The phrase "a moderate message" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a communication that is balanced, reasonable, or not extreme in its content or tone.
Example: "The politician delivered a moderate message that aimed to unite rather than divide the audience."
Alternatives: "a balanced message" or "a measured message".
While a moderate message is seen as necessary to win undecided independent voters, the party's left wing argues that a more traditional agenda is needed to excite minorities and other voters from the Demcrats' base.
This year, the Kerry campaign has been appealing to centrist swing voters, much as Johnson did, with a moderate message of strength and optimism while depicting Bush as an extremist renegade, out of step with the mainstream conservatism of the Republican base.
"There doesn't seem to me to be any other way to do it, except to engage with the party that won the election," the official said, adding, "They've been very specific about conveying a moderate message — on regional security and domestic issues, and economic issues, as well".
Jonah Peretti, a new media specialist at Eyebeam, an arts organization in New York, observes that boldness is to the Internet what F.D.R.'s voice was to radio and J.F.K.'s image to television: "A moderate message is not the kind of thing that friends want to e-mail to each other and say, 'You gotta take a look at this!' " Unlike Al Gore, Dr. Dean doesn't aspire to be hip about computers.
Direct marketers told campaigns that a strong and clear message to the party base is more likely to elicit a large financial response that a balanced, moderate message to the middle.
Senator John B. Breaux, a Democrat as well as the state's senior senator and a mentor to Ms. Landrieu, said the election showed that "a mainstream moderate message can win in the South and can win throughout the country".
Some Democrats, in fact, say one of Mr. Gore's biggest mistakes was not sticking to a more moderate message.
Many clerics, troubled by the radical language of Mr. Sadr's followers, say Mr. Sestani is promoting a more moderate message.
"Someone said to me today, Governor Bush sounded like a George Pataki last night with the moderate message he was pushing out," Daniel Stewart, the mayor of Plattsburgh, N.Y., and a convention delegate, said Friday.
Juppé has undergone a profound image transformation to become France's most popular politician, perceived as a trusted elder statesman preaching a moderate, centrist message of social harmony in a rising tide of national identity politics on the right.
The moderate message has been lost," she said.
