Damn, that brings up a factor I've never thought of.
I wonder to what degree the Republican habit of pushing their most unapologetic conservatives to prominent positions has helped promote those positions, while the Democratic habit (at least since the 1990s) of marginalizing their most enthusiastic liberals has cast a wet blanket over public support for liberal ideas?
Like I said, psychological research shows that people tend to adopt the positions of those they stan. And Republicans have kept putting up extremist far-right politicians into power. Meanwhile Democrats keep putting mealy-mouthed centrists afraid to push strong positions into those same roles. Has that potentially resulted in less enthusiastic public support for liberal positions than otherwise would have been possible?
I've always thought the Democrats' failure to promote leftists has led to lack of enthusiasm among those who were already leftists and those who would benefit from leftist policies. But it might also have reduced the # of potential leftists full-stop and thus hurt the party doubly.
I thought this was obvious. The way the DNC and the liberal media have framed the liberal/conservative divide has always come off to me as a purposeful tactic to quell public support. Constant calls for bipartisanship, "we need a strong Republican party", "Republicans take back your party", "how are we going to pay for that?", climate science vs climate deniers being placed on equal standing, 'can't go too far left', etc. Not to mention joining the Republicans in punching left as well. They keep telling us we need to meet conservatives halfway and push moderates, and what kind of message does that send?
The correct path is always framed as somewhere in between liberals and Republicans, never directly liberals alone, and definitely never anything further left. The liberal establishment never stands on the liberal platform except to ride the waves of public uproar every now and then. The solutions are always presented as "just a disagreement of beliefs" even if one side is pushing to remove voting rights for black citizens and calling the other side child groomers. If the establishment Dems stood firm on their platform and spoke with conviction you could create actual true believers from it. Currently the message is muddled and more and more people who don't pay attention are thinking centrism is a reasonable take. Bernie's following isn't just from populist policies, but the conviction he has in speaking about and fighting for it.
I do think Biden is making some effort (but nowhere near enough), but people have been calling out the Democrats for not wanting to actually govern for decades.
I think they need to hammer on less tasteful aspects like election fraud and abortion (to split the women), maybe touch on Bailey's stupid attempt to secede the rest of the state from Chicago to prop up his incompetency. Dude is a legit idiot. But Bruce Rauner was elected so the window to winning is always open.
