It ain't just DU

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

61. I don't think any sort of 'average' voter actually matters.

Who doesn't vote in the Dem primary? Republicans and independents.

Republicans, by and large, aren't going to vote for a Democrat no matter who that Democrat is, barring some fringies who will be matched by some fringe of Dems who will vote Republican.

So the question becomes who are the indies that will vote? And I think they're all across the spectrum. Some will be far right teabagger types, some will be far left communists, some will be simply people who are ticked off at the major parties, but as studies have shown are almost all 'left leaning' or 'right leaning'. We're a polarized country now. The 'middle' is even more mythical than it used to be. So the folks on the left who bother to vote will vote for either the Dem or some lefty third party type, and the folks on the right will vote for the Repub or some righty third party type.

Nader did teach a lesson, although not the lesson most people want to take away. What he taught was that indies are willing to take a risk when they think it won't matter, but once they saw that Repubs could steal close elections, they didn't want to even take a chance on elections being closer than they could. His 5% 2000 vote dropped to less than a percent when he ran again in 2004. Almost all (lefty) indies held their nose and voted for the Dem.

So the voters that matter for the left in the general rather than the primary are left-leaning indies. And I don't agree with you that that specific block of voters is, on average, 'more conservative'. If anything, I think they're less conservative, which is why they're indies rather than Dems already. Right leaning indies don't matter because the only way to even try to win them is to act like a Republican.