Quote:
Originally Posted by well named
Matthew Yglesias: Democrats are learning the wrong lesson from Donald Trump: He ran as a moderate, and it worked
The underlying point about moderates doing better in elections seems sound enough. The argument about Trump specifically is interesting. I'm not sure I entirely buy it.
I think he has a point but it seems like it might be more correct to say just that Trump never really had many coherent policy positions, and he said enough (incompatible) things to seem plausibly moderate? But his only really firm policy positions (on immigration) were not particularly moderate, I don't think.
But the polling data about perceptions of Trump as less conservative than Romney/Bush is interesting.
I'm still not voting for Biden though :P
I think Trump almost transcended any categorization of moderate/conservative. He was his own unique TV character entity. He ran and won as a rich celebrity alpha male.
I am not convinced that the racist stuff is why he got elected (not that it didn't appeal to some voters I'm sure). He won because he stood on stage, larger physically than the other candidates, and smacked them down with insults and schoolyard bully nicknames. They were all smarter than Trump but had no idea how to counter it. It worked. Trump was a showman and he knew that the public wanted a show of alpha-dog dominance, not policy. When asked about calling women pigs, he answered "only Rosie O'Donnell", to huge laughter from his supporters. That line probably helped propel him to the presidency. What that says about the electorate, I'm not sure. It's pretty depressing though.
He also boiled his campaign down to a single white-nostalgia motto, which may have been the most genius bit of political sloganeering ever created. MAGA was all he needed. No policies required. Were his policies moderate? Who knows. Did anyone who voted for him go to his web site to check out his policy positions, or could they even articulate what his positions were? They knew he wanted a wall, he talked a lot about veterans and bringing back manufacturing jobs, and he was rich and famous.