Ideological moderates are the most loved and hated members of Congress in the polarized era. In the 117th Congress, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema—“Manchinema”—have attracted significant attention for their role in Democratic policy failures and successes. Scholars and political observers alike have long focused on the Manchinemas of Congress because of the perceived power that comes with being a centrist and a less reliable vote for the party. Moderates control the policy reins, or so this story goes, and party leaders accommodate their demands and shift policy in their direction to secure their votes. Neilan S. Chaturvedi’s book, Life in the Middle: Marginalized Moderate Senators in the Era of Polarization, provides a new look at the impact of moderates in the US Senate and encourages us to question whether they are as influential as the conventional wisdom suggests.

Chaturvedi begins by making a useful distinction among ideological moderates in the Senate, differentiating those from partisan-lean states (such as Maine and West Virginia, where the opposing party is strong) and those from dual-peaked swing states (such as Florida and North Carolina, where voters are evenly divided between the parties). Moderates strike a balance “so as not to upset their core to invite a more ideological challenger, but also to not upset their general constituency and risk losing to a member of the opposing party” (p. 9). As Chaturvedi notes, moderates seek to maximize their ideological flexibility while minimizing their traceability. They modify their legislative behavior to not be seen as conciliators, preferring to instead avoid the spotlight and take a back seat in the legislative process. Moderates adopt four strategies to minimize their imprint: They can delegate their position to the party leadership, distract their constituencies by focusing on the consensual aspects of legislation, delay their decision and make demands to change legislation, or demur and avoid taking a clear position altogether. When viewed from this vantage point, moderates occupy a marginal position in the legislature, rather than an all-powerful one.

Chaturvedi first tests his “Marginalized in the Middle” argument with data on voting and nonvoting behavior on the floor. He examines Congressional Quarterly key votes from the 108th to the 112th Congress and finds that moderates propose fewer amendments than their more conservative Republican and liberal Democratic counterparts. In additional case studies of the Affordable Care Act and the Medicare Modernization Act, we see similar patterns on amendment activity. Chaturvedi then turns to floor speeches by senators, and he shows that moderates are less likely to give floor speeches than their more extreme colleagues. The few moderates who do give floor speeches use the strategies noted in the preceding text (delegate, distract, delay, or demur) instead of expressly supporting or opposing the bill.

The analyses provide rich insights into how moderates adjust their legislative behavior to avoid traceability due to their more precarious electoral position. The book is particularly convincing with respect to the desire of moderates to minimize traceability. Yet it is less obvious that minimal traceability also results in minimal influence. While amendment and floor speech activity are good measures of traceability, they may be less good at capturing influence. For example, the analyses additionally show that conservative Republican senators were the most likely to give floor speeches on the Affordable Care Act, but few would say that conservative Republicans had much of an influence on the outcome. In addition, majority party failures are often due to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and intraparty disagreement (James M. Curry and Frances E. Lee, The Limits of Party: Congress and Lawmaking in a Polarized Era, 2020), where moderates play a key role.

To be sure, it is difficult to measure power, and the number of moderates in office has declined, which certainly limits their impact on the agenda. Chaturvedi also anticipates the response that moderates instead work behind the scenes to get their desired policy outcome. In subsequent chapters, the quantitative analyses are supplemented with rich qualitative data from interviews conducted with retired US senators and their staff. The specific questions about which senators are perceived as directly and indirectly influential are particularly novel, and the responses provide a critical look into how senators and their staff perceive the distribution of power in the chamber. One chapter also draws on Project Vote Smart data to examine whether senators’ votes correspond to their stated preferences on issues. The finding that moderates often lose on their preferences is consistent with recent work showing that legislators reject compromise proposals that would move policy in their preferred direction because they fear punishment from primary voters (Sarah E. Anderson, Daniel M. Butler, and Laurel Harbridge-Yong, Rejecting Compromise: Legislators’ Fear of Primary Voters, 2020).

While Chaturvedi focuses on the role of moderates in the policy-making process, the theoretical underpinnings of the book provide ample opportunities to look beyond moderates as well. The distinctions between safe, partisan-lean, and swing states invite other timely questions about the willingness of senators to support or oppose prodemocracy measures. For instance, we might wonder how Republican senators from safe states compare with their counterparts from swing states and partisan-lean states on issues like voting rights and election administration. More generally, in an era where general elections are largely uncompetitive, the framework allows us to draw key distinctions among officeholders in both the House and Senate and probe the strategies and behavior of lawmakers elected from safe districts as well.

To conclude, Neilan S. Chaturvedi’s book, Life in the Middle, provides a welcome challenge to the notion that moderates hold the key to policy change. Instead, as he shows, their electoral circumstances often put them in a precarious position, and they modify their behavior accordingly to minimize traceability. Although there are high-profile examples to the contrary that we can conjure up, particularly in the Senate, the quantitative and qualitative data detail a host of ways in which moderate lawmakers avoid the limelight on controversial issues. Equally important, the book has significant implications for the future of polarization in Congress, with conservative Republican and liberal Democratic senators likely to be the most outspoken, active, and visible lawmakers in the years to come.