I would add that just improving the margins in some of these places would be enough to make a difference. Losing rural Friendship County in WI 60-40 will win you a lot more elections than losing 80-20.
I would add that just improving the margins in some of these places would be enough to make a difference. Losing rural Friendship County in WI 60-40 will win you a lot more elections than losing 80-20.
I’m both sympathetic and skeptical of this view. From what I saw, Obama got the worst of both worlds on immigration. He got zero credit on the right for more aggressive border enforcement, and the left hated him for it.
However, both Obama and Biden express a more vanilla pro-law enforcement, pro-patriotism, pro-capitalist message that resonates with most Americans, even as it alienates the left. This kind of stuff is a no-brainer to me. You may be able to win a deep blue House district on “America, not so great,” but that’s almost certainly going to fail in a statewide or national race (Bernie did pull it off in Vermont, so it’s not impossible).
However. I have never seen a presidential race that didn’t boil down to “the beer test.” Hillary Clinton lacked the common touch that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and yes, that other guy had.
It’s harder to write hundreds of articles on “charming, approachable candidates win,” so I understand why this isn’t a popular pundit theory.
One thing I’ll point out, Matt, is that many of us “people of color” are closer to those “downscale white people” than those young white college graduates on those social issues where Obama moderates. My parents (immigrants from a Muslim country) loved Obama back in 2008. They like Biden fine. But my mom has said she will not vote for Harris, and my dad’s hoping she never wins the nomination.
Right now democrats are in okay shape because (1) republicans are being nuts; (2) inflation is low; and (3) Biden is a credible leader for all the people of color who will caucus with socially liberal white people, but to a point. If any of things things change it could be a Corbyn-style bloodbath for democrats.
To close out that thought: what I mean is inflation is low so democrats can buy votes. If austerity becomes necessary, then the combination of extreme social liberalism combined with economic moderation will become a boat anchor around the party’s neck.
"She talked about how she’d moved to West Virginia from Florida, where her grown daughter was in law enforcement. She had become upset by illegal immigration, she said. She had no problem with immigrants, and she had long been okay with the influx of Latinos. But it had just gotten to be too much in their Florida community, and it was contributing to the crime that her daughter had to deal with professionally."
I *seriously* doubt that this woman is representative. How many Midwestern Obama->Trump voters moved to the Midwest from places that actually have lots of immigrants? I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that that number is pretty tiny.
But we do know that "almost all" of the white working class Obama->Trump switch happened around the month that Trump got nominated: https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1352991433519726594 Which means that nothing that happened between 2012 and 2016 mattered for those voters. Including Ferguson, Baltimore, DACA, the 2013 attempt at immigration reform, the 2014 Central American migrant crisis, ISIS, etc. Which is not all what we would expect to see if changes in Democratic rhetoric from 2012 to 2016 were the primary cause of the broader WWC shift.
If Obama's pre-2014 "respectability politics" did help win over any demographics, my guess is that it most likely helped win over black "small-c" conservatives, IE John McWhorter types. According to some sources, Obama got more than 95% of the black vote. You can't get numbers like that without appealing to some very conservative people. https://catalist.us/wh-national/#pp-toc-608eee40d2225-anchor-2
Of course, whether such a strategy would work as well nowadays, with a Republican party that has slowly but steadily gained ground among working class black voters in the last two elections, is an open question...
As unhappy as I am to hear the message, and no matter how much I would like to be able to achieve a working majority while imposing some manner of orthodoxy, I fear that your take is absolutely correct. The greatest risk is failing to slow the rise of authoritarian voices in the GOP.
As Matt has pointed out before, Democrats also need to govern well where they have power. I think a lot about policing and crime, recently.
If this murder wave were happening in our neighborhoods, we'd be treating it as the emergency that it is. Educated black activists are well represented in our leadership and media, black people who live in dangerous neighborhoods are not. It's always uncomfortable to admit when Trump is right, but he was largely right about Democrats controlling the cities where we're having the most problems. We need to lead.
