anyway, i also think the Harris campaign should appeal to moderates. i just think “appeal to moderates” means demonstrating an all-american, mainstream vibe with some strategic shifts on a few issues. which is what the harris campaign is doing!
I feel like this all becomes much clearer when we assume someone who claims to be a "moderate" is often a conservative who doesn't want to say they are a conservative bc of the social blowback - which is, weirdly, something I learned by getting divorced and going on dating apps 😬
It’s high time we all stopped pretending Joe Manchin is a moderate.
Example: she's not really talking about how she'd be the first woman president or southeast asian or anything else unique about her; she's instead playing herself up as a normie middle class person www.politico.com/news/2024/08...
She's talking more about her upbringing and prosecutorial track record.
Also, like, I swear to god, wasn’t “shift on a few popular issues” basically Yglesias’s whole suggested strategy for Dems for years?
harris running explicitly as the prosecutor and “the cop” — with the genial Friday Night Lights coach as her running mate — is exactly the kind of affective moderation that really does appeal to voters
Being able to run as the "normal" candidate is a huge advantage, and one Hillary Clinton didn't have. I remember before the VP debate that year someone referred to Kaine and Pence as "the normals", and Mike Pence was anything but normal! But he did make Trump more palatable to the rank and file GOP.
Moderates, without exception, have utterly incoherent and contradictory politics and they are the number one constituency that votes entirely on vibes.
It is so shocking that they’re doing this, and so unnerving. The first Dem campaign in ages to consider that perhaps Republicans aren’t the default American.
I also think it's a matter of prioritization: not necessarily staking out a mythical "middle ground" on any particular issue, but talking about the issues the middle cares about, which is exactly what they're doing.
Also, "moderates" are so far left of the Republican Party that the pundits can't believe that where she is is actually moderate!