With their new leaders in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats this week showed the country an undeniable truth: There’s no such thing as a moderate in their party anymore.
Throughout the 2025 campaign cycle, national media presented a fundamentally false story about the Democratic candidates for governor in the Old Dominion and the Garden State.
Even as commentators acknowledged that Zohran Mamdani represented a move leftward in New York City, legacy media framed former roommates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill as the centrists in the party.
“Ms. Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill are moderate women,” The New York Times reported as fact.
“The two congresswomen, both moderates, have shared a Capitol Hill apartment for the past four years,” wrote Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty — and were so close, in fact, that “they sometimes finished each other’s sentences.”
Those sentiments were echoed endlessly: CNN, MSNBC, NPR and others all parroted the line that both women were moderates, pragmatists, centrists or even bipartisan.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member