Well not quite, Republicans didn't really pick up the votes. Romney got a million votes more than McCain, but Obama lost 5 million, that's just a huge turnout gap.
It doesn't matter whether or not the Republicans picked them up
from the Democrats. Whether the Republicans picked up those extra votes from undecideds, or previous Democrats, or even just population growth, the takeaway for a strategist is that the country has a greater appetite for right-wing politics than it did four years earlier.
But if it happens reliably, and is the alternative to a strategy that has proven to be unsuccessful, it's hard to argue in favor of the unsuccessful strategy like the Dems are.
The alternative is to divorce the entire primary process from money and heavy corporate interference.
But these decisions are not based on throwaway sentiments like, "what have we got to lose?"-- they're based on complex weighing of risk and reward. Unreliable voters are high-risk, and low-reward.
Hence why students have been shafted by the political establishment here in the UK for so fucking long: they're highly unreliable voters, resulting in a depressed turnout. Pundits have long speculated that if the right candidate were to make the effort with the student demographic, they could tap into that well.
Jeremy Corbyn did just that: he promised major ameliorisation of the student loan burden and free tuition (as we used to have), as well as appearing at events like Glastonbury festival. He got a rapturous reception there. Students turned out to his speeches in huge numbers, and he enjoyed a massive boost in activist sign-ups.
And his vote did increase among that demographic. But... y'know, loads still stayed home, because students are flighty as hell, and can be put off by a single policy among dozens. Turnout was still poor.
But it's quickly becoming a case of it being no other choice for the Dems. The advantage of our crappy voting system is that a progressive voting bloc can hold a national party hostage. But that only works if the threat is credible.
Past behaviour indicates to me that the threat is not credible. That's because the possibility that they'll stay home if they don't get what they want is very real.... but the possibility that they'll stay home anyway is very real too.