It should be no secret to anyone following American politics that one group of people more than any other is responsible for the demise of moderates within both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
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Some might call them renegades, mavericks, rogue elements or radicals who are challenging their party’s core fundamentals and its more moderate members. The truth is that the guilty group is the same in both political parties but known by different names.
On the left are the “limousine liberals” and on the right are the “country club conservatives.” Both have several things in common: money, education and power. Some of them have inherited wealth and some have accumulated it by using the capitalist system to their advantage. That said, both have one BIG thing in common. They are the products of the American education system and many are living privileged lives.
If we look at higher education as one element of registered voters in recent Pew Research studies, we will find that 55% of those identifying themselves as Democrats have at least a Bachelor’s degree or higher. That figure is 42% for the Republican group. And when it comes to postgraduate degrees, that figure jumps to 61% for Democrats and falls to 37% for Republicans.
On the wealth spectrum, that same 2024 study found that the educated elites of the Democrat party hold a substantial share of America’s high-income wealth while the Republicans are property-owners and commercially affluent Americans.
Based on that study and many others it is tempting to make the case that having a good education helps in wealth generation and that human nature would dictate that wealthy people will vote in their own self-interests to retain their wealth and influence. Yet that is not always the case, especially when it comes to well-educated liberals within the Democrat party.
A 2025 Pew poll found that among upper-income Democrats, 80% favored raising federal income-tax rates on households earning more than $400,000, compared with only 61% of lower-income Democrats. Fully 91% of those same upper-income Democrats favored higher taxes on large corporations. Within the Democrat party, the affluent were actually more supportive of those tax increases than their poorer fellow Democrats.
In the 2024 presidential race, Kamala Harris won 51% of voters with household incomes over $100,000 a year. What was interesting was when Democrats were asked by Pew whether Trump’s policies would make the wealthy wealthier, 86% responded “yes.” Despite that fact, the vast majority supported Harris and her policies.
That raises a question about pocketbook (self-interest) voting and sociotropic (ideological/common good) voting. There is a great deal of polling, studies and theories about when a voter will cast a ballot for a candidate or join a party that is in sync with their economic views or is perceived to be empathetic or compassionate and holds the country’s interests above their own. Basically, the argument is: “If you are wealthy, well-educated and wise to the world you can afford to be empathetic to those who have less.” Political analysts and pollsters are constantly trying to figure out who is inclined to vote out of conscience and regard for the common good as opposed to those who will choose to protect their own interests.
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It is the age-old debate about whether support for the individual can actually create a healthy and richer collective or does self-interest voting only add more people to the “elite” column.
That brings us back to the limousine liberals and the country club conservatives. I would submit that both groups of well-educated and well-to-do members of both parties have moved so far to their respective left and right in their support for their party fundamentals (traditional Democrats for the collective and traditional Republicans for the individual) that they have lost the support of their moderates.
The parties are coming apart.
The October 2025 Pew survey found that 61% of Americans considered the Republican Party “too extreme in its positions.” Nearly the same number (57%) said the same about the Democrat party. A whopping 47% of registered voters now consider themselves “independents” while the Democrat and Republican parties each have only 27% of the electorate.
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why the parties are losing their members overall, but it is not unreasonable to postulate that among those who have left, a sizable number have been moderates who have done so because they believe their parties have lost their way and become too monolithic and too dogmatized. The same goes for their parties’ leaders’ style.
There seem to be only a handful of politicians who are willing to even listen to each other’s arguments let alone act on them. The same is true for the public at large. Americans are not only voting with their pocketbooks, but also expressing themselves with slanderous speech, violent protests, tearing down statues, burning public buildings and the malicious use of social media and gaslighting.
Now the chickens have come home to roost.
Back in 2008, President Obama’s longtime minister of the Trinity United Church of Christ, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, took the pulpit and proclaimed that “America’s chickens have come home to roost.” Five years earlier, the same reverend said “God damn America,” and seemed to set the tone for the death of moderatism. To be fair, Wright was not the first to lambaste politics, political parties or even condemn America, but his performance seemed to indicate the beginning of the end of moderation.
Enter MAGA and the Democratic Socialists.
Proof that both parties have chosen the extremes over the middle is the rise of the “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement on the right and the Democrat Socialists of America to say nothing of the radical progressives on the left. Both coexist for now within the U.S.’s two major parties. It is anybody’s guess how long it will take before those groups sever their connections with the Republicans and the Democrats and go their own way. If the Democratic Socialists and the MAGAns eventually leave their respective parties, they may carry enough of the parent parties’ genetic material with them to form entirely new strands of political DNA. One thing is for certain: they will not leave many moderates behind them to pick up the genetic pieces.
Stephen Helgesen is a retired career American diplomat specializing in international trade. He has lived and worked in 30 countries over the course of 25 years under the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. He is the author of fifteen books, seven of which are on American politics. His latest book deals with the Danish-American relationship, written in both Danish and English. He has penned more than 1,500 articles on politics, economics and social trends. He now lives in Denmark and is a frequent political commentator in Danish media. He can be reached at: [email protected].
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