Right now, it looks like leftist candidates are a bigger threat to other Democrats than to Republicans. wthh.dataforprogress.org/blog/2018/11/7…
Some of the thinking here has been that candidates running unafraid on redistributive platforms might pull in non-traditional voters with economic appeals to their self-interest. That didn’t really shake out.
I would contrast that with what I saw in Kansas, where the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Laura Kelly, ran a successful campaign by *avoiding* hot-button progressive issues BUT nonetheless focusing on bolstering government services.
You know what a lot of people in reddish parts of Kansas are freaked out about? Their public schools getting worse and their rural hospitals shutting down. Kobach ran on tax cuts and anti-immigration and only pulled down 43% of the vote.
Anyway, driving around rural Kansas for a couple days was a good reminder it’s just a different world than where a lot of progressives live and formulate their ideas. (And the bulk of those voters, frankly, are pretty old.) They’ll listen to economic appeals, but on their terms.
Oh, I almost forgot — at Laura Kelly’s campaign events in central Kansas, maybe her biggest applause line: *Promising to restore public funding for the arts.* (!) Brownback had cut the program in 2011: createquity.com/2011/06/reacti…
(When I asked Kobach about it, he wasn’t even aware of the arts funding issue! Kelly said she didn’t realize how powerful it was when she started running, until she mentioned it once, and people just *reacted*. So then she kept talking about it.)
You know what people in small towns like, along with open hospitals and non-crumbling schools? Parades, fairs, plays, something new and funky happening on Main Street. It’s a quality-of-life thing.
As an addendum here, across the border, while Missouri voters were chucking Claire McCaskill out of office, they also approved a handful of liberal ballot measures: latimes.com/nation/la-na-b…
