We've mentioned how Democrats have a white liberal problem. Like locusts, they're eating up too much of the agenda, especially when it comes to messaging. These folks are college-educated, ideological, engaged on social media, and give disproportionately to the Democratic Party. Who do you think gets their calls returned?
Meanwhile, the electorate is not a liberal majority. The blocs that make up the backbone of the party aren't liberal either. It's moderate to conservative-leaning. There's a reason why liberal data scientists like David Shor have argued for Democrats to quit viewing elections along "liberal vs. conservative" lines. It's simple: they'd lose.
White liberals view almost every issue along hyper-ideological lines that are simply not shared with not just the wider electorate, but their own party base. The New York Times wrote about a study that showed why a) Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was able to survive his blackface fiasco, and b) why Joe Biden's scandals never got to him.
For Northam, the progressive wing clamored for him to go, whereas most Democrats, especially Black Democrats, were more likely to support him staying. Liberal Twitter is not real life. It's not even the country or the Democratic Party base, which explains how Eric Adams, a former police officer, is on the cusp of winning the Democratic Party's mayoral nomination in New York City. Adams doesn't nearly have the social media following as someone like Andrew Yang, who will not be the next mayor.
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The study found that for Democrats who don't really post on social media, some 70 percent think that political correctness is a problem. For those who are active, well, the breakdown is not shocking. They're white, liberal, and college-educated. And these people live among the bastions where most news outlets operate, which enhances the bubble (via NYT):
Today’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its “woke” left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.
The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online, according to data from the Hidden Tribes Project. This latter group has the numbers to decide the Democratic presidential nomination in favor of a relatively moderate establishment favorite, as it has often done in the past.
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The relative moderation of Democrats who are not sharing their political thoughts on social media, and therefore of Democrats as a whole, makes it less surprising that Virginia Democrats tolerated Mr. Northam’s yearbook page. It makes it easier to imagine how Joe Biden might not merely survive questions about whether he touched women in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, but might even emerge essentially unscathed.
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The Hidden Tribes Project, conducted by More in Common, is a nonpartisan representative YouGov survey of 8,000 Americans that divided respondents into different groups, or “tribes,” based on their responses to dozens of questions. The characteristics of these groups help make sense of the different ways Democrats have run and won primary elections.
In reality, the Democratic electorate is both ideologically and demographically diverse. Over all, around half of Democratic-leaning voters consider themselves “moderate” or “conservative,” not liberal. Around 40 percent are not white.
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The rest of the party is easy to miss. Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also under-represented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam. It is under-represented in the Northern blue states and districts where most Democratic politicians win elections.
Many in this group are party stalwarts: people who are Democrats because of identity and self-interest — a union worker, an African-American — more than their policy views. Their votes are concentrated in the South, where Democratic politicians rarely win.
Now, the publication did note that the left-wing swing the Democrats have undertaken isn't fake news. They have swung toward the Hammer and Sickle hard. As they note, it's enough of a swing to make Sen. Bernie Sanders a presidential candidate who gave Clinton a run for her money. It allowed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to clinch an upset primary win that led to her taking a congressional seat. Yet, the outrage is still concentrated on a certain type of Democrat. You know this already probably, but do the higher-ups at the DNC? Given the garbage policy proposals they've tried to pass, I'd say the answer is no.
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