> And while the Baileys would not vote for a guy wearing a white hood and burning a cross, they are also not Black — they want to vote for politicians who seem fired-up about helping middle-class white suburbanites.
This point really seems to get missed by so many progressives.
The big elephant in the room here is Biden. He's the leader of the party, and if Schumer feels pressure from the left, Biden should take it upon himself to relieve that pressure, perhaps by taking the heat from progressive groups himself. There's a real "pass the buck" vibe to the administration (and Democratic leadership in Congress) right now.
Supporting Israel is one of the issues that are most personal to Schumer and yet he was not so happy about the May 2021 Gaza war. It seems that it is also one of the issues where he turns left.
What would the Baileys have said about Trump in the summer of 2015? Or, more to the point, what did Schumer/Yglesias/conventional wisdom think that the Baileys thought of Trump in 2015?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed to me that most conventional wisdom concluded that Trump was repulsive to the Baileys, so any political analysis based on what we think the Baileys want was clearly wrong in that very important case.
Part of my problem with MY's political analyses is that he's always asking me to pretend to not know what we learned about the Baileys in 2016--they are a lot more racist than we thought they were, and they are far more tolerant of transparent dishonesty than we thought they were.
The vast majority of the Democratic base is simply unwilling to play this pretend game. Refusing to accept the realism of that is just as naïve as refusing to see that old white people don't like anti-racism.
Is Matt asking you to pretend that? Isn't it actually the opposite? Matt loudly mocked those who claimed that it's economic anxieties that made people vote Trump (as he actually does in this piece), and instead argues that it was a secular form of social/racial conservativism that attracted him to them. That's very consistent with his 2020/2021 calls for popularism.
I don't have the numbers handy, but I don't think that was true in 2016.
In any event, my point is that the Baileys test failed one way or the other in 2016. Either CW misunderstood who the Baileys are, or staying on the better side of the Baileys didn't help.
Either way, calling the Baileys was a failure as a political strategy in 2016.
Well, I don't know. Did Clinton stay on the better side of the Baileys? A lot of people thought she was focusing too much on equity-type talk, calling Trump supporters deplorable (to be clear: they were) and playing up the racial division angle, rather than talking about kitchen-table issues. I don't mean to make a No True Scotsman argument, I just don't know if Hillary 2016 is the poster case of appealing to the Baileys.
> The vast majority of the Democratic base is simply unwilling to play this pretend game
And that is why they will lose.
It's all well and good to be morally upright, but the Left has decided it's far preferable to be "right" than to win elections, while enough of the actual Right is ok compromising some to win.
The case I'm making is that expecting black and brown people to shut up about racism is just as unrealistic as expecting old white people to be persuaded by antiracism.
So scream at black and brown people to shut up all you want. It will be about as effective as me walking up to old white people and calling them racist.
Black people were why Biden won the primary. Brown people are migrating to Trump and away from the Democrats on a daily basis. The only people who need to shut up are overly-privileged White people who think their super-Left One Black Friend channels the thoughts of an entire race.
Well, I'm not a white big-city liberal (I'm a brown immigrant, and I live in semi-rural GA), and I feel like I'm being told to STFU by all of you armchair strategists who are quick to put the burden of realism on others but not accept it yourself.
My point is that you even if you were to persuade me, it's obvious that you're never going to shut up enough black and brown people to deny conservatives the props they need for their scumbaggery.
So stop sulking about antiracism and recognize that you have to find a way to live with the base just as much as I have to find a way to live with the scumbags.
Thank you for writing this piece, Matt. I was confused as to why Schumer wasn’t taking more heat prior to the Voting Rights snafu, as he’s been bungling matters since at least the Trump impeachments (all, I believe, in the name of shoring up his left flank).
That said, how much of Schumer’s BBB failure is attributable to the Biden White House? It is my observation that presidents set the legislative agenda, while the controlling legislative body controls how much of that agenda comes to fruition. From the start, Biden made clear his aim was a “transformative presidency”. By setting such an aggressive starting point and proving unwilling to make concessions, did Biden set Schumer up for failure?
