I find it striking how much of this piece is just admitting that primaries produce far-left (or far-right) candidates. Primaries are bad! It's also the one piece of the American political system that's relatively new (since the 70s), and neatly coincides with the US political system going off the rails. If there were one problem I wish I could solve it would be how to get rid of primaries
I agree regarding congressional primaries, but do presidentials have a recent record of producing far left nominees? Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, Biden…except for Obama, the winner was always to the right of their second place competitor. I’ll grant you that they give a lot of exposure to lefties like Bernie and Warren that probably isn’t great for the D brand with the national electorate.
I think the tendency is to produce someone from the mainstream of the dominant faction (left or right) of the party. When that dominant faction is the more extreme one, that winner is well to the left/right of the party much less of the country.
When it's the less extreme faction that wins (e.g. both Clintons, HW Bush, Romney, McCain), those candidates often compromise with the other wing to win the primary and then move to the centre for the general. When it's the more extreme faction that wins, while they usually do compromise with the more centrist wing in the primary (e.g. Obama), they're still way to the left/right of the country.
Yeah I think it's a new phenomenon. And it won't lead to leftist candidates getting nominated per se. But it will exert a gravitational pull to the left on more mainstream candidates. And it also means that normie Democrats will not have the luxury of exploring the candidacies of lesser-known normie-friendly politicians. There will be a need to consolidate early behind a known quantity, to avoid splitting the vote. This helped Biden in 2020, and it will help Harris in 2028 (never mind that she might not be all that normie-friendly, but whatever).
I liked this comment even though I agree with others below that the historical analysis is wrong. Primaries have not historically chosen extreme candidates, but going forward they very well may. Primaries *plus partisan sorting* is bad news.
Well, let's look at the tale of the tape. I'm willing to adjust on these if I hear good points otherwise, but here's my lightning round style take:
Carter: no
Ford: no
Reagan: yes
Mondale: not that much
Dukakis: ...? He ran such a weird and bad campaign in the general that it's tough to tell
HW: no
Bill Clinton: definitely no
Dole: yes, and really ran under the radar on this
Gore: no
Dubya: tough to say, probably depends on the issue
Kerry: yes, like Dole ran under the radar here
McCain: no, but like Dubya a bit issue dependent
Obama: no
Romney: the 2012 version of him, yes--perhaps not an earlier or later version of him
Hillary Clinton: probably yes relative to where she was before, but both Clintons can be chameleons in this regard
Trump: the highest variance dependent on issue
Biden: no
Now, I could buy an argument that the primary system needed some time to distill into its capability to nominate extreme candidates, and that that distillation may now be upon us.
I'm more interested in the position relative to the entire party than to just a handful of primary competitors, and I always saw Kerry near the left end of the Senate caucus when it came to the issues. Dean was weird and I don't think we can glean much from his brief run. Edwards, maybe, I'd have to review his policy takes relative to Kerry's, and in any case Kerry picked him as his VP.
Edwards started out billing himself as the 21st Century Bill Clinton, then pivoted left when he saw that’s where the energy/money was. He had quite the cheering section on Daily Kos based largely on his “Two Americas” speech about economic inequality, which became his trademark.
Edwards had a big contingent of support from the Hollywood left based on his economic populism. Which, TBH, I thought he was correct to champion. In my view economic inequality is the original sin from which most of our other problems flow. But he was obviously a highly flawed candidate.
I think the Iraq War was a big issue among progressive dems in 04 and Kerry voted for it. i think he was also generally very “establishment.” Edwards talked a lot more about inequality and he and Dean were perceived as “outsiders”.
But Bernie and Warren lost! So your position isn't that primaries produce extreme candidates (your comment's first sentence). It is that primaries expose extreme candidates (who go on to lose) to the public?
....can you think of any politically extreme candidates that might have shockingly won their party's nomination in the last 8 years? Going on to transform American politics in a negative way and push us close to a Latin American-style strongman government? Anyone come to mind? Think hard man
So, the GOP should basically ignore what a majority of it's voters want?
LIke, Trump is terrible, but it's because a lot of GOP voters are terrible. Again, Mitt Romney in 2012, regardless of his actual views, had to pivot hard right to win over voters who thought he was an elite squish, and he's basically the type of guy a GOP convention filled with rich dudes and their lackeys would've chosen.
Then again, the last couple weeks show a lot of this comment section would've agreed with 2012 Mitt Romney on immigration.
>So, the GOP should basically ignore what a majority of it's voters want? LIke, Trump is terrible, but it's because a lot of GOP voters are terrible
So to merge this and your other comment- Trump only won the 2016 nomination because of open primary states. He won most of those, likely pulling in former Democrats and independents. He actually lost most of the closed primary states to Cruz (to be fair, there's not that many of them). Which begs the question- who are the 'GOP voters', exactly?
If we have to do primaries, they should be closed primaries. 41 US states are some degree of open primary now (it's a spectrum as to how open). If you want to help select the representative of a private organization, *you should be a card carrying member of said organization*. Neither you nor I get to vote as to who the next Girl Scouts leader is, right? Or who wins the Oscars, or who the next president of the 4-H Club is, right? Is that undemocratic? No, they're all private organizations controlled by their members.
If voters are disgruntled with 2 parties, sure, they're free to go out and form their own party or whatever. Or, vote in independents. *That's totally legal now*. Don't have high odds of winning? Not my problem
I can't tell if you literally just landed on our planet and are not familiar with other extremist wins in US primaries, but off the top of my head:
AOC over Joe Cawley
Dave Brat, shockingly, over Eric Cantor. The # of Brat voters was like not even 10% of the district's total electorate. What's democratic about that?
Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst
Mike Lee over Robert Bennett
Rand Paul over Trey Greyson
Kari Lake is the likely favorite for the Arizona Senate
Etc. etc. Much worse, the threat of being primaried is enough to pull Republicans further to the right. Do you ever wonder why they've consistently become more extreme? Because they know if they anger the party's base, various donors, the Fox News establishment, etc., they'll face a primary challenge. The US- is far as I know- the only democracy in world history to *primary incumbents*. Of course the mere threat of losing pulls them further to the right! And the number of people who vote in the primaries is just a few % of the total voting population, so you're selecting for extreme partisans.
Why was Ken Paxton acquitted on impeachment charges of corruption recently? Because billionaire far-right donors promised to primary any Republican who voted to impeach him. It's a very, very, very bad system
Well, I'm not sure it's fully distilled on the presidential level, then. Lower levels, perhaps, though I think it's complicated, with Trump of course adding into the complication with chaos.
I'm not offering a take yet on whether I agree with LF or not--I am sympathetic to the idea that primaries are bad. I was more just thinking through what's happened before to see if any of us can glean some trends. My first thought is that at the presidential level there didn't seem to be much consistency.
Yes: primaries have, well, primed Dem voters to expect left-wing candidates. An open primary, like an open convention, would push Democrats to the left.
I dunno, I kind of agree in principle but if it were up to Democratic elites wouldn’t we have gotten someone far to Biden’s left in 2020? Republican primary voters are indeed nightmare fuel but moderate Black Democrats are seemingly the only force still saving Dems from their worst instincts.
One thing that might help is if the Democrats frontloaded their primary schedule in redder states like, say, Oklahoma where the primary electorate is closer to the national center than it is elsewhere. While Republicans could do the opposite.
Even if every single person voted in the primaries, you could still end up with not very moderate candidates. If voters are evenly spread out between -100 (far left) to 100 (far right), the median Democrat is -50 and the median Republican is +50, neither of which is close to 0. With parties centrally controlled, they would compete for the median general election voter, and nominate people at like -10 and +10. Of course primary voters can prioritize electability as well, but if many of them don't, you still get pulled toward the extremes.
Here's the thing, and I've said this before. You can have one of two things in modern politics -
1. A relatively weak party system and not that many parties.
2. A relatively strong party system, but it's fairly easy to have multiple parties that have a chance to win seats/matter.
I'd actually argue that's why there were more signifigant third-party challenges pre-primary system is if you were a group basically shut out from serious consideration (abolitionist in the 1850's, populists in the late 19th century, socialists & Dixiecrats in 1948, segregationists in 1968, etc.), there was no way to make your voice really heard within the system, so you could only make an impact by winning a big number of votes and make one or both parties shift toward you.
If you want to give people only two choices, forced upon them via elite consensus, you're either going to get a massive drop in voting, and even more distrust of the system, or we're going to see far more 3rd party (especially in a world of basically no campaign finance limits) runs that ruin your precious moderate candidates chances of winning.
Part of the reason you didn't see a serious 3rd party effort in 2016 & 2020 from the left is they got to try to win the primary. They failed, and yes, as part of a coalition, they got their hand to effect policy, as much as that upsets many here.
Look, I get this comment section, that wants it to be 2003 forever, wants a world where they never have to listen to anybody to the left of them, but every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters.
"Look, I get this comment section, that wants it to be 2003 forever, wants a world where they never have to listen to anybody to the left of them, but every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters."
I've seen you voice this a couple of times, and I totally get being frustrated by obtuse commenters online
On the other hand, this is a pretty left of center place with people who are 99.999% likely to vote for Biden in the election. And the polls suggest that even with these people who are to your right, Biden might still lose. If the left does run a third party candidate of almost any sort, it will certainly lead to Republicans winning easily. That will in turn move policy dramatically to the right of where it is now. Democrats likely respond to such events by moving to the center like Clinton and the DLC did in the 90s in order to triangulate better. How does any of that accomplish what you want?
TL;DR Version - You just can't give people a "we're stopping the bad people from doing things, but we're not giving you anything you want" or they'll stop showing up, no matter how bad the alternative is. You actually have to give them or at least try to give them something they care about.
But, the current Democratic coalition, as somebody who is to the left of 95-98% of the populaiton is fine with me. Which is why I have no real issues Biden running for reelection, and will have zero problems voting for him in November.
But, much of that is a lot of things that much of this comment section is upset that Biden did. If the Biden administration actually ran like many people in this comment section want him too, I, a fairly partisan Democrat would have some real issues getting motived to drop my ballot back in the mail in lovely all-mail voting Washington, and the people I know under 40, which yes, in a deep blue city, but I also know via the Internet people in varying other places, would probably be even more upset with Biden than they are now, and I don't think he would be any more popular, since the largest chunk of his unpopularity isn't that he hasn't been meaner to immigrants, trans kids, or people with college debt, but because he's old, the Afghanistan withdrawl didn't do perfectly (and the Blob jumped on that), and stuff is expensive.
There's a lot of complaining about how the evil Left NGO's and Bernie voters (who are all rich trust fund kids in the eyes of the comment section here, despite Bernie basically even going 50-50 with African-American voters under 40, and overwhelmingly winning the other ethnic groups in the 2016 & 2020 primary) should all sit down and shut up, and hell, Warren voters should and realize they're in a coalition, there are a lot of people who, and let me mean here, don't realize that the fact they were OK with gay people, were against the Iraq War, and are OK with higher taxes doesn't mean you're on the left edge of the Democratic coalition anymore like it was when you were a edge Gen Xer in the 90's.
There are a lot of people who claim they're liberal, but continually talk and seem to vote on the issues that they're on the right edge or are just right-wing about a bunch here, which is actually different than most voters in the Democratic coalition, who may have right or centrist-leaning views on things, but they don't really care. Just like all the single-payer or pro-choice people who vote for Trump. They legitimately have those views, they just have issues they care about more, just like the 74 year old grandma in rural South Carolina probably believes in two genders, but doesn't care the Democratic Party doesn't - unlike many people here, who do deeply care about the things the Democrat's are too far left according to them.
Again, people claim this is a pretty left of center place, but on certain issues, especially issues the younger part of the population cares about is far more liberal about, the rancor is honestly, no different than blue checks on Twitter complaining about the kids these days and how wokeness is ruining free speech/college/politics/media/etc. Bluntly, on the trans issue, this comment section is to the right of every elected Democrat, including John Bel Edwards, Governor of Lousiana, who did some pretty pro-trans EO's while in office.
The reality is, if you're somebody on the 50% of the Democratic coalition on the leftier sides, basically the only thing you've gotten in the past six months to a year is some attempts at student loan forgiveness, a few minor (but good) regulatory things, all while Biden continues to basically let Israel do whatever they want with no reprecussions, and the Democrat's attempting to pass a law that would've been Steve Sailer and Tom Tacrendo's wet dream ten years ago.
Again - the actual current Democratic Party, I'm fine with. The Democratic Party this comment section seems to want at times - not interested in, and I think would be actually less electorally successful than the current Democrat's, who are basically the most electorally successful center-left party in the developed world outside of the Canadian Liberals or Portugese left in the past 20 years.
So you included a lot in your response and I would enjoy digging in a bit more on many aspects of it, but I want to focus purely on the coalitional aspects you highlight -
"You just can't give people a "we're stopping the bad people from doing things, but we're not giving you anything you want" or they'll stop showing up, no matter how bad the alternative is. You actually have to give them or at least try to give them something they care about. "
I think you are absolutely correct! But I think just as you think the Democratic party has to address the coalitional wants of the left of the party, I also think they have to address the coalitional wants of the center & right of the party. This is further complicated because there is not one single spectrum, but instead there are a host of issues where many people are left or right - as you noted in your discussion about trans issues.
Important to this discussion is what you said about those who feel they're not being sufficiently accommodated by the party. One of the key limitations the left has with Democrats is that if they aren't sufficiently enthused, they will stay home. While if the right of the party is not sufficiently enthused, they will vote Republican. Groups or segments that will credibly switch parties are much more impactful than those who stay home. If there are 100 voters, and the balance is 51-49 for left and right respectively, if one person on the left stays home, they still have a 50-49 advantage, but if one person on the right of the party switches it becomes a 50-50 tie. Every person either party gets to switch from the other party is worth twice as much one they pick up on the edge.
All of which is to say that a successful party will (and should!) try to balance the interests of coalition partners in order to be most effective, go as far to the edge to add votes without going so far that they start attriting votes in the center.
I'm curious if you think this is incorrect in some substantive way? Matt highlighted that the Democratic party has responded to Republicans putting up weak candidates by moving further to the left. Should that change, and Republicans put up much stronger candidates, do you think the Democratic party will be able to move right without losing your and other left support? Even with a very weak candidate like Trump, Democrats (Biden) are in danger of losing, what path to victory outside of moving to the right do you see possible for Democrats if Republicans offer stronger candidates?
1.) Again, I actually think the "Democrat's Stay Where They Basically Are + Nominate Somebody Who Isn't Old" will actually go fine in 2028, and past that, it gets really difficult for the GOP to win a national election since Millenial's aren't going as conservative as Gen X did (and they also started more liberal).
Again, I'm not against the current Democratic Party's positions on a whole (obviously, I have issues on specific things) because I understand we can't be Norway overnight, but I'm against the "Dem's should move to the right on all cultural issues" that a lot of people here want.
Like, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, and so on are in some ways, to the left of Biden on some issues, but I think they'd do fine in a general. For all the talk sometimes here about "safe, legal, and rare," Whitmer did basically make the "nah, it's in the Constitution, folks" with zero talk about rareness and won big in a swing state.
TL:DR - I don't mind the current Democratic position on things, and think a not old nominee could even shift a bit to the left, if they were actually charismatic.
2.) I think there's also some disagreement on whom the actual swing voters are. Swing voters don't have real politics the way we weirdos do. They base on vibes and what comes up in the election - see the famous graphic from David Shor where people who approved the ACA, but wanted less immigration went 60-40 Obama to 60-40 Trump from 2012 to 2016.
The best you can do about those voters is highlight the things the GOP is nuts on they don't like (abortion, etc.) and try your best to not talk about things they disagree with us on.
Yes, on crime and immigration, there was overreach, but Biden basically never caved to the stuff on crime, but he can't fix the fact that many urban dwellers care less about being as punitive to every homeless person or person who committed a crime as people in suburbs do. Also, the GOP will run on the cities being crime-ridden hellholes no matter what the actual truth is.
I also don't think there are actually that many "the Dem's are too woke on trans kids/CRT/DEI/whatever Chris Rufo is whining about today" voters outside of highly educated people annoyed about the milleiu in basically deep-blue districts. It's a very Online Issue, as even polling post-2022 midterms showed.
The actual right-edge of the Democratic coalition isn't white centrists on Twitter upset their kids talked about whiteness at their private school. It's actually older moderate non-white non-college-educated minorities with a variety of views on cultural issues, most of which they don't care about.
For all the talk of some actual shift toward the GOP by minorities, the actual good exit polls in 2022 didn't really show much, and I'll be blunt - I simply don't but the polling showing Trump winning Hispanic's or winning 25% of black men. A point or two shift, sure. But, until it actually happens, like people were claiming would happen in 2020 & 2022 by much further margins than it actually did, I'm not going to buy it.
Yes, there'll be bleeding in places like the border area of Texas, but those are a bunch of votes we shouldn't have been winning for a long time. It's basically the same as the pro-choice pro-LGBT suburban women that voted for Romney. Those people are gone gone gone from the GOP coalition in the long run.