Are we comfortable following the science, so to speak? Can we even get away with it? It looks like more police in more places definitely plays a role in preventing crime. Are Democrats even comfortable saying that part aloud? Have we allowed or created an environment where we can't? If I were still working as a lefty activist, I certainly wouldn't, not if I wanted to keep doing that work. I'm a white guy who still has a trace of a southern accent, for Pete's sake.
I see several issues where data might lead us in a direction, but it feels like our activists and media would tear us apart. I'm sure I'm not the only one who notices Matt stepping gingerly around some of these things. David Shor came through the other side and now does it loudly and proudly, bless him. Are our politicians and journalists capable of same, or will they try to destroy anyone who steps out of line with ist/phobe type accusations? We don't just need a Sister Souljah moment, we need a Sister Souljah movement.
I know a lot of people who are in denial, but we do have a speech problem on our side, leading to the letter that Matt signed. b the reaction to that anodyne free speech endorsement was alarming.
This issue isn't a simple matter of ignoring some activists. We have to find our way back to a speech environment that allows us to unabashedly use data to approach problems. All the messaging in the world can't save us if we cannot approach problem solving in an honest, effective way.
So why did Obama do better with non-college whites earning less than $27,000 than Hillary or Biden?
My hot take: it had little or nothing to do with what Obama said or what was in the Democratic platform. It had to do with whom they ran against. Obama ran against McCain and Romney. the latter two ran against Trump. The 2008 and 2012 candidates were standard Republican models in the eyes of the vast mass of American voters; Trump was not. Trump instead activated underlying motivations, anger and resentment that the former two were incapable of (remember McCain saying, "Obama isn't an Arab; he's a good man" Um . . . what?)
So that's how Trump got lots of putatively Democratic-supporting poorer, and rural whites to support him. So . . . good for him, I guess. But politics is about addition and subtraction. When your opponent makes choices (like targeting racial resentment, misogyny, bullying assholery) to get one slice of the population, that gives you an opportunity to grab putatively Republican-supporting voters away from him, like suburban Republican women. You gotta know how to play the game.
Ah, but we can't "give up" white rural voters. Indeed, we have to *pander* to them:
>>But the Senate map (and to a lesser extent the Electoral College) makes it absolutely necessary to pander the views of rural white people.<<
Really? So here are the top ten states by % rural population (some of which have lots of non-white rural residents) in descending order: Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, North Dakota.
Not a swing or purple state in the whole group.
So where do the swing states rank in terms of % rural?
I'd say that the Republicans in following Trump may be making a huge strategic mistake. If the Democrats can lock up the suburbs, they are absolutely golden. The question is how to do that.
Not your main point but I think you, like a lot of people, are really misconstruing McCain’s “he’s a good man.” Watch the clip again: in context, “he’s a good man” is in response to the questioner’s whole take on Obama, that he spends time with terrorists, etc., and the questioner’s “he’s an Arab” is supposed to be one more reason Obama is bad. In that context “No, he’s a good man” makes perfect sense, because he’s responding to the totality of the question, not just the Arab point. Of course if he put it that way in a speech it would be offensive, but in conversation it’s a perfectly natural response.
Also it was pretty obvious that the woman was fishing for the word "Muslim" and came up with "Arab" (there's a whole bunch of disfluencies there because she can't remember the right word). And "he's not a Muslim, he's a good Christian" would be a perfectly sensible response.
I think McCain was expecting her to get to "Muslim", decided to follow where she went not where she intended to go, and had to reconstruct the sentence on the fly.
I voted for Romney in 2012, and then moved to Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Bluntly, I firmly agree with Matt here, because if Mitt Romney was the candidate (running a relatively similar campaign) I'd strongly consider returning to the GOP. I find Donald Trump deplorable, a danger to our democracy, and now his party must be stopped. But given better choices, I would find the Democratic Party far less palatable, especially if the Bernie Sanders/AOC wing takes charge.
