Some of the Democrats running in 2020 are acting as if they believe left-wing Twitter users represent the American people. Nancy Pelosi, of all people, is concerned about how this is going to play in the general election.

Sahil Kapur writes at Bloomberg, via Yahoo News:

Nancy Pelosi Is Worried 2020 Candidates Are on Wrong Track Speaker Nancy Pelosi is issuing a pointed message to Democrats running for president in 2020: Those liberal ideas that fire up the party’s base are a big loser when it comes to beating President Donald Trump. Proposals pushed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders like Medicare for All and a wealth tax play well in liberal enclaves like her own district in San Francisco but won’t sell in the Midwestern states that sent Trump to the White House in 2016, she said. “What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said at a roundtable of Bloomberg News reporters and editors on Friday. “What works in Michigan works in San Francisco — talking about workers’ rights and sharing prosperity.” “Remember November,” she said. “You must win the Electoral College.”

Win the Electoral College? Haven’t Democrats spent the last three years telling us that it’s an illegitimate institution which must be abolished?

All snark aside, Pelosi is right to be concerned. There are already other Democrats who fear Elizabeth Warren’s recent talk about the cost of her ‘Medicare-for-all’ plan is being tied to them.

Marc Caputo and Alex Thompson write at Politico:

‘This is going to cause down-ballot damage’: Warren’s $20 trillion health plan fails to quiet critics The most-vulnerable Democrat in Colorado’s state House, Bri Buentello, is dreading door-knocking in her rural district now that Elizabeth Warren dropped her massive “Medicare for All” plan into the presidential arena. “This is going to cause down-ballot damage in swing districts and states if she’s the nominee,” Buentello says, describing how her Pueblo-area constituents — who voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 — were already echoing criticisms about a giant, one-size-fits-all big government run plan that cancels private health insurance and raises taxes. The fear of blowback is indicative of the broad and largely negative response to Warren’s proposal from centrist, moderate and rural Democrats — many of whom, like Buentello, back Joe Biden in the primary. And it exposes the fault line between those who fret about winning voters in the center and the activist progressive base propelling Warren to the front of the Democratic pack.

Democrats have spent the last three years playing to the resistance instead of trying to win back the voters they lost to Trump in 2016. It may end up costing them 2020.



