Not sure what you think that “cite” supports but certainly not your claim. But again an irrelevant aside.
My take FWIW is that MA voters prefer an establishment candidate and not someone who promises to disrupt. An argument has been made in these threads that the key swingables specifically are more attracted to a disruptor than to an establishment friendly candidate. And the idea may have merit. If so yes there is a special case to plead.
Educated white suburbanites want a disruptor? 
And the proof of this is that Sanders and Warren are outpolling Biden in key swingable states? Right?
Well, of course I had to look this up, and…kinda, yeah.
The only general election polling of a swing State in the last month was in Michigan, which showed Biden beating Trump by only 1% more than Sanders.
Going back two months, we have polls of WI, PA, MI and FL. In Wisconsin, Bernie does beat Trump by 1% more than Biden does. All the others have our strongest candidates as Biden, Sanders and Warren, in that order. But Sanders and Warren are closer to Biden than they are in most national polls.
So in absolute terms, Biden still does best. But it does appear that Sanders and Warren are more appealing to swing State voters than they are to voters in non-swing States.
And on the national level, Biden’s numbers have declined relative to Sanders and Warren since those polls were taken, so it’s reasonable to guess that they would look even better if those States were polled now.
Those are not the swingables; those are swung. Educated white voters are now solidly D. Romney-Clinton voters are now pretty much swung against Trump too. He’s fixed them there. The swingables are Obama-Trump voters, and both they AND younger progressive voters are attracted to those who promise greater change of the system. They both are groups that feel the system is not set up to their benefit and would rather give it a spin.
No. It is not. Despite the numbers as quoted above I don’t think they mean much right now.
And I certainly do not present the idea as something proven but as an argument that I am not convinced of, but am no longer completely convinced is not correct either. I am not sure these are voters “in the middle” so much as they are orthogonally just wanting things shaken up: so long as it is a change it might be something that helps them more than the hand they feel they are currently dealt. Trump is no longer that new hand.
Yes, many educated white Republicans have swung. But they are tenuous, and someone who promises to take away their Cadillac health plan and attack Wall Street could scare them off. And there’s more gold in them thar hills. We can get even more of those voters if we nominate someone moderate.
I’m leery of arguments that are basically: “We should do this time what we should have done last time.” Kind of ignores that this time AIN’T last time.
A more relevant to me data point than national head to heads is the details in the recent Quinnipiac poll..
The argument goes you want a candidate to drive young progressive turnout and get that improved share of non-college educate white voters, who, I posit, share a desire for disruption.
Warren way leads the “very liberal” group with 40% support, and is second to Biden with the non-college educated white voters. On the top with white college educated voters btw … over Biden. So Slacker she is who you want to support if that is the cohort you are most concerned about. Her big weakness is with Black voters. Biden rules there. (And with older voters.)
I know you’re smart enough to know those aren’t the same educated white voters I’m talking about. The educated white people who like Warren are her base: white liberals who voted Democratic long before she entered politics.
It should be noted that Diehl (Warren’s senate opponent in 2018) ran on an extremely pro-Trump message. On the one hand I do think this is because Massachusetts is an example of a state where Trump’s appeal would hit more conservatives and generally disengaged voters than a small-government conservative. It is problematic that even in one of the two most liberal states in the US, Warren still had trouble with appealing to Trump’s marginal voters.
I think people get a bit confused about MA because we’ve had two moderate Republican governors in recent memory. The main reasons for that are that a lot of people (including Democratic voters) want low state taxes, some state govt scandals make people distrust state Democrats and anyone who wants to spend more money on xyz program, and the state legislature is so overwhelmingly blue that they can always override a governor’s veto if they can unite. The GOP minority in the electorate is pretty receptive to Trump.
Some interesting nuggets there. Weird to me that Biden is a very close third among “very liberal” voters. And Sanders is significantly MORE popular with black voters than white ones. So much for that stereotype.
But Slacker has a point, in that this poll only includes people who plan to vote in the Democratic primary. It’s probably not safe to assume that because Democratic members of some demographic group favor a certain candidate, that non-Democrat members of that cohort will feel the same way.
(I couldn’t resist :p)
Oof. That’s even worse, then. Hundreds of thousands of voters who supported another Democratic woman crossed over to vote for a Trumpite against Warren? :smack:
Yeah it’s worrying. I have to hope that a similar demographic in the Midwest has soured on Trump enough to counter this effect.
Basically I think Bernie can win by bringing in left-wingers who usually don’t vote, and by getting crossover appeal with angry, disaffected white people. Warren HAS to bring in left-wingers in droves in a general against Trump because she’s not going to overlap with many of his marginal voters.
It should be noted that Healy’s opponent was almost invisible - I honestly wasn’t even aware she was running opposed in 2018.
Yeah I just watched the speech. It’s easy to give an “immense” speech that’s just essentially criticizing something that’s bad: gun violence and Donald Trump. That’s all he did. It’s a hell of a lot harder to deliver a convincing speech about an actual, specific, PLAN to do something to improve the country. And his vocal delivery and even his facial expressions reminded me of George W. Bush without the Texas accent - no shit. I’m not terribly impressed by this particular speech.
I’ll split the difference and say that it was a good speech but not “immense”.
Bullock cautions Democrats not to “blow it” by promising to abolish private insurance or give coverage to undocumented immigrants.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/steve-bullock-trump-reelection-2020-1451575
Bullock is not my choice for the nominee but he’s 100 percent right: a moderate Dem will carry a progressive state, but a progressive dem might not carry a swing state. The map naturally favors the moderate unless you can fundamentally move the country to the left, which would probably not happen unless there’s an economic crisis.
The Dems need to abolish the primaries and return to the Smoke-Filled Rooms model. The Smoke-Filled Rooms got them FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. The primaries got them Dukakis, Mondale and Hillary. Just sayin’…
And, in the first year they were fully implemented, McGovern! I 100% agree that this would be better, but it would send too many Democrats around the bend. Just not possible to put this toothpaste back in the tube, unfortunately.