Why Democrats still have to appeal to the center -- and Republicans don't.

[pnwmom]

The Democratic party's greatest strength and its greatest challenge are the same: its diversity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/sunday/democrats-republicans-polarization.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Let’s start with diversity. Over the past 50 years, the Democratic and Republican coalitions have sorted by ideology, race, religion, geography and psychology. Not all sorting is the same. Sorting has made Democrats more diverse and Republicans more homogeneous. This is often played as a political weakness for Democrats. They’re a collection of interest groups, a party of list makers, an endless roll call. But diversity has played a crucial role in moderating the party’s response to polarization.

Appealing to Democrats requires appealing to a lot of different kinds of people with different interests. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on white voters. Democrats are a coalition of liberal whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and mixed-race voters. Republicans are overwhelmingly dependent on Christian voters. Democrats are a coalition of liberal and nonwhite Christians, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, agnostics, Buddhists and so on. Three-quarters of Republicans identify as conservative, while only half of Democrats call themselves liberals — and for Democrats, that’s a historically high level.

As a result, winning the Democratic primary means winning liberal whites in New Hampshire and traditionalist blacks in South Carolina. It means talking to Irish Catholics in Boston and atheists in San Francisco. It means inspiring liberals without arousing the fears of moderates. It’s important preparation for the difficult, pluralistic work of governing, in which the needs and concerns of many different groups must be balanced against each other.

The Democratic Party is not just more diverse in who it represents; it’s also more diverse in whom it listens to. A new Pew survey tested Democratic and Republican trust in 30 different media sources, ranging from left to right. Democrats trusted 22 of the 30 sources, including center-right outlets like The Wall Street Journal. Republicans trusted only seven of the 30 sources, with PBS, the BBC and The Wall Street Journal the only mainstream outlets with significant trust. (The other trusted sources, in case you were wondering, were Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Breitbart.)

Fox News, in particular, holds a unique centrality in Republican media . . . .

SNIP

[FiveGoodMen]

1. In the long run, I think the world would be much better if we picked the things that are worthwhile

and fought for them.

Trying to game everything has brought us low.

"If the rule you followed brought you here, then what good was the rule?" -- Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men

[pnwmom]

2. Who decides what's worthwhile? Which part of the "we" decides,

when we're in such a diverse party?