As I explained on @amjoyshow today, in the primary postmortem, it'll be clear that the Sanders team needed to spend the time between '16 & '20 on outreach to the mainstream of the party. They worked for, & got, concessions on the nominating process that decreased the influence of
party elites. Eliminating Super Delegates off the 1st ballot & thus the delegate totals was a HUGE change & the 2020 process is a full (and pure) reflection of popular will. The issue the campaign faces is 2016 was low turnout which produced a primary electorate more favorable to
the progressive wing. People who vote in presidential primaries tend to be engaged partisans & these voters tend to be more ideological. When turnout increases, like in 2008 & in 2020, the increase is coming from the more casual elements of the party's coalition & this increases
influence of moderates & frankly, pragmatists. This is research I am working on now (comparing the ideological compositions of primary electorates in high & low turnout environments). My expectation was that if my model/theory was right & neg partisanship drove high turnout in
'20, it would help the mod front runner & although the 1st 2 contests had mod turnout, since then, turnout has increased sharply over '16. Here is the ideological reality of the Dem Party, which @billscher used my data for in a report last spring. realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/…
It was always the case that Sanders (or Warren if she ended up the progressive standard bearer and for a time, I assumed this would happen but instead, she ended up pulling ahead of Sanders only to fall back behind bc of her decision to release the 23 trillion plan AND the pile
on coverage about her so-called electability issues which were largely name ID deficits) anyway, it was always the case that whoever the progressive frontunner was, they were going to need to pull over significant support from the mainstream of the party gen.medium.com/electability-p…
and hat support, from voters of any color, was always going to be conditioned on whether those voters could be convinced that the progressive candidate was electable which itself required media and party elites to be convinced the candidate was electable bc for the most party,
frame coming out of the media talking heads (the punditocracy of which I'm now a member I suppose) is the frame that you will see echoed in public opinion data. For ex: pundits and other candidates started talking about Medicare For All in terms of what it takes (health insurance
for 160 million Americans) and suddenly mass public opinion responds. So, in order for Bernie to win over the mainstream of the electorate he had to woo the mainstream of the party & despite 4 years to do it, he did not. Too be fair, the mainstream of the party was not exactly
receptive to being wooed, and I think it IS important to acknowledge that: it takes two to tango. But far too much emphasis was put on the one area the Sanders campaign did not need to focus on: the progressive base. What they needed to do was mainstream their candidate and make
him digestible & in this task, they failed. Its imp to acknowledge that Sanders was and is an imperfect messenger for the progressive faction if their goal was to actually win the nomination bc of the baggage he carries w the socialist label. Mainstreaming the issues is actually
much easier than mainstreaming the messenger the insistence of Sanders as the standard bearer probably cost the progressive faction their 1st real shot at the party's nomination. The fact is that much of Sanders' platform is not staple Dem platform positions, so the progressive
movement is actually enjoying unprecedented success in getting the Dem Party to actually be a liberal party and not a center-left or even often center-right party as it was through the 1990s and first decade of the 2000s. And if the @JoeBiden is serious about beating Trump they
will take very seriously the legitimate grievances of the progressive faction in terms of his running mate & not repeat the mistake Clinton made in selecting a moderate VP at a time when 30% of the Dem electorate is demanding representation ideologically. That said, it can't be
Warren bc the Dem Party also needs to recognize that its 2020 and they can't be putting forward tickets that don't reflect the diversity of the modern party. Anyone floating all-white tickets to me is getting the