As for the McArdle/etc. types, they're always temporarily allies and anything short of just becoming a bland centrist to center-right party will never make those people happy. I guess, my line is, if you're asking to the Dem's to move to the center more than Woke Bill Kirstol is, you're probably not a long-term Dem voter in any scenario.
TL;DR - The people on here and on Twitter who claim to be the important voters to win actually aren't. The actual important voters are weirdos who want single-payer, the border closed for 10 years, are pro-choice up to conception, and want all guns banned, and other wacky conflcting views.
3.) More specifically, on the GOP, I don't think it's possible really for them to nominate "normal" candidates a lot of the time. Mike Gallagher, who was basically fated to run for a WI Senate seat in the next cycle or two peaced out. And I'm not talking about moderates, but right-wingers who aren't openly nuts.
Look at 2022 - the only win they had was Joe Lombardo, who barely beat the incumbent Governor of Nevada even though they had the highest unemployment, and since being elected, he's basically been a moderate center-right guy hemmed in by an almost Dem supermajority and the fact his pre-Trump career showed him being a typical center-right cop - not crazy on immigration, pro-gun control, and not really caring about other social issues.
Otherwise, despite efforts by the NSCC & NCCC, a bunch of nuts got nominated, because that's what the GOP base wants.
Now, maybe in 2028, all the scales will fall, and a ticket of John Thune & Spencer Cox will win 39 states, but I highly, highly doubt it. This isn't me saying the GOP can't win, this is me saying that there's zero evidence they can fix what they're currently doing. The Democratic Party in 1989 hated losing three times - I see no evidnece most GOP voters will care if they lose for the fourth time in five POTUS elections.
TL:DR - Show me a competent GOP class of nominees for Senate and I'll worry.
"Show me a competent GOP class of nominees for Senate and I'll worry."
That is simply reinforcing what Matt said that because Republicans are offering weak candidates, that Democrats are moving left. They moved sufficiently left that despite Republicans offering a candidate who was impeached twice and has multiple civil and criminal trials ongoing is still neck and neck (if not leading) the current Democratic candidate.
You're response is
1) "Democrats where they are is fine" - but will they stay there? They have moved SIGNIFICANTLY to the left in the last decade on a large number of issues. You also note that older (more conservative) Democrats are dying off and younger more liberal Democrats are aging into the party - won't that in and of itself push the party left?
2) Swing voters are weird, but the general consensus is that most voters are generally more culturally conservative than the Democratic party and more economically liberal than the Republican party. (With the acknowledgement that large number of voters have loosely held and/or contradictory opinions). Moving into an age where culture beats economics suggests bad news for Democrats and in my opinion is THE reason why Trump is competitive.
3) The GOP is unable to provide non bonkers candidates - which seems like a risky thing to bet on and also suggests that if they did provide reasonable candidates, that they would win because they are closer to the majority opinion, its just that their candidates are crazy keeping them from winning now.
"every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters."
At one time I was as confident as you about new voters bringing strength to progressive Democrats, just as I was about increasing diversity bringing strength to progressive Democrats. Trumpism has scrambled those assumptions in ways that I'm still coming to terms with.
I support strong parties *because* I want third parties. Voters should have far more choices.
This would lead, IMO, eventually to proportional voting for Congress and state legislatures, at least in some states - the third parties, almost regardless of political stance, would support this and if they're getting 20+% of the vote as is typical in other FPTP countries, then they will have enough influence to get it through the initative process, and the nature of US politics means that it will be so obviously an old guard protection scheme to oppose it that at least some referendums will be won.
The US chose to head in the direction of ever-more-open primaries and those crushed the third parties by pushing all the best politicians into contesting major-party primaries instead of turning the third parties into serious forces. No-one with the ability to be a serious politician joins the Green or Libertarian Party, or at least stays in them (Kyrsten Sinema left, and you can have your own views on how serious she is, but she did make it to the US Senate).
The issue is, American politics is a lot more expensive than any place in the world. The reason why despite it being a FPTP system with two and a half strong parties, there still exists several reasonably strong minor parites in the UK is a constiuency is 1/10th the size of a congressional district, and it's far cheaper to run a parliamentary campaign.
If we had 2,000 House seats and campaign finance limits, that'd be another way as opposed to PR or ranked choice to have strong third parties, but that's probably even less likely to happen than a voting system change.
Plus, for whatever reason, minor parties in the US basically refuse to actually seriously run in local races. Like, why hasn't Jill Stein (pre-Russian connections) run for Mayor or some serious libertarian outside of Gary Johnson (when there was some) tried to run for Mayor or Governor. Like, maybe Ron Paul should've tired to start the revolutiion in Texas instead of the 2008 primary.
Once cool reform idea from Ian Shapiro & Frances Rosenbluth: make primaries non-binding when support for the winner is below some threshold (say, 10% of registered voters in the district).
At minimum, this would let voters know that primary winners tend to have incredibly *weak* mandates. And it would soften the ground for party leaders to remove truly bad candidates.
It's funny you say that, I've independently had the exact same idea. Just do 1 gigantic open 'primary' that's non-binding, anyone can vote for the candidate of either party. And do some really rigorous exit polling, so you know who voted for who, which candidates are popular with which groups, etc.
Then the party can pick, technically, whichever candidate they want. They'd likely go for whoever looks best-positioned to win in the general, but you're not making them do anything. It's better than just polling because you're seeing which candidates perform the best in a real contest
Primaries may be relatively new compared to how old the US is, but the 1970s were still ~50 years ago. If either Party tried to scrap their Primary system in favor of going back to party and local machine bosses picking Presidential candidates, you would have a massive revolt against said Party.
The party could pick a select number of candidates to run in the primary, and voters could get to pick 1 of them. It'd be a closed primary where only dues-paying, card-carrying members of the party can vote. This is how primaries are conducted in the world's 159 other democracies
I don't think that he explicitly makes that point, but he strongly implies it in points 9 & 17. I also read him as conflating contested primaries with brokered conventions in result and by implication in causal relationship to the results.
I don't see it in 9. No. 17. suggests Castro might have done better had he not turned left, but "the party elite, in terms of donations and top campaign staff" pushed left. Matt argues the Party mistakenly pushed to the left of the voters. That hardly seem like an argument favoring removing the voters and centering the Party.
I think 21 thoughts is an excellent post, by the way, I just don't see a 'primaries are bad' subtext. Maybe MY has done some tweets lately and people are synthesizing...
Sure, that's just completely unrealistic. Personally I think the US should abolish being a presidency, become a parliamentary republic, institute a national VAT, have completely open borders for anyone with a STEM PhD, and so on. I don't spend a lot of time advocating for these policies because they're not going to happen, you know?
There are constitutional or at least statutory impediments to everything you mention, you'd need to pass a bill, you'd need bipartisan support, Schoolhouse Rock and all that.
Primaries were imposed on the Presidential nominating process by a voluntary stroke of a pen by the parties themselves and could be removed by the stroke of a pen in the same way.
They don't want to do it, it feels very politically destructive and just sort of wrong. But to your initial point, we didn't have Presidential primaries of consequential substance for most of our history, and it seemed to lead to better outcomes.
Suppose the Klein scenario actually happens and Dems pick a candidate at the convention (I agree this is a very unlikely scenario). In this case however, I expect the Overton window would open to the possibility of getting rid of primaries
There would be. Do you agree with that opposition?
If it's THAT important, maybe it's worth taking a lonely stand and starting to build the case.
Because, to my initial response, the actual *doing* of it is easy and simple and totally within the control of the party itself. It's not like changing to a parliamentary system at all.
"Primaries were imposed on the Presidential nominating process by a voluntary stroke of a pen by the parties themselves and could be removed by the stroke of a pen in the same way.
They don't want to do it, it feels very politically destructive and just sort of wrong. But to your initial point, we didn't have Presidential primaries of consequential substance for most of our history, and it seemed to lead to better outcomes."
Once you give an entitlement to any halfway powerful constituency, you can never take it away.
No approach is going to be infallible, the question is which one has the better odds of success. I don't have a strong opinion on that. I could also seeing the odds changing depending on the current conditions at play that might not always be the same.
Maybe because a lot of voters don't want to be given two bland choices by their supposed betters?
I bet you the vast majority of voters who voted for Youngkin know he was basically chosen by GOP state leaders, as opposed to a primary.
You can get away with that on the state level, but not on a national level.
If the Democrat's actually tried to go back to a convention-style system without buy-in from the electorate, I guarantee you there would be a serious third-party run, and it wouldn't even be that all left-wing, but just based more on "the party doesn't trust you, and thinks you need to be told who to vote for."
Hell, Bernie got a lot of votes in 2016 with basically this message in the primaries from people who probably disagreed with a lot of his policies.
What's your take on federal Senate and House races? They're for national office but are voted upon on the state level. And the GOP in particular has suffered multiple own goals on these offices by the primaries sticking them with clowns in the general election.
If a presidential nomination at the convention were to happen in 2024, I think it's highly likely that Trump would go third party, but that Biden wouldn't, and I'm not sure if there's another Democrat or Democratic supporter who could pull off a third party campaign that would be threatening enough. I'm using that as an example to prod at the idea that circumstances that are relative to the current situation at the time may matter as to what's the better path.
>Either party is totally free to just eliminate their primaries unilaterally.<
Presidential primaries, yes. I'm not sure that's true for lower offices. And that's because it's not actually the "primaries" that technically choose the two major party nominees. But rather the summer conventions. Parties are indeed free to opt out of the current way of doing things—perhaps returning to some version of smoke-filled rooms—in the selection of their presidential nominees.
But for lower offices, the primary elections directly determine ballot access. Anybody wanting to upend this system need to get a bill through the state legislature or a court ruling allowing them to bypass it. Right?
That ruling held that California's *blanket* primary violated the freedom of association rights of political parties. AFAIK it didn't strike down the authority of states to hold (partisan) primary elections to decide general election ballot access. Let's imagine the following scenario: the Massachusetts Democratic Party for whatever reason decides it no longer wants to participate in the Commonwealth's state primary (for state, local and congressional races), which is normally held in September. But Democrats would basically be shit out of luck absent an act of the legislature, because it couldn't prevent individuals who got the requisite number of signatures from getting on the primary ballot. And the first past the post winner in any of these races would subsequently: A) be allowed on the general election ballot and, B) would have "Democrat" next to their name. Does that not sound correct? (I realize there's some variation depending on the state in question; and again, needless to say, I'm happy to stand corrected). But I suspect a political party that was really determined to opt out of state-run nominating primaries would have to get the law changed and/or (equivalent) go to court.
For the record I fully support the right of parties to decide on nominees however they damn well choose. What I've never quite been able to wrap my mind around is: if parties do have this authority, why is public sector machinery used to participate in the (partisan) nomination process? Political parties are private entities, after all. If parties want to use a broad, popular approach to selecting nominees, they should organize private events, keep track of internal registration (who pays dues? who's a member in good standing?), rent polling places on their own dime, or book convention halls, or what have you...
Non-partisan (ie, jungle) primaries are a different matter in my view. They're pure, non-partisan, preliminary elections. But *most* primary elections in America are "The government getting involved in deciding which persons are allowed to enjoy the general election imprimatur of these private ideological clubs known as political parties."
You'd have to explain the Virginia/Youngkin situation. The broader right in that case was that the parties have a freedom of association right to choose their nominees, the blanket primary was just the vehicle by which the case landed at the Court
In theory they have the broad first amendment right to choose nominees however they wish, indeed. But that's not the same as "eliminating primaries unilaterally" — which is the original claim I'm responding to. Unless at some point they opt to exercise that right (either by court action or getting state election law changed in the legislature) the primary system will continue to be the method by which general election ballot access is managed, and by which candidates are awarded a "D" or an "R" next to their names.
I have been telling my liberal friends that if you seriously believe Trump is the worst, you should pick the most conservative Democrat you can accept, in the interests of carrying the swing states. I recommend Joe Manchin, and I swear to God they all make the same lemon-sucking face at the idea.
But I think Trump is such a danger that we should do it. (Though #9 is in fact my personal preferred path, probably via Whitmer or Kelly.)
IMHO the summary of points 3-6 is that no one should be thinking about Harris at the top of the ticket. Just don't. That's not what the people want.
>I have been telling my liberal friends that if you seriously believe Trump is the worst, you should pick the most conservative Democrat you can accept<
I hope your liberal friends informed you Joe Biden is both running for the nomination and blowing his opponents out of the water. So there seems little prospect of Manchin's securing the nomination.
Barring a health crisis, it's Biden vs. Trump. How much longer will these fantasies endure?
I agree that's what they should do but it's not how politics works in the social media age. Maybe at an earlier time in history but now politically active people are into politics as a means of broadcasting identity and as a lone voter it's crazy to take the identity hit of supporting someone like Manchin when you have so little influence individually. But since that's true of everyone and people don't like to see themselves as hypocrites they aren't going to vote for that kind of canidate at primaries.
Biden offers as moderate a package as possible without being unappetizing to modern Dems.
not much, but now I'm watching his videos on Youtube and he seems 100% fine re age. Like he looks "respectable experienced old" - not some JFK candidate of youth obviously.
OMG how have I NOT listened to him directly before. Goosebumps to hear a politician say such reasonable things. I think the Left has been lying to me about Joe Manchin to make him sound bad for some reason. This guy would totally win.
I mean, he reminds me of an 80s Republican, before the Gingrich revolution and all the crazy. And I mean that in a good way.
Davie are you over 50? Most voters are. I am too. I can 100% understand why the Millennials might not connect with Manchin, but for carrying the swing states and cutting into Trump's numbers on low-education White folks? I like Manchin.
Joe Biden is a little too old, and the idea of replacing him with a youngster like Manchin amuses me in a lot of ways, but it’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
In other words, I don’t think I will be able to survive the inevitable 2028 “he wasn’t too old to run 4 years ago, but maybe he is now?” re-election discourse. I think I might actually die.
Agree, but somehow this never comes up. Also, I don't think there are any democrats in West Virginia, so he's kind of a DINO, for all intents and purposes.
I think a Haley/Manchin ticket on No Labels or as independents could really disrupt this election. My guess is it would be strong in swing states and ultimately help Biden win. There are a lot of moderates in this country who don't care for the extremism of MAGA and your liberal friends.
I've always felt that sore loser laws would be grossly unconstitutional if candidates aren't allowed to even get write in votes. I'm struggling to find caselaw on this though, maybe one of the legal eagles out there like srynerson or Dilan Esper immediately knows.
Don't discount this because it comes from the Federalist Society- the reporting seems accurate and it looks like West Virginia's sore loser law was upheld against a constitutional attack just 5 years ago.
Thanks. The facts of Blankenship's case weren't quite what I was looking for, but looking through that opinion, it did help me find the answer that I was looking for, and now I see in Burdick v. Takushi that SCOTUS did uphold a ban on write in voting. I think that's really, really bad and wrongly decided, and I think Kennedy had it correct in dissent.
Burdick is definitely a bad decision, although to be clear it was a prohibition on write in votes in general and it would at least be possible for a court distinguish it in a sore loser case.
I am quite tired of people who confidently tell us what we should do but have no realistic plan.
If I could wave a magic wand sure, I'd happily install Joe Manchin. But the whole thing is a chimera. There is no magic wand. Harris might not be a stronger candidate, yet she might prevail anyway at a brokered convention. Another reason this is day-dreaming.
#1 converts Ezra's punditry on this into sheer fantasy—not just a longshot. But sure, in the parallel universe where Joe Biden decides not to run or becomes incapable of running, his delegates could be released and we could have an open convention that chooses (most likely) Kamala Harris or (hopefully, but don't count on it) some iteration of Whitmer-Kelly-Shapiro-Beshear-Warnock.
Then we can all hope the polls are wrong and that we didn't just lose our most competitive nominee, one Joseph R. Biden Jr.
TBH I don't care if it is his age specifically or just the more general prospect of losing. This is also why I'm clear in other threads that I do not think Harris should get the nod either. The goal is to nominate someone who will win.
Yeah, that is Klein's program. For reason MY gives, it seems vanishingly unlikely Manchin would be chosen in a brokered convention. Single most likely winner would be Harris.
I feel like MY is spelling it out with 5, 12, and 13.
Per 5 & 12, Harris or Newsome are considered more liberal and poll worse. Per 13, Manchin is more conservative and polls better.
If you want Trump to lose - if this is really important to you - select someone more conservative than Biden. (If I say "more centrist" will that make the medicine taste better?)
You and I and MY might feel Manchin is a smart choice were there a brokered convention.
MY absolutely does not argue a brokered convention would nominate Manchin. If anything he argues the opposite, a brokered convention would push to the left.
I made that lemon sucking face as I read tour comment!! Haha. But you know, I might have to agree with you. I really don’t like Manchin…at all. He is a worm. But he’d be 100 percent better than Trump. Sometimes I fantasize Oprah steps up to sacrifice 4 years of her life to steadying the ship!
I'm genuinely curious how a Manchin run in 2020 would have gone. Probably not well, but there was a wide lane open to Biden's right, and he would have been the only one taking it.
