this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Its the center-right that Biden is aiming for and has been the whole time. He's always been that way, his cabinet better represents the constituency than he does. Its a big part of why he was the VP for Obama, to appease old white guys.
The people on the right for whom Trump is too extreme or distasteful are the voters they are hoping to pick up , the people they lose by going too right are not going to vote for the republican anyways. Question is if its a good calculation or not.
He's likely lost huge margins in swing states due to his right wing politics though, he's not going to make that up on an imaginary demographic of people who can go either way on someone like Trump. If anyone says they're still seriously considering Trump they're not going to vote Dem, they just don't want to admit it in polite company.
I just think it's a serious miscalculation on the part of the Biden campaign to chase those voters and give the finger to his base. Every time the Democrats fail to bring out their base, they lose elections. Relying on "the implication" just doesn't work any more I don't think. People are struggling, their rights are being stripped away on Biden's watch and Democrats are making themselves less and less distinguishable from Republicans on economics, on the border, and on genocide apparently. That's a serious problem, the utter demoralization of the left is toxic to the party.
Not the person you were responding to, but - uh - hello? This is tucson.social and last I checked Arizona is one of the aforementioned swing states.
I can tell you that his campaign is more effective here for this move. It might not be completely convincing for those center and center-right, but it will be a point in a "for" column - hopefully for enough people to matter.
Arizona is primarily made up of registered Republicans, then Independents, then Democrats source. It's the Republicans who only need to "turn out the base".
There is something to note, however. Looking only at recent registration data, it's Independents leading and by a staggeringly wide margin.
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Appealing to the left isn't the winning strategy. Appealing to the independent vote in Arizona is - and hopefully picking up just a couple %'s of the moderate Republican votes in the process. Sure, some of those independents might be disaffected democrats who want to distance themselves from Biden, but I'd bet that's a pretty small portion of independents. Generally speaking, those that would pass on the Biden vote would likely register as green party, or "no labels", or something equally communicative of part of their identity. True independents would be the ambivalent, the "both siders", the "enlightened centrists", and many others - usually far more persuadable than the ideological hard-liners. Compared to Trump, who would likely still get most of his voters from the Republican base who, in their pride, would be emboldened to register as Republican over "no party"/Independent. Sure, he might bring over some libertarians, "no-labels" folks, but I think he's largely burned the bridge with the electorate in a much more visceral way - and wouldn't garner much of the Independent vote outside of that.
Further, I'll add that we're different here at tucson.social - we strive to be a reflection of our local community, and I make a point of going out and talking to real people, in real places about all sorts of things as well as tucson.social itself. And wouldn't ya know it? There's a lot of people who have weird combinations of beliefs that don't fit what the internet would have you believe. Even here in bright blue Tucson/Pima County.
Appealing to the left is more effective because that razor thin margin of right-wingers who "can go either way" are super low information. They're not voting on policy, they're voting on vibe.
The left comes out for policy and authenticity, when a candidate actually demonstrates that they're unwilling to play within the political frame that the right has created that's only a good thing for their chances. People are less and less likely to simply "vote blue no matter who" anymore, voters see how that strategy has failed to produce meaningful results.
When you poll Americans on policy the majority are in favor of progressive policy, even in red states like West Virginia. When people were polled on the original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan (before it was gutted by "moderates" like Manchin) public support was overwhelmingly positive for things like climate funding, child care assistance, healthcare reform etc. BBB was essentially the progressive platform. The fact that Democrats are ignoring that kind of data and instead chasing people on the far right who aren't realistically going to vote for Biden anyway is absurd.
The question should not be "How do I make my policy more fascist to look more like a Republican" but instead "How do I best communicate convincingly that I'm behind these popular working class policies and not just using them as a cynical political ploy. How do I rally my party to support local, working-class progressives during their primaries instead of letting AIPAC run rough shod over them even if it costs Democrats a seat."
Progressives bring out both groups for Dems in the generals -- the democratic base, independents and the low-info vibe voters.
When progressives don't get sabotaged by their own party they have been shown to flip red and purple regions (ex. Summer Lee in PA). They simply are better at appealing to working class majority and talk about real policy plans, not just scare mongering about brown immigrants etc. Even Sinema ran on a super progressive platform. Of course she's a lying POS and not actually progressive at all, but that's how she got elected in AZ, by playing as a progressive.
Jessica Cisneros was within a percentage point of beating Henry Cuellar during his primary in Texas (one of the only forced-birth democrats left) and instead of backing Cisneros, Pelosi deliberately went to prop up Cuellar. This was a month before RvW got overturned. This is the kind of dumb shit that happens when Democrats try to hide from their base and why they are always fighting low voter turnout and need to resort to "pied piper" strategies of propping up extremist GOP opponents to make their own look more palatable.
When the left comes out, they win. Conservativism is simply less and less popular as boomers age out, the battle for Democrats is with apathy not with trying to find some impossible balance of fascism and progress.