Why has the American center right disappeared from the ballot box? | Jan-Werner Müller

Americans voted for the far right without necessarily wanting to endorse a far-right mandate. Trump will claim one anyway

The blame game's in full swing. Armchair campaign strategists just know that Kamala Harris should have thrown Joe Biden under the bus, or gone on Joe Rogan, or - the perennial favorite among self-declared centrists - trashed identity politics. Of course, it matters a great deal to find out why people who voted for Democrats in 2020 failed to turn out; of course, there needs to be an explanation (not freewheeling speculation) about Trump's gains among Latino men in particular.

Yet one larger question deserves at least as much attention: why does anything recognizable to international observers as a center-right option seem to have disappeared from our politics? Why was the only 2024 choice between the far right and a vaguely progressive (not progressive enough for progressives, to be sure) center party?

Jan-Werner Muller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist