The largest blocks of low hanging fruit voters that are at risk of not turning out are angry women and angry non-whites. Biden doesn't do particularly well with either group.

IMO if there is any democrat out there who isn’t going to vigorously support Biden if he were running against trump they are a lost cause and hate their country.

Yea, lol, seriously what is this crap

The whole point is that there are millions of people that are not dyed in the wool Democratic party members. But you still want them to vote for you in the election. They will come vote for an inspirational candidate that speaks to their needs. Viewing these people as traitors is a flawed view that makes it less likely to win the election.

Acting like people owe the party something, instead of the other way around, is crap.

There’s waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more at stake here. This is such an obtuse way of looking at it that I find it hard to believe you’re being serious.

lmao this is definitely a 100% correct characterization of previous discussions and it's definitely thanks to you that people are "coming around" to this radical new view that HRC sucked

Ok, so what? You can be right and then you can have a second term of Trump plus a cookie. FWIW, i don't hate Biden or anything, but the attitude that you vote D or you are a traitor, is awful no matter how bad Trump is. A lot of this sentiment is projection though from people who would have a hard time voting for Bernie or Warren or someone like that (let alone vigorously supporting them) vs. Trump or any R.

My assertion here is that winning the election is important, and that the Dems have a problem with tackling elections from the perspective of the way things should be instead of the way things actually are. I don't know what you mean by "there's more at stake". My whole point is that winning the election is more important than the establishment D's obsession with winning over people from the Dem side instead because they feel that's how society should work, instead of focusing on the bigger issue of mobilizing different constituencies into a winning coalition.

Democratic party already is that, you've got the old school "let's be nice and compromise and play by the rules and everything will come out peaches and roses" with the new school of are you ****ing kidding me? Roughly 50/50. Hard to get both sides to eagerly show up for the other 100, which is what's needed now.

Nikki Haley rumors, don't see she tries to primary trump unless **** really starts hitting the fan, like more than even they can hand wave, which is pretty hard.

Biden vs Trump is rough but doable, he'll get painted as the old establishment though but without the blatant sexist **** to go against him and maybe only half the anti obama racist venom. Beto did get a higher % than I thought he would in that poll but he's still got to get out there, Gilibrand is basically Hillary as a politician so she's out for me, Warren is probably drawing the worst vs trump--she will not move people in the midwest especially with non stop pocohontas/socialism fear mongering. They'll do the last one anyway but the key is that not to get actual traction. Bernie does have **** in his background that hasn't gotten unleashed yet so not the obvious landslide like people in here think but winnable. These are all gut feels though, *shrugs*.

You genuinely think Biden would get beat by Trump? Literally anyone except Hillary could have beat Trump last time and his presidential approval is really bad. Tons of folks voted purely against the clintons and Biden is not a Clinton so he easily wins IMO.

Hillary got as many votes as obama did in 2012.

And lost. That's why the Dems need a new plan to, you know, win.

I think this is exactly wrong. The establishment dyed in the wool Dems will vote for anyone the Dems put forward. The angry, ready for a representative potential Dem voters are the ones that matter.

Biden is fine in a vacuum but he plays to exactly the wrong crowds. The traditionalist Dems don't need to be persuaded, they're voting D for sure unless its like a Bloomberg wolf in sheep's clothing candidate. The white blue collar racist males that went from Trump might go for Biden but it's basically coin toss.

This analysis is easier in hindsight, but I think Biden would have won for the same reason Bernie would have won. He would have done better in the midwest than Hillary. Going in though you would have had to weigh that against North Carolina and Florida where Hillary may well have been expected to do better. Since Hillary lost North Carolina and Florida anyway, it would have been hard for anyone else to have done worse.

I think this is right. If there's any group that it makes electoral sense to take for granted it's the most loyal party members. And I don't think much of this is about winning over Trump voters or Trump winning over D's. Half the eligible voters in the country don't vote. If someone can get 15% of them to vote, they will win.

LOL at you still not getting it. For someone who claims to be ultra focused on logic, you keep making the same mistake.

You could take your theory to the extreme of never voting unless the candidate is 100% perfect. Obviously that is absurd, which shows there is gray area here and that you need to weigh whatever value you put on the "increased candidate quality theory" (real but minimal imo) against the harm that you cause by not voting for the better candidate right now.

This is further illustrated in suzzer's hypothetical that you kept ducking, because you want to believe the analysis should end at your theory instead of comparing it with the harm you cause by not voting.

You mean those same white racist blue collar males that voted for O in PA, WI, MI, IA, NC, FL 4 year before? Did Trump perform an exorcism on them or hypnotize them?

Just imagine if all those people who weren't energized voted for HRC anyway, I wonder what we'd be discussing now?

The 5-4 liberal Supreme Court we just locked in for a generation?

The potential of this Supreme Court to put an end to gerrymandering and voter suppression?

The improvements to the ACA we probably would have made by now?

How to hang on to the House and/or Senate in the midterms, and whether or not HRC was going to have a shot at being re-elected?

Signed,
A guy who voted for Bernie in the primary, was not at all energized for HRC, but knew what was at stake and got off his ass and voted for the WAY lesser of two evils.

Those are the ones. This is the whole point. If the election in 2020 is about that relatively small number of blue collar white males then 2020 might end up looking a lot like 2016. Does it really make sense to go all in on Uncle Joe's ability to turn that sliver of the population back, vs. finding a candidate that will mobilize the much larger constituencies that the Ds should be actively trying to appeal to? The Trump administration is actively anti-woman. So let's put forward a handsy 70+ year old man who took part in undermining Anita Hill (RIGHT AFTER Anita Hill 2.0)? The Trump administration is actively white supremacist. So let's put forward ANOTHER "super predator" era Dem and stir all that **** up again?

And when Joe is nominated and loses, we'll blame the women and black voters that didn't show up. Yay establishment D.

I don't think you can win elections by increasing the percentage of folks that are as far to the left as you fellows. There just aren't that many.

Trump dialed into the psyche of middle Americans who felt rightly or wrongly disenfranchised by the D party.

A simple example. I woke up this morning and looked at RCP and one of 2 polls early today was CD MN 8

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...vich-6355.html

As you can see Obama won this CD by 5.5% and Trump won it by 15.6%.... that's a large change in the electorate and those people could certainly be brought back into the fold by a "moderate" (to the rest of the country, but not to you fellas) candidate.

But please nominate Ms Warren or Ms Harris or Mr Booker please :-)

I'm not even talking about picking somebody far to the left of Biden. I'm talking about picking somebody that is younger, whose appeal isn't based on the needs of white male blue collar workers, who can capitalize on current trends to mobilize votes. There are plenty of people that aren't on the far left that are still looking for a representative in the middle.

For the record whites make up 72% of the US population. Exit polls showed Trump won 52% of white women so please continue with the deplorable and racist stuff....

With 52% of 72%, you can't possibly lose!