• sugar_in_your_tea
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    10 months ago

    Bush… Tea Party

    The only thing resembling the Tea Party in Bush’s campaign was tax cuts (along with EITC expansion). That’s it. They weren’t particularly aggressive (esp compared to Trump’s), and he mostly did a stimulus package due to the tech crash.

    The rest of his platform was pretty centrist, such as:

    • non-interventionism - lol, he really didn’t stick to that, but it was in his campaign
    • no child left behind - expansion of education and testing
    • end reliance on foreign oil - has been a pretty consistent thing across the aisle

    Nothing he campaigned on or did as President was particularly extreme. Gore, on the other hand, was relatively extreme WRT environmentalism, and Bush aimed to get those who didn’t agree with Gore.

    Biden

    Biden was only catering to progressives because everyone else was, and he was by far the least progressive of the frontrunners. If he’s the only one that’s saying something different, it needs to be really compelling or he’ll just get slaughtered in the debates.

    Once he got the nomination, he didn’t need to cater to progressives anymore, so he focused on the center.

    On the flipside, look at Romney, he was pretty centrist in the debates and got the nomination, but got slaughtered in the general election when he flipped more conservative. McCain had a similar strategy in 2008.