As always, I appreciate the long and thoughtful response. It's good to understand where you are coming from.
I'd start by pointing out that moderate is not the same thing as casual. There are definitely some right wingers on r/politics (in part because the sub puts an emphasis on discussing things with a moderate tone). However, MUCH of the sub is comprised of people who feel at home in either party and thus, don't want to be on r/conservative or r/politics (which leans very left).
I don't think we necessarily ride in different circles. Most of my friends are of the same mindset-- but they are also the ones who were going to vote blue no matter what. And of that group, Palestine / Israel is the thing that has them on the fence. Or at least had them on the fence with Biden. I'm also in IL so they have the luxury of being in a safely blue state.
That said, I think the primary difference in our views is that I have long run in activist circles (went on hiatus during the pandemic and haven't returned) that I'm still very connected to online. I also spent 1000's of hours door knocking without a voter registration list between 2015-2020 (in five different states) because the campaigns I was working for were always fighting an uphill battle against the DNC machine. This includes Bernie twice but also multiple local elections and several props.
During my time door knocking, two of the most common personality types I came across were A) "I'm economically very liberal and socially basically a libertarian on social issues (across the board) but I don't any of our politicians because they are corporate whore"s. Of note, this comes close very close to my world view except that I do want gun control. The other very common personality type was the "I believe in the free market, am liberal on social issues but don't trust our politicians". The later type is VERY common where I grew up in Colorado- except in CO a lot of those people are the type of educated Republican who has been pushed out of the party by Trump instead of unregistered.
Now what I would note is that none of the states I was in are known as particularly reglious (CA, NV, AZ, CO, IA). Instead, most of them lean "wild, Wild West" in their core values. But either way, all the assertions here that moderate voters don't exist are wild to me. 1/3 of the country is independents. And while a solid chunk of those independents are progressives who are to the left of Democrats (or fall into personality type 1), a very large amount of them are closer to personality type 2. People who still want to believe that free-market economics work but who find themselves disgusted by the stranglehold hate, bigotry and (to some degree) religion has on the GOP.
And while I'm sure a solid chunk of the disenfranchised people I spoke to are now Trump supporters-- there are also a ton of people who went Obama-Trump-Biden. And those people will likely decide the election.
