Political journalists and commentators always put too much emphasis on policy and ideology. Often, that’s the only way they know how to speak about politics. But it leads us to misunderstanding the political landscape.

In the current Democratic presidential race, the main misperception is that there are two “lanes”: a centrist lane and a progressive lane. This leads analysts to assume that if Elizabeth Warren drops out, her supporters go to Bernie Sanders because both are on the Left. The policy-ideology framing also leads to analyses such as these: