Warren has permanently her base but the suburban soccer moms core. She is fake progressive and in fact a saboteur - look at her now still failing to back Sanders.
Pushing reforms from within is slow but steady straegy. Sanders managed to push the superdelegates to the convention by demanding their scrapping. They feared he would torpedo Hillary if they did not compromise. He was lukewarm in the general and little to aid her. His med4all and green transformation are now mainstream debates.
Compare to the dismal performance of the British Green Party or Lib Dems. 3rd parties are easily scapegoated as spoilers - what Boris did to the Brexit Party. It does cause the big party to broaden their policy umbrella but I wonder if it is as effective as the push from within.
He would have made the blue states bluer. Which was not Hillary’s problem. His support can boost someone in a primary. But he doesn’t have cross-over appeal. He is tribal and that can’t work for Democrats.
Sanders has an appeal to the fringe of hippies and students who will never show up even for Biden. Same as Trump's deplorables. These group is everywhere including purple states - where part of them indeed voted Trump to scorn the DNC. Especially students or young voters. But also Latinos - Arizona, Kansas, Wisconsin, Indiana. These purple states went Trump marginally.
Trump's strength is not the centrist/independent vote but the deplorables. I bet he will spruce up a new "build the wall" rallying cry. Biden with his charisma of a dump rag will have little to match.
I agree that Trump’s appeal is not to moderates. But it is standard Republican fare in its appeal to racists. The dog whistle approach tweaked by a MAGA bullhorn.
With few exceptions, that appeal resonates with the same crowd. Those poor folks have always voted Republican not because of economics, but in spite of it, because the GOP is a vehicle for putting the Negro in his place.
IMO the lesson in Trump’s wafer thin EC victory is there is still one or two last hurrahs, as opposed to zero, left in that approach. Not some unmatchable charisma by a man who can barely string together a coherent sentence. It is still gradually losing its viability despite the distortion of the noise that often accompanies winning.
I believe Trump benefitted from Hillary’s historical unpopularity - they both were historically unpopular nominees - to eke out a victory in the Electoral College. Biden is not that way. I also think he can appeal to those who dumped the GOP after Trump. But more importantly, he can excite the relevant demographics in the Midwest and PA that Hillary failed to get.
You really underrate Trump - he is flhent and fairly smart. He is also quite charismatic and a crowd puller in contrast to Biden. It is a false diagnostic that Hillary lost only on account of unpopularity. Yes it was sexism (aka "unlikability"), coupled with a dubious record of blunders and incompetence, lack of an exciting vision with Obama 2.0 ideas despite the fullterm fatigue. But most importantly the brazen fraud/cheating by the DNC turned off Bernie Bros.
If Trump's strength is exciting the deplorables - who are a fringe ala Bernie Bros - why did Hillary lose the purple states? Boycott by the Bernie Bros is the key cause. Deplorables are a
fringe - no they don't always respond to the same tribal message if ever. Generally there are 3 kinds of elections:
1. Post-GOP - say after Bush Sr or Bush Jr - there is a GOP fatigue and it is easiest for a Dem to win. Obama's big landslide. There is a Left-> Right-> Left-> pendulum.
2. Post-Dem - liberal fatigue makes it easy for GOP to win. Bush Jr, Trump, etc - coming after a Dem full-term at WH.
3. Incumbent - what you have now or 1996, 2004, 2012. It is always tough to dethrone an incumbent. Because they have coalesced their forces while the opposition faces divisive primaries. The DNC vs Sanders situation obviously benefits Trump. Usually the opposition has been reciting some false- and half- truths about the incumbent without asking why despite his glaring flaws he occupies the WH? "Trump is a racist. He is a sexist. He is a this, he is a that. He is a science denier.. ."
We are at 3 now and the Dems are statistically disadvantaged. You need a very strong change mesage that Joe Obama II Biden does not have. Nostalgia works for the core base in Illinois or California you ironically peg on Sanders. Not in the purples... because, well, they are
purple! They have no love lost for either party and vote on the issues of the day. These issues of the day resonate in the progressives much better than the retrospectives.
