I disagree. Everything you’re saying is conventional wisdom, and as any scientist will tell you, what people call “common sense” is often proved wrong when tested empirically. The political “experts,” i.e. the party technocrats, want everyone to think that their savvy operators who know what their doing, and that this decision to side with Biden over Sanders is the result of some sort of carefully considered political assessment of the relative risks and benefits of the two electorally.
However, you’d be hard-pressed to make the case that Sanders’ liabilities (social democratic policies that are mainstream in most developed countries) are more of a risk than Biden’s (sexual assault allegations, corruption scandals with his son and brother, perception of personal self-dealing, dishonesty, cognitive decline). This is not even to mention the fact that Bernie has the basic prerequisites of a winning campaign (staff, money, volunteers, excitement) and Biden does not.
As for the electorate being “center-right” — what we have is a highly polarized electorate that is sharply divided in how it perceives Donald Trump. This idea that the most conservative candidate is automatically the most electable is based on a spurious assumption that dissatisfied Republicans are going to defect to the Democrats because of Trump. In actuality he has around 95 percent approval rating on the right.
It’s a fallacy to assume that “independents” are just smack dab in the middle of the political spectrum. Swing voters are weird, which is to say they don’t have very coherent or consistent political views that lend themselves to easy categorization. Swing voters, which make up about 7% percent of the electorate consistently (10 million votes) are generally speaking, low-information voters who respond to intangible personal qualities as much as policy.
What we do know about Obama-Trump voters is that 75 percent were dissatisfied with the ACA and wanted to repeal it. Just Biden’s association with Obama isn’t enough to make them come running back. Medicare for All might, and support for it has been trending upward since the pandemic began.
The name of the game in this polarized environment is expanding the electorate and bringing out more of your side than theirs. And before you point out that Bernie failed to do that in the primary, you need to take note that yes he actually did. Bernie’s base turned out in higher numbers in most states, but it was offset by even higher numbers of Boomers who were scared shitless by the same exact signalling that Bernie was “risky” and Biden was “safe.”
These are high-propensity voters who will “vote blue no matter who,” whereas the people who Bernie is capable of turning out won’t. And even if as a group, the young aren’t reliable to vote, the young people who are fired up about Bernie can be relied upon to do the basic campaign labor that every candidate needs to get elected.
What good is a placeholder if he can’t actually manage to hold said place?
