Does the party need to move right culturally to win more elections?

[Awsi Dooger]

123. We are in an awkward stage right now

The people who came of voting age during the Reagan years are voting dependably and will still be around for a long time. We are dominating the newcomer voters but they aren't reliable and too often go off on tangents like third party. Some of our key demographics like single females don't show up in midterms. The white working class shift is very real and has been evident for several years, long before 2016. Fear sells. It is moving white men now just like 9-11 shifted a critical percentage of the so-called security moms. Many states are trending our way but several simply aren't ready, like Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.

It's hard to panic when our party has carried the popular vote in 6 of the past 7 general elections. Imagine how different the dialog and country would be without those flawed Florida ballot designs or Hillary sensing she should campaign in different states, that barely squeaking over the electoral line was plenty.

Bill Clinton used to speak of the impact of strong and wrong. That explains Donald Trump. Realistically we need to handicap the electorate and cater to what they respect. White males are allowed to bullshit and get away with it. Note that commercial with a disc jockey who seamlessly pretends to be a financial analyst. Trump pretended to be everything to everybody. IMO, every time we nominate a woman or a black man we are taking an admirable risk that probably isn't worth it in this era. Every race, not merely president. Obama may have won two terms but he also forfeited a huge chunk of white males along the way, and now every one of our candidates is paying for it for the foreseeable.

I'd prefer to win narrowly than to explain and strategize. It's perfectly fine for the background photo to resemble America as a block even if our candidate himself front and center resembles the prototype CEO.

As always, I don't care about issue breakdown compared to bottom line self-identify numbers. As long as the country has a 3/2 split of conservatives over liberals we have little margin for error.