Basically, whenever Democrats insist they have to craft their message to appeal to white conservative men and head off the inevitable Republican attack ads -- that's the stuff they really believe.
Someone told me Talarico needs a guns and immigration message to defeat Paxton in Texas and honestly, that kind of triangulation, like backing off trans rights, is exactly why I think he will lose.
Your goal as a politician isn't to win over the other side's voters.
It's nice when that happens but in general, if they like that shit, they already have a candidate to vote for.
Like, look, we all get that political positions cluster around two or more poles, right?
For example, someone who is anti-immigration probably agrees with Republicans on a bunch of other things.
Democrats vice signaling that they're aligned with the Republican part of the spectrum are a) telling us something very important about themselves and b) engaged in a self-defeating bit of sophistry.
Democrats don't want to vote for a Republican and Republicans already have a candidate.
The political center does not exist. No one lives there. There is no situation where if you just take the perfectly calibrated positions on the right issues, you're guaranteed to win.
There's no evidence for this strategy at all. But it's gospel among Democratic strategists. Why? Well, because they're mostly conservatives. Some aren't even trying to win; they're Overton Window shifting in league with Republicans.
Some are just dumb.