This is me 100%. There's no home for even moderately Libertarian tendencies unfortunately. The situation now demands that we strive to achieve a solid majority (>55%) for rule-of-law, even if we have to compromise on almost everything else. I will continue trying to pull the Democratic party a bit more toward Libertarianism, if only at the margins, simply because there is no better hope.
Ruthless message discipline would definitely help, but Obama was able to get away with a lot of things that other candidates can’t get away with because he was enormously charismatic, personally popular, and his essential vibe was sympathetic and thoughtful. I led some large volunteer contingents in 2008 and my primary challenge as an organizer was finding spaces large enough to hold all the volunteers and enough work for them to do. That’s not a typical challenge. Other politicians recognize a winner when they see one, so they fell in line.
Is it really possible for other candidates to make the same kinds of compromises and impose the same party discipline when they are just less popular?
Matt says “lose your majority **FOREVER** when West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana go red in 2024”.
I'm hearing a lot of people like Matt describe upcoming elections as ones where, if the GOP wins, they win FOREVER. Another variation is "Permanent Minority Rule" where the minority is conservatives. I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take these claims and what logic or evidence supports it.
Does anyone want to try and explain what it means or make the case on why I should take FOREVER seriously?
Forever, in political terms, probably means the next few presidential election cycles. And frankly, Matt's being deadly serious here.
Let's game this out. What's the most likely outcome in the 2022 midterms for the Senate? Probably that Democrats lose a few senate seats. Here are the seats in play in 2022:
Let's look at those states. Arizona and Georgia went for Biden by less than half a percentage point, and while Democrats represent all four senate seats, the largest victory in those states is a tie between Krysten Sinema and Mark Kelley in AZ by 2.4 points. Sinema's victory came in a Democratic wave election, and Mark Kelley beat a crappy candidate (who lost the previous election). In a mildly Republican year (which is likely best case scenario for Democrats in 2022 given electoral history): Republicans take both those senate seats back. Next on the tossup list is Wisconsin, where Ron Johnson beat Russ Feingold twice by over three points, and Biden barely won the state. Again, a mildly Republican year likely keeps Johnson in office. Pennsylvania is an open seat, and Democrats probably hold a slight edge, but this seat is likely the Democrats best pickup opportunity, but realistically Republicans still are slightly favored.
Ohio and North Carolina have gone for Republicans in every major race in the state besides: A) Sherrod Brown in 2018, and
B) Roy Cooper (who barely won in 2016, and it was still competitive in 2020)
Neither of these states are good states for Democrats in mildly Republican years, even without incumbents defending those seats.
Now, I do think Democrats can hold the two Lean D seats (unless Sununu runs, in which case it's competitive). But our gaming out at this point leaves Republicans at least up one seat in 2022, which gives them the majority.
Next: 2024, where the most endangered Democrats are up for re-election. Jon Tester has lucked out and ran in three democratic years ('06, '12 and '18) winning tough races in a pretty red state. Sherrod Brown won two races in what was a purple state in those same years, and then barely won re-election in 2018. Joe Manchin is a miracle, and while he scraped by in 2018: I would be surprised if he won again in 2024.
That's three more seats lost, and Democrats also need to defend seats in Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin. The only decent offensive opportunity is Florida (which has been a white whale for Dems since 2016). But let's again be kind and assume Democrats only lose the three seats in deep red states, and hold the others.
That means Democrats are down four seats to Republicans. Where are they going to pick up more senate seats? Dems would have to wait until 2026 to find halfway decent pickup opportunities where they can (again) challenge Susan Collins as she (potentially) runs for re-election.
So yea, it's not far fetched to say that after 2024 Democrats are doomed in the Senate 'forever' (in political terms).
Another way to look at this is that Biden won 25 states with a 4.4% in the popular vote. So the Democratic Party needs to average that lead over three cycles just to split the Senate.
The three red state Democrats are Tester, Brown and Manchin; the three blue state Republicans are Collins in Maine, Johnson in Wisconsin and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.