I'm even more curious how Manchin would have done in a 2024 primary against Biden, though I suspect 1) Biden would still win easily, and 2) Biden may have responded to a Manchin primary challenge by going even more to the left, damaging his electoral college prospects
I mean, Bloomberg for one? Amy Klobucher? Governors Bullock, Inslee, and Hickenlooper? Tim Ryan was probably farthest to the right but had other problems. There just wasn't such an appetite in 2020. We had a fun field of centrist candidates but somehow Biden was He Who Remained. (I think Black voters helped on that a lot, esp with Clyburn's endorsement in SC.)
I do think Bloomberg was to the right of Biden, but his issue was that he's an insufferable billionaire more than anything. I wouldn't consider Klobuchar to the right of Biden. She, Pete, and Warren competed for the college-educated liberal wing to the left of Biden and to the right of Bernie.
I wouldn't consider Inslee to the right of Biden, at least on climate. The other governors? I guess I could take your word for it, but I don't recall issues where they were to the right of Biden.
I do agree with you on Tim Ryan, though. He was pretty unknown at the time. Manchin was also not as well-known as he is now, but as a long-time Senator who had just won a race in WV (2018 midterms) and could have made a more credible case for himself and for centrism in general compared to Ryan.
Pivot. To. The. Center. This is what every bloody POTUS does! Biden should hammer republicans on how he needs more money and men to guard the southern border. More money and men to police the streets and that they shout pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthy. He should then tell them he wants to reduce the permitting process to both install more green energy and drill for more oil and gas since while he hoped the transition would be quick it’s going slowly and until we finally reach the green future we need to drill to ensure America has plenty of gas to put in cars.
I think he’d be shocked at how people respond and then he should state down the Progressive wing of his party and tell them to put up or shut up
I actually think he would lose a lot of votes amongst young people thing way. He's already really struggling with younger progressives. Maybe he can make it up with more moderate/conservative voters. Its possible, but I don't think this is a risk-free strategy given that Biden is not liked or trusted by younger, progressive voters already, so them not voting or voting third party is a real threat in a way it wasn't so much with Obama.
Bluntly they’re already mad and won’t be happy anyway. They’re already whining that he hasn’t ended college debt, even though he’s done what he could, or fixed climate change, despite being the most effective at this in history, and racial justice (for being a white man). There isn’t much he can do to make them happy that wouldn’t royally piss off everyone else
Agreed. If the body of the electorate prefers different policies and you will lose if part of your base demands something. You deny them that and hope they realize that abstaining will be worse for them than voting.
As I remind people about the leftist critics on Twitter, one third of them are teens, one third are foreigners, and one third were never going to vote anyway.
I was talking recently to my daughter, a millennial, about this age thing. Her notion was that Biden simply isn’t in touch with what people her age are worried about. They fear that he is in it simply for their votes that he doesn’t really believe the way they believe in their issues.
That's an oversimplification, but basically if you could trade a +1% swing in 35+ voters for a -5% swing in 25 and younger, you should do that every time.
On the plus side, I hope that the level of Biden age coverage now means the political reporters will be bored of it by the time the election heats up.
But I also think things aren't as bad for Biden as everyone thinks. Increasing partisanship means turnout matters more and being old doesn't turn out your opponents the way Trump turns out democrats.
The age thing is entirely in pundits’ head as a variable that matters for this election. It’s absurd the extent to which they’ve latched into this in the absence of polling data showing an actual alternative would do better. I too would like a world where we got a younger candidate in 2020, but I don’t know for a fact that any of the options we had would’ve actually won the general. In our current world, Joe Biden is the incumbent, there’s zero evidence throwing away incumbent advantage would help (and clear evidence the only other person with it, Harris, would do worse) and people need to touch grass. Nate Silver truly has fallen far from the guy who mainly did well by telling people to take the polls seriously.
The polling data that says an unnamed alternative would do better is silly, I agree.
But the polling that has been crystal clear for years that it bothers voters that Biden is an old fogey is not in pundit's heads, it is a variable that matters in the election, and the reality that there's nothing the party or its voting base can do about it does not mean it isn't real.
And yet younger candidates don’t poll better. So no it does not matter, because they prefer Joe Biden to any other actual specific individual, and we cannot make Joe Biden younger
I think we agree here. Joe is the best card the Dems have in the deck, warts and all. Trying to replace him has a terrible risk/reward profile.
But the warts are not a pundit-invented narrative. Voters don't like Biden's visibly advanced age, and it's costing him votes at the margin, even against a widely disliked Trump.
It's not a hypothetical, it's a revealed preference. If voters say they care about his age but they are less likely to vote for candidates that are much younger than him, it suggests they do not actually care about his age.
No, it suggests there are other things they care about more than age. The vast majority of voters care about ideological positioning more than age, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about age.
Unless something dramatic happens to Biden over the next months, I just find it very hard to believe that voters' decisions will be much affected by Biden's age.
It seems like such a vague, inchoate thing, like wishing you weighed ten pounds less but at the end of the day you live with it and you're actually OK with how you are.
Matt's right: voters seeing Democrats as too beholden to the Left is far more dangerous than whether Biden will still be an engaged President on Jan. 20, 2029.
Right. I think the bind democrats are in is that winning requires someone both charismatic and moderate but without an existing national platform it's really hard for that kind of canidate to rise to the top in the modern primary system especially with the increased relevance of individual donors.
It's not that there isn't a constituency for picking moderates who can win but that you can't get that winning glow until you are polling pretty well and getting off the ground usually requires either something like having been VP or the president's spouse or the kind of enthusiastic support moderates don't generate in the democratic party currently.
But the reason they are less likely to vote for younger candidates isn’t that they don’t care about age, it’s that they have no idea who the f*** these people are.
If Biden is the best candidate, saying “he would poll better if younger” is a little like saying “he would poll better if he had the power of flight”. True, but a weird thing to focus on.
>Trying to replace him has a terrible risk/reward profile.<
No. It's not that such a move has a "terrible risk/reward profile." Before we even get to doing such calculus, we confront the reality that swapping him out isn't an actionable strategy: there's no way to accomplish this.
But Trump seems younger, in part because he dyes his hair and wears makeup (go ahead and laugh, but it does affect people’s perception, even when inexpertly applied). Also, Trump has a younger affect because the misfortunes of others do not affect him, while Biden is obviously much more empathetic and frustrated when he can’t help people.
Also don't underestimate how much the deplatforming of Trump has backfired. If the media was airing everything Trump was doing like in 2016 people might be seeing more of his Senior Moments and craziness. But I get the feeling there's some ego infested in that decision and the people who made it don't want to admit it helped Trump and reverse it.
I re-up my support for an addendum to the qualifications to be President: cannot have ever slept with Kimberly Guilfoyle. Newsome and Donny Jr. both ineligible to run.
I recently got into a fairly intense argument with some friends who were convinced Newsom was going to be much better than Harris, and I think they felt so because Newsom takes so many shots at Republicans that they like. I tried sharing Josh Barro's article to them to no avail. About the only progress I could make is that he once dated Kimberly Guilfoyle.
"My second irritation is that Democrats already have a candidate for 2024. His name is Joe Biden, he’s presided over a series of important legislative victories, his poll numbers have improved markedly, and his renomination remains Democrats’ best chance to hold the White House in two years."
One reason why many of us prefer older candidates is because the younger ones are deeply unappealing. My generation of the Democratic Party is apparently going to be a bunch of socialist Hamas huggers.
If you were actually true about voter preferences, why does Dean Phillips place 3rd place in South Carolina *after Marianne Williamson? Matt explicitly brings up Dean in one of these points.
I think Biden being hurt by his old age and other Democratic party alternatives being hurt by swing voter perceptions of being more left-wing than they let on (which Biden's advanced age, wistful Strom Thurmond comments, etc *helps him combat*) is a plausible theory of what's going on here. Silver is right it's hurting Democrats, but he's wrong to theorize Democrats have any better alternative. So he gets very mad at Democrats while being in denial he's becoming a kind of new liberal Republican since COVID.
I would actually like to see someone write about the "new liberal Republican since COVID" angle. I was a Republican a long time ago and drifted left as the party drifted right. Since COVID (and the chaos of 2020 more generally) I have stayed the same or drifted right while the Dems seem to have gone hard to the left...still could not be a Republican though. Are there many people like this?
Honestly, this is the best argument for RCV for me: it makes it clear to the voter that you're voting on how the candidates compare to each other, not affirmatively selecting someone who is up to your standards of acceptability.
I think the answer is "no", but I think this is a really good question, and I think anyone who says they're sure they know the answer is bullshitting us.
"Donald Trump is an incredibly weak leader for the Republican Party, and that Democrats have chosen to respond to that weakness by moving aggressively left on policy"
I love that observation. The last several presidential election cycles have been decided by a couple of points, and it's clear that if one party displays a weakness, the other party will react not by cruising to an easy win but rather by shifting away from the center right up to the point that the next election will be (another) nailbiter.
Ezra Klein did a podcast many months ago and kept wondering why elections are so close these days, and somehow never really talked about this, the obvious answer. Parties have good data teams, so they know what it takes to win, and there isn’t much incentive for producing a landslide.
I’m very glad to see Matt make this point on ideology and it’s been missing in all of the discussion. Despite his age, Biden qua Biden brings a lot to the table in terms of beating Trump!
As I wrote in response to Nate Silver’s most recent piece banging this drum: Trump is in some ways a difficult Republican to beat, because he doesn’t take typical Republican stances on things like social security and Medicare, he doesn’t seem like a creepy social conservative, he’s not weirdly religious, etc. In many ways, Trump is less scary to a certain set of voters than Paul Ryan would be.
So it’s Biden’s centrism and institutionalism that makes him particularly well suited to beat Trump, in ways that a generic Democrat wouldn’t be. I really don’t think you could just drop Cory Booker (or Gavin Newsom) in there and get the same outcome against Trump in particular, even if Booker or Newsom would probably do better against someone like Haley.
What's weird is that Biden's moderation isn't all that unique. As Matt points out what's unique is that he's a moderate who can win the primaries.
I fear that a combination of social media and McCain-Feingold has left both parties at much greater risk of capture by extreme elements and some kind of major reform is needed -- but can't think of one that will pass.
I actually think it is unique, though? Even people like Shapiro or Whitmer - to say nothing of Newsom - seem more liberal-coded than Biden.
He’s probably to the right of ~90% of Dem Senators (even if not by much relative to someone like Chris Murphy or Kirsten Gillibrand). Like yes he’s to the left of Manchin, but that’s a basic prerequisite to be a Democrat.
I think that while he was in the senate, he was basically always the median democrat. I suppose it’s possible that the newer senators are all left of him, so he would now be on the right end.
I'm not sure we are per se disagreeing. I agree that amoung democrats of sufficient national standing it's rare. But it's rare because the democrats don't support these canidates not because it's somehow a rare quality. Heck, if centrist messaging started being the better draw for campaign donations I bet you'd find lots of that 90% suddenly rediscovering moderate views.
I agree that there's no way to get from here to a better universe with a younger moderate Democrat candidate, just as there's no way for the Republicans to get to a...less indicted, less crazy Republican candidate.
But that's a separate issue from how big of a factor the age thing is or whether it would be be a good idea for Biden to be out there more. And I say, based on the polling data, that the age thing is a big deal. And also, based on just looking at the guy, that getting him out there more is not the answer.
What does one do about this? I don't know. Be sad about the decline of political parties, probably. Maybe think about whether there's anything you can do so that this doesn't happen again. That's not my lane. But seriously, the guy is old and he looks old and people notice that and it's a big deal.
Jon Stewart joked about not seeing a sharp and capable Biden video clips of him in meetings, and I think it would be a good idea to drop a bunch of those. They can select a bunch of short clips for TikTok followed by a crazy Donald Trump comparison.
Because being competent at your job is not entertaining, it’s not something we see a lot in general. And at meetings where stuff actually gets accomplished, people have to be able to say things that are true but might not sound good in public to people who don’t understand what they’re talking about or why this or that has to be considered.
The really sad thing is that campaigning is a young person’s game, but actually governing is something an older person (who has more familiarity with both history and the people they’re dealing with) may be better at. Obama was a brilliant campaigner, but didn’t accomplish much (didn’t really contribute much to passing ACA). The Democratic party went on a downhill slide during his eight years in office, which ended with the election of Donald Trump. If only Joe Biden had been in charge, we might have been in much better shape—he’s accomplished more in one term (including having to clean up Obama’s mess in Afghanistan) than Obama did in eight. Yet he’s not cool or good looking, so it’s all literally invisible.
The issue is that when he is in public, he says wild shit and acts confused. So, if that's not the real picture, get him in front of a camera literally anywhere where he can show off how together and with it he is.
I mean only if you watch the deceptively edited montages. If ypu just pick a random video of him speaking, he's still better at speaking and nusmced policy discussion than people of pretty much any age. If you want a really fun one look up the time he got Republicans to applaud protecting social security.
I think it is correct that wisdom and experience count in governance while youthful energy and articulation matter in the campaign.
But I wouldn't go as far as you do. Physical and mental decline are real and sometimes sudden, old people can be very stubborn when it happens, and something disastrous could happen in EITHER a Trump or Biden second term because of that.
I think they will. He's already done some press. Fewer than other presidents, but it's not as if he's taken no Q&A from the press at all. And he's been fine when he's done it, although his performance tends to get nitpicked: normal minor gaffes that he would have made 30 years ago get noticed in a different way today because they fit a predetermined narrative, which is exactly how bias works, whether it's race bias, or gender bias, or in this case age bias - the brain knows what it wants to see going in, and so it notices those things. Regardless, I think his increased visibility as the campaign goes on will be helpful to him, especially because of how expectations are being set so low right now. We saw a dry run at this in 2020, which was not devoid of "Biden is senile" commentary - then, when Biden did fine at the debate (actually did better than Trump, who was all over the place), it made him look even better than he otherwise would have looked. I doubt Trump will agree to participate in debates this time around, partly for that very reason, but there will be other opportunities for Biden to be on the stage.
“The 33 news conferences Biden has given during the first three years of his presidency is lower than any other American president in that time span since Ronald Reagan, said Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor emeritus and expert on presidents and the press. Similarly, the 86 interviews Biden has given is lower than any president since she began studying records with Reagan. By comparison, Barack Obama gave 422 interviews during his first three years.”
It looks like Democrats just aren't trying that hard to win. I think we know what campaigns from struggling parties that put winning first look like. They fight their own flank as a signal to swing voters that they're prioritising them over partisanship. Clinton had Sister Soulja and "the era of Big Government is over", Blair had a load of issues. It worked.
I don't recall Biden doing anything like that. His flank complains non-stop because that's what they seem to view as their role these days. But *he* hasn't performatively taken them on. I'm not sure why that is. But it isn't happening.
Example A is the continued push to cancel student loans. As Matt consistently mentions the median voter doesn't have a student loan because they didn't even go to college. It's a massively regressive policy that's singularly positioned to placate his left flank.
It’s interesting that it seems to be succeeding at getting a lot of favorability from the people who receive it, with basically no blowback the way it seemed like there would be when he was pushing the big version.
IDK. I guess the counterpoint is Biden is still down 5%p in swing states and - to me - he's in a no-win situation with the various plans: (1) they do nothing to reduce the cost of college going forward, (2) polling from Gen Z thinks he *way* over-promised and under-delivered (e.g., ~ 40% of people already spent the money they thought was going to be forgiven), and (3) non-student loan holders are moving towards Trump.
Point #1 is big. i’m for forgiving some student loans in a means tested way but they need to rein in the cost of college long term.
If the plans for relief did something for people without college loans (reduced cost for future generations, adding funding for vocational programs) it’d be a worthwhile to do. Absent that, it seems pointless.
Yes he's really down in the top 10 swing states. Pick any aggregate poll you want. See also Matt: "Where Ezra and I agree is that Biden is currently on track to lose the election."
I think this is actually pretty savvy. Placates younger leftist voters (at least at the margin) and is low-salience enough that he doesn’t catch hell from centrists much (it polls reasonably well)
Fair enough. If he really is trying to pivot to the centre I think that makes sense. Hopefully he gets more support in the party. It's kinda perverse he's concurrently facing demands he step down because he's down in the polls *and* that he adopt unpopular policy positions.
It’s his staff and maybe his grandkids. They’re performatively left educated elites and he defers on social issues because he knows he’s old. Can you see Karine Jean-Pierre getting on board with a Souljah moment?
I don't think Democrats actually want Biden to pivot like Bill Clinton did, because they're doing fine right now. Bill Clinton's pivot rightward existed in the context of Democrats *losing three presidential elections in a row.*
I don't think Dems are doing fine. The current GOP is incredibly dangerous and unfit for office (some of its own elected officials say so) and Dems are barely managing to split power 50:50 with them.
>Biden is currently on track to lose the election. <
No disputing this.
