I think there’s a kernel of truth in Sean Trende’s musings over why Hillary Clinton is running to the left:
I tend to think overall that the 2016 election will be decided much more by the state of the economy than Hillary Clinton’s positioning on marriage equality or ability to increase youth participation rates. In that respect, Wednesday’s GDP report was much worse news for Democrats than anything we might discern about youth turnout in 2016 (though it remains to be seen if there is a summer “bounce-back†for the economy, as there was last year).
But I do think party coalitions matter, however, at least on the margins. In that respect, I think Beutler identifies the most important issue, by several orders of magnitude, for 2016: Is Obama’s coalition transferrable to Clinton (or other Democrats)? I think we need to flesh out this question a bit before we can turn to Beutler’s second question, which actually asks what Hillary Clinton’s positioning tells us about the answer to the first question.
I think the answer is pretty obvious: she’s doing what she needs to do to prevent serious primary competition and that’s run to the left. What she does after the primaries is anybody’s guess.
The kernel of truth is this: the 2016 general election will be about turnout. It will turn on which candidate is better able to draw out his or her voters or demotivate her or his opponent’s voters.
That’s why I think that Democrats should be running from Hillary Clinton. Presuming she remains the candidate, between now and November 2016 there will be a Chinese water torture of scandals and tone-deaf statements with surrogates fanning out to perform damage control with increasing lame and incredible excuses. That won’t convince a single Democrat to vote for her Republican opponent whomever that might be but it will discourage them from turning out to vote at all. Conversely, Republicans will be increasingly motivated to vote against Hillary.
