All this penguin / woodchuck fighting misses the point

[Recursion]

("Penguin" and "woodchuck" referring to two characters from Tom Tomorrow cartoons.)

Yes, the Democratic party nationally is composed both of wretched craven moderate centrist neoliberal pragmatic corporate third-way scum and heroic uncompromising for-the-people democratic-socialist righteous avengers. This is a fact that nobody is in a position to change right now. But arguing about "which one" gets the nomination misses the important point: we win the White House when -- and only when -- we find a candidate that is acceptable to both groups. And that hasn't been all that often in the past 50 years.

The attacks you see in this forum are us rehearsing, word for word, the attacks that are going to be used in the fall to peel off support from whichever candidate we do nominate. So the question should not be "who is most appealing to my tribe?" The question should be "who is least offensive to all the other tribes?" This was, I think, the theory behind Warren's candidacy, though both sides seem to be souring on her, and it was also supposed to be the theory behind Buttigieg's candidacy, but that seems to have skipped souring and gone straight to curdling.

You're already seeing, here and other places online, the arguments that will be used to depress our turnout, for all the major candidates. And people will fall for them (before you haughtily say "not me!", remember that some otherwise very intelligent people actually managed to convince themselves 4 years ago that there is an ethical problem with working the lecture circuit -- there will be something equally fatuous this year, and people will fall for it equally hard).

The voting booth is not your personal performance art space. It is not a place to "express yourself". It is a chance -- a small one, but nonetheless a chance -- to limit some amount of harm that may otherwise be done. That's it. Nothing else. Forget policies. Just put them out of your mind. If you're concerned about policies, you need to be following the Senate races, because those are where policy is decided. The Presidency is not a policy job, and Presidents almost never make policy decisions (not even Trump). In the nomination for the White House we have an opportunity to limit the amount of harm done by the executive branch. The question you should be asking is which candidate bleeds off the least possible fraction of our coalition.