The ideological spectrum as we analyze it is less consequential than candidate charisma and messaging that transcends left vs. center and connects with people the way Clinton, Obama, and Bernie, among others have in the past. And maybe have the instincts to recognize that de facto open borders is the biggest imaginable electoral loser before attaching yourself to that policy for more than three years.

I submit that it wasn't carved in stone that Harris was destined to get plastered because of a multiracial working-class Trump coalition this year. The closer we got to the election, the less she had to say that tickled downscale voters' erogenous zones. She couldn't have possibly read the room more poorly than her closing message of doubling down on preserving democracy with Liz Cheney at her side. It just wasn't salient.

Gretchen Whitmer and others pleaded with her campaign to change the subject to economic concerns but they were convinced that reproductive rights was voters' top priority and that their path to victory was through the microscopic cohort of college-educated moderate Republicans who hadn't already flipped to Biden four years ago. That kind of messaging isn't gonna win the Presidency.