It was originally my assessment that such an aggressive starting point was a boon for progressive democrats. It allowed significant room for retreat while still producing major legislative wins. The fact that $1.5 trillion in spending was a compromise should have been viewed as a dream scenario by the Democratic Caucus and Biden White House.
Instead of getting progressives on board with this still impactful legislation, Biden has insisted on attempting to strong-arm Manchin and Sinema into helping him achieve dreams of transformative grandeur. Schumer played a role, but more of this governing catastrophe is attributable to Biden’s hubris, ineptitude, or some combination thereof.
Really good point. The two career politicians, Biden and Schumer are really making a mess of things and the Democrats are going to pay dearly in the midterms.
The problem isn't the explanation's simplicity, it's that it is inconsistent with Schumer's long track record of sound judgement. Are you getting Biden and Schumer confused for one another?
"In demographic terms, Democrats are college-educated residents of big cities who mostly socialize with college-educated residents of big cities. In those particular social circles, it’s taken for granted that transforming the United States into a European-style welfare state would be desirable"
Fixed it.
Here is my take.
Obama and the Dems shot their wad on Obamacare after leveraging voter anger about the economy and instead of Obama focusing on a domestic economic agenda, he focused on Dem candy.
Trump started working on some of the economic repair work.
Now the Dems are back working on Dem candy.
The economic repair work does not help the college-educated big city liberals that run the show. They don't need help. For them, things have never been better. But the ignoring of the economic repair work has led to serious problems with the economy... still not impacting the college-educated big city liberals (although homelessness, drug use and crime are other things... secondary impacts from failing to do the economic repair work... and those are starting to irritate the elites)... but now the problems with the economy are well felt by everyone else... especially as the free Biden dollars from the pandemic relief run out.
The party has been led astray because the party is out of touch with the lives of everyone except the college educated residents of the big cities.
The Democrats will never fix what is broken until the party is not longer dominated and run by big city left coast elites. They play a political game that has become so disconnected from the actual lives of other Americans, that other Americans are increasingly seeing the leaders in the Democrat party as something alien.
Wikipedia does not list any major primary challengers so far. State Senator Alessandra Biaggi is listed as having expressed interest. She seems to be a pretty typical NYC Democrat. She knocked off a conservative IDC Democrat state senator in 2020, but is not a leftist. Given her profile, it also seems likely she could be susceptible to party pressure not to run.
It's always possible that AOC or another leftist jumps in, but let's assume Schumer succeeds in preventing a major challenger files before the deadline. How should we expect his governing style to change after this occurs? Will he finally take some heat and offer to cut a deal with Manchin (whether Manchin is open to discussions being a completely different topic)?
If a challenger does file and a primary heats up, June 28th would likely be too late to begin discussions on any major legislation prior to the midterms.
This is an excellent insight into the *possible* thinking of Schumer (though who really knows) and could explain a lot. But in a wider context, I think it puts too much burden on Schumer. Should he have worked more closely with Manchin to make sure the bill followed the latter's preferences? Sure, and that might have helped. But Schumer wasn't the only one.
Nancy Pelosi -- the consensus greatest Speaker ever (and I agree with that assessment) -- passed a bill that she knew would be DOA with Manchin. She could have fought harder to fashion legislation that could be more easily modified to meet that Senator's objections, but she didn't. Instead, she cobbled together a rickety coalition of progressives and centrists in the House and then tossed the hot potato over to the Senate to dump the problem in Schumer's lap. You're great, Nancy, but this was not your finest moment.
And what's with Biden and the White House? I love Joe B., but how could he let their anger at Manchin (for whatever reason) be so exposed in public? Why couldn't he find a way for the two to appear arm in arm and announce an agreed upon package? I'm guessing that would be enough to overcome objections in the House or Senate.
Schumer may be overly spooked by the specter of AOC, but there's plenty of blame to go around for the present state of BBB. (And that may include Manchin, who may just be jerking us all around.)
But brave writing by MY. He can kiss that future internship for Jose goodbye.
So here's a hypothesis of where Schumer's head may be on this. I'm not saying I agree with all of the factual premises here.
