Democrats have a bigger voter pool (50 percent plus of voters who disapprove of the president’s job performance) but bringing all such voters under one umbrella will be a challenge. No candidate is perfect and the reelect team will find weaknesses in whichever Democrat emerges. A race against a nameless Democrat will not be the same as one against a real candidate with strengths and weaknesses. Democrats need only look to the scars from the primary campaign in 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders that never fully healed. That opening allowed Trump to win a large number of voters who disapproved of him but disliked Clinton even more.
It says here that high propensity voting centrists should be easier to win than lower intensity progressives. The Democratic candidates’ early focus on extra constitutional proposals such as court packing (rejected even by Franklin Roosevelt Democrats) and the abolition of the electoral college, and out of the policy mainstream measures like reparations and abolishing private health insurance, will make it more difficult for Democrats to ultimately win moderate voters looking for a change of direction, but not a constitutional rewrite. Past successful national Democrats (Carter, Clinton, Obama) have combined soaring rhetoric for reconciliation and a better future with enough specific policy proposals aimed squarely at making life better for the crucial middle class who feel squeezed by economic circumstance. Such voters might also be looking for a candidate that offers more cooperation rather than confrontation.
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