I’m not arguing with you that there are people that will pathologically vote Republican. Those aren’t the people that anyone should be worried about changing/trying to convince to switch sides. Doing so would be a losing strategy, and trying to outrun the bear.

There are way more people throughout the entire U.S. that fall into the voter apathy/“didn’t bother bc I’ve accepted both sides are essentially the same” camp. Those are the people that could be won over by Democrats not selecting an establishment candidate. This would be focusing on outrunning the opponent instead of the bear.

Why do you think so many people voted Clinton/Gore in 1992? When he first ran, Bill Clinton was just a smooth talking young guy from Arkansas, who seemed like he genuinely cared about people. Compared to Bush, he seemed like an outsider and a breath of fresh air.

This is a fuck ton of blue (including West Virginia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_United_States_presidential_election

Look at all the blue on that 1992 map, and compare it to all the red on this map when Dukakis ran against Bush in 1988: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_United_States_presidential_election

Flashback: When Bill Clinton Was A Populist

The answer won Clinton rave reviews, partly–ok, mostly–because Clinton showed so much ability to connect with average Americans. (It helped, too, that Bush was so utterly lacking in the same ability.) But the answer was also a hit because it made a persuasive case on substance–one that would actually work pretty well today, right down to Clinton’s suggestion that simply reducing national debt isn’t a strategy for recovery. It takes investment, he says, and controlling health care costs.

We tend to remember the Clinton presidency for its largely centrist pattern of governance–the focus on balanced budgets, enthusiastic promotion of free trade, and so on. But that was a reaction (and, I’d argue, a mostly necessary reaction) to the political circumstances Clinton faced once in office. Back in 1992, even as he was promoting himself as a New Democrat who was tough on crime and demanded work from welfare recipients, he was still a pretty unabashed populist. He championed the need for public investment to create jobs and universal health care, giving them more priority than adopting a crash course towards balanced budgets.