(1) It's not that he thinks he has any chance of losing to Ocasio-Cortez in a primary. But he thinks that if she even runs, it will be damaging for the party because the NYC-based media will give it tons of attention, and every swing voter in America will get her image beamed onto their computers and TV screens. And she is the last person that the Party wants swing voters to be thinking about. If Schumer crushes her at the polls, that will send a good message, but not good enough to make up for the damage that will be done in the primary campaign.
(2) So, the key is to get her to not even try to run. But Ocasio-Cortez also knows that this is Schumer's calculus so she is sending him messages that she will try to run unless he does XYZ.
(3) The filing deadline for the primary is April 7. So once April 8 hits, all the incentives change. If Ocasio-Cortez doesn't run, then Schumer will be free to remember the Baileys. And if Ocasio-Cortez does run, then Schumer will know that the damage to the Party will come no matter what he does, at which point the best way to mitigate that damage will be to, again, remember the Baileys and make it clear to America, by trouncing Ocasio-Cortez at the polls, that moderates run the Democratic Party.
(4) In the meantime, Schumer has to continue to antagonize Manchin, because people would be able to tell from Manchin's demeanor if the two of them had a secret handshake deal to do kayfabe for the next 2.5 months.
(5) Schumer is betting that if he goes to Manchin on April 8 and cuts a deal, then (a) Manchin won't let personal grudges get in the way of that, and (b) there will still be plenty of time for the Party to recover from the bad PR from the winter and change the narrative.
I think this may suggest a somewhat exaggerated sense of how much attention American voters would pay to a Senate primary race in New York. Matt's Post-It note is a bit incomplete; I'll finish it here:
"the median voter is a 50-something white person who didn’t go to college and lives in an unfashionable suburb [and doesn't pay much attention to politics]."
Thanks for this. Helpful.
> And while the Baileys would not vote for a guy wearing a white hood and burning a cross, they are also not Black — they want to vote for politicians who seem fired-up about helping middle-class white suburbanites.
This point really seems to get missed by so many progressives.
The big elephant in the room here is Biden. He's the leader of the party, and if Schumer feels pressure from the left, Biden should take it upon himself to relieve that pressure, perhaps by taking the heat from progressive groups himself. There's a real "pass the buck" vibe to the administration (and Democratic leadership in Congress) right now.
Do the Bailies support $1.5 trillion in additional deficit spending when the government has borrowed $8 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic?
Supporting Israel is one of the issues that are most personal to Schumer and yet he was not so happy about the May 2021 Gaza war. It seems that it is also one of the issues where he turns left.
If Milan makes a good enough graph, I think we can totally convince Schumer.
What would the Baileys have said about Trump in the summer of 2015? Or, more to the point, what did Schumer/Yglesias/conventional wisdom think that the Baileys thought of Trump in 2015?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seemed to me that most conventional wisdom concluded that Trump was repulsive to the Baileys, so any political analysis based on what we think the Baileys want was clearly wrong in that very important case.
Part of my problem with MY's political analyses is that he's always asking me to pretend to not know what we learned about the Baileys in 2016--they are a lot more racist than we thought they were, and they are far more tolerant of transparent dishonesty than we thought they were.
The vast majority of the Democratic base is simply unwilling to play this pretend game. Refusing to accept the realism of that is just as naïve as refusing to see that old white people don't like anti-racism.
Is Matt asking you to pretend that? Isn't it actually the opposite? Matt loudly mocked those who claimed that it's economic anxieties that made people vote Trump (as he actually does in this piece), and instead argues that it was a secular form of social/racial conservativism that attracted him to them. That's very consistent with his 2020/2021 calls for popularism.
If CW held that the Baileys didn't like Trump, then CW was correct. The Republican share of the suburban vote went down with Trump leading the party.
I don't have the numbers handy, but I don't think that was true in 2016.
In any event, my point is that the Baileys test failed one way or the other in 2016. Either CW misunderstood who the Baileys are, or staying on the better side of the Baileys didn't help.
Either way, calling the Baileys was a failure as a political strategy in 2016.
Well, I don't know. Did Clinton stay on the better side of the Baileys? A lot of people thought she was focusing too much on equity-type talk, calling Trump supporters deplorable (to be clear: they were) and playing up the racial division angle, rather than talking about kitchen-table issues. I don't mean to make a No True Scotsman argument, I just don't know if Hillary 2016 is the poster case of appealing to the Baileys.
