Another sack to toss on the Progressives v Moderates Democrat Argument heap

[Jimmy Higgins]

In general, my stance has been the Democrats suffer from having a much more complicated voting base. While the Republicans can appeal to older white people, the Dems are trying to appeal to inner city, minority, and suburbs. And with gerrymandering, some seats are just completely out of touch (see Ohio) because there is simply too much rural being matched up against diluted urban areas.

So this provides us a narrative, different districts need different candidates. Progressives in blue districts, moderates in purple districts.

Now 2020 in Georgia indicated that turnout percentages matter a lot more than crossover voting. You need turnout, and if you run a conservative Democrat in a purple district, it might be hard to generate any excitement. We'll ignore that Ossoff isn't exactly Ocasio-Cortez. Both sides seem to have reasonable points, and are likely both true, but with a frustrating Venn Diagram making it difficult to hit the sweet spot of appealing to liberal and moderate voters.

A study released looked into the 2020 election.

Regardless of how you look at it, President Joe Biden did better than House Democratic candidates in the 2020 elections. Yet while House Democrats across the board underperformed the top of the ticket, and challengers did worse than incumbents, the data is clear that moderate non-incumbent House Democratic candidates fared much better than their leftwing counterparts—by a significant margin.

In fact, leftwing nominees lost more than double the amount of support than moderate Democrats on average compared to Biden, due to some combination of ticket-splitting and under-voting.

Indeed, the 2020 election was an abysmal affair that seemed to speak of two nations.

1) A nation tired of shitty candidates (Trump, Purdue, Loeffler, McSally)
2) A nation fine with the status quo

The Dems lost seats. And it seems some of them shouldn't have been lost. Though some we thought that should have been in play, were never in play. Regarding the progressives in purple or red territory...

In the eight Republican-held districts, Biden lost by an average of 45.3% to 52.9% or -7.6 points. So it was tough electoral ground. But the leftwing House Democratic candidates lost 40.3% to 57.8% for an average loss of -17.5 points. That is a 9.9-point underperformance by these far-left candidates compared to Biden.

These numbers are a bit distorted due to the inclusion of three unwinnable districts that these groups (Our Revolution and Brand New Congress specifically) decided to support in IL16, TX14, and OH05. But the leftwing candidates in competitive districts, those that made the DCCC Red-to-Blue list, actually did worse relative to Biden.
In the five DCCC Red-to-Blue races where the candidate was endorsed by one of these far-left organizations, the terrain was more favorable. Biden actually only lost these districts by a 49.0% to 49.1% margin on average, which rounds to a 0.0-point difference with Trump slightly ahead. But the far-left House Democratic candidates lost these five districts by an average margin of 43.3% to 53.6%, or 10.3 points. That is a 10.2-point underperformance by these leftwing candidates compared to Biden in their districts.

This underperformance was so severe that two of the five far-left candidates in Red-to-Blue races managed to lose districts Biden won. Kara Eastman in NE02 underperformed Biden’s margin by 11.1 points while Dana Balter in NY24 underperformed Biden’s margin by a staggering 19.1 points. Both managed to hand winnable seats to Republicans for the second election in a row.

Simply put, enough with the "more progressive candidates mean we'll win automatically!" The stats indicate it is not that simple. The GOP dominate messaging because they'll say anything, their supporters will buy anything they say. Many Republicans currently think Biden is a socialist, a concept so absolutely preposterous that it nearly induces a coma to consider that yes, people believe it, People want to blame the Democrats on messaging. The Democrats need to improve on messaging, but ultimately they'll lose. The GOP has no boundaries.

There is no one solution, nor may there even be a solution. The 2016 economy should have given the election to the Democrat candidate. 2000 as well, right before the mini-recession. The GOP seems to do so well on messaging, that it'd be wonderful to say that Biden's forward move on policy and hopefully a reopened economy boom will make it easy for the Dems in 2022, but the truth is the GOP has radicalized the message so much, accomplishments for the Dems with the economy can be overridden to even denied.

So where to go from here? Most likely several paths. Progressives in safe districts, pushing hard on policy (fuck the GOP) in Congress and the White House, perfect the messaging to counter "socialism" labels, jar whatever the heck Abrams came up with and pass it around to unlock the turnout power-up, any progressive running in a purple district needs to prove they have the charisma and ability to drive turnout. Winning a primary isn't enough. And about higher taxes? Let's just make it clear, "Economic growth through investment in our nation means more people make more money and they end up better off even with a slightly higher rate."

Ultimately, it probably won't matter, but the Dems need to try to improve because the US has failed to address several problems for decades (like Medicare/Social Security solvency, infrastructure, de-employment through automation and robots), and the Dems aren't particularly good enough to solve it now, and we know the GOP is an absolute failure at solving any problem. The Dems are our best worst chance at getting the US through to the next stage of this Global Economy anywhere near the lead.

 

[Rhea]

Thanks, this is the kind of information I've been wondering about. To answer what data supports the "go progressive" versus the "progressives just cannot yet support an election without appealing to the middle."


I agree that we need to stay more moderate at least until we control enough to dismantle gerrymandering. Until we are done with that, the progressive voice (the one I identify with but don't think is numerous enough to pull home alone) needs to join with the moderates, not demonize them.