Political Memes

Different base population, different set of candidates, different election. Apples and oranges. In comparison, French elections have a sort of "primary" (the actual election) with a follow-up between the two strongest candidates across parties about who becomes the president. The odds there sometimes look quite different from the first round. I mentioned Sanders here because I remembered something fishy was going on during the primaries in 2016 which took Sanders off the board, despite a decent support. But Wikipedia suggests that might have been a Russian spin against Clinton? Hard to tell.

Anyway, my broader point is that you can't run triangulation politics against fascists. This doesn't work and political scientists have been pretty clear about that for a long time. Hence both Clinton and Biden were pretty short-sighted and weak strategic choices. The democratic party didn't stand for anything in the past decade, apart from "not the orange guy". There needs to be a visionary, authentic alternative people can identify with. I'm not sure such a thing can meaningfully develop top-down from inside the political establishment. I have no solution.