What did Democrats do wrong?

[dirtywick]

you should probably check into that imo

 

[Reformed Offlian]

Bernie quit the Democratic party when he lost the primaries.

You seem to have this conceit that Sanders was a career Democrat who only left the party in a huff relatively recently.

Bernie Sanders has been independent for decades. His refusal to formally join the Democratic party has been a thing throughout his career.

The relationship between candidacy and party affiliation is more nuanced than you assume, even in a politial system as two-party-dominated as the US.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Well, that's what I get for being sarcastic.

Well, we were working with the "lose 1 to gain 5 vs lose 5 to gain 1" scenario that Beelzebuddy introduced, and there are more in the center, center left and center right than on the far left by a significant margin.

Yeah, I did it that way on purpose. If I'd have said the hypothetical marginalized voters were one centrist and five progressives you'd have insisted the Democratic party stay with the one centrist because the other five weren't appreciative enough to deserve representation, but I figured the other way around you'd be more likely to engage in the non-zero-sum exercise. And holy crap did you! I wasn't really expecting four entire pages of you and Emily's Cat creaming your shorts about how bad you think progressives are given the flimsiest of excuses. Get a grip. Or maybe a room, I don't know, you do you.

But speaking of losing some voters to gain others, and also things Democrats have done wrong, here's good 'ol Chuck Schumer's classic 2016 strategy:

For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.

The success of the Clinton administration, ushered in by her dominant performance in all of these swing states, ultimately proved the wisdom of tossing long term supporters under the bus in a relentless pursuit of the middle.