Has Elizabeth Warren broken the electability ceiling? [View all]

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

One of the early truisms of the 2020 Democratic nominating contest was that Democrats wanted nothing more than to beat President Trump. There’s typically a connection between overall support in a primary and the perception that a candidate has the best chance of winning in the general election, but this year that seemed to be amplified: If you care only about winning in 2020, how could you not support the candidate who seemed to have the best chance of winning?

That assumption was always iffy. That electability and support go hand-in-hand means that, as support for a candidate drops, so does the perception that the candidate can win the general election. The correlation between the two, in other words, means that electability is often just a trailing indicator of primary support anyway.

For former vice president Joe Biden, this was always a looming iceberg. If voters stopped thinking he was the best candidate to beat Trump next year — which they consistently seemed to think — what would happen to his support? Or, conversely (and probably more accurately): If voters stopped supporting him, what would happen to perceptions of his electability?

We’re starting to get an answer to the second question.