I have in the past contemplated how the general public votes

[bluedye33139]

Last edited Thu Jan 16, 2020, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

And I am guilty of wondering in the past if people of color, sexual minorities, and women might face a tougher battle in a general election. A lot of my worries about gender have been put to rest, as studies have indicated that women and men do not have differential success in elections. White voters tend to respond to dog whistle politics, however.

This whole dust-up between Warren and Sanders bugs me because on the one hand he is being accused of saying something along the lines of my own thinking in the past. But also because it's taken on such a hateful tone. Twitter in particular has some extremely hateful attacks on Warren by Sanders supporters and on Sanders by Warren supporters. It's like everyone believes he was accused of murder, or some horrific wrongdoing. The accusations and the defenses are histrionic.

The pessimistic part of my mind, however, thinks that we were all deluding ourselves if we thought that Democrats would act like angels during a primary. When you run a campaign, you have thousands of people working under you and all of them are fired up for your victory and for the loss of the other candidates. In that atmosphere, some pretty mean and terrible attacks tend to get floated by campaign workers.

In an ideal world, politicians would be saints with full knowledge of everything that their campaign is doing, and they would always interdict any problematic campaign strategy. In the real world, we got people.

[PatSeg]

1. Very well said

[TheRealNorth]

2. You also have to consider that there are trolls that will come into the discussion

And will squat a #2 in the middle of the floor (figuratively speaking) to get people riled up and angry. So you either leave or get yourself dirty.

[Sloumeau]

3. I think animosity slowly built up between the two camps of Sanders and Warren...

and eventually, those animosities were just waiting for a spark to set them off.

Apparently, the first spark happened when the Warren camp found out that the Sanders camp allegedly used a script that painted Warren in an unkind light. That, apparently, may have led to one of Warren's staffers letting the 2018 conversation between Sanders and Warren leak. It was actually kind of predictable that this would happen around 30 days before Iowa, when things started to get quite real.

For now, the fun and games are over. Welcome to the Thunderdome. Two Progressives enter. How many leave?

[Tom Rinaldo]

4. I agree with you completely n/t

[judeling]

5. The Research is not that definaitive

Much like when Bill Gates walks into the room the average income shoots up, the majority of the studies only account for outcomes on a gross level. Once you take partisan lean of the district out the data becomes much more ambiguous. Republican women win in Republican districts and Democratic in Democratic ones.

Once you get to more swing district comparisons there really isn't enough data to be definitive and that is required because each race has its own dynamics and you need a lot of data to smooth that out.

What the deep studies indicate that people of color, sexual minorities, and women are perceived as more liberal, but are also not given as much room to err or divert from preconceptions. Basically they need to be the superior candidate.