Is the Democratic Party leadership more conservative than its base?

My answer on Quora.

I am not convinced at all that the leadership heading into 2020 is more conservative than its base. In fact it appears to be the other way around. There is virtually nothing that echoes conservatism when one looks at the Presidential tickets of Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and indeed Joseph Biden (circa 2019…yes even Biden…listen to his rhetoric lately if you don’t believe me…Biden criticizes 'white man's culture' as he talks violence against women).

Maybe the leadership is planning to pull the bait and switch later, as they did with the re-branding of Obama in 2008, but the way it stands all of these leading figures can be rightly filed under the Progressive banner certainly in terms of policy advocated.

Meet the Leaders Source: CARTOON: The 2020 Democratic field

Now there are some fringe candidates that may offer more of a genuine Liberal alternative (Andrew Yang perhaps) but the chances of them going the distance are slim. This is not the party leadership of Bill Clinton, JFK or Harry Truman. The Progressives own the show and those who aren’t Progressive better get with the program…STAT.

Here however is the inconvenient reality. As of 2017, in a widely cited Gallup Poll American ‘liberals’ make up just 26% of the electorate. This translates to a figure of 50% when looking at voters who self identify as Democrats.

U.S. Still Leans Conservative, but Liberals Keep Recent Gains

Granted the 50% number has increased since 2001 (it stood at 30% then) however what it does show is that at present, half of the Democrats are NOT liberals.

Now the polling of course does not distinguish between the terms progressive and small ‘l’ liberal (read Charles Tips for more on this….Are Republicans really still conservative and Democrats really still liberal?), however it is not unreasonable to infer that all of those who see themselves as small ‘l’ liberals may not see themselves as progressive, especially when one factors in the collectivist approach that progressives have towards economic control. This of course would lower the 50% value….perhaps to 40%.

Leftward leadership drift

So then why is it that every leading Democratic Party Candidate today is running a Progressive agenda? What about the rest of the base? You know…the 50% or 60%?

The answer in my opinion is that the Democratic Party leadership believes that the progressive platform is a winning one. The reasons for this are as follows

• Barack Obama won elections in 2008 and 2012. Although there is debate as to the strength of his progressive credentials he did address several Progressive talking points;
• The strong showing of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party Primaries in 2016;
• A perceived change in demographics which Progressives believe works in their favor;

However this is likely to be a strategic miscalculation for a number of reasons that I believe outweigh the former points.

• The US as a nation is not as a whole on board with the Progressive agenda. It is still very much a right-of-center country.
• Part of the Bernie Sanders success in the Democratic Party race of 2016 was that Hillary Clinton herself was not a great candidate and the alternatives (O’Malley, Webb, Chaffee etc) were weak. A stronger centrist candidate (with less baggage) would have likely created more distance between themselves and Sanders.
• The rest of the US (the so-called fly-over states) have very different concerns than that of the coastal regions where the elites framing Progressive policies are largely located.
• An element of group think reinforced by a partisan media is likely skewing perception here - When Democrats do succeed in key swing state areas, such as they did with Conor Lamb (Pennsylvania) in April 2018, its largely a consequence of the fact that they ran a candidate with solid Blue Dog credentials;
• The Obama victories in 2008 and 2012 have likely been blown out of proportion. His popularity did not transfer to HRC in 2016 and his victory in the 2008 election was to a large extent a function of the centrist re-branding of Obama (as mentioned earlier), the downswing in the economy and the inept campaign ran by John McCain. Mitt Romney in 2012 was hardly much better than McCain.
• Progressives policies are all too often impractical and easy to lampoon. People can sense a money grab even when it is couched in glitter and platitudes. They also create conflict among various party stakeholders (remember Amazon v Sanders/AOC over the New York move).

Now the claim could be made that leaning to the left is part and parcel of the age old methodology behind securing the Democratic Party nomination in the first place. Perhaps, but if you lean too far to the extreme that you lose the elasticity to reset yourself later, the voters were duly reward you in the Presidential race with the runner-up tag.

A strategy of adhering to a centrist line would present real problems for Trump in 2020. As it stands right now he just has to point to his opponents and laugh. He couldn’t have wished for more.