I keep banging on this drum but it appears to me that if the Dems would nominate a centrist who would easily win back a majority of independents it would be a landslide election. The far left could stay home or vote for JD Vance.
I don't think a landslide is possible any longer. In the technical sense, we haven't "really" seen one since 1988, and Richard Nixon denied that was a landslide when he pointed out Bush got 9 million fewer votes than Reagan did in 1984. Because they've all gotten more strategic in which states they will campaign - Trump's 2016 plan was almost a mirror image of Clinton's 1992 plan as far as resources in states - it's much more difficult for any candidate to run up the electoral vote count because they'll play defense to make sure they keep their 330-360 EVs rather than take a high roll risk on winning 400. Even candidates with a huge lead - like Clinton in 1996 - keep it close to the vest and play to not lose rather than to win big.
As far as the Democratic nominees, the party right now is going through a similar process to the one that marked most of their nominations between 1972 and 1988, where a loud, vocal group of Hard Left liberals won't allow a vote some Democrat made 20 years ago to be left in the past. The purity posse - and let's be clear, both parties have this - uses social media and in a matter of minutes can get bad news about a vote 20 years ago on something out there, demand the apology that will never appease them, and then use the apology to say "even that person admitted they were wrong" to say "you can't trust him/her."
Have you seen what's going on in Texas right now in the Senate race? The Democrats are being handed at least a POSSIBILITY of winning a Senate seat they have no business carrying because angry Trumper Ken Paxton (the indicted adultery committing sleazeball) is in the race to avenge Trump against John Cornyn, who has been there since 2002. And Paxton is about as vulnerable a Republican as the Democrats could ever hope to get in a Senate race. Enter Jasmine Crockett, the whiny rep with the fake "from the hood" accent, who threw the race against James Talarico into a quandary by claiming he had called the last nominee (Colin Allred - a black former NFL player who lost to Cruz) "mediocre." Of course with race there's always an exaggeration, so she makes it more extreme and now Allred is showing more anger and fire and passion demanding his apology than he did campaigning against Ted Cruz. Talarico admits saying that Allred was mediocre on the campaign trail, but this IS Race Bait Crockett we're talking about. And she would rather LOSE as the nominee than WIN the seat with Talarico, who is a seminary student who just might be able to bring back some of the religious voters to the Dem party if he's lucky enough to face Paxton.
But there are a series of candidates - AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Bernie Sanders, several of the Chicago local races I'm observing up here - who would rather THE OPPOSITION WIN the general election than one of their kindred souls beat them for the nomination.
That doesn't sound any different than Trumpism electoral politics to me.
Here's the thing: I think the rank and file Democrats ARE pragmatic enough to say, "Look, better we nominate and elect another Carter and Clinton than nominate a ticket of AOC/Mamdani and lose 35 states."
They'd BETTER be pragmatic.
AGES OF SCOTUS JUSTICES IN 2028:
Clarence Thomas - 80
Samuel Alito - 78
Sonia Sotomayor - 74 and with health issues known
John Roberts - 73
A center-left candidate could appoint between 2 and 4 (maybe more) justices between 2029 and 2037.
Nobody should be pretending the justices appointed by JD Vance are the same as those that would be appointed by any Democrat.
