The Fed kept rates on hold as expected Wednesday.

Notwithstanding the exhortations of Bill Dudley and Mohamed El-Erian, there was no chance of a cut at this meeting.

Although I’m sympathetic to the self-evident notion that a Fed which wants to land the proverbial plane softly is a Fed that cuts proactively, for “insurance” purposes, not a Fed that cuts reactively, when the labor market turns, the balance of the data doesn’t justify a cut quite yet.

The “Why wait?” question’s a good one, though. That is: If you know you’re going to cut in September, why not just do it now? Particularly given that the closer you get to the election, the worse the optics at a time when the GOP’s keen to insist on “deep state” conspiracies and various narratives centered around a “politicized” American bureaucracy. (Never mind that Jerome Powell’s a Republican.) Here are four answers to the “Why wait?” query:

1. By September, the data may be much closer to conclusive. If it is, the politicization charges won’t stick. Or not among serious people, anyway.
2. It’s very likely that Powell doesn’t yet have the kind of consensus buy-in among the Committee’s hawks he’d like to see before delivering the first cut.
3. Powell probably wants to telegraph the first cut in Jackson Hole.
4. September’s an SEP meeting. All else equal, it’s better to move at SEP meetings so you can reference the projections while explaining a given decision.

In any event, no cut on Wednesday. Just a facelift for the statement, which contained a few key tweaks. Job gains “have moderated,” the Fed said, and the unemployment rate “has moved up,” although it’s still low. That’s a change from June, when job growth “remained strong,” and the jobless rate “remained low” (with no caveat).

There’s been “some further progress toward the Committee’s 2% inflation objective” in recent months, the Fed noted. In June, that sentence was more cautious. Specifically, it included the adjective “modest” to describe renewed disinflation progress. “Modest” was missing on Wednesday, which is to say the Fed’s more confident now in the durability of the disinflation trajectory than they were in June.

The most notable tweak was in the second paragraph. Rather than reiterate a single-minded focus on price growth, the statement said “the Committee is attentive to the risks to both sides of its dual mandate.” That’s a dovish shift. The balance of risks has changed, and officials are now just as attentive to rising unemployment as they are to the risk of rekindled inflation.

That said, the statement retained the forward guidance, verbatim. The Fed doesn’t “expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%.”

All in all, it was a generally balanced statement with dovish overtones. In my view anyway, that should leave September priced as something close to a done deal, with the caveat that the Committee’s hawks aren’t entirely persuaded. Yet.