I was sobered to see some of the details of the revised DSA platform.

[QueerDuck]

45. Those mainstream goals aren't what makes the platform fringe.

Every single Democrat in every district wants lower healthcare costs, affordable childcare, and billionaires paying their fair share. Those are mainstream Democratic platform staples, not radical proposals. I have not suggested otherwise.

The issue isn't the popular economic goals... instead the issue is the specific DSA platform items I actually noted, including the public nationalization of large corporations and closing all prisons.

Those extreme proposals are what hand the opposition a gift-wrapped playbook for devastating attack ads in competitive purple seats. Frontline candidates shouldn't be forced to spend a campaign defending or "educating" swing voters on the nationalization of industry when they need to be focused on winning basic majorities.

We saw exactly how this worked when candidates were left trying to explain, or distance themselves from things like "Defund the Police"... or wasting time trying to clumsily explain that "when they say defund they didn't literally mean defund, and that it was symbolic" only to deal with the extreme advocates chiming in "no we literally mean defund".

In the end, if you're explaining, you're losing.