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Notes -
I mean this tension isn't unique to politics. I think a music analogy is also appropriate here. Is the most popular, listened-to music actually the best? Personally, I do actually think that popular music must ipso facto be almost definitely of decent quality, but if you ask most people on the street if they think the current top song is actually good music, they might often disagree. You brought up film, which is a good analogy, but I think you make a mistake in limiting the analysis to just poor performing films = must be bad films. The dynamics of unpopular things is not fundamentally the same as popular things. A film can not do well because it has a niche audience in the first place, but a film can do well because it does all things at least somewhat competently, even if it does nothing particularly well or best-in-class. At least that's my take on the popular vs quality tradeoff that's present in many forms, including politics. But many films don't even explicitly attempt to do well - not every Oscar Best Picture winner expects to top the box office, and in fact often there is a concession that the two goals are often mutually exclusive. That's why I think the analogy isn't perfect, because in politics, the goal IS to get the top box office! You can't redefine electoral success. I don't think Democrats have deluded themselves into thinking something other than electoral success is the goal. And honestly, I don't think they are doubling down on guilt-based politics either. At least, not yet. Right now they are just in the "milling around confused" phase still.
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