Thread by @jmartNYT

NEW: The animating force in the Dem primary will be defeating Trump & Trumpism, but what’ll be revealing is *how* that’s manifested:

By policy, with a candidate who can best articulate opposition or one who personifies opposition w their own identity?

nyti.ms/2HbbGiq

“I don’t believe the electorate is going to be so purist that they’re going to knock somebody out because they’re not 100 percent down-the-line. People are excited about candidates they think have a potential to win,” says @RubenGallego, who may be on the Senate ballot in ‘20

and @RepCummings notes that Democratic voters are deeply scared about Trump.

But this is what alarms folks further left:

“Fear is a useful tactic to override underlying ideological debate,” says @matthewstoller

The torrent of anti-Beto chatter on the left wasn’t just about the gentleman from El Paso: it reflected the alarm that Dems are gonna stick w center-left politics & Obama-style uplift instead of a more confrontational populism

If there are litmus tests, some Ds think they won’t be on economics but the race & gender issues Trump has pushed to the forefront

“I don’t think you can be for stop-and-frisk in a primary. It’s less about economic issues than culture and issues of the heart.” -@cornellbelcher

Two things can be true: the center of gravity in the party has (duh) moved since the '08 primary. But the House primaries last year showed Dem voters more interested in elevating women, period, than rallying behind the most progressive candidate in a given race.

final point: one of major threads in Dem debate over who to nominate in ‘20 is division between the (majority) who think the Obama presidency was a triumph and those who think it was too timid or worse — even if, as @matthewstoller notes, they may not say it out loud