@hightor,
Regardless of how it's precisely defined, a political party has have a recognizable identity, a
brand. Otherwise what is the point of having a party?
I don't know if this is the case, but my bet would be that a lot more people base the majority of the votes they cast on a ballot, upon party affiliation rather than perceptions or knowledge of the individual candidates.
Perhaps in very high profile races like those for president, governor, big city mayor and a Senate seat there are a lot more votes based on the voter's understanding of the of the individual, but local election? Water Commissioner, County Clerk etc? I doubt that even House Reps who haven't found a way to grab the national spotlight have much name recognition let alone well known profiles in their districts.
And even when a candidate is well known, but not well liked, his or her party affiliation will often be the deciding factor of the person voting for them. I'm sure this was the case with a lot of voters in November:
"I don't really like Hillary and I don't like Trump, but she's a Democrat and he's a Republican and, in general I like Democrats better than Republicans." In order to base one's vote on a calculus like this, one has to have some understanding, or at least a perception, of what it means to be a
Democrat or
Republican.
An effective strategy in the recent GA special election was to continuously link the unknown Ossoff who ran as a centrist, with Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi had 98% name recognition in the district and for a whole lot of people, she is the face of the Democrat Party, a personification of the Democrat Brand. Pelosi and the national brand are not hugely popular in the district (especially among Republican voters) and so they filled in the blanks they had with Ossoff with Pelosi and the Brand. They did so despite the impression they may have received from Ossoff's campaign rhetoric, and I think that demonstrates that a lot of voters don't, at all, trust campaign rhetoric and that they know (or at least strongly believe) that candidates will do or say anything to get elected and then worry later about what the voters think about them once they get on the job.
Even if Ossoff was sincere in his centrist rhetoric, the way a number of Blue Dog Democrats were during their last successful wave, once he got to DC he would have learned that the only way a low profile, first term representative was likely to accrue power or influence is to support the Party Leadership, the people who establish the Brand. Blue Dog Democrats who stayed true to the positions they ran on found themselves wandering the wastelands of DC and if they joined in on the majority's agenda in order to have any chance of being effective, when they returned to their districts, the voters, understandably, saw them as having conned them to get elected (even if they really hadn't) and refused to re-elect them.
I can't say if any of the returning Blue Dogs tried to explain to their constituents their dilemma and how they needed to go along with Party leadership if they were to have any chance of serving them, but if they did, I'm sure it wasn't persuasive. Why would anyone vote for a centrist Democrat who once elected, acted like a left wing Democrat? That the Blue Dog
just had to because that's the way the system worked?
"No thanks, we wouldn't vote for Pelosi if she ran here, and voting for you was a vote for her, so pack your bags."
Of course the same dynamic can play out with Republicans, but I don't think too many Democrat voters would buy it either.
It's funny too because Democrat strategists haven't exactly kept this particular strategy secret. They'll tout it to whatever reporter asks them about it. Of course they don't add
"...and the most important part of the strategy is for the guy to flip once in DC either by design or coercion," but do they really think voters are so gullible as not have figured that part out yet?