> The vast majority of the Democratic base is simply unwilling to play this pretend game
And that is why they will lose.
It's all well and good to be morally upright, but the Left has decided it's far preferable to be "right" than to win elections, while enough of the actual Right is ok compromising some to win.
The case I'm making is that expecting black and brown people to shut up about racism is just as unrealistic as expecting old white people to be persuaded by antiracism.
So scream at black and brown people to shut up all you want. It will be about as effective as me walking up to old white people and calling them racist.
Black people were why Biden won the primary. Brown people are migrating to Trump and away from the Democrats on a daily basis. The only people who need to shut up are overly-privileged White people who think their super-Left One Black Friend channels the thoughts of an entire race.
Biden knows that's why he won the primary. That's also why he makes sure to keep them happy.
Well, I'm not a white big-city liberal (I'm a brown immigrant, and I live in semi-rural GA), and I feel like I'm being told to STFU by all of you armchair strategists who are quick to put the burden of realism on others but not accept it yourself.
My point is that you even if you were to persuade me, it's obvious that you're never going to shut up enough black and brown people to deny conservatives the props they need for their scumbaggery.
So stop sulking about antiracism and recognize that you have to find a way to live with the base just as much as I have to find a way to live with the scumbags.
Such a good piece! Very Slow Boring
Thank you for writing this piece, Matt. I was confused as to why Schumer wasn’t taking more heat prior to the Voting Rights snafu, as he’s been bungling matters since at least the Trump impeachments (all, I believe, in the name of shoring up his left flank).
That said, how much of Schumer’s BBB failure is attributable to the Biden White House? It is my observation that presidents set the legislative agenda, while the controlling legislative body controls how much of that agenda comes to fruition. From the start, Biden made clear his aim was a “transformative presidency”. By setting such an aggressive starting point and proving unwilling to make concessions, did Biden set Schumer up for failure?
It was originally my assessment that such an aggressive starting point was a boon for progressive democrats. It allowed significant room for retreat while still producing major legislative wins. The fact that $1.5 trillion in spending was a compromise should have been viewed as a dream scenario by the Democratic Caucus and Biden White House.
Instead of getting progressives on board with this still impactful legislation, Biden has insisted on attempting to strong-arm Manchin and Sinema into helping him achieve dreams of transformative grandeur. Schumer played a role, but more of this governing catastrophe is attributable to Biden’s hubris, ineptitude, or some combination thereof.
Really good point. The two career politicians, Biden and Schumer are really making a mess of things and the Democrats are going to pay dearly in the midterms.
How about poor judgment? It fits the facts 1000 x better than primaryphobia. Is that too simple of an explanation?
The problem isn't the explanation's simplicity, it's that it is inconsistent with Schumer's long track record of sound judgement. Are you getting Biden and Schumer confused for one another?
Democrats would be better if they did one thing, and I can describe it in one word: prioritize n
"In demographic terms, Democrats are college-educated residents of big cities who mostly socialize with college-educated residents of big cities. In those particular social circles, it’s taken for granted that transforming the United States into a European-style welfare state would be desirable"
Fixed it.
Here is my take.
Obama and the Dems shot their wad on Obamacare after leveraging voter anger about the economy and instead of Obama focusing on a domestic economic agenda, he focused on Dem candy.
Trump started working on some of the economic repair work.
Now the Dems are back working on Dem candy.
The economic repair work does not help the college-educated big city liberals that run the show. They don't need help. For them, things have never been better. But the ignoring of the economic repair work has led to serious problems with the economy... still not impacting the college-educated big city liberals (although homelessness, drug use and crime are other things... secondary impacts from failing to do the economic repair work... and those are starting to irritate the elites)... but now the problems with the economy are well felt by everyone else... especially as the free Biden dollars from the pandemic relief run out.
The party has been led astray because the party is out of touch with the lives of everyone except the college educated residents of the big cities.
The Democrats will never fix what is broken until the party is not longer dominated and run by big city left coast elites. They play a political game that has become so disconnected from the actual lives of other Americans, that other Americans are increasingly seeing the leaders in the Democrat party as something alien.
https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1486028053486743565?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Exhibit 1
How rude.
