Randy Bryce was one of the 2018 “progressive losses” in Wisconsin-1 which was Paul Ryan’s district rigged by Scott Walker in 2010.
Median income $67k, 80% white, 6% black, 10% Hispanic, Cook R+5. Affluent white suburbs that lean conservative.
Nearby is Wisconsin-4 (Milwaukee):
Median income $45k, 41% white, 33% black, 18% Hispanic, D+25. They picked this lady for Congress:
Here is Wisconsin-1’s pick:
And their previous pick:
But yeah cool narrative “progressives can’t win” when Randy Bryce loses the tax-obsessed Aryan suburbs strategically split off from the D+25 areas. You don’t see how that’s different from a statewide race? Scary progressive Tammy Baldwin won easily in Wisconsin. McCaskill, Heitkamp, Nelson, and Donnelly (the centristy centrists) got flipped for -2 net.
And besides that, nobody has laid out a theory of moderates that makes sense. There are two different types of moderates: voters and candidates. The myth that there’s this block of moderate voters who will reliably vote centrist has been written about before. See:
Pollsters are just averaging responses on a liberal ↔ conservative scale. Believe (a) in UBI and (b) that immigrants should be executed at the border? That’s a moderate! There are all kinds of people holding all kinds of crazy beliefs that identify as moderate, centrist, and independent. Like the article points out, they don’t quite have their ideological shit together like the people who have chosen sides. Dare I suggest it’s because they aren’t paying attention, don’t know the issues, and only tune in at the last second?
Like, yo dawg, a game show host is calling for the military to mow down protesters with war weapons and you’re holding out for…centrism? Where were all of these moderates in 2016? Of all the elections in American history, that one is the single best fit for moderates and centrists. It was an absolute no-brainer–the Queen La Femme Centrista herself versus a race-baiting misogynist who inherited a billion dollars and turned it into way less than that. Or remember that time W Bush killed a million Iraqis? Where were all the centrist voters on that one? Watching Collateral Murder and waiting for a GOPete/McMuffin ticket to sweep them off their feet with plenty bold policies and empty platitudes about working together and shapes of democracy?
To be clear about what I’m saying, moderates did not vote for Trump. That’s an intellectual no-fly zone. The only possible argument there is that conservative Republicans voted for Trump who may be enticed by moderate Democrats now from having buyer’s remorse. Why would you court them though? The competing theory is that moderate Dems who didn’t vote in 2016 showed up in 2018. That’s also a tough sell because where the fuck were they all the other times they could have elected cold oatmeal instead of letting the world burn?
