Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Wasn’t There Supposed to Be a Surge of New Democratic Voters by Now?

Wasn’t There Supposed to Be a Surge of New Democratic Voters by Now?
Excerpt: One reason to look forward to Super Tuesday is that it will give us our first large-scale comparison of turnout in the Democratic primaries of 2016 and this year’s primaries. Since about late Election Night 2016, Democrats have believed that President Donald Trump is a one-man Democratic get-out-the-vote machine, and they certainly saw supporting evidence for that theory in the 2018 House races. Suburban soccer moms and white-collar dads who had previously split favorably to Republicans turned to the Democrats in significant numbers. But you don’t run on socialism, banning private health insurance, a ban on fracking, abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, banning U.S. exports of oil, or praise Fidel Castro (see below), and pledge to allow convicted felons to vote from prison while serving sentences if you want to keep suburban soccer moms and white-collar dads. The argument of the Bernie Sanders campaign is that he doesn’t have to worry about alienating or frightening the suburban soccer moms and white-collar dads, because he’s going to bring out a big number of people who previously didn’t vote. As David Frum summarized: “The Sanders campaign is a bet that the 2020 race can be won by mobilizing the Americans least committed to the political process while alienating and even offending the Americans most committed to it.”

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