Biden gambles on high-risk primary strategy

[uawchild]

6. "they contend" it's not so liberal, that's what's risky

That contention is the issue isn't it? Biden's campaign is contending that, but is it true?

That's why I edited my post to address that point. Sorry for the inconvenience that you posted a reply in mid-edit. Let's discuss your valid point here.

From the OP: "It’s a high-risk strategy at a time when the progressive wing is pulsing with energy. There is a danger of looking disconnected from the rising Obama coalition, or seeming to adhere to an outdated view of the party."

Yes, your point is well taken, the Biden Campaign CONTENDS that the party isn't as "hyper-lprogressive" as the media portrays". Ignoring the pejorative tag of "hyper-progressive", other sources, like the one from Brookings I just posted, show that it is getting consistently more and more liberal.

Let me post another counter to Biden's contention that shows graphically how more and more liberal the party has become:

"In 2018, for the first time, a majority of Democrats said they considered themselves to be “liberal,” according to Gallup. At 51 percent, the 2018 share is only 1 point greater than the share of Democrats who identified as liberal in 2017, but it’s very different from how Democrats’ political ideologies broke down in the 1990s and early 2000s.

In 1994, during Bill Clinton’s first term, the share of Democrats who identified as liberal and the share who said they were conservative were the same, at 25 percent. Nearly half, or 48 percent, identified as moderate. But around 2000, more Democrats began to identify as liberal and fewer as conservative. Gallup found that from 2002 to 2014, the share of Democrats who said they were liberal grew by roughly 1 percentage point each year. Since 2014, the increase has been about 2 points per year, on average.


https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-democrats-now-identify-as-liberal/

The risk for Biden is that his contention is wrong, that the party IS more liberal than he thinks and will vote that way in the primaries.

The Blue-Wave in 2018 seemed to show that from where I sat.

Time will tell.