I like your argument. It gives me hope that Bernie or someone like him can win soon. But is it really true? Or just wishful thinking?
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ted-cruzs-general-election-strategy-is-wishful-thinking/
This article points towards it as wishful thinking. And it has hard data to back it up. The general election Is won by swing voters. The key is that there are only a few states left that are competitive.
SLD
In the first place, there's a different reality for conservatives; the theory that they can win elections just by being "more conservative" is a meme they've been running with for a long time. But this article, like so many others, appears to be equating the concept of "swing voters" with "swing states" as if they are related concepts.
They're not, though. Swing states are on the fence because the number of liberals is similar to the number of conservatives and there isn't an clear supermajority of one group or the other to make the national election a foregone conclusion in those states. This isn't because a huge number of voters in those states are undecided, it's because a huge number of voters from both sides of the political spectrum live there.
And it is in PRECISELY those states that the high turnout of your supporters makes the most difference. If only 30% of eligible voters actually turn out to cast a ballot, your electoral success depends entirely on whether or not turnout of your SUPPORTERS exceeds turnout from your opponents. The obsessive chasing of swing voters depends on the assumption that 100% of your potential supporters will definitely turn out on election day and that you really only need to clinch a few EXTRA percent to have a chance at winning.
THAT is wishful thinking: the assumption that you can count on every single liberal in a battleground state vigorously supporting a candidate who has given them no reason at all to do so other than "Vote for me, I'm not a Republican," whose political presence and campaign thrust has been entirely calculated to attract shallow swing voters with short attention spans, whose avoids controversy like a schoolyard bully and refuses to take a decisive stand on any liberal issue for fear of alienating right-leaning centrists. When you fuck over your entire base to try and win the swing vote, that's when you start getting 30% turnout from members of your own party; even if you SUCCEED and win over the swing voters, you still loose the general election.
So it isn't actually a task of convincing people to vote for you instead of the other guy. It's a task of convincing people who support you to vote AT ALL. People who are still undecided on election day probably won't bother voting in the first place.
tl;dr: the "math" only works out the way the writer claims if you can guarantee that 100% of base voters will actually vote. If you piss off the base and none of them show up to the polls, it doesn't matter how many swing votes you pull. In that sense, Cruz's team isn't actually wrong about Romney, and that's essentially how Obama got elected the FIRST time too.
