People that talk about "pragmatism" and "electability" should check their privilege.

Not white privilege. I'm talking about the vastly more important and influential privilege of money.

Exhibit A: Bill Maher

Bill Maher, like most rich a**holes, don't want radical change, even if the country desperately needs it. After all, things are going great! The system is working fine. If it wasn't for that one guy in the White House, then everything would be perfect.

Anyone who disagrees with that is obviously flawed in some way, and is probably a racist.



upper-class Americans were from 20 to 30 percentage points more likely than the rest of the population to embrace conservative values, and to reject progressive ones. Upper-class Americans were significantly more likely: to embrace the claim that the economy is “fair to most all Americans”; to disagree that “too much power” exists “in the hands of a few rich people and large corporations”; to agree with the meritocratic claim that “if you work hard, you can get ahead” in America; to disagree that the U.S. is “divided” between “haves and have-nots”; to reject the position that U.S. “financial institutions and banks are a major threat to society”; to agree that “Wall Street helps the economy more than it hurts”; and to oppose progressive-left protest groups like Occupy Wall Street, which sought to spotlight issues such as economic stagnation, corporate greed, and Wall Street political power. One’s upper-class status is a highly significant predictor of economic attitudes, after statistically accounting for survey respondents’ other demographics, including partisanship, education level, gender, race, ideology, and age.

Another way of putting it is "upper-class status is the most important predictor of economic attitudes, after statistically accounting for survey respondents’ other identities, including gender, race, and sexual orientation."

Yes, class is not just an identity. Class is THE identity.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that someone wealthy isn't incline to vote for a progressive candidate that will change the status quo. Nor will his/her wealthy family and friends vote for the progressive candidate.

The only working class people they know will often be people who work for them, and if they want to keep their jobs they aren't going to admit to supporting the progressive.

So in their little gilded bubble, the progressive isn't a viable candidate.

Remember how important it was to beat George Bush in 2004 and how John Kerry was more electable?





Fast forward 12 years. We have corporate centrists telling us to shut up and vote for the center-right candidate because only someone that talks like a Republican can win.





Centrists in the Democratic Party that talk about electability are like neocons and war - they are almost always wrong and no one in the media will ever call them on it.

You notice that "electability" and "lesser evilism" go hand in hand.

Both preach that sucking is a positive quality that wins elections, and that voting for what you want is "throwing away your vote".

In case you were wondering, there is a logical, 9-step progression that will get you to that point.



1. The world of politics is coextensive with the range of possibilities permitted by the Democrat-Republican Party system. 2. Therefore, when voting the choice is always and only between a Republican or a Democrat. TINA. 3. There are no finite limits to the possibilities of greater badness. 4. However bad the Democratic candidate may be, the Republican will be worse. (well confirmed empirical generalization) 5. The lesser evil is always a better choice than the greater evil. (self-evident tautology) 6. Therefore, when voting the best choice is always the Democrat. 7. However bad the Democrat is -and there are no limits to how bad he can be [cf. 3 above]- it’s always best to vote for him. (follows from 4-6) 8. It doesn’t matter how bad the Democrat is, I’ll vote for him. (follows trivially from 7) 9. Accordingly, I need know nothing more than that a candidate is a Democrat to justify voting for him.

It actually makes sense, as long as you accept a series of flawed assumptions.

Fivethirtyeight.com looked at the polling and discovered that young people cared about the issues, while older people cared about electability "even if they disagreed on the issues".

At least that is what older people think.



But by prioritizing electability, older Democrats may wind up backing a candidate with a major weakness: an inability to drive youth turnout. While younger voters tend to lean heavily Democratic — in 2016, for instance, they backed Hillary Clinton by around 20 percentage points — the challenge has always been getting them to the polls. But when they do mobilize, younger voters can have a profound impact on the election. The blue wave of 2018, for example, was powered in part by Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X voters,1 who cast more votes than Baby Boomers and people from older generations, according to the Pew Research Center.

Electability means the ability to be elected. If you can't get your voters to turn out then you aren't electable. Period. The overwhelming swing voter is the young voter.

So who do you think is best at turning out young voters?



It’s still early, but Sen. Bernie Sanders — who won more votes from people under 30 in 2016 primaries than Trump and Clinton combined, according to a CIRCLE analysis of 21 states — is currently leading in the polls among younger voters, with 22 percent of Democrats under 50 saying they would vote for him if the primary was held today, according to a Quinnipiac poll.

Sure Bernie gets the kids to vote, but can he win in the heartland?



Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are the only two 2020 Democratic candidates who could best President Trump in Texas, according to an Emerson College poll published Tuesday by The Dallas Morning News.

Both Biden and Sanders hold a 51 percent to 49 percent advantage over the president among registered voters in the Lone Star State

Today we learned that Sanders gets support from people who may not normally be drawn to Democratic candidates. Something tells me that might come in handy in November. But that's not how the establishment folks would like you to interpret it. https://t.co/zYf6xkQ9k5 — Miss Jabali (@MalaikaJabali) August 6, 2019

Current polls show that the most electable candidate is Bernie.

Recent history (2004, 2016, 2018) show that the progressive candidate is more electable.

Yet everyone on TV will tell you that electability depends on the candidate not representing your values and being someone you don't really like.

It's time that the word "electability" joins "journalism" as words that can't be said without your fingers doing air quotes.