In a recent post…Dems Prefer Electability to Ideological Purity (https://www.boomantribune.com/story/2019/2/4/144611/1283) Booman made a case for a more centrist 2020 Dem presidential candidate rather than a more “progressive” one.
I disagree.
Here’s why. (Hint, hint…it’s all about the numbers.)
Read on.
Booman…the following is the fly in your electoral ointment:
…most Democratic voters are more concerned with winning than with finding a candidate who can check all of their boxes.
Now…this is not exactly a shoofly, but rather a true fly.
Why a fly of any kind?
Because…as true as it may be, it does not recognize the potent fact that about 40% of the potential electorate simply doesn’t vote!!!
Who Helped Trump Most in the 2016 Presidential Election? Nonvoters, Pew Study Says
When it comes to the Donald Trump presidency, nonvoters are just as responsible as verified 2016 voters for the presidential election results, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center.
The study notes an important statistic: four in 10 Americans who were eligible to vote did not do so in 2016. And by taking the unique (and uniquely valuable) step of validating those who claimed they voted, Pew researchers were able to determine who actually voted and who did not. Breaking out these categories into hard data makes it clear: Nonvoters in 2016 had just as much to do with establishing the Trump presidency as actual voters.
The really important question is:
Why didn’t they vote?
Immediately followed by the next important question:
Who and/or what would motivate a majority of those non-voters to show up and vote in 2020?
And my own seat-of-the-pants answer is that only a candidate who successfully reaches out to the entire population of this country…not one who stinks of deplorablism and public/private positions, not one who has the stench of corporate control and/or racism, not one who has made a career out of being a Washington DC insider of either party…can mobilize an appreciable part of this essentially ignored by both major parties and the Trumpists “dark matter” (In the physics sense) to come to the polls.
Think on it, Booman.
Here are some numbers…2012 was the best I could do on limited search time:
…analysis by the University of California, Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project found that there were 235,248,000 people of voting age in the United States in the 2012 election
8 years later? Let’s round the number out to 250 million, ok?
40% of that electorate equals roughly 65 million potential voters!!!
HRC lost to Trump while getting roughly 66 million votes to his 63 million or so , but she lost in the (totally jive) Electoral College.
If she had reached even 10% of those non-voters…let alone a majority of them…she would then have had such a majority that the Electoral College vote would have been hers as well.
But NOOOOOoooo…she and her DNC tried to run the old “public/private position” game and got caught out doing it, mostly because of social media.
Long story short?
Sure.
The regular “Democratic” voters…including the so-called progressives and the more neocentrist/neoliberal types…were not enough to give her an unchallengeable win.
Do you really think that…given Trump’s and the Republicans’ fairly unshakable base…yet another mainstream DNC-supported DC career insider is going to be able to motivate some large percentage of those non-voters to come out in 2020? A percentage large enough to perhaps even “blue wave” the Senate?
I don’t.
With any of the thoroughly DC-branded pols who are leading the so-called polls now, 2020 will be a squeaker.
At the end of your post, you say:
This election cycle is not going to reward ideological rigidity or radicalism. On the other hand, the winner could wind up being as far out of the historic mainstream as Trump. Anything is possible with the right kind of campaign.
I want to add to that…it is not going to reward Washington DC insiderism either. In fact, I think that…just like in 2016…it will to some degree punish that characteristic, on both sides of the political spectrum.
I have been posting a great deal recently here about Beto O’Rourke, and I have gotten flack from many of the pro-DNCers here about wishful thinking vs. pragmatic politics, etc.
As George Santayana so accurately wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
If the Dems try to foist another mainstream DC insider on the electorate, it’s going to be Groundhog Day, one more time once. It might come out…due to the ongoing, awful sight of a narcissistic madman in the Oval Office…pro-Dem. But it will not be a landslide by any means.
However…if they present a candidate and platform that reaches some effective part of the silent 40%? Not necessarily a candidate who kowtows to the Dem’s current so-called “progressive” system, but one who is a truly pragmatic politician. One who reaches people of all races and cultures in this miraculously multiracial and multicultural nation?
Landslide!!!
A landslide of historic proportions.
So far, O’Rourke is the only possible presidential Dem candidate who is not playing by the rules.
The rest?
The same tired games.
“Expert” advisors.
Making …necessarily perfunctory, so far… showings in the primary states.
Hustling the corporate donors.
And so on and so forth.
Meanwhile, this O’Rourke guy has been breaking all of the rules, most importantly the one that says important, privileged politicians can’t go out and meet the people without a cadre of advisors and bodyguards at the ready.
As far as I know, this is truly revolutionary!!!
We shall see.
He may not run.
But if he does?
Watch out, DNC-ers!!!
A benevolent candidate is threatening your hegemony.
All’s I can say is:
It’s about time!!!
And about the numbers, too.
Watch.
Later…
AG
P.S. Given the grousings about O’Rourke’s voting record as a House member from some supposedly “ideologically pure” Dems, here and elsewhere, maybe your title (if not necessarily your conclusions) is quite accurate.
“Dems Prefer Electability to Ideological Purity”
Lord A’mighty!!!
I certainly hope so!!!