The problem is platforms are non-binding, and here as well as other threads do I make effort to demonstrate Democratic policy positions and action (as opposed to rhetoric) are at complete odds with its platform. You're continuing to push the old, long-disproven lie that platforms matter in any way other than bilking people into voting for a party.
No, I'm not. In other threads I've talked extensively about his record, and how enormously, materially different it is from his opponent's in ways that aren't seriously disputable.
Policy positions and actions, as well as electoral platforms, are not built to target a single demographic, either. Progressives do not have a huge amount of leverage to impact the former, either, I'm afraid to say, and must use their votes strategically. They do not have the numbers (or the reliability, given the shoddy turnout) to hold their votes to ransom and expect massive concessions to win them.
It's in the Democrats' interests to cater to the Progressives. It is not in their interest to abandon the idea of acting as a broad church and ignore the traditional Democratic voters, on the misplaced assumption that they're "locked in", as UK Labour did.
Yes, because we're looking at Biden's past statements and Senate record and noting how dramatically the two contrast. It's the height of lunacy to suppose a Presidential candidate with a nearly-fifty year record on Capitol Hill, let alone one whose Senate record is living testament to the economic and social straits in which the United States finds itself today, will up and reverse his entire ideology within three months.
I'm not expecting that at all. I'm
hoping for a forced concessionary approach as a result of internal pressures from Sanders, AOC, and the unity task forces they've set up.
Yet it would be an even greater change in direction for Biden to get anywhere even
close to Trump on healthcare, environmentalism, almost any area of policy (800 billion cut over a decade to medicare/aid alone)... and I'm frequently coming across forumites seeming to treat that as a foregone conclusion.
Your issue with reliance on polling numbers, is for the decade before 2016 polls have become consistently less stable, predictable, and useful as a metric for predicting voter behavior. That was an eminent concern before 2016 -- hell, Nate Silver became famous because of it -- and 2016 should have been another '48 in terms of meta-analysis and methodology reform. It wasn't thanks to Russiagate, and little to nothing has changed in the past four years except polarization. Again, you aren't adapting your methodology or arguments to reflect the post-2016 electoral landscape despite all evidence or arguments to the contrary.
I'm not adapting my methodology to the demographic assumptions you're making, because I haven't yet been presented with a single piece of evidence to indicate these "low info moderates" are locked-in for the Democrats and can reliably be ignored.
Polls aren't a great indicator. What's worse than using an unreliable indicator? Not using one at all, and relying on one's own sympathies to guide strategic decisions (or reading tea leaves).
Don't pretend you didn't read my last sentence and didn't understand my point. Because it's the same point I've been making this whole-ass time.
I see and understand the point, but I'm still being presented with data showing that "cable news brain worms" aren't reliable Democratic voters.
It seems the conclusion you're drawing only works if you're tremendously selective about how you get your sample ("without a college degree" isn't a good proxy, but watching television is?!) and then rest on enormous assumptions about future behaviour.
Generally, presumptuousness doesn't pay off come election time.