There's a narrative among centrist liberals that the majority of the American people tend to support moderate candidates far more than progressive/leftist candidates. This generally holds true: In all but the most left-leaning municipalities, moderate candidates are more likely to win Democratic primaries, and when progressive candidates do get the Democratic nomination, they tend to lose the general election.
There's also a narrative among progressives that the majority of the American people tend to support progressive ideas like Medicare-For-All, free college, increased minimum wage, police/judicial reform, marijuana legalization, and an end to our foreign military interventions. This also generally holds true, according to a great number of surveys.
How can both of these narratives be true? Don't they contradict each other? It's been puzzling me for a while. At first, I was just assuming that I must simply be getting my facts wrong, that one narrative or the other must actually be false. But after taking a closer look at what Americans were actually saying, I think I've figured out the answer, and it seems incredibly obvious in retrospect.
American voters like progressive policies. They HATE progressive ideology and rhetoric.
They want policies that clearly and directly benefit them, like higher wages and better healthcare programs and legal weed. Insofar as progressivism means "liberalism, but with more social welfare programs and less authoritarian bullshit like the War on Drugs," then a great many Americans are progressive. Even centrist Democrats realize this, which is why Biden's current policies are considerably further left than his pre-2016 stances.
But when progressivism is perceived as being far-left and anti-liberal, and associated with socialist or communist or anarchist ideologies, or with divisive minority identity politics, then the majority of Americans reject it. Wanting a $15/hour minimum wage and better workplace protections for Amazon factory workers is a popular sentiment; wanting to literally nationalize Amazon is considered totally insane by everyone who isn't a radical leftist. Wanting to reduce police brutality is a popular sentiment; wanting to literally get rid of the police altogether is not, which is why slogans like "Abolish the Police" and "Defund the Police" are incredibly unpopular and have only served to decrease support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
People want the country to go two steps to the left, but if they're forced to choose between going ten steps to the left or zero, they're going to choose zero; better to stay in place than drive off a cliff. And as much as they may want universal healthcare, they're still going to vote for a centrist over a revolutionary socialist or a left-identitarian wokescold.