"I have been trying to push @JoeBiden in a more progressive direction so he could expand his coalition and bring in more voters"

Let's talk about 'opportunity cost.'

If you attract more progressive voters, you lose more moderate voters. The latter are more numerous. https://twitter.com/ProudResister/status/1250468119480373248

Joe Biden has clearly assembled a very large coalition, considering he beat Bernie Sanders by an even wider margin than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

So, at this point, how do you know you're *adding* to the coalition by moving further to the left? What evidence do you have?

Generally, you should expect that people are normally distributed in any given attribute.

In this case, the median voter (by definition) is centrist. The vast majority of voters are center-left, centrist, or center-right.

Sometimes, you actually have two different distributions on one attribute, and you're essentially seeing these two normal curves added together.

This is a bimodal distribution (and larger multimodal distributions are also possible).

If you look at the ideologies of House Democrats and Republicans over the past 50 years, you see a bimodal distribution (as you would expect for two distinct parties).

In fact, if you look closely, there's a multimodal distribution WITHIN the GOP (i.e. Tea Party vs. mainstream).

So, looking at these graphs, what *precisely* makes you so certain that you'll have a net gain of voters by moving further to the left?

The Democrats are already solidly center-left, and they have been for ages. They're pretty tightly clustered in a normal distribution, too.

If the Democrats had a multimodal distribution like the GOP, there might be some evidence that there was a massive concentration of voters further to the left.

But there is not.

And they didn't show up for Bernie, either. So maybe they don't exist.

Now, before you say "but the Democrats are *really* center-right!" let me extend this concept a bit further.

Country ideologies are normally distributed, too. America is to the right of most modern democracies, but that international comparison isn't applicable locally.

Left-wing and right-wing are always used relative to the polity in question (i.e. the local status quo), not relative to the observer.

You wouldn't say a bird has two right wings just because it's to your right, after all.

The Democrats can't move too rapidly to the left or they will alienate more centrist voters.

The Republicans are discovering what happens when you go to fast to the right. The 2018 midterms were a slaughter for them (and keep in mind how much gerrymandering gave them an edge).

Don't try to mimic their losing strategy. It worked in 2016, but that appears to have been a fluke judging by every election since then.

We have to win 2020 so Democrats will control redistricting after the census, thereby making future elections more fair .

In conclusion, this isn't the time to go hard to the left. The GOP has already overextended themselves and lost quite a bit of support by going too far to the right.

Make them pay for that mistake. Don't duplicate it.

/fin