>And I agree with Ezra that if Biden loses, which he probably will,<
Probably will lose? Maybe it's terror-related denial on my part, but this second claim I think is more questionable. But I don't do punditry and political analysis for a living as Matt does, so what do I know? Do past polling history and/or national conditions give us any hints about what is likely to transpire over the next eight months? By my count the two parties have collectively enjoyed thirteen opportunities since 1900 to secure a second consecutive White House term, and have succeeded eleven times. The two exceptions (1980, 2020) both saw recessions. That doesn't sound much like 2024. Also, Donald Trump has had two cracks at the presidency, and has lost the popular vote both times. Yes, one is aware that's no guarantee of an Electoral College loss. But still, he clearly seems to be an objectively weak presidential candidate by historical standards. Is it really so unlikely Biden's chances won't look better by, say, late summer?
PS—Even if my intuition about improving odds for Joe Biden are correct, I'm under no illusions he'll be a heavy favorite. I doubt very much Trump's odds slip much below 40%.
In the current climate, it feels like it would take an act of God to make *either* party's chances drop below something like 30%. Even if the candidate fucking died and got replaced by some no-name.
This is where we agree - as a person looking to know what the other side is up too, I check out the right-wing abyss in various places, and yes, there's lots of whining about the Democrats, there's not a lot of hope Trump will get in their and fix things, especially among the slightly smarter right-wingers.
I have the same sense from the deep red to your east. I don't expect to see much engagement until late summer. So we should cool off on any Biden doomerism.
The race at this point seems like a complete toss-up to me, not that that is much more comforting. So I also thought Matt’s take was overly pessimistic.
I know it’s become a cliche, but Biden will likely benefit as the choice between Trump and him crystallizes. I do worry about the RFK Jr. ratfckery, but I’m not completely sure which side he’ll hurt more.
The one thing I keep not seeing in the “Biden is heading to defeat” takes is that we still haven’t reached the point of the campaign where Trump is in everyone’s face nonstop again. I truly believe it will remind a lot of squishies how awful it was to have his craziness sucking up all the oxygen all the time.
Counter to my own point is that we also haven’t reached the stage where Biden needs to be vigorously campaigning and I worry about that. He benefited enormously from 2020 being a virtual campaign.
To be clear, I think Biden has been good as a Dem president and people are overly concerned about his age but the summer campaign season does concern me.
I think the average news consumer is still convinced it will be NEITHER Trump nor Biden. My mother in law is 10000% Certain it will be Newsom vs Haley lol.
So far polls have shown RFK Jr taking more votes away from Trump than Biden. I don't know if that would hold up in the general election but I think a lot of people can see right through him.
While the "probably will lose" statement isn't that different from "currently on track to lose" they present different connotations. The latter is saying, "if the election were held today, he'd likely lose and if things don't change by November he's also likely to lose" while "probably will lose" contains a more definitive core implying that "no matter what happens between now and November, he probably will lose."
I agree with the "currently on track" and also think no one has any basis for saying he "probably will lose." There's a lot that is going to happen between now and November.
I don't even necessarily buy the claim that he would lose if the election were held today. I assume many people put much less thought into answering a poll than they would when actually voting.
Generally agree, but I’m nervous it’s denial-based as well. I’m scared to death of a trump round 2, but I can’t bring myself to accept Trump as the favorite. Especially because these trials are just going to wear him down. Like spending weeks in court, plausibly getting convicted, these can’t help. And it feels like it will be low-turnout, which (oddly, surprisingly) helps democrats these days.
I agree with Matt. Let Biden be Biden. Let him be the old guy who remembers America before we all went insane. He’s a guy who wears aviators, drives a corvette, and thinks his wife Jilly is still smoking hot. Josh Barro loves this Joe. So do normie voters like me, and plain-speaking senators like Fetterman.
Instead of this retro centrist dude, my Twitter was flooded yesterday with angry responses to video clips of Joe celebrating student debt relief. He’s attacked from the hard-left as a squish. These debt cancellations are too small! He’s attacked from the center and right, for overstepping his executive authority, and bragging about it.
Joe’s messaging was terrible. Kamala “the cop” Harris would be even worse. She’s caught in the same cultural tar pit, pandering to an ideology that created Google’s weird Gemini application that won’t draw white people.
My mind keeps going back to Ronald Reagan. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, but Reagan's age was a big deal, and jokes about his senility were pretty commonplace. He had a ton of cognitive gaffes during his second run. The run in which he won 49/50 states.
Voters say that they care about Biden's age, but I think it's just a proxy for myriad other reasons that people don't like him.
It feels like you can’t say this, but it feels like the new version of the Democratic Party has no place for cishet white men. Biden is just a placeholder.
You sound terminally online. Who uses lingo like “cishet” anymore??? Perhaps among zombie MSNBC watchers, but few others. That phrase is sooo 2020, thank god. 🤣🫠🙃
Well, no worries now on my question in the last mailbag as we know it not getting answered, because it got a whole article! Thanks very much for this, I have been trying to keep a very open mind on this and learn more from disagreeing takes from people I trust, and yours is always appreciated.
I also find this finding quite disturbing: "People often tell me that my obsession with issues and ideology is sad and pedantic, that we are in a post-policy world run by vibes". Talking the issues and ideology is most important, and that is why I've read your work for so long and participate here. I really wish more people would do the same more.
It’s very, very weird and alarming that Matt’s peers are saying that. Makes you wonder how their differing views affect their news coverage/punditry, and since they outnumber Matt, also how it affects politics and average voter sentiment.
Matt assumes that the delegates at the convention will behave similarly to the democratic primary electorate but if Biden wins the primary in a landslide the convention will be ~95% Biden electors. I genuinely don't know who signs up to be a Biden elector in a year where the Primary is a foregone conclusion but I expect they would be quite different demographically and perhaps dispositionally from the primary electorate.
All the takes defending sticking with Biden assume he is able to run a somewhat normal campaign and that he isn't in decline. I think it is telling that Biden has done nothing to show that he can run a halfway normal Presidential campaign.
For sure, Biden & co have been decent re timing [delayed] and breasting their cards. Old time political behaviors continue to have relevance, even as 'social media' etc creates daily turmoil. The turmoil is what commenters / social media peoples see as issues; but the people voting...the giant middle...they (we?)....'pay attention', in the home stretch. Maybe unfortunate; but seems to be the behavior.
I have fond memories of all those powerhouse speeches that Obama gave in February 2012.
(A lie: I have no memory of any Obama speech in February 2012. I *do* remember him giving one of the worst debate performances in history in his first Romney debate. Clearly the guy was too old and suffering from dementia.)
Yeah, unfortunately I think you are right. I used to think they were just making a strategic mistake by not doing more to let the public see and hear from Biden. At this point it's become clear that they do in fact need to hide him so he doesn't reveal how old he seems.
I can’t get my head around why Biden’s age is an issue. It seems like a proxy for dislike of policies Biden supports rather than a response to actual evidence of grossly diminished decision making.
It’s time for the age obsessed to get with the program or come out and openly make their case.
I have never understood how he gets away with this, because to me he looks incredibly weak. And his buffoonish bragging exacerbates it.
Me vs. Trump, with $100k on the line in a "fair fight", there are not very many contests that I would say no to, on either physical or mental prowess dimensions. And I suspect if you polled the greater republic with questions like "Do you think you could beat Trump in [arm wrestling/chess/mma fighting/pickleball/poker/math quizes/current event trivia/whatever], you would find a lot of people saying "yes".
Plus he will be 86 at the end of a second term. A lot of normies have extensive experience with 86 year olds and can list 1,000 reasons they would make bad Presidents.
My brother is the epitome of a normie voter. He voted Biden in 2020 but probably won’t this time around for precisely this reason. He’s a physical therapists assistant and he deals with 86 year olds all this time.
My wife regularly listens to *sigh* The Daily Wire, and there is ongoing/repeat video coverage of Biden going into 'Roomba Mode' after public speaking.
Once it was pointed out it really does look like he is just bumping into things and needs guidance to navigate away from the podium.
It's mean-spirited, but I have to admit that it is a pretty effective dig.
The case for age being an issue is that a lot of voters say it's an issue. It doesn't matter whether I personally think it's making him worse at his job.
Completely agree. People made a big fuss of Reagan's age in 1980-1983. By '84 the economy was booming, and we strangely no longer heard so much about this issue despite the fact that the Gipper hadn't gotten any younger.
My theory is because smart media elites know it's an asymmetric issue that drives clicks.
The average Reb voter is like 10 years older than the average Dem voter.
The boomers who reliably vote Reb will not have any problem with octogenarian leading the country.
Gen X and Millennials are getting really tired of the country being led by someone who's old enough they should get their license taken away preaching at them from the white house.
Actually some boomers (quite a few, probably) do worry about someone their own age doing a demanding job, particularly if they themselves have trouble remembering things or even getting out of bed in the morning. Of course everyone’s different, some people are debilitated in their 60s and others are sharp into their 90s.
We had a giant discussion about this in the comment section a few days ago. Davie insists that "Rebs" is common slang for "Republicans" (like "Dems" is for "Democrats"), many people chimed in to tell him that nobody reads it that way, and Davie refuses to believe that communication is a two-way street.
Glad I missed it. Just saw this today...that's kind of peak stupid. I've seen a lot of silly slang words for opposing parties that are basically childish insults, but that one doesn't even make sense as one of those.
Not me, especially for Biden, who keeps himself trim & doesn't need to pretend he's "doing it the hard way."
But the main thing is that we'd be electing his deep knowledge of Washington and how to get things done there. That knowledge & understanding (dare I say wisdom) also comes into play when choosing the people who will do the real work.
We had to take my dad's away! He was a bit older than Biden, but still, the truth is, cognition begins to falter in people this old, and they are very frequently incapable of acknowledging when it happens.
I can't get my head around it either, especially with Trump *also* being old, plus a lot of additional stuff that is bad. But it seems that a sizeable chunk see otherwise, with Biden's age being uniquely problematic, hence having to deal with this discussion.
77 to 81 is a big leap - as shown by Biden's ability to campaign vigorously 4 years ago vs now per Ezra's piece. I fear what 81 to 85 brings - as Silver points out, the probability of death in any given year really goes up in one's 80s. So there really is a difference, even if Trump is also too old and will be where Biden is now by the end of a theoretical presidential term.
I would still absolutely take Biden over Trump, but I find it frustrating when people try to dismiss concerns about Biden's age or theorize that they are born from some ulterior motive.
Ezra played Biden's two Presidential announcement speeches back to back and yeah ... they just speak for themselves. If Biden can't campaign, he can't be President.
Biden campaigned vigorously 4 years ago? I thought the doctrinal position was that he slipped into the White House because he was able to pursue a COVID-based basement campaign.
I wish the poobahs would get their story straight.
Yes, you think there would be at least *some* amount of protest voting in the primaries so far. But, nope.
Maybe, shockingly, people don't tell the whole truth to pollsters: gee, we really wish Biden were younger, but it is what it is when we actually have to make a decision.
Yeah, people in here are just ignoring voters’ revealed preferences in the form of actual election results, just like they ignore the midterms and special elections. It’s as though the people worrying about Biden’s age are just telling on themselves (they hate old people and want them to be hidden in retirement communities.)
I think Biden can and should position himself as the law and order candidate and emphasize that we won't be a great nation if we decide to allow shoplifting, sexual assault, cheating on taxes, or lying in business records. This would achieve both Matt's desire for Biden to move to the center and Brian's desire for him to be tactically more agressive in pointing that Trump is a corrupt liar who puts his own interests ahead of those of the American people.
I find it striking how much of this piece is just admitting that primaries produce far-left (or far-right) candidates. Primaries are bad! It's also the one piece of the American political system that's relatively new (since the 70s), and neatly coincides with the US political system going off the rails. If there were one problem I wish I could solve it would be how to get rid of primaries
I agree regarding congressional primaries, but do presidentials have a recent record of producing far left nominees? Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, Biden…except for Obama, the winner was always to the right of their second place competitor. I’ll grant you that they give a lot of exposure to lefties like Bernie and Warren that probably isn’t great for the D brand with the national electorate.
I think the tendency is to produce someone from the mainstream of the dominant faction (left or right) of the party. When that dominant faction is the more extreme one, that winner is well to the left/right of the party much less of the country.
When it's the less extreme faction that wins (e.g. both Clintons, HW Bush, Romney, McCain), those candidates often compromise with the other wing to win the primary and then move to the centre for the general. When it's the more extreme faction that wins, while they usually do compromise with the more centrist wing in the primary (e.g. Obama), they're still way to the left/right of the country.
But Biden and H. Clinton definitely ran the general to the left of what their record would predict.
Yeah I think it's a new phenomenon. And it won't lead to leftist candidates getting nominated per se. But it will exert a gravitational pull to the left on more mainstream candidates. And it also means that normie Democrats will not have the luxury of exploring the candidacies of lesser-known normie-friendly politicians. There will be a need to consolidate early behind a known quantity, to avoid splitting the vote. This helped Biden in 2020, and it will help Harris in 2028 (never mind that she might not be all that normie-friendly, but whatever).
I liked this comment even though I agree with others below that the historical analysis is wrong. Primaries have not historically chosen extreme candidates, but going forward they very well may. Primaries *plus partisan sorting* is bad news.
Well, let's look at the tale of the tape. I'm willing to adjust on these if I hear good points otherwise, but here's my lightning round style take:
Carter: no
Ford: no
Reagan: yes
Mondale: not that much
Dukakis: ...? He ran such a weird and bad campaign in the general that it's tough to tell
HW: no
Bill Clinton: definitely no
Dole: yes, and really ran under the radar on this
Gore: no
Dubya: tough to say, probably depends on the issue
Kerry: yes, like Dole ran under the radar here
McCain: no, but like Dubya a bit issue dependent
Obama: no
Romney: the 2012 version of him, yes--perhaps not an earlier or later version of him
Hillary Clinton: probably yes relative to where she was before, but both Clintons can be chameleons in this regard
Trump: the highest variance dependent on issue
Biden: no
Now, I could buy an argument that the primary system needed some time to distill into its capability to nominate extreme candidates, and that that distillation may now be upon us.
From what I recall, Kerry was positioned to the right of Howard Dean and John Edwards in '04.
I'm more interested in the position relative to the entire party than to just a handful of primary competitors, and I always saw Kerry near the left end of the Senate caucus when it came to the issues. Dean was weird and I don't think we can glean much from his brief run. Edwards, maybe, I'd have to review his policy takes relative to Kerry's, and in any case Kerry picked him as his VP.
Edwards started out billing himself as the 21st Century Bill Clinton, then pivoted left when he saw that’s where the energy/money was. He had quite the cheering section on Daily Kos based largely on his “Two Americas” speech about economic inequality, which became his trademark.
Edwards had a big contingent of support from the Hollywood left based on his economic populism. Which, TBH, I thought he was correct to champion. In my view economic inequality is the original sin from which most of our other problems flow. But he was obviously a highly flawed candidate.
I think the Iraq War was a big issue among progressive dems in 04 and Kerry voted for it. i think he was also generally very “establishment.” Edwards talked a lot more about inequality and he and Dean were perceived as “outsiders”.
My stance is your last sentence, pretty much
But Bernie and Warren lost! So your position isn't that primaries produce extreme candidates (your comment's first sentence). It is that primaries expose extreme candidates (who go on to lose) to the public?
....can you think of any politically extreme candidates that might have shockingly won their party's nomination in the last 8 years? Going on to transform American politics in a negative way and push us close to a Latin American-style strongman government? Anyone come to mind? Think hard man
So, the GOP should basically ignore what a majority of it's voters want?
LIke, Trump is terrible, but it's because a lot of GOP voters are terrible. Again, Mitt Romney in 2012, regardless of his actual views, had to pivot hard right to win over voters who thought he was an elite squish, and he's basically the type of guy a GOP convention filled with rich dudes and their lackeys would've chosen.
Then again, the last couple weeks show a lot of this comment section would've agreed with 2012 Mitt Romney on immigration.
>So, the GOP should basically ignore what a majority of it's voters want? LIke, Trump is terrible, but it's because a lot of GOP voters are terrible
So to merge this and your other comment- Trump only won the 2016 nomination because of open primary states. He won most of those, likely pulling in former Democrats and independents. He actually lost most of the closed primary states to Cruz (to be fair, there's not that many of them). Which begs the question- who are the 'GOP voters', exactly?
If we have to do primaries, they should be closed primaries. 41 US states are some degree of open primary now (it's a spectrum as to how open). If you want to help select the representative of a private organization, *you should be a card carrying member of said organization*. Neither you nor I get to vote as to who the next Girl Scouts leader is, right? Or who wins the Oscars, or who the next president of the 4-H Club is, right? Is that undemocratic? No, they're all private organizations controlled by their members.
If voters are disgruntled with 2 parties, sure, they're free to go out and form their own party or whatever. Or, vote in independents. *That's totally legal now*. Don't have high odds of winning? Not my problem
Trump is extreme in many respects, eg corruption, but he is not extreme _politically_. He was famously perceived as the more moderate candidate in 16.
OK, I get it. Trump won a primary, therefore primaries are bad.
Interesting preposition, seems wholly separate from MY's post.
I can't tell if you literally just landed on our planet and are not familiar with other extremist wins in US primaries, but off the top of my head:
AOC over Joe Cawley
Dave Brat, shockingly, over Eric Cantor. The # of Brat voters was like not even 10% of the district's total electorate. What's democratic about that?
Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst
Mike Lee over Robert Bennett
Rand Paul over Trey Greyson
Kari Lake is the likely favorite for the Arizona Senate
Etc. etc. Much worse, the threat of being primaried is enough to pull Republicans further to the right. Do you ever wonder why they've consistently become more extreme? Because they know if they anger the party's base, various donors, the Fox News establishment, etc., they'll face a primary challenge. The US- is far as I know- the only democracy in world history to *primary incumbents*. Of course the mere threat of losing pulls them further to the right! And the number of people who vote in the primaries is just a few % of the total voting population, so you're selecting for extreme partisans.
Why was Ken Paxton acquitted on impeachment charges of corruption recently? Because billionaire far-right donors promised to primary any Republican who voted to impeach him. It's a very, very, very bad system
Well, I'm not sure it's fully distilled on the presidential level, then. Lower levels, perhaps, though I think it's complicated, with Trump of course adding into the complication with chaos.
Exactly. I have trouble understanding what Lost Future is staying. But his comment has 44 likes so what do I know?
I'm not offering a take yet on whether I agree with LF or not--I am sympathetic to the idea that primaries are bad. I was more just thinking through what's happened before to see if any of us can glean some trends. My first thought is that at the presidential level there didn't seem to be much consistency.
OK, interesting question: Are primaries bad?
Seems like it could be a good post. Any connection to MY's 21 thoughts?
Yes: primaries have, well, primed Dem voters to expect left-wing candidates. An open primary, like an open convention, would push Democrats to the left.
That's not the message of the 2020 primary. Lots of candidates moved left and the moderate won.
Matt's had some vague hints at this on Twitter at least, but I'll let him expound on those on his terms if he wants to. An article could be good.
I dunno, I kind of agree in principle but if it were up to Democratic elites wouldn’t we have gotten someone far to Biden’s left in 2020? Republican primary voters are indeed nightmare fuel but moderate Black Democrats are seemingly the only force still saving Dems from their worst instincts.
Parties should just do a better job of a getting normies to register their opinion.
The thing is that once you're even voting in a primary you're already not much of a normie as far as political engagement goes.
One thing that might help is if the Democrats frontloaded their primary schedule in redder states like, say, Oklahoma where the primary electorate is closer to the national center than it is elsewhere. While Republicans could do the opposite.
That's exactly why parties should find ways to reach out to more normies to vote.
If getting them a more median voter opinion helps them choose a viable candidate, then they have an electoral advantage.....
Even if every single person voted in the primaries, you could still end up with not very moderate candidates. If voters are evenly spread out between -100 (far left) to 100 (far right), the median Democrat is -50 and the median Republican is +50, neither of which is close to 0. With parties centrally controlled, they would compete for the median general election voter, and nominate people at like -10 and +10. Of course primary voters can prioritize electability as well, but if many of them don't, you still get pulled toward the extremes.
If every democrat voted in the primary, they're probably more likely to show up for the general.
moderation isn't in itself the goal here.
Here's the thing, and I've said this before. You can have one of two things in modern politics -
1. A relatively weak party system and not that many parties.
2. A relatively strong party system, but it's fairly easy to have multiple parties that have a chance to win seats/matter.
I'd actually argue that's why there were more signifigant third-party challenges pre-primary system is if you were a group basically shut out from serious consideration (abolitionist in the 1850's, populists in the late 19th century, socialists & Dixiecrats in 1948, segregationists in 1968, etc.), there was no way to make your voice really heard within the system, so you could only make an impact by winning a big number of votes and make one or both parties shift toward you.
If you want to give people only two choices, forced upon them via elite consensus, you're either going to get a massive drop in voting, and even more distrust of the system, or we're going to see far more 3rd party (especially in a world of basically no campaign finance limits) runs that ruin your precious moderate candidates chances of winning.
Part of the reason you didn't see a serious 3rd party effort in 2016 & 2020 from the left is they got to try to win the primary. They failed, and yes, as part of a coalition, they got their hand to effect policy, as much as that upsets many here.
Look, I get this comment section, that wants it to be 2003 forever, wants a world where they never have to listen to anybody to the left of them, but every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters.
"Look, I get this comment section, that wants it to be 2003 forever, wants a world where they never have to listen to anybody to the left of them, but every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters."
I've seen you voice this a couple of times, and I totally get being frustrated by obtuse commenters online
On the other hand, this is a pretty left of center place with people who are 99.999% likely to vote for Biden in the election. And the polls suggest that even with these people who are to your right, Biden might still lose. If the left does run a third party candidate of almost any sort, it will certainly lead to Republicans winning easily. That will in turn move policy dramatically to the right of where it is now. Democrats likely respond to such events by moving to the center like Clinton and the DLC did in the 90s in order to triangulate better. How does any of that accomplish what you want?
TL;DR Version - You just can't give people a "we're stopping the bad people from doing things, but we're not giving you anything you want" or they'll stop showing up, no matter how bad the alternative is. You actually have to give them or at least try to give them something they care about.
But, the current Democratic coalition, as somebody who is to the left of 95-98% of the populaiton is fine with me. Which is why I have no real issues Biden running for reelection, and will have zero problems voting for him in November.
But, much of that is a lot of things that much of this comment section is upset that Biden did. If the Biden administration actually ran like many people in this comment section want him too, I, a fairly partisan Democrat would have some real issues getting motived to drop my ballot back in the mail in lovely all-mail voting Washington, and the people I know under 40, which yes, in a deep blue city, but I also know via the Internet people in varying other places, would probably be even more upset with Biden than they are now, and I don't think he would be any more popular, since the largest chunk of his unpopularity isn't that he hasn't been meaner to immigrants, trans kids, or people with college debt, but because he's old, the Afghanistan withdrawl didn't do perfectly (and the Blob jumped on that), and stuff is expensive.
There's a lot of complaining about how the evil Left NGO's and Bernie voters (who are all rich trust fund kids in the eyes of the comment section here, despite Bernie basically even going 50-50 with African-American voters under 40, and overwhelmingly winning the other ethnic groups in the 2016 & 2020 primary) should all sit down and shut up, and hell, Warren voters should and realize they're in a coalition, there are a lot of people who, and let me mean here, don't realize that the fact they were OK with gay people, were against the Iraq War, and are OK with higher taxes doesn't mean you're on the left edge of the Democratic coalition anymore like it was when you were a edge Gen Xer in the 90's.
There are a lot of people who claim they're liberal, but continually talk and seem to vote on the issues that they're on the right edge or are just right-wing about a bunch here, which is actually different than most voters in the Democratic coalition, who may have right or centrist-leaning views on things, but they don't really care. Just like all the single-payer or pro-choice people who vote for Trump. They legitimately have those views, they just have issues they care about more, just like the 74 year old grandma in rural South Carolina probably believes in two genders, but doesn't care the Democratic Party doesn't - unlike many people here, who do deeply care about the things the Democrat's are too far left according to them.
Again, people claim this is a pretty left of center place, but on certain issues, especially issues the younger part of the population cares about is far more liberal about, the rancor is honestly, no different than blue checks on Twitter complaining about the kids these days and how wokeness is ruining free speech/college/politics/media/etc. Bluntly, on the trans issue, this comment section is to the right of every elected Democrat, including John Bel Edwards, Governor of Lousiana, who did some pretty pro-trans EO's while in office.
The reality is, if you're somebody on the 50% of the Democratic coalition on the leftier sides, basically the only thing you've gotten in the past six months to a year is some attempts at student loan forgiveness, a few minor (but good) regulatory things, all while Biden continues to basically let Israel do whatever they want with no reprecussions, and the Democrat's attempting to pass a law that would've been Steve Sailer and Tom Tacrendo's wet dream ten years ago.
Again - the actual current Democratic Party, I'm fine with. The Democratic Party this comment section seems to want at times - not interested in, and I think would be actually less electorally successful than the current Democrat's, who are basically the most electorally successful center-left party in the developed world outside of the Canadian Liberals or Portugese left in the past 20 years.
So you included a lot in your response and I would enjoy digging in a bit more on many aspects of it, but I want to focus purely on the coalitional aspects you highlight -
"You just can't give people a "we're stopping the bad people from doing things, but we're not giving you anything you want" or they'll stop showing up, no matter how bad the alternative is. You actually have to give them or at least try to give them something they care about. "
I think you are absolutely correct! But I think just as you think the Democratic party has to address the coalitional wants of the left of the party, I also think they have to address the coalitional wants of the center & right of the party. This is further complicated because there is not one single spectrum, but instead there are a host of issues where many people are left or right - as you noted in your discussion about trans issues.
Important to this discussion is what you said about those who feel they're not being sufficiently accommodated by the party. One of the key limitations the left has with Democrats is that if they aren't sufficiently enthused, they will stay home. While if the right of the party is not sufficiently enthused, they will vote Republican. Groups or segments that will credibly switch parties are much more impactful than those who stay home. If there are 100 voters, and the balance is 51-49 for left and right respectively, if one person on the left stays home, they still have a 50-49 advantage, but if one person on the right of the party switches it becomes a 50-50 tie. Every person either party gets to switch from the other party is worth twice as much one they pick up on the edge.
All of which is to say that a successful party will (and should!) try to balance the interests of coalition partners in order to be most effective, go as far to the edge to add votes without going so far that they start attriting votes in the center.
I'm curious if you think this is incorrect in some substantive way? Matt highlighted that the Democratic party has responded to Republicans putting up weak candidates by moving further to the left. Should that change, and Republicans put up much stronger candidates, do you think the Democratic party will be able to move right without losing your and other left support? Even with a very weak candidate like Trump, Democrats (Biden) are in danger of losing, what path to victory outside of moving to the right do you see possible for Democrats if Republicans offer stronger candidates?
1.) Again, I actually think the "Democrat's Stay Where They Basically Are + Nominate Somebody Who Isn't Old" will actually go fine in 2028, and past that, it gets really difficult for the GOP to win a national election since Millenial's aren't going as conservative as Gen X did (and they also started more liberal).
Again, I'm not against the current Democratic Party's positions on a whole (obviously, I have issues on specific things) because I understand we can't be Norway overnight, but I'm against the "Dem's should move to the right on all cultural issues" that a lot of people here want.
Like, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, and so on are in some ways, to the left of Biden on some issues, but I think they'd do fine in a general. For all the talk sometimes here about "safe, legal, and rare," Whitmer did basically make the "nah, it's in the Constitution, folks" with zero talk about rareness and won big in a swing state.
TL:DR - I don't mind the current Democratic position on things, and think a not old nominee could even shift a bit to the left, if they were actually charismatic.
2.) I think there's also some disagreement on whom the actual swing voters are. Swing voters don't have real politics the way we weirdos do. They base on vibes and what comes up in the election - see the famous graphic from David Shor where people who approved the ACA, but wanted less immigration went 60-40 Obama to 60-40 Trump from 2012 to 2016.
The best you can do about those voters is highlight the things the GOP is nuts on they don't like (abortion, etc.) and try your best to not talk about things they disagree with us on.
Yes, on crime and immigration, there was overreach, but Biden basically never caved to the stuff on crime, but he can't fix the fact that many urban dwellers care less about being as punitive to every homeless person or person who committed a crime as people in suburbs do. Also, the GOP will run on the cities being crime-ridden hellholes no matter what the actual truth is.
I also don't think there are actually that many "the Dem's are too woke on trans kids/CRT/DEI/whatever Chris Rufo is whining about today" voters outside of highly educated people annoyed about the milleiu in basically deep-blue districts. It's a very Online Issue, as even polling post-2022 midterms showed.
The actual right-edge of the Democratic coalition isn't white centrists on Twitter upset their kids talked about whiteness at their private school. It's actually older moderate non-white non-college-educated minorities with a variety of views on cultural issues, most of which they don't care about.
For all the talk of some actual shift toward the GOP by minorities, the actual good exit polls in 2022 didn't really show much, and I'll be blunt - I simply don't but the polling showing Trump winning Hispanic's or winning 25% of black men. A point or two shift, sure. But, until it actually happens, like people were claiming would happen in 2020 & 2022 by much further margins than it actually did, I'm not going to buy it.
Yes, there'll be bleeding in places like the border area of Texas, but those are a bunch of votes we shouldn't have been winning for a long time. It's basically the same as the pro-choice pro-LGBT suburban women that voted for Romney. Those people are gone gone gone from the GOP coalition in the long run.
As for the McArdle/etc. types, they're always temporarily allies and anything short of just becoming a bland centrist to center-right party will never make those people happy. I guess, my line is, if you're asking to the Dem's to move to the center more than Woke Bill Kirstol is, you're probably not a long-term Dem voter in any scenario.
TL;DR - The people on here and on Twitter who claim to be the important voters to win actually aren't. The actual important voters are weirdos who want single-payer, the border closed for 10 years, are pro-choice up to conception, and want all guns banned, and other wacky conflcting views.
3.) More specifically, on the GOP, I don't think it's possible really for them to nominate "normal" candidates a lot of the time. Mike Gallagher, who was basically fated to run for a WI Senate seat in the next cycle or two peaced out. And I'm not talking about moderates, but right-wingers who aren't openly nuts.
Look at 2022 - the only win they had was Joe Lombardo, who barely beat the incumbent Governor of Nevada even though they had the highest unemployment, and since being elected, he's basically been a moderate center-right guy hemmed in by an almost Dem supermajority and the fact his pre-Trump career showed him being a typical center-right cop - not crazy on immigration, pro-gun control, and not really caring about other social issues.
Otherwise, despite efforts by the NSCC & NCCC, a bunch of nuts got nominated, because that's what the GOP base wants.
Now, maybe in 2028, all the scales will fall, and a ticket of John Thune & Spencer Cox will win 39 states, but I highly, highly doubt it. This isn't me saying the GOP can't win, this is me saying that there's zero evidence they can fix what they're currently doing. The Democratic Party in 1989 hated losing three times - I see no evidnece most GOP voters will care if they lose for the fourth time in five POTUS elections.
TL:DR - Show me a competent GOP class of nominees for Senate and I'll worry.
"Show me a competent GOP class of nominees for Senate and I'll worry."
That is simply reinforcing what Matt said that because Republicans are offering weak candidates, that Democrats are moving left. They moved sufficiently left that despite Republicans offering a candidate who was impeached twice and has multiple civil and criminal trials ongoing is still neck and neck (if not leading) the current Democratic candidate.
You're response is
1) "Democrats where they are is fine" - but will they stay there? They have moved SIGNIFICANTLY to the left in the last decade on a large number of issues. You also note that older (more conservative) Democrats are dying off and younger more liberal Democrats are aging into the party - won't that in and of itself push the party left?
2) Swing voters are weird, but the general consensus is that most voters are generally more culturally conservative than the Democratic party and more economically liberal than the Republican party. (With the acknowledgement that large number of voters have loosely held and/or contradictory opinions). Moving into an age where culture beats economics suggests bad news for Democrats and in my opinion is THE reason why Trump is competitive.
3) The GOP is unable to provide non bonkers candidates - which seems like a risky thing to bet on and also suggests that if they did provide reasonable candidates, that they would win because they are closer to the majority opinion, its just that their candidates are crazy keeping them from winning now.
"every day, a bunch of older Democrat's to your right die, and a bunch of new 18 year olds to your left become voters."
At one time I was as confident as you about new voters bringing strength to progressive Democrats, just as I was about increasing diversity bringing strength to progressive Democrats. Trumpism has scrambled those assumptions in ways that I'm still coming to terms with.
I support strong parties *because* I want third parties. Voters should have far more choices.
This would lead, IMO, eventually to proportional voting for Congress and state legislatures, at least in some states - the third parties, almost regardless of political stance, would support this and if they're getting 20+% of the vote as is typical in other FPTP countries, then they will have enough influence to get it through the initative process, and the nature of US politics means that it will be so obviously an old guard protection scheme to oppose it that at least some referendums will be won.
The US chose to head in the direction of ever-more-open primaries and those crushed the third parties by pushing all the best politicians into contesting major-party primaries instead of turning the third parties into serious forces. No-one with the ability to be a serious politician joins the Green or Libertarian Party, or at least stays in them (Kyrsten Sinema left, and you can have your own views on how serious she is, but she did make it to the US Senate).
The issue is, American politics is a lot more expensive than any place in the world. The reason why despite it being a FPTP system with two and a half strong parties, there still exists several reasonably strong minor parites in the UK is a constiuency is 1/10th the size of a congressional district, and it's far cheaper to run a parliamentary campaign.
If we had 2,000 House seats and campaign finance limits, that'd be another way as opposed to PR or ranked choice to have strong third parties, but that's probably even less likely to happen than a voting system change.
Plus, for whatever reason, minor parties in the US basically refuse to actually seriously run in local races. Like, why hasn't Jill Stein (pre-Russian connections) run for Mayor or some serious libertarian outside of Gary Johnson (when there was some) tried to run for Mayor or Governor. Like, maybe Ron Paul should've tired to start the revolutiion in Texas instead of the 2008 primary.
Once cool reform idea from Ian Shapiro & Frances Rosenbluth: make primaries non-binding when support for the winner is below some threshold (say, 10% of registered voters in the district).
