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Chloe Humbert's avatar

It's not just the mainstream press that's terrified to appear "too liberal" - Democratic politicians themselves run headlong into right wingery at the mere whisper that they aren't right wing conservative enough. We're living in a messed up landscape.

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Andrew Van Wagner's avatar

Thanks for commenting! There is an idea that the Democrats are on "defense" all the time; they're always defending themselves against GOP attacks instead of framing things themselves. You can look at Democrats who run effective campaigns (Fetterman?) and learn from them.

I guess that what you're describing is actually an attack from the corporate Democratic establishment, though, not from the GOP.

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Dear Rest Of America's avatar

Although my sociopolitical views lean toward the Right, I appreciate your perspective. It could be that the pollsters did not capture the views of Generation Z (who overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic Party) nor the opinion of a subset of the American people around "reproductive rights." Perhaps the two articles below might be of interest?

https://www.foxnews.com/media/michael-moore-predicts-landslide-gop-traitors-midterms-thanks-scotus-abortion-ruling

https://www.newsy.com/stories/election-22-what-matters-allan-lichtman-on-midterm-trends/

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Andrew Van Wagner's avatar

Thanks for commenting! Apparently certain unreliable right-wing polls were accepted at face value in a way that skewed the data; I'd like to see a detailed analysis of whether this is what happened, though. If this is indeed the case, it's not hard to remedy it would seem; simply exclude those unreliable polls going forward and the problem is solved.

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Kate Bergam's avatar

I was hoping that Dan Rather’s Substack Steady would address this very issue since he’s a veteran journalist.

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Andrew Van Wagner's avatar

Thanks for commenting! It would indeed be interesting to get a veteran perspective.

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Nov 14, 2022Edited
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Andrew Van Wagner's avatar

Thanks for commenting! One issue is whether predicting a "red wave" helps the GOP or not. My friend told me this:

I don't know the literature. It certainly can cause some people to give up, not sure what the data show. Where I think it had the clearest impact was getting the Dems to blow a lot of money on seats that were not close, like Hassan in HN and Murray in WA. As far as the longer term story, by trashing the economy 24-7, I'm sure they convinced a lot of people that the economy was in really bad shape.

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