• electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    When democrats go to the right on issues, they don’t attract republican voters. What happens instead is that republicans go even farther right in order to differentiate themselves from democrats.

    • Blackbeard@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      That only makes sense if you view the electorate as though on a linear spectrum (and are standing squarely on “the left”). If you view it more like this, then it helps explain phenomena like this where ~15% of moderate/liberal Republicans routinely vote for Democrats, as opposed to ~7% of conservative/moderate Democrats going the other direction. It also helps explain issues where Trump outflanks Democrats on the left, which tends to attract Sanders-Trump voters.

      edit: I’ll add that the downvoting on perfectly matter-of-fact comments in this thread (and quite frankly, most others on Lemmy/Reddit) is a really crisp display of the left’s toxic intolerance that Trump so readily and effectively leverages with middle America. Hammer that button, folks. In an infinitesimal way you’re proving Trump right every time you do.