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One Weird Trick To Get Elected President
The Iowa caucuses are about to open the final act of the long Democratic primary contest. Are you worried that whoever gets nominated won’t be electable enough to beat Donald Trump?
Don’t be. Every candidate, from Biden to Bernie to Tulsi Gabbard, stands an equal chance of winning in November. It’s not because the conventional wisdom is backwards and progressives are actually more electable than centrists. There’s no such thing as “electability” in the first place.
One question decides presidential elections: is the economy in recession on Election Day? If so, the incumbent party loses. If not, it wins. Who the candidates are doesn’t play a role.
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There’s an old leftist truism — the Republican and Democratic Parties are basically the same. They’re Coke and Pepsi, not meaningful alternatives. What this misses is that the Greens, the Libertarians, and the hundred other fringe groups also share the major parties’ most important trait: their middle-class base.
The Democrats and Republicans follow the same broad ideology. They both want a market economy with some regulation, with the US’s competitive advantage over other countries secured by both favorable treaty terms and military force. Even the Democratic Party’s “socialists” and the GOP’s “economic nationalists” accept…