I misread Bernie’s broad 2016 ideological coalition as a generic candidate net favorability vote. But it now seems like he combined ideological objections to Hillary from 2 directions, the economic left & the social/racial/gender right, & has mostly retained only the left side
— Matt Grossmann (@MattGrossmann) March 8, 2020
I think both Clinton and Sanders perceived Hillary’s attacks on Bernie as insufficiently left on culture to be effective when in fact they were counterproductive.
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 8, 2020
This misunderstanding went on to shape many candidates’ 2020 decision-making. https://t.co/RK1Dj4jA95
Rural/non-college white vote for Sanders in 2016 was mostly socially right of Hillary and those voters are comfortable with Biden now (and in the general that could potentially include some Obama- Trump voters too).
— Campaign Diaries (@CampaignDiaries) March 8, 2020
Bernie’s association with the “squad” cost him this vote.
A similar point, looking at why Warren’s campaign imploded. Via Tucker Carlson:
“Warren got derailed. More precisely, she got infected with a virulent strain of identity politics…. Elizabeth Warren went intersectional, and it killed her.”
2 Comments for “Voters Don’t Share the Intersectional Left’s Views”
posted by Jorge on
“Rural/non-college white vote for Sanders in 2016 was mostly socially right of Hillary and those voters are comfortable with Biden now (and in the general that could potentially include some Obama- Trump voters too).”
There’s a strange sort of thinking I encounter every so often but only on the left. Some people think that just because right-veering Democrats are weird, they don’t exist.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
There’s a strange sort of thinking I encounter every so often but only on the left. Some people think that just because right-veering Democrats are weird, they don’t exist.
I agree, but I think that the idea that “right-veering Democrats … don’t exist” is largely the product of hype from Republican-aligned shills, who (as Stephen often does on IGF) single out views from the fringe left and treat those views as if they are prevalent among the mainstream left.
The hype is a product/example of a classic logical error, but is effective with low-information folks, giving them the impression that all left/liberals hold the fringe views of a few on the left.
In a fact-based analysis, the hype doesn’t stand up for a New York minute, as exit polling in the Democratic Party’s primaries makes clear enough (20% identify as “Very Liberal”, 40% identify as “Somewhat Liberal”, and 40% identify as “Moderate or Conservative”), but that doesn’t stop the hype, because the hype is good fodder for the Republican propaganda mill.
It has been this way for a long time. The propaganda mill has been portraying Democrats as communists/socialists, for example, for as long as I’ve been involved in politics (the 1960’s) and before my time. It didn’t matter to the propaganda mill that it wasn’t true, because it scared conservatives. But it was all nonsense, as is the current hype about “all Democrats are intersectionalists”.