Reply #87: Accountability for the nominee happens in the primary. And the "long term" strategy doesn't work.

[BzaDem]

If the person was really a backstabber, he would not be renominated.

As for your "long term" thinking, that doesn't work either. The premise of the "long term" argument is, better "teach" Democrats a "lesson" now and have Republicans win in the short term, because that will produce better Democrats in the long run.

Unfortunately, this is completely divorced from reality. In reality, the lesson Democrats learn is to move further and further to the right. Why? It is MUCH easier to get independents by moving to the right than to get irrational Democrats by moving to the left.

One reason for this is that an independent who changes their vote from Republican to Democrat is really a swing of 2 in the margin of victory, whereas a vote from a third party candidate to a Democrat is only a swing of 1. So by moving further to the right, self-interested politicans get twice the "bang" for their "buck."

Another reason is that irrational Democrats will always eventually come around. When there are Democrats in power and third-party voters don't know how good they have it (relative to Republicans), it is easier for them to screw the Democrats. But once Republicans come into power, reality hits the irrational squarely in the head. There's only so much they can take before they become rational again. For example, in 2004, 90% of Nader's vote share vanished (compared to 2000), even though Kerry was either the same or more conservative than Gore on almost every issue.

And as for your position on "transformative" vs "incremental" change, it also does not correspond to reality (at least in terms of American history). While there is certainly time for transformative change and time for incremental change, historically, most major movements were very incremental in their nature. The Civil Rights movement is probably the best example of this, as the product of decades of planning/protesting/grassroots organizing/court cases/legislation.