Will Moderates or Immoderates Save The Democrat Party?

 From Vox, Do Democrats need to moderate to win — or would that be a terrible mistake?

I do think of Kamala Harris as a wild-eyed leftist. I am not sure that Bernie Sanders is all that much of a revolutionary. Eugene Debs was an out-and-out Socialist. I am having trouble thinking of a radical on the left to compare with the radicals on the right we have been plagued with since 1980.

I also know no one will be paying attention to what I write here, but I can hope.

Whether the candidates are moderate or progressive, the Democrats need a unified message. Either we stand for something, or we're going to be taken to the cleaners at every election from here on out. (Apologies to John Mellencamp.)

I do not really read in this interview a distinction between moderate policies and moderate candidates. Have we forgotten FDR and LBJ so completely? Then I read the following:

It seems to me that the Obama approach, the Obama message, which I think has shaped Democratic rhetoric as long as I’ve kind of been engaged in politics — “We are one country, all have the same common values, whether in red states or blue states, there’s this fundamental commonality and there’s more that unites us than divides us, and business owners and workers and everybody, all the constituencies in American politics have kind of common interests that we would realize if it weren’t for the peddlers of division and those who seek to capitalize on division for their own personal gain” — worked for a good while, certainly for his presidential campaigns. But I think that this election, and frankly Donald Trump’s election in 2016, should be understood as a repudiation of that from most of the American electorate. I think there are a lot of people who really matter in the electorate for whom that message is not really resonating reliably.

There’s something about Donald Trump’s political style and personality — the fact that he stands against our institutions and norms — that is very compelling to a lot of people you need to win the Electoral College. And so maybe that’s one area where Democrats can think about tweaking their messaging.

Can we not have moderate policies with immoderate presentations? I would prefer policies immoderate in their attack on Republican governance that benefits only a narrow class, made in an immoderate way. I am not so sure if there is any other way of getting the message through the noise. One point I agree on is that Democratic messaging has played it safe - safety being defined by pollsters and campaign consultants - that leaves the party looking as if it serves only persons of means, including those running the government that is non-responsive to the have-nots. That I do not believe this is the real Democrat Party is why I keep voting for its candidates.

sch 12/6