At minimum, this would let voters know that primary winners tend to have incredibly *weak* mandates. And it would soften the ground for party leaders to remove truly bad candidates.
It's funny you say that, I've independently had the exact same idea. Just do 1 gigantic open 'primary' that's non-binding, anyone can vote for the candidate of either party. And do some really rigorous exit polling, so you know who voted for who, which candidates are popular with which groups, etc.
Then the party can pick, technically, whichever candidate they want. They'd likely go for whoever looks best-positioned to win in the general, but you're not making them do anything. It's better than just polling because you're seeing which candidates perform the best in a real contest
Jamelle Bouie wrote a good column on why getting Biden to drop out would be problematic, and he also addresses, indirectly, the issue of primaries: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/24/opinion/joe-biden-democratic-primary.html.
Primaries may be relatively new compared to how old the US is, but the 1970s were still ~50 years ago. If either Party tried to scrap their Primary system in favor of going back to party and local machine bosses picking Presidential candidates, you would have a massive revolt against said Party.
The party could pick a select number of candidates to run in the primary, and voters could get to pick 1 of them. It'd be a closed primary where only dues-paying, card-carrying members of the party can vote. This is how primaries are conducted in the world's 159 other democracies
Ranked choice voting?
Is complete vaporware that doesn't do anything? I completed the sentence for you
RCV usually just ends up being window-dressing to produce the same result.
Uh, LF and Muccigrosso have had legendary debates on this one...
Matt has been admirably consistent on this, I remember 2015 weeds(!) doing an episode on it
What? I don't follow. How does this column suggest primaries produce extreme candidates.
I don't think that he explicitly makes that point, but he strongly implies it in points 9 & 17. I also read him as conflating contested primaries with brokered conventions in result and by implication in causal relationship to the results.
I don't see it in 9. No. 17. suggests Castro might have done better had he not turned left, but "the party elite, in terms of donations and top campaign staff" pushed left. Matt argues the Party mistakenly pushed to the left of the voters. That hardly seem like an argument favoring removing the voters and centering the Party.
I think 21 thoughts is an excellent post, by the way, I just don't see a 'primaries are bad' subtext. Maybe MY has done some tweets lately and people are synthesizing...
Yeah, it worked okay for a while because the parties didn't become so ideologically sorted until after 2000 or so.
Jungle primary
I don't like primaries either (No Party Ranked Choice FTW!)
But until recently the primaries mostly brought parties back to the center by reminding them they actually wanted to win the general.
Either party is totally free to just eliminate their primaries unilaterally.
Sure, that's just completely unrealistic. Personally I think the US should abolish being a presidency, become a parliamentary republic, institute a national VAT, have completely open borders for anyone with a STEM PhD, and so on. I don't spend a lot of time advocating for these policies because they're not going to happen, you know?
There are constitutional or at least statutory impediments to everything you mention, you'd need to pass a bill, you'd need bipartisan support, Schoolhouse Rock and all that.
Primaries were imposed on the Presidential nominating process by a voluntary stroke of a pen by the parties themselves and could be removed by the stroke of a pen in the same way.
They don't want to do it, it feels very politically destructive and just sort of wrong. But to your initial point, we didn't have Presidential primaries of consequential substance for most of our history, and it seemed to lead to better outcomes.
There would be overwhelming public and elite opposition. That's what 'unrealistic' means
Suppose the Klein scenario actually happens and Dems pick a candidate at the convention (I agree this is a very unlikely scenario). In this case however, I expect the Overton window would open to the possibility of getting rid of primaries
There would be. Do you agree with that opposition?
If it's THAT important, maybe it's worth taking a lonely stand and starting to build the case.
Because, to my initial response, the actual *doing* of it is easy and simple and totally within the control of the party itself. It's not like changing to a parliamentary system at all.
"Primaries were imposed on the Presidential nominating process by a voluntary stroke of a pen by the parties themselves and could be removed by the stroke of a pen in the same way.
They don't want to do it, it feels very politically destructive and just sort of wrong. But to your initial point, we didn't have Presidential primaries of consequential substance for most of our history, and it seemed to lead to better outcomes."
Once you give an entitlement to any halfway powerful constituency, you can never take it away.
Virginia GOP did it with governor!
I think you could do it at state level because no one pays attention to state politics, and other state parties would be wise to try to copy that.
If Youngkin had lost, there would've been a lot of hand-wringing on the Right about GOP elites "imposing" a loser candidate on the base.
But he didn't!
No approach is going to be infallible, the question is which one has the better odds of success. I don't have a strong opinion on that. I could also seeing the odds changing depending on the current conditions at play that might not always be the same.
Maybe because a lot of voters don't want to be given two bland choices by their supposed betters?
I bet you the vast majority of voters who voted for Youngkin know he was basically chosen by GOP state leaders, as opposed to a primary.
You can get away with that on the state level, but not on a national level.
If the Democrat's actually tried to go back to a convention-style system without buy-in from the electorate, I guarantee you there would be a serious third-party run, and it wouldn't even be that all left-wing, but just based more on "the party doesn't trust you, and thinks you need to be told who to vote for."
Hell, Bernie got a lot of votes in 2016 with basically this message in the primaries from people who probably disagreed with a lot of his policies.
What's your take on federal Senate and House races? They're for national office but are voted upon on the state level. And the GOP in particular has suffered multiple own goals on these offices by the primaries sticking them with clowns in the general election.
If a presidential nomination at the convention were to happen in 2024, I think it's highly likely that Trump would go third party, but that Biden wouldn't, and I'm not sure if there's another Democrat or Democratic supporter who could pull off a third party campaign that would be threatening enough. I'm using that as an example to prod at the idea that circumstances that are relative to the current situation at the time may matter as to what's the better path.
I dunno though, I don’t really think anyone wants the Trump-Biden matchup
>Either party is totally free to just eliminate their primaries unilaterally.<
Presidential primaries, yes. I'm not sure that's true for lower offices. And that's because it's not actually the "primaries" that technically choose the two major party nominees. But rather the summer conventions. Parties are indeed free to opt out of the current way of doing things—perhaps returning to some version of smoke-filled rooms—in the selection of their presidential nominees.
But for lower offices, the primary elections directly determine ballot access. Anybody wanting to upend this system need to get a bill through the state legislature or a court ruling allowing them to bypass it. Right?
No, the parties are private organizations, they can technically choose their nominee however they see fit. There was a Supreme Court case in 2000 establishing this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Democratic_Party_v._Jones
The Virginia Republican party recently used a convention and not a primary to select Youngkin as their nominee, for instance
That ruling held that California's *blanket* primary violated the freedom of association rights of political parties. AFAIK it didn't strike down the authority of states to hold (partisan) primary elections to decide general election ballot access. Let's imagine the following scenario: the Massachusetts Democratic Party for whatever reason decides it no longer wants to participate in the Commonwealth's state primary (for state, local and congressional races), which is normally held in September. But Democrats would basically be shit out of luck absent an act of the legislature, because it couldn't prevent individuals who got the requisite number of signatures from getting on the primary ballot. And the first past the post winner in any of these races would subsequently: A) be allowed on the general election ballot and, B) would have "Democrat" next to their name. Does that not sound correct? (I realize there's some variation depending on the state in question; and again, needless to say, I'm happy to stand corrected). But I suspect a political party that was really determined to opt out of state-run nominating primaries would have to get the law changed and/or (equivalent) go to court.
For the record I fully support the right of parties to decide on nominees however they damn well choose. What I've never quite been able to wrap my mind around is: if parties do have this authority, why is public sector machinery used to participate in the (partisan) nomination process? Political parties are private entities, after all. If parties want to use a broad, popular approach to selecting nominees, they should organize private events, keep track of internal registration (who pays dues? who's a member in good standing?), rent polling places on their own dime, or book convention halls, or what have you...
Non-partisan (ie, jungle) primaries are a different matter in my view. They're pure, non-partisan, preliminary elections. But *most* primary elections in America are "The government getting involved in deciding which persons are allowed to enjoy the general election imprimatur of these private ideological clubs known as political parties."
You'd have to explain the Virginia/Youngkin situation. The broader right in that case was that the parties have a freedom of association right to choose their nominees, the blanket primary was just the vehicle by which the case landed at the Court
In theory they have the broad first amendment right to choose nominees however they wish, indeed. But that's not the same as "eliminating primaries unilaterally" — which is the original claim I'm responding to. Unless at some point they opt to exercise that right (either by court action or getting state election law changed in the legislature) the primary system will continue to be the method by which general election ballot access is managed, and by which candidates are awarded a "D" or an "R" next to their names.
Re #13 - Joe Manchin
I have been telling my liberal friends that if you seriously believe Trump is the worst, you should pick the most conservative Democrat you can accept, in the interests of carrying the swing states. I recommend Joe Manchin, and I swear to God they all make the same lemon-sucking face at the idea.
But I think Trump is such a danger that we should do it. (Though #9 is in fact my personal preferred path, probably via Whitmer or Kelly.)
IMHO the summary of points 3-6 is that no one should be thinking about Harris at the top of the ticket. Just don't. That's not what the people want.
>I have been telling my liberal friends that if you seriously believe Trump is the worst, you should pick the most conservative Democrat you can accept<
I hope your liberal friends informed you Joe Biden is both running for the nomination and blowing his opponents out of the water. So there seems little prospect of Manchin's securing the nomination.
Barring a health crisis, it's Biden vs. Trump. How much longer will these fantasies endure?
Punditry can stay irrational longer than you can stay sane.
I agree that's what they should do but it's not how politics works in the social media age. Maybe at an earlier time in history but now politically active people are into politics as a means of broadcasting identity and as a lone voter it's crazy to take the identity hit of supporting someone like Manchin when you have so little influence individually. But since that's true of everyone and people don't like to see themselves as hypocrites they aren't going to vote for that kind of canidate at primaries.
Biden offers as moderate a package as possible without being unappetizing to modern Dems.
Joe Manchin is in his mid seventies. How would that short circuit the age issue?
Because he doesn't seem old. Age wasn't a big factor four years ago either.
True. Four years ago we knew Biden was old, but he seemed OK. Now he seems old as soon as he opens his mouth.
Have you heard him speak?
not much, but now I'm watching his videos on Youtube and he seems 100% fine re age. Like he looks "respectable experienced old" - not some JFK candidate of youth obviously.
I'm watching his retirement speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-xiBEy8GTg
and for something with less editorial control, statements on the budget:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgsxaSFImcM
and now on manufacturing/imports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qw0GWA_MVI
OMG how have I NOT listened to him directly before. Goosebumps to hear a politician say such reasonable things. I think the Left has been lying to me about Joe Manchin to make him sound bad for some reason. This guy would totally win.
His problem isn’t age, it’s that he has the charisma of a bowl of cold oatmeal.
sorry to break it to you, but those look bad. he looks like an old fogey trapped in another generation.
I mean, he reminds me of an 80s Republican, before the Gingrich revolution and all the crazy. And I mean that in a good way.
Davie are you over 50? Most voters are. I am too. I can 100% understand why the Millennials might not connect with Manchin, but for carrying the swing states and cutting into Trump's numbers on low-education White folks? I like Manchin.
Five or six years of aging can make a big difference, and Biden's clearly lost more steps than Manchin at this point in their lives.
Joe Biden is a little too old, and the idea of replacing him with a youngster like Manchin amuses me in a lot of ways, but it’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.
In other words, I don’t think I will be able to survive the inevitable 2028 “he wasn’t too old to run 4 years ago, but maybe he is now?” re-election discourse. I think I might actually die.
Ooh, ooh, I know the one: because the age issue is complete bullshit.
Agree, but somehow this never comes up. Also, I don't think there are any democrats in West Virginia, so he's kind of a DINO, for all intents and purposes.
I think a Haley/Manchin ticket on No Labels or as independents could really disrupt this election. My guess is it would be strong in swing states and ultimately help Biden win. There are a lot of moderates in this country who don't care for the extremism of MAGA and your liberal friends.
Sore loser laws prevent Haley from running
I've always felt that sore loser laws would be grossly unconstitutional if candidates aren't allowed to even get write in votes. I'm struggling to find caselaw on this though, maybe one of the legal eagles out there like srynerson or Dilan Esper immediately knows.
Don't discount this because it comes from the Federalist Society- the reporting seems accurate and it looks like West Virginia's sore loser law was upheld against a constitutional attack just 5 years ago.
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/blankenship-v-secretary-of-state
Thanks. The facts of Blankenship's case weren't quite what I was looking for, but looking through that opinion, it did help me find the answer that I was looking for, and now I see in Burdick v. Takushi that SCOTUS did uphold a ban on write in voting. I think that's really, really bad and wrongly decided, and I think Kennedy had it correct in dissent.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/91-0535.ZD.html
Burdick is definitely a bad decision, although to be clear it was a prohibition on write in votes in general and it would at least be possible for a court distinguish it in a sore loser case.
We should do what? Magically install Joe Manchin?
I am quite tired of people who confidently tell us what we should do but have no realistic plan.
If I could wave a magic wand sure, I'd happily install Joe Manchin. But the whole thing is a chimera. There is no magic wand. Harris might not be a stronger candidate, yet she might prevail anyway at a brokered convention. Another reason this is day-dreaming.
Yeah, I mean Ezra explains the steps and admits it is a longshot.
1. Biden voluntarily steps down. (Or, health event maybe?)
2. Convention delegates select the ticket.
#1 converts Ezra's punditry on this into sheer fantasy—not just a longshot. But sure, in the parallel universe where Joe Biden decides not to run or becomes incapable of running, his delegates could be released and we could have an open convention that chooses (most likely) Kamala Harris or (hopefully, but don't count on it) some iteration of Whitmer-Kelly-Shapiro-Beshear-Warnock.
Then we can all hope the polls are wrong and that we didn't just lose our most competitive nominee, one Joseph R. Biden Jr.
TBH I don't care if it is his age specifically or just the more general prospect of losing. This is also why I'm clear in other threads that I do not think Harris should get the nod either. The goal is to nominate someone who will win.
Hey, me too. But there is no mechanism that is feasible and likely to produce a better outcome on net, defined as beating Trump.
Yeah, that is Klein's program. For reason MY gives, it seems vanishingly unlikely Manchin would be chosen in a brokered convention. Single most likely winner would be Harris.
I feel like MY is spelling it out with 5, 12, and 13.
Per 5 & 12, Harris or Newsome are considered more liberal and poll worse. Per 13, Manchin is more conservative and polls better.
If you want Trump to lose - if this is really important to you - select someone more conservative than Biden. (If I say "more centrist" will that make the medicine taste better?)
You and I and MY might feel Manchin is a smart choice were there a brokered convention.
MY absolutely does not argue a brokered convention would nominate Manchin. If anything he argues the opposite, a brokered convention would push to the left.
Honestly I had to go back and re-read it to confirm what you are saying.
That is how impossible it is for me to contemplate anyone doing something as stupid as nominating Harris. Sigh.
I made that lemon sucking face as I read tour comment!! Haha. But you know, I might have to agree with you. I really don’t like Manchin…at all. He is a worm. But he’d be 100 percent better than Trump. Sometimes I fantasize Oprah steps up to sacrifice 4 years of her life to steadying the ship!
I'm genuinely curious how a Manchin run in 2020 would have gone. Probably not well, but there was a wide lane open to Biden's right, and he would have been the only one taking it.
I'm even more curious how Manchin would have done in a 2024 primary against Biden, though I suspect 1) Biden would still win easily, and 2) Biden may have responded to a Manchin primary challenge by going even more to the left, damaging his electoral college prospects
re 2020, I think you might be forgetting a lot of candidates to Biden's Right who bombed out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Withdrew_before_the_primaries
I mean, Bloomberg for one? Amy Klobucher? Governors Bullock, Inslee, and Hickenlooper? Tim Ryan was probably farthest to the right but had other problems. There just wasn't such an appetite in 2020. We had a fun field of centrist candidates but somehow Biden was He Who Remained. (I think Black voters helped on that a lot, esp with Clyburn's endorsement in SC.)
I do think Bloomberg was to the right of Biden, but his issue was that he's an insufferable billionaire more than anything. I wouldn't consider Klobuchar to the right of Biden. She, Pete, and Warren competed for the college-educated liberal wing to the left of Biden and to the right of Bernie.
I wouldn't consider Inslee to the right of Biden, at least on climate. The other governors? I guess I could take your word for it, but I don't recall issues where they were to the right of Biden.
I do agree with you on Tim Ryan, though. He was pretty unknown at the time. Manchin was also not as well-known as he is now, but as a long-time Senator who had just won a race in WV (2018 midterms) and could have made a more credible case for himself and for centrism in general compared to Ryan.
Manchin in 2020 would have been right up there with Bullock and Hickenlooper.
I'm curious as well re Manchin 2024.
You might be right Biden would have won easily, that would do a lot to put the age issue to rest. Voters had their say, they didn't care that much.
Pivot. To. The. Center. This is what every bloody POTUS does! Biden should hammer republicans on how he needs more money and men to guard the southern border. More money and men to police the streets and that they shout pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthy. He should then tell them he wants to reduce the permitting process to both install more green energy and drill for more oil and gas since while he hoped the transition would be quick it’s going slowly and until we finally reach the green future we need to drill to ensure America has plenty of gas to put in cars.
