1) This turned into a THREAD: A notable theme of the 2020 Dem primary has been the degree to which some candidates misjudged how left Dem voters are. Harris, Booker, Warren, Buttigieg have all had to recalibrate away from their further left positions. I’m curious why...
2) So many candidates miscalculated. I’d guess it has something to do with learning the wrong lessons from the ‘16 election. Trump was actually seen by voters as less partisan than Clinton. Not more. It’s hard to make the case that Clinton lost chiefly bc she wasn’t left enough..
3) Probably also has to do with how close politicians and their staff are to the activists in their party (something that skews perceptions of politicians on both sides of the aisle)...
4) One lesson that probably *is* worth learning from Trump’s success is that part of the reason he was seen as less partisan is that he crossed the aisle on issues like Social Security, Medicare, public spending, entitlement reform etc...
5) He disarmed Democratic attacks on some of Republicans’ least popular positions. Haven’t seen any Democrats do much work to disarm Republicans on Democrats’ least popular positions...
6) In ‘16 many Dems saw Trump taking extreme positions on certain issues and assumed they too could go all out and be rewarded. But it’s easier to take extreme positions on some issues if you frustrate the overall picture by crossing partisan lines on others. END
Addendum that, yes, Dems probably also learned the wrong lesson from the ‘16 primary in that Sanders’s appeal wasn’t just about being further to the left, it was also about being a new face/not Clinton/whatever else. But also he lost the primary, so why copy?
