Seth Masket: “When Democrats lose a big election, they’re convinced they’ve been doing everything wrong and want to radically remake their party, their nomination systems, and even their approach to politics. When Republicans lose (and acknowledge that loss), they generally regard it as an aberration; with a bit more money allocated a bit better, they could probably have won, and so there’s no need to rethink everything.”
“Relatedly, Democrats are convinced that they lose when they nominate someone who is too ideologically extreme and makes working class whites uncomfortable, and when they pivot toward the center they tend to win. Republicans are convinced that they lose when they try too hard to please centrists, but win when they stand up for what they believe in.”
“There’s no empirically correct answer here, and the parties have similar win rates, but both these beliefs are defensible given the parties’ histories, and they lead to vastly different behavior.”