I think he’d be shocked at how people respond and then he should state down the Progressive wing of his party and tell them to put up or shut up
I actually think he would lose a lot of votes amongst young people thing way. He's already really struggling with younger progressives. Maybe he can make it up with more moderate/conservative voters. Its possible, but I don't think this is a risk-free strategy given that Biden is not liked or trusted by younger, progressive voters already, so them not voting or voting third party is a real threat in a way it wasn't so much with Obama.
Bluntly they’re already mad and won’t be happy anyway. They’re already whining that he hasn’t ended college debt, even though he’s done what he could, or fixed climate change, despite being the most effective at this in history, and racial justice (for being a white man). There isn’t much he can do to make them happy that wouldn’t royally piss off everyone else
Plus where are those younger lefty voters located? Most of them aren't even in swing states.
Agreed. If the body of the electorate prefers different policies and you will lose if part of your base demands something. You deny them that and hope they realize that abstaining will be worse for them than voting.
As I remind people about the leftist critics on Twitter, one third of them are teens, one third are foreigners, and one third were never going to vote anyway.
I was talking recently to my daughter, a millennial, about this age thing. Her notion was that Biden simply isn’t in touch with what people her age are worried about. They fear that he is in it simply for their votes that he doesn’t really believe the way they believe in their issues.
Ok? Do they think Trump thinks more like them? Because that’s what matters
Young people do not vote.
That's an oversimplification, but basically if you could trade a +1% swing in 35+ voters for a -5% swing in 25 and younger, you should do that every time.
If young people voted this would matter
I agree fully with this.
On the plus side, I hope that the level of Biden age coverage now means the political reporters will be bored of it by the time the election heats up.
But I also think things aren't as bad for Biden as everyone thinks. Increasing partisanship means turnout matters more and being old doesn't turn out your opponents the way Trump turns out democrats.
The age thing is entirely in pundits’ head as a variable that matters for this election. It’s absurd the extent to which they’ve latched into this in the absence of polling data showing an actual alternative would do better. I too would like a world where we got a younger candidate in 2020, but I don’t know for a fact that any of the options we had would’ve actually won the general. In our current world, Joe Biden is the incumbent, there’s zero evidence throwing away incumbent advantage would help (and clear evidence the only other person with it, Harris, would do worse) and people need to touch grass. Nate Silver truly has fallen far from the guy who mainly did well by telling people to take the polls seriously.
The polling data that says an unnamed alternative would do better is silly, I agree.
But the polling that has been crystal clear for years that it bothers voters that Biden is an old fogey is not in pundit's heads, it is a variable that matters in the election, and the reality that there's nothing the party or its voting base can do about it does not mean it isn't real.
And yet younger candidates don’t poll better. So no it does not matter, because they prefer Joe Biden to any other actual specific individual, and we cannot make Joe Biden younger
Well, now you're the one hypothesizing polling.
I think we agree here. Joe is the best card the Dems have in the deck, warts and all. Trying to replace him has a terrible risk/reward profile.
But the warts are not a pundit-invented narrative. Voters don't like Biden's visibly advanced age, and it's costing him votes at the margin, even against a widely disliked Trump.
It's not a hypothetical, it's a revealed preference. If voters say they care about his age but they are less likely to vote for candidates that are much younger than him, it suggests they do not actually care about his age.
No, it suggests there are other things they care about more than age. The vast majority of voters care about ideological positioning more than age, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about age.
Unless something dramatic happens to Biden over the next months, I just find it very hard to believe that voters' decisions will be much affected by Biden's age.
It seems like such a vague, inchoate thing, like wishing you weighed ten pounds less but at the end of the day you live with it and you're actually OK with how you are.
Matt's right: voters seeing Democrats as too beholden to the Left is far more dangerous than whether Biden will still be an engaged President on Jan. 20, 2029.
Right. I think the bind democrats are in is that winning requires someone both charismatic and moderate but without an existing national platform it's really hard for that kind of canidate to rise to the top in the modern primary system especially with the increased relevance of individual donors.
It's not that there isn't a constituency for picking moderates who can win but that you can't get that winning glow until you are polling pretty well and getting off the ground usually requires either something like having been VP or the president's spouse or the kind of enthusiastic support moderates don't generate in the democratic party currently.
But the reason they are less likely to vote for younger candidates isn’t that they don’t care about age, it’s that they have no idea who the f*** these people are.
If Biden is the best candidate, saying “he would poll better if younger” is a little like saying “he would poll better if he had the power of flight”. True, but a weird thing to focus on.
I would very simply vote for the Flying President.
>Trying to replace him has a terrible risk/reward profile.<
No. It's not that such a move has a "terrible risk/reward profile." Before we even get to doing such calculus, we confront the reality that swapping him out isn't an actionable strategy: there's no way to accomplish this.
I think the idea is that Biden would be one of key people to come around to the idea. If he desists in his campaign for another term it must happen.
just wait until those same voters learn about trump's age!
But Trump seems younger, in part because he dyes his hair and wears makeup (go ahead and laugh, but it does affect people’s perception, even when inexpertly applied). Also, Trump has a younger affect because the misfortunes of others do not affect him, while Biden is obviously much more empathetic and frustrated when he can’t help people.
Also don't underestimate how much the deplatforming of Trump has backfired. If the media was airing everything Trump was doing like in 2016 people might be seeing more of his Senior Moments and craziness. But I get the feeling there's some ego infested in that decision and the people who made it don't want to admit it helped Trump and reverse it.
Also, Biden may be too thin—being fat (not obese, just plump) smooths out wrinkles.
What are you talking about? looking like a fatty spirit halloween store ghoul does not make him "look younger"
"hypothesizing polling"
wait how is citing existing polls "hypothesizing"
Or maybe the younger candidates also suck. I mean, Gavin Newsome? Yuck.
God, give me a million year old Biden over that smarmy sleaze.
I re-up my support for an addendum to the qualifications to be President: cannot have ever slept with Kimberly Guilfoyle. Newsome and Donny Jr. both ineligible to run.
I just hunted down a picture of them when they were together, and they looked...normal back then, and not the monstrosities that both would become.
https://s.hdnux.com/photos/10/03/30/2110991/6/0x720.webp
I recently got into a fairly intense argument with some friends who were convinced Newsom was going to be much better than Harris, and I think they felt so because Newsom takes so many shots at Republicans that they like. I tried sharing Josh Barro's article to them to no avail. About the only progress I could make is that he once dated Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Heh, I just reread that Barro post, and it included this paragraph--granted, from 2022:
https://www.joshbarro.com/p/gavin-newsom-is-gross-and-embarrassing
"My second irritation is that Democrats already have a candidate for 2024. His name is Joe Biden, he’s presided over a series of important legislative victories, his poll numbers have improved markedly, and his renomination remains Democrats’ best chance to hold the White House in two years."
One reason why many of us prefer older candidates is because the younger ones are deeply unappealing. My generation of the Democratic Party is apparently going to be a bunch of socialist Hamas huggers.
That’s not an “or” that’s one possible explanation for why the age thing is irrelevant
The media have been pushing Biden's age.
Jon Lovett noted that just by bringing it up, you can get people to say they agree with some conspiracy theory they had never heard of before.
To get a fair poll on the issue, the other candidate would need to be in the race and making campaign appearances. Nobody knows who Mark Kelly is.
If you were actually true about voter preferences, why does Dean Phillips place 3rd place in South Carolina *after Marianne Williamson? Matt explicitly brings up Dean in one of these points.
I think Biden being hurt by his old age and other Democratic party alternatives being hurt by swing voter perceptions of being more left-wing than they let on (which Biden's advanced age, wistful Strom Thurmond comments, etc *helps him combat*) is a plausible theory of what's going on here. Silver is right it's hurting Democrats, but he's wrong to theorize Democrats have any better alternative. So he gets very mad at Democrats while being in denial he's becoming a kind of new liberal Republican since COVID.
I would actually like to see someone write about the "new liberal Republican since COVID" angle. I was a Republican a long time ago and drifted left as the party drifted right. Since COVID (and the chaos of 2020 more generally) I have stayed the same or drifted right while the Dems seem to have gone hard to the left...still could not be a Republican though. Are there many people like this?
If people think that Biden is mentally not there enough to be president (and i do)
Then it's pretty reasonable not to vote for him
Because Trump is the picture of mental acuity?
Honestly, this is the best argument for RCV for me: it makes it clear to the voter that you're voting on how the candidates compare to each other, not affirmatively selecting someone who is up to your standards of acceptability.
Do you think the incumbent advantage is nerfed when the other candidate has also been president and has someone incumbency tied to them?
I think the answer is "no", but I think this is a really good question, and I think anyone who says they're sure they know the answer is bullshitting us.
"Donald Trump is an incredibly weak leader for the Republican Party, and that Democrats have chosen to respond to that weakness by moving aggressively left on policy"
I love that observation. The last several presidential election cycles have been decided by a couple of points, and it's clear that if one party displays a weakness, the other party will react not by cruising to an easy win but rather by shifting away from the center right up to the point that the next election will be (another) nailbiter.
Ezra Klein did a podcast many months ago and kept wondering why elections are so close these days, and somehow never really talked about this, the obvious answer. Parties have good data teams, so they know what it takes to win, and there isn’t much incentive for producing a landslide.
There *would* be an incentive: that you'd have a 90% chance of getting your party into power (however watered down and Manchin-ized) vs. a 50% chance.
I’m very glad to see Matt make this point on ideology and it’s been missing in all of the discussion. Despite his age, Biden qua Biden brings a lot to the table in terms of beating Trump!
As I wrote in response to Nate Silver’s most recent piece banging this drum: Trump is in some ways a difficult Republican to beat, because he doesn’t take typical Republican stances on things like social security and Medicare, he doesn’t seem like a creepy social conservative, he’s not weirdly religious, etc. In many ways, Trump is less scary to a certain set of voters than Paul Ryan would be.
So it’s Biden’s centrism and institutionalism that makes him particularly well suited to beat Trump, in ways that a generic Democrat wouldn’t be. I really don’t think you could just drop Cory Booker (or Gavin Newsom) in there and get the same outcome against Trump in particular, even if Booker or Newsom would probably do better against someone like Haley.
What's weird is that Biden's moderation isn't all that unique. As Matt points out what's unique is that he's a moderate who can win the primaries.
I fear that a combination of social media and McCain-Feingold has left both parties at much greater risk of capture by extreme elements and some kind of major reform is needed -- but can't think of one that will pass.
I actually think it is unique, though? Even people like Shapiro or Whitmer - to say nothing of Newsom - seem more liberal-coded than Biden.
He’s probably to the right of ~90% of Dem Senators (even if not by much relative to someone like Chris Murphy or Kirsten Gillibrand). Like yes he’s to the left of Manchin, but that’s a basic prerequisite to be a Democrat.
I think that while he was in the senate, he was basically always the median democrat. I suppose it’s possible that the newer senators are all left of him, so he would now be on the right end.
I think were he in the senate today, he would be more liberal than he is as president. That being said, he's the most left president we've ever had!
I'm not sure we are per se disagreeing. I agree that amoung democrats of sufficient national standing it's rare. But it's rare because the democrats don't support these canidates not because it's somehow a rare quality. Heck, if centrist messaging started being the better draw for campaign donations I bet you'd find lots of that 90% suddenly rediscovering moderate views.
I agree that there's no way to get from here to a better universe with a younger moderate Democrat candidate, just as there's no way for the Republicans to get to a...less indicted, less crazy Republican candidate.
But that's a separate issue from how big of a factor the age thing is or whether it would be be a good idea for Biden to be out there more. And I say, based on the polling data, that the age thing is a big deal. And also, based on just looking at the guy, that getting him out there more is not the answer.
What does one do about this? I don't know. Be sad about the decline of political parties, probably. Maybe think about whether there's anything you can do so that this doesn't happen again. That's not my lane. But seriously, the guy is old and he looks old and people notice that and it's a big deal.
Jon Stewart joked about not seeing a sharp and capable Biden video clips of him in meetings, and I think it would be a good idea to drop a bunch of those. They can select a bunch of short clips for TikTok followed by a crazy Donald Trump comparison.
They don't exist.
Because being competent at your job is not entertaining, it’s not something we see a lot in general. And at meetings where stuff actually gets accomplished, people have to be able to say things that are true but might not sound good in public to people who don’t understand what they’re talking about or why this or that has to be considered.
The really sad thing is that campaigning is a young person’s game, but actually governing is something an older person (who has more familiarity with both history and the people they’re dealing with) may be better at. Obama was a brilliant campaigner, but didn’t accomplish much (didn’t really contribute much to passing ACA). The Democratic party went on a downhill slide during his eight years in office, which ended with the election of Donald Trump. If only Joe Biden had been in charge, we might have been in much better shape—he’s accomplished more in one term (including having to clean up Obama’s mess in Afghanistan) than Obama did in eight. Yet he’s not cool or good looking, so it’s all literally invisible.
The issue is that when he is in public, he says wild shit and acts confused. So, if that's not the real picture, get him in front of a camera literally anywhere where he can show off how together and with it he is.
This shouldn't be hard.
I mean only if you watch the deceptively edited montages. If ypu just pick a random video of him speaking, he's still better at speaking and nusmced policy discussion than people of pretty much any age. If you want a really fun one look up the time he got Republicans to applaud protecting social security.
I watch whole clips from CNN, NYT etc. I don't care to get my news from social media.
I think it is correct that wisdom and experience count in governance while youthful energy and articulation matter in the campaign.
But I wouldn't go as far as you do. Physical and mental decline are real and sometimes sudden, old people can be very stubborn when it happens, and something disastrous could happen in EITHER a Trump or Biden second term because of that.
If I could switch the Obama and Biden presidential terms, I'd jump at the chance.
Sadly I have to agree. If he were capable of impressive appearances, he’d be making them. If good clips existed, we’d be seeing them.
Right, they would have to be staged and then edited. It would be like “reality tv”.
The issue is that they don't video-record meetings, because that would be a crazy thing to do regardless of who the president is.
Then have him give a press conference about literally anything where he can show off how sharp he is.
I think they will. He's already done some press. Fewer than other presidents, but it's not as if he's taken no Q&A from the press at all. And he's been fine when he's done it, although his performance tends to get nitpicked: normal minor gaffes that he would have made 30 years ago get noticed in a different way today because they fit a predetermined narrative, which is exactly how bias works, whether it's race bias, or gender bias, or in this case age bias - the brain knows what it wants to see going in, and so it notices those things. Regardless, I think his increased visibility as the campaign goes on will be helpful to him, especially because of how expectations are being set so low right now. We saw a dry run at this in 2020, which was not devoid of "Biden is senile" commentary - then, when Biden did fine at the debate (actually did better than Trump, who was all over the place), it made him look even better than he otherwise would have looked. I doubt Trump will agree to participate in debates this time around, partly for that very reason, but there will be other opportunities for Biden to be on the stage.
He does plenty of press, it just doesn't get covered because he only makes news when he messes up. He's boring to watch is the real issue here.
“The 33 news conferences Biden has given during the first three years of his presidency is lower than any other American president in that time span since Ronald Reagan, said Martha Kumar, a Towson University professor emeritus and expert on presidents and the press. Similarly, the 86 interviews Biden has given is lower than any president since she began studying records with Reagan. By comparison, Barack Obama gave 422 interviews during his first three years.”
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/as-2024-election-picks-up-biden-campaign-signals-a-more-aggressive-challenge-to-the-press
Give the man some adderall!
First they'd have to score some. Not easy!
It looks like Democrats just aren't trying that hard to win. I think we know what campaigns from struggling parties that put winning first look like. They fight their own flank as a signal to swing voters that they're prioritising them over partisanship. Clinton had Sister Soulja and "the era of Big Government is over", Blair had a load of issues. It worked.
I don't recall Biden doing anything like that. His flank complains non-stop because that's what they seem to view as their role these days. But *he* hasn't performatively taken them on. I'm not sure why that is. But it isn't happening.
Example A is the continued push to cancel student loans. As Matt consistently mentions the median voter doesn't have a student loan because they didn't even go to college. It's a massively regressive policy that's singularly positioned to placate his left flank.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2024/02/23/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-plan-approved-panel/72714884007/
It’s interesting that it seems to be succeeding at getting a lot of favorability from the people who receive it, with basically no blowback the way it seemed like there would be when he was pushing the big version.
IDK. I guess the counterpoint is Biden is still down 5%p in swing states and - to me - he's in a no-win situation with the various plans: (1) they do nothing to reduce the cost of college going forward, (2) polling from Gen Z thinks he *way* over-promised and under-delivered (e.g., ~ 40% of people already spent the money they thought was going to be forgiven), and (3) non-student loan holders are moving towards Trump.
Point #1 is big. i’m for forgiving some student loans in a means tested way but they need to rein in the cost of college long term.
If the plans for relief did something for people without college loans (reduced cost for future generations, adding funding for vocational programs) it’d be a worthwhile to do. Absent that, it seems pointless.
