Atlantic Article: Moderates and the idea that only they can win

[Awsi Dooger]

34. A liberal can win in a very favorable situation

We could have nominated someone more liberal in 1992 or 2008 and won, since Republicans had held the White House for 12 years then 8 years and their favorability rating was low.

The problem is when the situational landscape is totally ignored. That article does it and virtually every article and analyst does it. Somehow there is no comprehension that these outcomes are largely dictated years in advance via the terrain alone. Day to day details and issues essentially mean nothing.

In 2020 we are totally at the mercy of Donald Trump. We cannot defeat him. He can only lose. Trump is in the catbird seat of most favorable situation in American politics as an incumbent whose party has been in power only one term. Benefit of a doubt almost cannot be overstated.

Now 2020 happens to coincide with a unique evolving situation in which the key states we need to rescue are midwestern states with high number of white voters and ideological breakdowns that basically mirror the national percentages. I always test as liberal but I'm not dunce enough to ignore that the nation holds 9% more self-identified conservatives than self-identified liberals. There was a thread here recently with a Sanders supporter asking what fellow Sanders supporters are supposed to do. Well, you are supposed to be intelligent enough to understand that 9% ideological deficit and what it means in practical terms. When we're trying to return states like Wisconsin and Michigan this shouldn't be a complicated puzzle.

I'm not going to let go of the Florida example from 2018. We wanted to believe that the national slant in our favor was so strong that we could shove aside the moderate Gwen Graham in favor of the more exciting and more liberal Andrew Gillum. It may have made us feel good for a couple of months. Then election day showed up, as election days have a habit of showing up. Reality shows up. Enthusiasm meant squat. Turnout meant squat. The white folks showed up and 46% of them matter of factly rejected Andrew Gillum as simply too liberal for the state. This is a considerably more recent and more relevant example than anything from that article. We threw away a major vital governorship against a joke opponent like Ron DeSantis simply because we were stupid enough to believe we could force our ideology on voters who will shut the door without second thought.

If the nation were 9% more liberals than conservatives, we could nominate anyone and everyone and allow the math to dictate. That's what Republicans do. Countless times I warned Chris Bowers about this on MyDD back in 2005 and 2006, that if both sides used their energized online base to dictate nominees through a cleansing process, the only possible outcome was that Republicans would be able to force feed more and more outrageously conservative members into office including the presidency, while we would be stuck trying to emulate them and wondering why it wasn't working.

Bowers dismissed it. I was aware of situational influence while he was stuck in the day to day detail crap. Never try to forecast anything if you are a day to day detail type. You've already flunked the process.