First, and perhaps most important, the proposals Biden embraced at the eleventh hour tend to poll extremely favorably.
I hope it works out like that, but my gut feeling is that actually the “Democrats should nominate a moderate Republican” people are right. I just don’t see the people who would otherwise vote for Trump being swayed by the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez sort of Democrat.
I just don’t see the people who would otherwise vote for Trump being swayed by the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez sort of Democrat.
The problem here is thinking the election will be won by convincing people who might otherwise vote for Trump to vote for the Democrat, rather than by shoring up support of traditional Democratic groups and pumping turnout. People have this 1D theory of politics where the voting population is static and arranged on a single left-right line, and thus winning is simply a matter of being the most center.
Biden wasn’t losing youth voters, or Muslims, or Black voters because he wasn’t moderate enough. People don’t organize rides to the polls because a more center person will vote for whoever picks them up. A R->D flip may give you a net of +2 votes, but there’s so many more opportunities out there to just rack up +1’s by getting non-voting or unreliable left-leaning voters to the polls, and exciting those base communities gives benefits in both votes and volunteers.
I hope it works out like that, but my gut feeling is that actually the “Democrats should nominate a moderate Republican” people are right. I just don’t see the people who would otherwise vote for Trump being swayed by the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez sort of Democrat.
You might be surprised how many people support Trump because they want something, anything, other than the neoliberal “business as usual.”
The problem here is thinking the election will be won by convincing people who might otherwise vote for Trump to vote for the Democrat, rather than by shoring up support of traditional Democratic groups and pumping turnout. People have this 1D theory of politics where the voting population is static and arranged on a single left-right line, and thus winning is simply a matter of being the most center.
Biden wasn’t losing youth voters, or Muslims, or Black voters because he wasn’t moderate enough. People don’t organize rides to the polls because a more center person will vote for whoever picks them up. A R->D flip may give you a net of +2 votes, but there’s so many more opportunities out there to just rack up +1’s by getting non-voting or unreliable left-leaning voters to the polls, and exciting those base communities gives benefits in both votes and volunteers.