Charlie Cook speaking to jittery DC Dem consultants and spineless Chris Coons types, says that it isn’t “base motivation” OR “reach out to the middle” but it is “base motivation” AND “reach out to the middle.”
I guess that’s progress of a sort. Still wrong, but progress. The real winning formula is “base motivation” THEN “the middle will reach out to you.”
If you don’t know by now that “the middle” is a bunch of sheep that will go with whoever has the momentum, then you are too stupid or too mobbed up in the status quo to bother with.
Anyway, it is hard to fathom the fact that we are still contending with this bullshit.
Charlie Cook: “The age-old debate over whether it is better to nominate a candidate who can motivate the party base or one who reaches into the middle, appealing to independent and other swing voters, is presenting a choice of walking or chewing gum—you have to do both. Where these things come into conflict is that the issues that most motivate the base, whether within the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, are often ones that grate on the nonideological, or at least less ideology-driven, voters in the middle.”
“Trump has clearly picked the base-motivation model, effectively conceding the middle ground to Democrats—if they choose to take it.”
