Definitely not worried that Bernie is too left. See my later post. I'm worried about candidates that (fairly or not) get labeled as "establishment". Good examples of this are Biden and Warren.

Disagree, I think this is kind of myopic. We are spotting most of the voting populace about 20 IQ and, much more importantly, hundreds of hours spent thinking about politics. The truth is that you win elections by throwing out a couple ideas ("health care for all!" is a great one. Who gives a **** about the details?) and being charismatic. "Too far left" is only a problem if the other side paints you that way and it sticks.

Well yea, but I think that's the opposite of what I'm talking about unless you're a Fox News viewer who believes that HRC is the "most liberal" person to have ever lived.

JoeC's posts came off (whether intentional or not) as "simmer down lefties, this guy is charismatic and can win the general so please can we just choose him and not 'gamble' on an actual progressive?"

I think there are two parts of Beto that people on the left shouldnt like.
The first is the fact that his position on economics issues seem to be centrist. I think this is negotiable for him. He will have to move to the left here or he will get killed in the primary.

Second is his positions seems to very police friendly. I think this is non negotiable for here because I think his strategy is to say yes to everything the police wants EXCEPT when it comes to race. That way he can pander to liberals because he is attacking the shooting of black people while at the same time not seeming a guy that hates the police. This is very smart for him imo. When he gets attacked on this on the primary he can defend himself saying "I have been one the major speakers against shooting of unarmed black people".

I think his strategy should be to move enough to the left on economics so he play the "graduality" card. He has to say I want the same as Bernie but Bernie wants it tommorrow and I think we need to take it slow.
If he says Bernie is loony then he is toast.

well i guess it's next to impossible to "read into your posts" because you're all over the place and seemingly having disagreements/arguments with yourself...? idk man, whatever.

Electability is extremely important; even a centrist is better than Trump by orders of magnitude.

Electability has little correlation with position on the progressive/centrist spectrum. This is a point I think a lot of you are missing.

Beto sure strikes me as pretty electable compared to the field. Litigating this point would take too much of my energy, but I am willing to structure a bet on it.

Given all of the above, relatively electable progressive (Bernie) > relatively electable but not reliably progressive (Beto) >>>>>>> progressive but not relatively electable (Warren) > people who are neither reliably progressive nor relatively electable (Biden, Kamala)

I really don't see how I've argued against myself.

wow imagine typing this in december 2018

you basically misinterpreted my whole point from the beginning, so yea. just stop, it's dumb.

I mean, JoeC is definitely right about that. It's personality that matters most, not policy. That Bill Clinton guy did pretty well, I'd say.

It was wrong when centrists argued for years that you can't win as a progressive. It's equally wrong now for progressives to argue that you can't win as a centrist. Examples abound showing both types of candidates doing well this past election.

It's good to worry about how Beto would actually govern. I'm worried about it. But if you think he wouldn't wafflecrush in the general you are terribly mistaken. The percentage of people who get pumped up to go out and vote for someone based on their policy ideas is quite small. Generally, the starting point is "I like that guy" and then people back into the policy stuff afterward.

Pretty much agree. Good looking and who could win in a fight are also important qualities.

If Romney had kept his powder dry and ran in '16, I think he would've been able to topple Trump in the Jeb! de facto early-lead-dog role and boat raced it.

Almost certainly you mean product rather than sum. I am quite sure that you would rather be 60% with someone you agreed with 80% of the time than than 45% with someone you agreed with 100%.

Bingo, great post.

I mean FFS 16% of Bernie primary voters in Pennsylvania then voted for Trump in the general. Were they inspired by Trump's memorable speech about how he'd provide healthcare and a college education for all?

No they were probably motivated by Trump talking **** about NAFTA.

Part of the problem with "electability" discussions is thinking that you and/or the Smart People in Charge of These Types of Things can accurately predict who's actually "electable". 2016 illustrates this with at least 3 different candidates.

Another problem is the presumption that clearly stated (or hoarsely shouted), easy to understand, broadly appealing policy goals do not contribute significantly to a politician's likability or charisma (or electability).

It's also errr...one of those logical fallacy thingies. Like, if the candidate is "electable" enough to have gotten through the primary in the current Dem landscape in this high profile election, they're probably "electable" in general.

We can quibble about whether the calculus is, in fact, this simple, but I for one agree that getting Trump out of office is a far higher priority than capturing the incremental difference in policy between a "centrist" Democrat and a "progressive" candidate. And that should be true regardless of whether one thinks centrists or progressives are more electable.

not sure why you think voters don't care about the details. for instance 'health care for all' and 'medicare for all' are two completely different things: one is a vague platitude used by politicians who take money from the pharmaceutical industry while the other is a concrete policy position which benefits the people.

for example, andrew gillum campaigned as a progressive on medicare for all in his primary with huge success but then strangely pivoted to a centrist in the general vowing "access to health care" which likely depressed turnout just enough to cost him (and bill nelson) the razor-thin margin that could've won them the election.

