Tuesday’s election results demolished the conventional wisdom that Democrats need to run cautious, corporate-friendly centrists to win in purple and red states.
Being the sort of candidate who motivates special interests to spend a fortune trying to stop you from getting elected makes you a weaker candidate, if all else is equal, where “weaker” here is referring to electability rather than ideology or the preferences of a Platonic ideal public.
Okay, I don’t really agree that having special interests spend against you makes you a weak candidate. Especially when that money doesn’t lead to your loss. If someone puts a 5 foot high hurdle in front of you, you are not weaker if you fail to clear it by the same margin as the runner next to you clears their 3 foot hurdle.
In fact going into the next race without knowing what the hurdle height will be, I’m more likely to pick the runner who cleared 5 feet. You can’t rely on your positions not attracting outside opponents, but you can rely on conservatives to make accomplishing anything good into a fight. I would rather have candidates ready for that fight than ones who are trying to avoid it by triangulating their positions to not offend conservatives.
It makes the candidate weaker than he would otherwise be if everything else was equal, but you’re right that a candidate opposed by special interests can overall be stronger than a candidate not opposed by them. My point is just that you can’t judge a candidate’s strength or weakness as something independent of those attack ads.
Well since the attack ads were primarily focused on his name, religion, and ethnicity, I don’t think we should accept that as a rationale. I found myself unable to skip them when they played, and holy shit were they bad. His ability to attract those attack ads was almost entirely because he offended AIPAC and because he is Muslim. They tried some other tactics early on (Medicare, ‘fake doctor’, etc), but the last few weeks has been almost nothing but attacks on his identity.
Being the sort of candidate who motivates special interests to spend a fortune trying to stop you from getting elected makes you a weaker candidate, if all else is equal, where “weaker” here is referring to electability rather than ideology or the preferences of a Platonic ideal public.
Okay, I don’t really agree that having special interests spend against you makes you a weak candidate. Especially when that money doesn’t lead to your loss. If someone puts a 5 foot high hurdle in front of you, you are not weaker if you fail to clear it by the same margin as the runner next to you clears their 3 foot hurdle.
In fact going into the next race without knowing what the hurdle height will be, I’m more likely to pick the runner who cleared 5 feet. You can’t rely on your positions not attracting outside opponents, but you can rely on conservatives to make accomplishing anything good into a fight. I would rather have candidates ready for that fight than ones who are trying to avoid it by triangulating their positions to not offend conservatives.
It makes the candidate weaker than he would otherwise be if everything else was equal, but you’re right that a candidate opposed by special interests can overall be stronger than a candidate not opposed by them. My point is just that you can’t judge a candidate’s strength or weakness as something independent of those attack ads.
Well since the attack ads were primarily focused on his name, religion, and ethnicity, I don’t think we should accept that as a rationale. I found myself unable to skip them when they played, and holy shit were they bad. His ability to attract those attack ads was almost entirely because he offended AIPAC and because he is Muslim. They tried some other tactics early on (Medicare, ‘fake doctor’, etc), but the last few weeks has been almost nothing but attacks on his identity.