Since at least the Bill Clinton era, a simple ontology of liberal politics has prevailed among the kinds of people who tend to advise centrist Democratic politicians and get paid to discuss politics on cable TV. Simply stated, the theory is that Democrats win when they run and govern from the center and lose when pulled too far to the left. The “center,” or so the story goes, is where most Democratic voters are generally found. The “Left,” meanwhile, consists of activists and ideologues whose raison d’être generally involves pushing chimerical slogans, policies, and schemes that run afoul of the bread-and-butter or kitchen-table issues important to a voting public.

Given the contested and sometimes fluid nature of a term like “centrism” (or, for that matter, the “Left”), this rendering of things leaves us with quite a lot to unpack and plenty of potential avenues for critique. But what’s ultimately so amazing about this fable of US politics is that it remains a kind of ambient wisdom regardless of context, electoral outcomes, or who was actually on the ballot. Thus, when Democrats win, it’s said that the centrist strategic vision has been vindicated; and, when they lose, it’s somehow been vindicated as well.

In a development that should therefore have shocked no one, exactly this kind of argument has been getting airtime since last week’s elections, which among other things saw the Democrats lose a key gubernatorial race in Virginia and suffer a close call in New Jersey. Like clockwork, a chorus of usual suspects quickly emerged to issue a reheated version of the standard centrist explanation for poor Democratic electoral showings — the crux of which is that the party has allowed itself to be pulled away from the center and has lost ground as a result.