Bernie's big mistake may be in the asking of this question: Can you think of one way that Bernie Sanders is signaling respect to voters outside of his base?

NY Times:   The last four presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump — are four very different politicians. But they have one crucial similarity: They all tried to appeal to voters who weren’t obvious supporters.

The Times pretends that Barack was similar to other presidents in terms of his willingness to seek out voters not previously disposed to vote for him.  In 2011,  Barack made it clear that he was no longer concerned about the working class of Middle America.  that pool of voter is now more than 63 million strong and growing ~ editor.

Clinton promised a “third way,” distinct from traditional Democratic or Republican policies. Bush ran on compassionate conservatism. Obama said that red and blue America shared more in common than pundits claimed.

Even Trump, radical as he is, flouted Republican orthodoxy by sounding like a populist Democrat on Social Security, Medicare and trade. Polls showed that voters judged Trump to be more moderate than any Republican nominee since the 1970s.

The art of peeling off voters — those in the middle or those who aren’t ideological — may be the most important skill in politics. It doesn’t require a mushy centrist policy agenda, either. Trump has made that clear   . . . .    understanding that politics is inescapably performative. Voters respond to signals. They respond to gestures of respect from politicians who are willing to say, in effect: We may not agree on everything, but I see you and understand what matters to you.

The newly energetic American left has largely rejected this approach, choosing instead to believe a comforting myth about swing voters being extinct and turnout being a cure-all. It’s a big mistake.

Before going further, I want to make clear that this is not a column urging Democrats to return to Clintonian centrism. I’m making a different case — that the left is hurting its own ability to win elections and enact sweeping change, by insisting on an orthodox version of progressivism.

To put it another way: Can you think of one way that Bernie Sanders is signaling respect to voters outside of his base?

He has taken a nearly maximalist liberal position on every major issue. It’s especially striking from him, because he has shown over his career that he grasps the importance of building a coalition.

Sanders once won over blue-collar Vermonters with help from a moderate position on guns. “We need a sensible debate about gun control which overcomes the cultural divide that exists in this country,” he said in 2015, “and I think I can play an important role in this.” He was also once an heir to organized labor’s skepticism of large-scale immigration. “At a time when the middle class is shrinking, the last thing we need is to bring over in a period of years, millions of people into this country who are prepared to lower wages for American workers,” he said in 2007.

Read the remainder of this lengthly article, here.