Thread by @hecubian_devil

Tbh @Tyler_A_Harper, the “pipeline” is very real—it describes so many young men I know.

The problem is Democrats see Bernie as *causative* here; he drove them away from Dems and to MAGA. Of course, the opposite is true: they would’ve stayed Dems with a Bernie-style platform

We should absolutely talk about the reality that tons of low-info, low-propensity, and politically disengaged voters loved Bernie and flocked to him. But he put off the highly-engaged base of the Democratic Party.

Problem is, Dems needed those low-info voters after all

And once Dems ceded them—not only by ditching Bernie, but by *deliberately trying to alienate* those voters, with explicit calls to fuck off and get out of Our Party—Trump started picking them up. Because, like Bernie, he can articulate a broad moral narrative about the economy

It’s a very different moral narraitve. It blames different groups and it proposes awful solutions. But Bernie and Trump could both speak to the kind of voters that need a low-resolution, generalized understanding of economic life. “Things hurt. Here’s who to blame. I’ll fix it.”

Dems win the voters who actually pay attention to policy and have some kind of reasonable political memory, sure. But I have a coworker who, in early 2024, forgot Trump was President. She thought Hillary had won. She used to be a Dem and now she’s a Trump voter.

Bernie spoke to people like that, and I know Democrats absolutely loathe the idea of being in coalition with such people, but you need them to win. Problem is, Dems don’t want to win. They want to get the votes from The Good People, they don’t want Bad Person votes!

For a party premised on technocratic proficiency, instead of on values, the goal is to have The Right People in charge

Which, of course, naturally spills over into having The Right Voters. The party self-conceptualizes as being about competency, not moral vision. Not values.

So, to a party that thinks about itself this way—a party for the top performers, the 4.0 students, the science-believers, the experience-respecters, the credentialed professionals who love a Slow Boring chart—it would be a bad sign to win low-info, low-propensity voters

The perfect form of this Democratic Party is one that keeps expanding its margins in DC while shrinking everywhere else. It’s a party for people who Get It, the Insiders, the Ball-Knowers, and, yes…the “elite.” It’s an elitist self-conception! They like that!

So Dems will keep screeching at the kind of low-info voters that Bernie was so good at moving. And they’ll pat themselves on the back with smug certainty when those voters leave to the GOP. “See? I knew they were rotten all along. That why I told them to fuck off.”

The Dems will trot out Liz Cheney a million times, in vain, because they don’t *want* the low-info Gen Z male swing voter. They don’t want the disengaged Latino family in south Texas. They only swing voters they want, talk like Mitt Romney.

Because the Dems don’t want to win. They only want to win The Correct Voters. The smart people. The degreed and credentialed defenders of norms and democracy. And they’re fucked as long as they stay stuck in that framework.