Again, the point I’m making is how easy it will be to get those people to turn on you, and the “fuck ‘em” line of attack isn’t going to win you their votes. And make no mistake: You need their votes more than they need yours.

No. “Center” is, by definition, the middleground. Moderate literally means “average in amount, intensity, etc.” If you stake claim to two poles on a spectrum, the moderate point of view will be held by the mass of people on congregating on either side of the “center” of that spectrum.

Obviously, AOC beat Crowley (and good for her, genuinely). But Crowley handled that challenge by trying to ignore it, which was a really dumb decision given how frustrated and blindsided his district was in the aftermath of the Trump victory.

Nobody’s telling you what you’re allowed to do. I’m telling you what you can afford to do and what you can’t afford to do. When you are an ideological minority, you cannot afford to alienate allies who belong to the ideological “center.” Moderates, by definition, are the average voter. Also by definition, there are…

When the crisis of 2008 hit, I was in my late 20s. I was living in NYC. I had a two-year-old and my wife was pregnant with our second. We had no assets to speak of and no savings. We had plenty of student loan debt, and my wife was laid off from her job while six months pregnant, which also left us uninsured while she…

I’m not suggesting to kick anybody out. I’m suggesting that she make an effort to understand why the party is as big as it is. Why it needs to be that big. Even in her district, would she win a three-way race? Would Bernie Sanders win a three-way race in Vermont?

So you do not think a party that has candidates with views that stretch from clear from the middle of the right all the way over to the left (or to put it in other terms 3/4 of the entire political spectrum) is not an overly large or big party?

She’s welcome to not be a Democrat, though. If she’d like, she can run as an independent in the fall and see how things work out for her in a general election in which she has to run against a run of the mill Democrat.

You don’t see how “I hope everybody would rally behind Bernie if he were the nominee” is incongruous with “The Democratic Party is too bid of a tent,” and “Oh my god, in any other country Joe Biden and I wouldn’t even be in the same party”?

I think you’re underselling Biden’s appeal to the people he appeals to. I think there are definitely a lot of people who will support Biden because they think he has the best shot of defeating the president, but I think they think that for a reason.

She’s probably not the ideal person to make that argument given that she was saying not even a month ago that the Democratic party was too big of a tent. Ultimately, that’s one of the central flaws of committing yourself to being an anti-establishment politician. What happens when you need the support of the…

There’s a difference between threading the needle between idealism and realism and making contradictory statements on specific policy goals. One is coherent, but pragmatic. The other is incoherent and sends the message that the candidate is unserious, untrustworthy and/or unreliable.

Psst...no it’s not. Harris lacked any coherent message and introduced herself on the national stage by attacking Joe Biden in a manner she understood (or should have understood) would be interpreted by the white people she needed to attract as calling him racist.

Part of the problem with that is she knows she mishandled it and doesn’t know how to talk about it. One of her and really most of the candidate’s flaws is that she has a tendency to run from her mistakes. If she had said from the beginning, we need Medicare for All, but that obviously can only be achieved as a long…

People are definitely attracted to Biden based on those things. But they’re also deeply uncomfortable with (and know the broader electorate will resist) disruptive economic policy. Go look at the age range of his supporters. He wins Gen X, Boomers and everyone above (by a lot). These are people beginning to think…

IA and NH are mostly white. SC’s Democratic population is disproportionately black. And NV has a pretty significant Latinx population. 

Why did you stop the block quote in mid-sentence? Did your mother, the political scientist, not teach you how to make an intellectually honest argument?

Given that Biden’s pretty strong with black people, the banana line is...probably unintentionally...poorly chosen.

Indeed. How could someone with little name recognition possibly improve it given 15 months of lead time, a dozen debates, Twitter, Facebook, a hundred different news shows, podcasts, etc. There’s just no way!

It wasn’t until the 70s that we even had literal democratic nominating contests in most states. In 1968, there were only 13 primary/caucuses. Hubert Humphrey wasn’t even on most of the ballots of those 13 contests, and he still ended up being the nominee.