Throwing out some contextual info relevant to the Primaryphobia hypothesis:
New York's filing period appears to be April 4th through April 7th for a June 28th primary: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/2022-state-primary-election-dates-and-filing-deadlines.aspx
Wikipedia does not list any major primary challengers so far. State Senator Alessandra Biaggi is listed as having expressed interest. She seems to be a pretty typical NYC Democrat. She knocked off a conservative IDC Democrat state senator in 2020, but is not a leftist. Given her profile, it also seems likely she could be susceptible to party pressure not to run.
It's always possible that AOC or another leftist jumps in, but let's assume Schumer succeeds in preventing a major challenger files before the deadline. How should we expect his governing style to change after this occurs? Will he finally take some heat and offer to cut a deal with Manchin (whether Manchin is open to discussions being a completely different topic)?
If a challenger does file and a primary heats up, June 28th would likely be too late to begin discussions on any major legislation prior to the midterms.
This is an excellent insight into the *possible* thinking of Schumer (though who really knows) and could explain a lot. But in a wider context, I think it puts too much burden on Schumer. Should he have worked more closely with Manchin to make sure the bill followed the latter's preferences? Sure, and that might have helped. But Schumer wasn't the only one.
Nancy Pelosi -- the consensus greatest Speaker ever (and I agree with that assessment) -- passed a bill that she knew would be DOA with Manchin. She could have fought harder to fashion legislation that could be more easily modified to meet that Senator's objections, but she didn't. Instead, she cobbled together a rickety coalition of progressives and centrists in the House and then tossed the hot potato over to the Senate to dump the problem in Schumer's lap. You're great, Nancy, but this was not your finest moment.
And what's with Biden and the White House? I love Joe B., but how could he let their anger at Manchin (for whatever reason) be so exposed in public? Why couldn't he find a way for the two to appear arm in arm and announce an agreed upon package? I'm guessing that would be enough to overcome objections in the House or Senate.
Schumer may be overly spooked by the specter of AOC, but there's plenty of blame to go around for the present state of BBB. (And that may include Manchin, who may just be jerking us all around.)
But brave writing by MY. He can kiss that future internship for Jose goodbye.
So here's a hypothesis of where Schumer's head may be on this. I'm not saying I agree with all of the factual premises here.
(1) It's not that he thinks he has any chance of losing to Ocasio-Cortez in a primary. But he thinks that if she even runs, it will be damaging for the party because the NYC-based media will give it tons of attention, and every swing voter in America will get her image beamed onto their computers and TV screens. And she is the last person that the Party wants swing voters to be thinking about. If Schumer crushes her at the polls, that will send a good message, but not good enough to make up for the damage that will be done in the primary campaign.
(2) So, the key is to get her to not even try to run. But Ocasio-Cortez also knows that this is Schumer's calculus so she is sending him messages that she will try to run unless he does XYZ.
(3) The filing deadline for the primary is April 7. So once April 8 hits, all the incentives change. If Ocasio-Cortez doesn't run, then Schumer will be free to remember the Baileys. And if Ocasio-Cortez does run, then Schumer will know that the damage to the Party will come no matter what he does, at which point the best way to mitigate that damage will be to, again, remember the Baileys and make it clear to America, by trouncing Ocasio-Cortez at the polls, that moderates run the Democratic Party.
(4) In the meantime, Schumer has to continue to antagonize Manchin, because people would be able to tell from Manchin's demeanor if the two of them had a secret handshake deal to do kayfabe for the next 2.5 months.
(5) Schumer is betting that if he goes to Manchin on April 8 and cuts a deal, then (a) Manchin won't let personal grudges get in the way of that, and (b) there will still be plenty of time for the Party to recover from the bad PR from the winter and change the narrative.
I think this may suggest a somewhat exaggerated sense of how much attention American voters would pay to a Senate primary race in New York. Matt's Post-It note is a bit incomplete; I'll finish it here:
"the median voter is a 50-something white person who didn’t go to college and lives in an unfashionable suburb [and doesn't pay much attention to politics]."