Rachel Bitecofer -- DNC, Listen To Her

[Fiendish Thingy]

22. From her Salon interview:

"Absolutely. In fact, in the district-level analysis of the voter file in California and Virginia that I'll be releasing after Labor Day, I have competitive districts in those states. The data shows the turnout surge and how much different the composition of the electorate was between 2014 and 2018. I'm also able to show that even in these districts where Democrats ran Blue Dog candidates who were as unobtrusive as possible — with, exactly as you stated, the goal of not riling up Trump voters — the turnout for Republican voters in those districts was huge.

In fact, not only did Democrats not get the benefit of not stirring up the Trump base — the Trump base was stirred up and showed up in huge numbers — but by not tapping into anti-Trump sentiment in their own campaign strategy, by not intentionally activating that Trump angst, they paid a price in terms of their own base turnout. It was depressed, compared to other districts.

<snip>
So you might think, "Why is that? If one group of candidates took more liberal issue positions, why did they win over independents?" It seems counterfactual, and the reason is what mattered was turnout. O’Rourke and Abrams carried independents because turnout surged, with different independents showing up to vote, motivated by the targeting strategy deployed by those campaigns, which were run under my suggested model rather than the old playbook that used to work back in the '90s and '80s."

Targeting Anti-Trump sentiment with Liberal issue positions will drive turn out and win the election.