The Winner Only Needs 51 Percent Of The Vote

     "Look, up in the sky: it's a drone! It's a kite! No! It's Lowered Expectations Man! Able to leap over moderate-sized buildings in a bound or two and outrun an electric rental scooter! Disguised as a laid-off reporter for a failing newspaper, Lowered Expectations Man attempts to fight crime and support fairly accurate information, a moderate degree of fairness, and many but not all of our better traditions!"
     "Our story opens in a low-priced fast-food franchise, where LE Man is choking down a tepid greaseburger...."

     What's all that got to do with anything?  Just this: in U. S. elections, the broad trend is that the winner tends to be the major party candidate the voters view as the least extreme.

     In the Long Island district formerly represented by expelled Congressperson George Santos, the Democrat who used to hold the job beat a Trump-aligned Republican, and it appears that he did so not by fiery rhetoric, an inspiring biography or superior advertising, but by getting out there and being closer to the center than the GOP's candidate.  In a district that had long leaned Democrat, that was all it took.

     In general elections, normal wins and being way out there loses.  Sure, not every time; there's a ready market for worry and fear and a candidate who can get the voters stampeding often does well in a given election -- but over the long term, the most normal-sounding candidates win.  When the pathologically online talk about wanting to "move the Overton window?" That's the game: if your side isn't nearest the middle now, try shoving the middle towards them.  Sometimes that works, but there's a lot of inertia and the middle's where it is because the vast bulk of people -- of voters -- like it that way.  It tends to bounce back, carried by the independents and those voters with only a little Party loyalty.  This isn't the cheering base that flock to rallies; it's the quiet folks who don't seek out arguments but show up for the general election, year after year.

     Are there enough of them to make a difference in the near term?  I don't know.  And it's not like the "middle" is some universal location; what passes for average in New York's Third Congressional district probably looks pretty far out to voters in Carmel, IN, and a bit staid in Portland, OR.  Nevertheless, over the long term, count on the middle.  Nobody loves tepid greaseburgers, but most of us will eat 'em when everything else on the menu looks worse.  Superduperpartisanman may catch eyeballs, but being the least-bad choice on the ballot is the winning bet.