*slams three shots of vodka*
Ok kids I've seen this argument floating around that goes something like "Trump is labeling Biden and Harris as socialists, so we should have just nominated an actually socialist to begin with."
Here's where that argument comes short.

Ok so when a campaign puts out a message (like "Biden is a radical leftist that will kill your children") the point of that media is to get citizens to vote for them.
This falls into two main categories:
Convincing Swing Voters
And Base Mobilization

(Note, campaigns also put out ads that aim to demotivate their opponent's base but for the sake of simplicity we're going to ignore that for now.)

Ok we've all heard about Swing Voters, and the elections of the late 20th century featured them heavily.
A voter would back Carter one cycle, Regan the next.
People would switch parties on the reg. The would also split the down ballot (ex: vote GOP for Pres, Dem for Senator.)

During this period the parties were far more ideologically similar and the public was also less educated as to the differences between them.

By 2000 swing voters had shrank dramatically in numbers.
Matthew Dowd (Bush's campaign strategist) calculated in 04 that they'd shrank from 22% to 7% over the course of the last 20 years (and that was in 04.)

There are far less swing voters these days. Less people identify as independents and most who say they're independent are lying.
So it is far more profitable to focus on Base Mobilization rather than Swing Voters.

"But Wyatt, what is Base Mobilization?" I'm glad you asked.

Ok let's invent a dude named Greg. Greg has lived through 9 elections, and every time he's voted he's voted Republican, BUT he's only voted in 3 of those 9 elections. For the other 6 he stayed home.
This is not a weird scenario. Americans vote at very low rates.

So in an election Greg is not making a choice between Republican and Democrat. He's making a choice between voting Republican and not voting.
He is a part of the Republican base but he is not reliable. He needs to be mobilized.

Trump was quite good at getting Republicans who don't always vote to vote.
Hillary was worse at mobilizing Dem voters than Obama was.
Now Hillary still got 3 million more votes b/c the Dem base is way larger than the GOP base, but still.

As a politician Trump is obsessed with his base. He cares little for anyone else (they aren't real Americans in his mind.)
When he says "Biden is against God" he's not trying to convince a swing voter. He's trying to make sure a base voter knows their vote is needed to win.

The point of most of Trumps ads are to keep the GOP base as scared of leftists and brown people as possible.
My point is that the people who are convinced by a "Biden is a leftist argument" were never going to vote for Biden in the first place.

Now there actually are swing voters out there. There's some consensus that suburban women delivered Dems their big win in 2018 (along with the base being far more fired up.)
This is why you've seen Trump tweeting about the burbs recently.

It's important to note that most political ads aren't targeted at you. They're targeted at the median voter who is in their 50's and didn't attend college.

Final note, there may be other and better reasons to elect a leftist. This thread is not about that. This thread is about a much more specific argument. If that is what you comment on I do not care what you think.

Ok that was the thing that was burning a hole in my mind today. I'ma go to work now.