixon, Davis, Scott Colom in Mississippi and Annie Andrews in South Carolina all did a lot better than Osborn or Bengs or Bodnar. Rather than allowing candidates to beat an R environment, it looks like indie branding left Osborn and company high and dry while everyone else was surfing a blue wave.
Maybe Democrats should be Democrats
There’s a parallel here with Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 campaigns. Sanders was coming from the left rather than the center. But like Osborn, Bodner, and Bengs, he ran largely against the Democratic brand; he hoped to activate left voters or populist voters frustrated with the Democratic establishment and sweep to victory in despite of those who strongly identified with the party.
Sanders’ indie left approach was worth trying. I think the Osborn/Bodnar centrist indie approach was worth a shot as well. But neither worked, and if we want to win, it seems like we should pay attention to what works and what doesn’t.
Specifically, Democrats should maybe stop running away from being Democrats. Yes, Republicans are negatively polarized against Democrats, and that can make it very difficult to win in red states. But Democratic identity is also a rallying point—certainly for the Black voters who turned up in record numbers in Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and across the South, but also for Latino voters, women, Asian-Americans, LGBT people, Jews, and, it turns out, for everyone who is sick of the GOP and knows who the other party is in the two party system. Candidates who ran as Democrats benefited from those identities, those structures, and those histories. Candidates who ran as independents did not.
To reiterate, a major, barely concealed tenant of centrism is that the Democrats need to desperately distance themselves from marginalized people, because marginalized people are stigmatized/abnormal/unpopular/not worth defending. And it’s true that Democrats are seen as the party of marginalized people. That is part of why Black people, Hispanics, women, and all those resisting fascism rallied to them in the midterms. It’s time, perhaps, to build on that, and vindicate that trust, rather than scurrying away from Democratic identity and what should be Democratic commitments.
Osborn, Bengs, Bodnar, Sinema, Fetterman, Jared Golden, and a lot of other Democrats who don’t want to be Democrats dug an abyss in the center and then jumped in. Let’s leave them there and make a better Democratic party by embracing our values rather than running away from them.