Yglesias likes to take one or two ideas and beat them into a fine powder. One of his "ideas" is that Democrats should eschew unpopular ideas and promote popular ones. Really brilliant insight there.
The problem with this post is that it once again fails to grapple with the fact that Democrats DON'T talk about unpopular issues. Republicans do and mischaracterize Democratic positions. Yes, as he notes, the other side gets to campaign, too, but he points to Andy Beshear who has done a good job sticking up for Democratic values without being labeled as too extreme or "woke".
It's because he's a white dude from Kentucky.
Harris and Hillary were naturally assumed to be further left on cultural issues than the were because they were women. Harris even more so as a Black woman from San Francisco. Voters are pretty freaking dumb when you get to the middle of the electorate. Sorry, but they are - at least about politics. So they use easy short hands like how the candidate physically looks. Or aspects of their biography.
If voters were voting their policy preferences, Democrats would be winning all 50 states. Trump's OBBB is toxic and getting worse, but it's basically the GOP wish list going back 60 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment