Based on polling the lib voters are actually a lot less addicted to that victim-as-hero image than their representatives are. The problem is that the message the Democrats sell to their voters from the top-down has consciously been chosen to be the “when they go low, we go high” message. But letting their voters cast themselves as the hall monitors of democracy and decency is just the form of appeal the top Dems consciously crafted to be most advantageous to them in their simultaneous pursuit of rewards from capital and everyday voters–who have the potential to become far more radicalized.

People will go toward whichever mainstream and widely publicized figure/party that agrees most with their views, just like how most people choose to go see studio movies over Indies because that’s what has the ad spend. So Dem voters choose which leaders to follow and let themselves be guided by based on who they’re putting on the TV, but what the popular Dem politicians and pundits espouse do not represent the fixed baseline average for what their voters already believe, just the fixed baseline for what their voters feel free to say at the current moment. Looking at an example from the other side, Republicans were terrified to call out Iraq for being a disaster until Trump called it out in a debate and opened the floodgates overnight.

The Dem voter-politician split on Gaza, Medicare 4 All, etc. is so stark, and while Biden is pulls his anti-Trump ads out of decorum the liberal voters online, especially on black Twitter are like “I don’t give a fuck if he got popped.” The message their voters crave has no mainstream figure to articulate for them yet.