I’m gotta get downvoted and cause a stir with this. Here goes anyway for the all of 5 people it might reach.
I would love. FUCKING LOVE for a candidate like AOC to get elected president of the United States. Love it.
HOWEVER.
Until there is enough power transferred in the senate and the house to candidates that would remove the current structure of how we elect the executive office; they are not electable.
See, you read that sentence thinking what I said was an opinion and pessimism. It was not. It was based in the statistics of how Americans vote and how strong the votes in various states are in a first past the post electoral system that uses an electoral college.
As it stands, and Nate Silver backs this math as well, the electoral college requires a moderate democratic candidate to overcome a 3.7 point disadvantage. That might sound small. It isn’t small. It’s the margin of victory in many races so, you effectively need to more than double the current margin of victory for a candidate, and so it when further left candidates have a harder time than that.
Jeff Jackson could make a run for office in 2028-2032 and be a candidate that historically could get elected. Statistically.
AOC is just not electable in the current structure of the electoral college and state first past the post voting that still persists in most states.
You run the virtue candidate and lose the election.
The same was true of Harris in 2024. Not because we don’t deserve a black woman president or that she couldn’t do the job.
She wasn’t fucking electable in this racist, sexiest voting base.
I get we want better candidates, but you can go too far and effectively give the election to the fascist asshole, and frankly the country can’t have that happen again post Trump. It will be the end of democracy as we know it if It does.
I know that isn’t what folks want to hear but the math is the math.
Not anyone with a stats background.
In fact it was his election to lose.