Is he really down in those swing states? Or are you cherry picking polls now?
There's no evidence he's down because of student loans either.
Yes he's really down in the top 10 swing states. Pick any aggregate poll you want. See also Matt: "Where Ezra and I agree is that Biden is currently on track to lose the election."
See evidence for point (2) here:
https://theintercept.com/2023/12/21/student-debt-biden-trump-poll/
I think this is actually pretty savvy. Placates younger leftist voters (at least at the margin) and is low-salience enough that he doesn’t catch hell from centrists much (it polls reasonably well)
Student loan relief polls well. I don't think that's the problem.
Have you been listening to Biden talk about the border? It's night and day from even a few months ago. That's your "fighting the flank" right there.
Fair enough. If he really is trying to pivot to the centre I think that makes sense. Hopefully he gets more support in the party. It's kinda perverse he's concurrently facing demands he step down because he's down in the polls *and* that he adopt unpopular policy positions.
It's truly amazing how you regularly don't remember these Biden moments that refute your thesis.
Somehow you regularly portray him as something he's not.
It’s his staff and maybe his grandkids. They’re performatively left educated elites and he defers on social issues because he knows he’s old. Can you see Karine Jean-Pierre getting on board with a Souljah moment?
I don't think Democrats actually want Biden to pivot like Bill Clinton did, because they're doing fine right now. Bill Clinton's pivot rightward existed in the context of Democrats *losing three presidential elections in a row.*
I don't think Dems are doing fine. The current GOP is incredibly dangerous and unfit for office (some of its own elected officials say so) and Dems are barely managing to split power 50:50 with them.
Great take. Underrated comment. This view deserves a lot of love.
I would love to see Biden tell a Palestine or climate activist to eat shit, but he won’t do it.
>Biden is currently on track to lose the election. <
No disputing this.
>And I agree with Ezra that if Biden loses, which he probably will,<
Probably will lose? Maybe it's terror-related denial on my part, but this second claim I think is more questionable. But I don't do punditry and political analysis for a living as Matt does, so what do I know? Do past polling history and/or national conditions give us any hints about what is likely to transpire over the next eight months? By my count the two parties have collectively enjoyed thirteen opportunities since 1900 to secure a second consecutive White House term, and have succeeded eleven times. The two exceptions (1980, 2020) both saw recessions. That doesn't sound much like 2024. Also, Donald Trump has had two cracks at the presidency, and has lost the popular vote both times. Yes, one is aware that's no guarantee of an Electoral College loss. But still, he clearly seems to be an objectively weak presidential candidate by historical standards. Is it really so unlikely Biden's chances won't look better by, say, late summer?
PS—Even if my intuition about improving odds for Joe Biden are correct, I'm under no illusions he'll be a heavy favorite. I doubt very much Trump's odds slip much below 40%.
I'm in Trump country, and while Biden is hated, the enthusiasm for Trump is notably muted compared to 2016 and 2020.
I'm not so negative on Biden's chances.
In the current climate, it feels like it would take an act of God to make *either* party's chances drop below something like 30%. Even if the candidate fucking died and got replaced by some no-name.
Do I like that? I mean, no, not really!
This is where we agree - as a person looking to know what the other side is up too, I check out the right-wing abyss in various places, and yes, there's lots of whining about the Democrats, there's not a lot of hope Trump will get in their and fix things, especially among the slightly smarter right-wingers.
For the first time in decades, neither party is really having a competitive primary. I think a lot of people aren't very tuned in.
I have the same sense from the deep red to your east. I don't expect to see much engagement until late summer. So we should cool off on any Biden doomerism.
The race at this point seems like a complete toss-up to me, not that that is much more comforting. So I also thought Matt’s take was overly pessimistic.
I know it’s become a cliche, but Biden will likely benefit as the choice between Trump and him crystallizes. I do worry about the RFK Jr. ratfckery, but I’m not completely sure which side he’ll hurt more.
The one thing I keep not seeing in the “Biden is heading to defeat” takes is that we still haven’t reached the point of the campaign where Trump is in everyone’s face nonstop again. I truly believe it will remind a lot of squishies how awful it was to have his craziness sucking up all the oxygen all the time.
Counter to my own point is that we also haven’t reached the stage where Biden needs to be vigorously campaigning and I worry about that. He benefited enormously from 2020 being a virtual campaign.
To be clear, I think Biden has been good as a Dem president and people are overly concerned about his age but the summer campaign season does concern me.
The average news consumer probably thinks Nikki Haley still has a shot and is pricing that in. I expect this will shift after super tuesday.
I think the average news consumer is still convinced it will be NEITHER Trump nor Biden. My mother in law is 10000% Certain it will be Newsom vs Haley lol.
RFK JR is overwhelmingly associated with anti-vax quackery. How could such a candidacy not hurt the GOP more?
So far polls have shown RFK Jr taking more votes away from Trump than Biden. I don't know if that would hold up in the general election but I think a lot of people can see right through him.
While the "probably will lose" statement isn't that different from "currently on track to lose" they present different connotations. The latter is saying, "if the election were held today, he'd likely lose and if things don't change by November he's also likely to lose" while "probably will lose" contains a more definitive core implying that "no matter what happens between now and November, he probably will lose."
I agree with the "currently on track" and also think no one has any basis for saying he "probably will lose." There's a lot that is going to happen between now and November.
I don't even necessarily buy the claim that he would lose if the election were held today. I assume many people put much less thought into answering a poll than they would when actually voting.
In an NYT Needle sense, I think the two claims are literally synonymous.
Generally agree, but I’m nervous it’s denial-based as well. I’m scared to death of a trump round 2, but I can’t bring myself to accept Trump as the favorite. Especially because these trials are just going to wear him down. Like spending weeks in court, plausibly getting convicted, these can’t help. And it feels like it will be low-turnout, which (oddly, surprisingly) helps democrats these days.
One reason Biden's age is such an electoral threat is that if enough people think it DQ's him the fundamentals like the economy won't matter.
I agree with Matt. Let Biden be Biden. Let him be the old guy who remembers America before we all went insane. He’s a guy who wears aviators, drives a corvette, and thinks his wife Jilly is still smoking hot. Josh Barro loves this Joe. So do normie voters like me, and plain-speaking senators like Fetterman.
Instead of this retro centrist dude, my Twitter was flooded yesterday with angry responses to video clips of Joe celebrating student debt relief. He’s attacked from the hard-left as a squish. These debt cancellations are too small! He’s attacked from the center and right, for overstepping his executive authority, and bragging about it.
Joe’s messaging was terrible. Kamala “the cop” Harris would be even worse. She’s caught in the same cultural tar pit, pandering to an ideology that created Google’s weird Gemini application that won’t draw white people.
My mind keeps going back to Ronald Reagan. I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember this, but Reagan's age was a big deal, and jokes about his senility were pretty commonplace. He had a ton of cognitive gaffes during his second run. The run in which he won 49/50 states.
Voters say that they care about Biden's age, but I think it's just a proxy for myriad other reasons that people don't like him.
I'm the biggest Biden supporter out there, but even I get a little queasy with the Biden "hot sex" approach.
https://nypost.com/2024/02/23/us-news/biden-81-tells-white-house-aides-the-key-to-a-successful-marriage-is-good-sex-book/
You're relying on the NY post for your Biden coverage?
Know the enemy.
I simply would not take it seriously as some sort of strategy that the Biden camp is delivering.
It feels like you can’t say this, but it feels like the new version of the Democratic Party has no place for cishet white men. Biden is just a placeholder.
You sound terminally online. Who uses lingo like “cishet” anymore??? Perhaps among zombie MSNBC watchers, but few others. That phrase is sooo 2020, thank god. 🤣🫠🙃
Well, no worries now on my question in the last mailbag as we know it not getting answered, because it got a whole article! Thanks very much for this, I have been trying to keep a very open mind on this and learn more from disagreeing takes from people I trust, and yours is always appreciated.
I also find this finding quite disturbing: "People often tell me that my obsession with issues and ideology is sad and pedantic, that we are in a post-policy world run by vibes". Talking the issues and ideology is most important, and that is why I've read your work for so long and participate here. I really wish more people would do the same more.
It’s very, very weird and alarming that Matt’s peers are saying that. Makes you wonder how their differing views affect their news coverage/punditry, and since they outnumber Matt, also how it affects politics and average voter sentiment.
Matt assumes that the delegates at the convention will behave similarly to the democratic primary electorate but if Biden wins the primary in a landslide the convention will be ~95% Biden electors. I genuinely don't know who signs up to be a Biden elector in a year where the Primary is a foregone conclusion but I expect they would be quite different demographically and perhaps dispositionally from the primary electorate.
I would hope they would take the survival of American democracy more seriously than Harris supporters.
All the takes defending sticking with Biden assume he is able to run a somewhat normal campaign and that he isn't in decline. I think it is telling that Biden has done nothing to show that he can run a halfway normal Presidential campaign.
IT'S FEBRUARY.
For sure, Biden & co have been decent re timing [delayed] and breasting their cards. Old time political behaviors continue to have relevance, even as 'social media' etc creates daily turmoil. The turmoil is what commenters / social media peoples see as issues; but the people voting...the giant middle...they (we?)....'pay attention', in the home stretch. Maybe unfortunate; but seems to be the behavior.
I have fond memories of all those powerhouse speeches that Obama gave in February 2012.
(A lie: I have no memory of any Obama speech in February 2012. I *do* remember him giving one of the worst debate performances in history in his first Romney debate. Clearly the guy was too old and suffering from dementia.)
Yeah, unfortunately I think you are right. I used to think they were just making a strategic mistake by not doing more to let the public see and hear from Biden. At this point it's become clear that they do in fact need to hide him so he doesn't reveal how old he seems.
I can’t get my head around why Biden’s age is an issue. It seems like a proxy for dislike of policies Biden supports rather than a response to actual evidence of grossly diminished decision making.
It’s time for the age obsessed to get with the program or come out and openly make their case.
He just looks old and weak and befuddled.
No one wants a weak seeming president. It's not much more complicated than that.
Trump is old, but for all his other flaws, he doesn't come across as weak.
Insane, yes, but not weak.
I have never understood how he gets away with this, because to me he looks incredibly weak. And his buffoonish bragging exacerbates it.
Me vs. Trump, with $100k on the line in a "fair fight", there are not very many contests that I would say no to, on either physical or mental prowess dimensions. And I suspect if you polled the greater republic with questions like "Do you think you could beat Trump in [arm wrestling/chess/mma fighting/pickleball/poker/math quizes/current event trivia/whatever], you would find a lot of people saying "yes".
So what does "weak" even mean?
It's obviously superficial, but that's enough for the general public.
And anyways, it's a relative comparison.
Biden looks weak and confused compared to Trump.
Trump would probably look weak (and maybe confused) compared to some like Justin Trudeau. Or even Gavin Newsom.
Plus he will be 86 at the end of a second term. A lot of normies have extensive experience with 86 year olds and can list 1,000 reasons they would make bad Presidents.
My brother is the epitome of a normie voter. He voted Biden in 2020 but probably won’t this time around for precisely this reason. He’s a physical therapists assistant and he deals with 86 year olds all this time.
My wife regularly listens to *sigh* The Daily Wire, and there is ongoing/repeat video coverage of Biden going into 'Roomba Mode' after public speaking.
Once it was pointed out it really does look like he is just bumping into things and needs guidance to navigate away from the podium.
It's mean-spirited, but I have to admit that it is a pretty effective dig.
Have you considered a no-fault divorce?
Rebs are going to make that illegal if you don't act soon.
Dude, cut it out. We don’t need this kind of BS here.
Is that any worse than the lame joke about Biden in Roomba mode?
He’s not supporting the joke, just pointing out that it’s effective. Also nobody here knows why you use “Rebs”.
That doesn't really explain it, because Trump's a fatty, who fumbles regularly, and looks like a clown.
You ever see that guy try to drink a glass of water?
That’s how you see him. Partisans are all familiar with video clips of the other party’s candidate looking their worst.
That's not true, otherwise it wouldn't explain the latest liberal panic about Biden mixing up Sisi with Amlo.
The case for age being an issue is that a lot of voters say it's an issue. It doesn't matter whether I personally think it's making him worse at his job.
Completely agree. People made a big fuss of Reagan's age in 1980-1983. By '84 the economy was booming, and we strangely no longer heard so much about this issue despite the fact that the Gipper hadn't gotten any younger.
My theory is because smart media elites know it's an asymmetric issue that drives clicks.
The average Reb voter is like 10 years older than the average Dem voter.
The boomers who reliably vote Reb will not have any problem with octogenarian leading the country.
Gen X and Millennials are getting really tired of the country being led by someone who's old enough they should get their license taken away preaching at them from the white house.
“Reb”? Is that short for “Rebel” (Confederate)?
Actually some boomers (quite a few, probably) do worry about someone their own age doing a demanding job, particularly if they themselves have trouble remembering things or even getting out of bed in the morning. Of course everyone’s different, some people are debilitated in their 60s and others are sharp into their 90s.
"'Reb'? Is that short for 'Rebel' (Confederate)?"
We had a giant discussion about this in the comment section a few days ago. Davie insists that "Rebs" is common slang for "Republicans" (like "Dems" is for "Democrats"), many people chimed in to tell him that nobody reads it that way, and Davie refuses to believe that communication is a two-way street.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-rise-of-cosmopolitanism-and-the/comment/50100217
Glad I missed it. Just saw this today...that's kind of peak stupid. I've seen a lot of silly slang words for opposing parties that are basically childish insults, but that one doesn't even make sense as one of those.
Not me, especially for Biden, who keeps himself trim & doesn't need to pretend he's "doing it the hard way."
But the main thing is that we'd be electing his deep knowledge of Washington and how to get things done there. That knowledge & understanding (dare I say wisdom) also comes into play when choosing the people who will do the real work.
I think you can tell from context that Reb is the alternative party to Dem.
And I think you should look at the polls and the crosstabs about what groups consider 80 to be too old to be president.
Surprise surprise, old people are biased to think old people are capable of being president.
What does it mean to be capable of being President? I don’t think we’re expecting the Chief Executive to lead a “Braveheart” charge
Exactly, and I think if you look at age brackets, folks will tell you different what they age they thing is necessary.
We get it, you hate your parents.
And young people are biased to think old people aren't capable of being President.
You deserve to get locked in a nursing home against your will as soon as you hit 65.
I'm a Millennial and I'm tired of the rank ageism that's become very common.
The same people who call telling people to touch grass "ableist" do not think taking away the license of someone over 80 is ableist.
I don't want my kids doing that to me when I'm 80 and I hope to God that yours do with this attitude.
People actually do get their license taken away for being old though.
It's not an absolute thing, just as getting it taken away for drunk drivng isn't either.
You're making stuff up.
We had to take my dad's away! He was a bit older than Biden, but still, the truth is, cognition begins to falter in people this old, and they are very frequently incapable of acknowledging when it happens.
I can't get my head around it either, especially with Trump *also* being old, plus a lot of additional stuff that is bad. But it seems that a sizeable chunk see otherwise, with Biden's age being uniquely problematic, hence having to deal with this discussion.
77 to 81 is a big leap - as shown by Biden's ability to campaign vigorously 4 years ago vs now per Ezra's piece. I fear what 81 to 85 brings - as Silver points out, the probability of death in any given year really goes up in one's 80s. So there really is a difference, even if Trump is also too old and will be where Biden is now by the end of a theoretical presidential term.
I would still absolutely take Biden over Trump, but I find it frustrating when people try to dismiss concerns about Biden's age or theorize that they are born from some ulterior motive.
Ezra played Biden's two Presidential announcement speeches back to back and yeah ... they just speak for themselves. If Biden can't campaign, he can't be President.
When did Ezra become such a doomer? I hate that guy now.
Or at least he won’t be.
Biden campaigned vigorously 4 years ago? I thought the doctrinal position was that he slipped into the White House because he was able to pursue a COVID-based basement campaign.
I wish the poobahs would get their story straight.
It actually seems like whatever they tell pollsters, voters aren't behaving like they have a problem with either Biden or Trump's age.
Otherwise the generic younger candidates running against them in the primary would be getting more traction.
Yes, you think there would be at least *some* amount of protest voting in the primaries so far. But, nope.
Maybe, shockingly, people don't tell the whole truth to pollsters: gee, we really wish Biden were younger, but it is what it is when we actually have to make a decision.
Yeah, people in here are just ignoring voters’ revealed preferences in the form of actual election results, just like they ignore the midterms and special elections. It’s as though the people worrying about Biden’s age are just telling on themselves (they hate old people and want them to be hidden in retirement communities.)
One reason is that in the broader electorate Harris is quite unpopular, and people don't want to see her finish out Biden's term as president.
I think Biden can and should position himself as the law and order candidate and emphasize that we won't be a great nation if we decide to allow shoplifting, sexual assault, cheating on taxes, or lying in business records. This would achieve both Matt's desire for Biden to move to the center and Brian's desire for him to be tactically more agressive in pointing that Trump is a corrupt liar who puts his own interests ahead of those of the American people.