She’s not going to gain any trump voters, there’s zero logical reason for Dems to move to the right. Except they think they can get away with being more to the right.

While I can’t speak on the effectiveness of the strategy, I would point out that Harris et al. aren’t really aiming to recruit Trump voters. They’re more aiming for more traditional Reaganite Republicans, the “never Trump” people. Think of the type of Republicans like Dick Cheney. That’s the type of Republican they’re aiming for. They’re not aiming to convince an active Trump supporter to flip to Harris. They’re trying to get Republicans who don’t want to vote for Trump, who would otherwise stay at home, to instead vote for Harris.

My own parents fit into this mold. They’re in their sixties and voted for Republicans their entire adult lives, up until 2016. They voted third party in 2016, and in 2020 they switched over to supporting Biden, and now they support Harris and are voting for Democrats across the board.

Whether appealing to voters like my parents or trying to appeal to younger, more disaffected progressive voters is a better strategy, I can’t say. But the perennial problem of appealing to hard-core progressive voters is that they are incredibly fickle and often engage in self-destructive purity testing. Look at the leftist voters refusing to vote for Harris over the Palestine issue. Far-left voters have a tendency to find any excuse not to vote for a candidate. It’s Palestine this time around, but it could easily be something else. There’s always some issue that the main Democratic candidate has that some leftists will cite as a reason not to vote for the mainline Democratic candidate. In 2024, it’s Palestine. In 2020, it was Biden and the crime bill. In 2016, it was Hillary’s treatment of Bernie. Etc. There’s always a purity test violation a certain segment of far left voters will cite to vote against their own interests. They want a perfect candidate, and they will actively seek out any excuse not to vote for the mainline candidate. As no politician will share 100% of their views, there will always be some reason to not vote for them.

The reason Democrats often tilt to the right is that voters on the far left side of things are often short-sighted and incredibly fickle. They’re not reliable voters.

I think it’s a bit more nuanced than that. At least some of these undecided voters seem like they’d otherwise be left leaning but they have the one issue (bad experience with abortion that they want to impose on everyone, or really don’t wanna give up their gun, etc) which is holding them back.

Of course it’s not like it’s the same one issue holding them all back - each one is different from the rest. Hence going more left and liberal - it feels right to us, but likely risk is that doing so could very well push some of these folks away.

That’s all and well in a normal election but - well, i think it’s obvious most of us regulars here that this election year is not that.