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I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, and I'm genuinely interested to know how you arrived at it. Like I really want to know how you arrived there.
I'm interested because, I don't think of it as a "sides" issue; what it takes for a Republican/ conservative to win an election and what it takes for a Dem/ progressive to win, they have practically nothing to do with one another. Its two entirely different sets of cohorts you have to appeal to, its two different ways of viewing and thinking about politics and power. I also don't believe that voters exist along a left-right spectrum. I think thats an appealing trope to entrench liberalism, one political class, of which both the Republican and traditional Democratic parties are a part of. So if you think along a unary spectrum to try and understand what people believe, you'll make very serious mistakes when you try to predict their behavior.
In my view, if you are running on the left, its the politician that withstands the most criticism, and stays standing, who is the strongest candidate. Graham Platner or Mamdani is an excellent example of this. And excellent examples of avoiding criticism, Hillary, Biden, Harris, they all led to republican victory. Criticism makes candidates stronger. Allowing them to persist uncritically leaves them, and you if you are they're supporter, vulnerable.
That being said, what it takes for a Democrat to win vs Republican? Absolutely different things. Apples and bananas.
It's a difficult thing to articulate, so I've put off responding. Sorry. I think there's a lot of daylight between how we view the US electorate for one thing - but perhaps not as much as I first thought. You're right that the distinctive difference between left and right-leaning voters is that only one side is highly critical of their candidates and easily falls out of love with them, while the other is a lot more willing to be led and uncritical. That's all pretty much what you'd expect from the research by Dr. Altemeyer on authoritarian personalities.
I do not mean to propose that we should be uncritical of self-styled leftist candidates, only that we should be more willing to forgive. I think of people like Al Franken and (across the pond) Jeremy Corbyn who were doing good things and were successfully ousted based on smears and vibes. I do not mean they are perfect or that we should vote 'blue no matter who', but that we should give grace to people who get smeared because we live in an adverse media environment where billionaire-owned news and social media clearly give preferential treatment to the right, and often silences or viciously smears anyone who might be a problem. And we let them rob us of the voices we need in politics. That's all.
A lot of my thoughts revolve around the game-theoretic implications of elections under FPTP. I feel that the dominant strategy in that 'game' is a bipolar oligarchy of mutually complicit actors who, in lay terms, run a good-cop/bad-cop con on the voter. You see it in the US very clearly, and to a lesser extent in the UK (because it's a different game, and the bipolar tendency is not as strong I think - though the chatter after the recent elections does seem to be reframing things in terms of Green v. Reform as a major upset, so it might just end up being a continuation of the same dynamic under different circumstances).
So in that situation of good cop/bad cop that I see happening, yes different things motivate different voters but - crucially - these two parties are operating on two sides of the same basic con (and I don't think it's a con that necessarily involves deliberate awareness of the con, I just see it as an emergent aspect of this game).
Basically I just hate the game, it needs to change. I don't know how cogent you'll find this, sorry I don't have a lot of time to edit down. Until someone's doing that, I'm going to advocate for being more forgiving. Still critical, but knowing that every time we cut someone loose we're weaker, and they're always stacking the deck against us.
There you go. Bad, weird opinions. You asked!