Yeah, with all due respect I just think this is so far off base.

I have no idea why Gillum lost, but I am very sure it wasn't because of the pivot in policy. Who would have changed their voting behavior due to the pivot you described? You really think there are a bunch of Floridians who got bummed out Gillum wasn't progressive enough and stayed home for the general? I'd guess the number of people who fit this description number less than 1,000.

Even people who care a lot about policy (these are few) likely just swallowed it and voted for Gillum anyway. I mean, wouldn't you?

trump clearly didn't win on personality or likability, he won on policy. he promised his voters he'd fight for what they wanted: the wall, an end to immigration, repealing obamacare, ending tpp and nafta, etc.. now contrast this with a centrist approach- obama was the most personable and likeable president probably in history, but he was sadly not a fighter, and his ineffectiveness with regard to policy is what drove the middle-class into the hands of a demagogue like trump.

during the midterms you had progressive ballot initiatives winning countrywide with red states like utah, idaho, and nebraska expanding medicaid and florida restoring voting rights to felons- yet all these states elected republican governors and senators- so why did this happen? it's clear people in both parties want the policy, but they can't tell where centrist dems stand on anything, so they either don't vote or just vote for the republican whose views are generally more clear.

Obama is partly responsible for the election of Trump, but not in the way you suggest.

In academic circles, it’s basically settled that, except during times of extreme crises such as war, most voters are very (I mean VERY) low information with basically no understanding of policy. Even this exception comes with a lot of caveats.

The cost of education is just too high relative to the immediate benefits of casting the “right” vote.

well i'd of voted gillum knowing what a terrible candidate desantis was. yet i'm sure there were other independents, progressives and younger voters who either didn't want to vote for the status quo or realized their vote wasn't going to help everyone get healthcare so they just stayed home. and in a race decided by only 30k votes, the one certainty is that his pivot did not help him win these voters.

A high percent of people are too busy with the normal routine of their lives or not interested in politics to even bother to vote even once every 4 years. That's why 50% turnout is considered high. Half the country doesn't have politics or voting even on their radar.

Nah, it's not impossible. I could have (and did) say that Hillary was a bad candidate well before she won the primary. So did lots of other people here. And no, I did not vote for Bernie.

I do agree that Democratic establishment "Smart People in Charge" are terrible at this, however.

(Note I am talking specifically about general elections here. Personality still matters in primaries but it certainly matters less as the electorate and dynamics are very different there.)

Trump won on policy? Wat? His supporters do not give a **** about policy. His appeal was racism and authoritarianism. (Some) people liked what he represented on those fronts. The average Trump fan couldn't even tell you what NAFTA stands for, let alone the policy details.

Furthermore, the whole "why Trump won" thing is presuming a false conclusion. Trump was a terrible candidate with terrible likability scores. He only received 46% of the vote and lost the popular vote. He "won" mostly because Hillary was nearly as bad as him and because he got lucky down the stretch and because we have a joke electoral college system.

Also, you know Obama was like a GOAT level candidate, right? Using him as an example of bad electoral centrism is kinda weird. He crushed in '08 and won pretty solidly in '12 despite his only signature achievement being unpopular. Dude is a perfect example of personality being more important than anything else.

[Part of] Trump's appeal is that he gives people an explanation for why they're hurting or why America is in trouble, and articulates very clear steps (policy) on how he will fix it.

In many cases the people are not actually hurting (some are racist Floridians in cushy retirement communities, for example), but Fox News (and most news in general) tells them that they are or that they/we are in imminent danger. And of course, his solutions are mostly the opposite of the correct ones.

But neither of those things matter, because liberals barely even tried in 2016.

I think you're just nitting here. He was advocating an bunch of racist and authoritarian policies. Granted, these policies were lacking in detail and substance (e.g. "I'm going to build a wall"), but I think they still count.

You're right that they couldn't accurately tell you what's in NAFTA, but they had their own idea of what was in it (basically it was bad for them because Trump said so). So, voting for someone because they're going to get rid of NAFTA is a vote based on policy. It is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the policy, but it's still a policy-based vote.

No one (I hope) is claiming that Trumpkins are making informed policy-based decisions. But in their own minds, they definitely think they are making policy-based decisions.

I agree with the rest of your post. But I don't think those things and the idea that many Trump voters based decisions on policy (albeit poorly) are mutually exclusive.