I have in the past contemplated how the general public votes [View all]

[bluedye33139]

Last edited Thu Jan 16, 2020, 03:06 PM - Edit history (1)

And I am guilty of wondering in the past if people of color, sexual minorities, and women might face a tougher battle in a general election. A lot of my worries about gender have been put to rest, as studies have indicated that women and men do not have differential success in elections. White voters tend to respond to dog whistle politics, however.

This whole dust-up between Warren and Sanders bugs me because on the one hand he is being accused of saying something along the lines of my own thinking in the past. But also because it's taken on such a hateful tone. Twitter in particular has some extremely hateful attacks on Warren by Sanders supporters and on Sanders by Warren supporters. It's like everyone believes he was accused of murder, or some horrific wrongdoing. The accusations and the defenses are histrionic.

The pessimistic part of my mind, however, thinks that we were all deluding ourselves if we thought that Democrats would act like angels during a primary. When you run a campaign, you have thousands of people working under you and all of them are fired up for your victory and for the loss of the other candidates. In that atmosphere, some pretty mean and terrible attacks tend to get floated by campaign workers.

In an ideal world, politicians would be saints with full knowledge of everything that their campaign is doing, and they would always interdict any problematic campaign strategy. In the real world, we got people.