WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING

Heading into the 2018 midterm elections, the Democratic Party deployed a politically wise divide-and-conquer strategy. In homogeneously liberal areas (like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district in New York City), strong progressives ran and sometimes won impressive victories. But in more moderate districts and states, more centrist candidates ran and also did well. …

But in a presidential race, a party can’t divide and conquer. Only one ticket will go up against Donald Trump and Mike Pence in 2020. … Democrats still need to prevail in states where the population isn’t very progressive — or where it might be potentially progressive in some areas of policy (health care) but not in others (abortion, immigration, guns). …

Today’s Democrats are dreaming about magically overcoming their problems, not by responding reasonably to the demands of the electoral map (by moderating their positions on some issues), but by embracing their inner democratic socialist. They hope and pray, in other words, that if they pretend their structural problems don’t exist, they’ll be rescued by demographic trends or Trump’s awfulness or their own charm and charisma or the latent leftist convictions buried deep within the American electorate.

None of that is likely to be true. The Democratic shift to the left in absolutely every area of policy at once may or may not motivate ever-more people to vote for them — but it’s quite unlikely to help them carry more states. Which means it’s unlikely to get them a victory in the actual election they need to win.

Damon Linker, The Week