The problem is more that there are lots of blue states that are very narrow - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan were all within 3% in the Presidential election, and would all favour the Republicans in a 50-50 national election - and only North Carolina is that close on the other side (Florida was 3.36% in 2020; the next state is Texas).
If there's good news here in that data it's that Arizona, Georgia, NC and Texas are noticeably trending left most election cycles. And the partisan age divide in those states is much bigger than in most of the country. Unfortunately for dems, that partisan age divide is at it's most minimal in the cracked "blue wall" states of PA, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan
yup, in retrospect the biggest failure in 09/10 was not doing
1. DC Statehood
2. PR Statehood
3. Filibuster elimination
We had a real shot at permanant structural changes that would have helped the Party. It seems like none of the then Power Brokers: Obama, Pelosi, Reid even considered pushing for it.
I think it all adds up to the Dems have formed an electorally-terrible coalition that will prevent them from holding. They probably shouldn't have done that
What unpopular positions will they have to take to please Trump? I suppose some of the voting-rights stuff, but I personally have no idea on how that will play to a swing or marginal voter.
The thing the media, and consequently many liberals, missed on Trump was his positions on many things were more popular than the GOPs positions. It's just personality and twitter-style of conducting himself that made him less popular. I feel like trumpism without Trump could do much better electorally
I'm certain that "Trumpist ideology without Trumpist personality" would do a lot better than Trump. Heck if he had kept his promise and not tried to cut health care + signed an infrastructure bill he would have won.
The alternative in the GOP to Trump is Ryanism: big tax cuts, enormous entitlement cuts, pro-immigration and Dubyaesque foreign policy. That is way more hated than Trump platform
GOP nomination is going to be interesting, especially if Trump decides not to run. If he does run, it will only be real interesting if a half-way decent challenger decides to step in.
But if Trump bows out...I just have a hard time imagining him staying on the sidelines without trying to throw his weight around. Maybe they'll just compete with each other for his praise, but at some point if you're going to be president you'll have to break a bit with your predecessor and Trump's reaction then should be interesting
It is entirely possible that your analysis is accurate, but here's the deal: that's not (historically) how midterms generally work. The ruling party has lost senate seats in every single midterm election this century (except for 2002). More often than not: the ruling party gets clobbered in the midterms. Maybe 2022 will be the exception...but your argument: "our candidates are really good and they'll ahi more money!" is not convincing. Democrats had 'good' candidates and more money than Republicans in 2020, and they still lost every single state where Biden lost.
Here's the list of senators representing states not won by their party's nominee in the 2020 election:
Sherrod Brown (D, OH), Jon Tester (D, MT), Joe Manchin (D, WV), Ron Johnson (R, WI), Pat Toomey (R, PA), and Susan Collins (R, ME). It's not a long list, and I suspect best case scenario for Democrats is they only win senate seats in states Biden won. If that trend holds that would mean Democrats win an additional two seats in 2022, but then lose the majority in 2024 when the three Democrats holding seats in deep red states lose re-election.
Either way: the math is not good for Democrats, and they need to find MORE Joe Manchin-esque candidates to hold the majority. But, unfortunately, the Democratic Party seems less interested in heterodox candidates than in the past.
The best pickup opportunity for Democrats in 2022 is probably Pennsylvania, and it's a state that's 2.9 points more Republican than the country as a whole, and Democrats need to defend two seats even more Republican leaning than Pennsylvania.
Keep in mind, you're calling that a 'favorable' map.
2024 is worse. The most Republican leaning state Democrats need to defend is West Virginia (the 5th most Republican state in the union). Now, you can say Joe Manchin is so independent that it doesn't really apply, fair enough. The next most Republican state is Montana, a state with a 20 point Republican lean. This wouldn't matter TOO much if the Democrats had great pickup opportunities in 2024: they don't. Their best pickup opportunity is probably Florida, which is still 7.6 points more Republican than the country.
The fact of the matter is Democrats hold every senate seat in Democratic leaning states besides Susan Collins' seat. There are only four other senate seats even in the top 25 most Democratic states in the country available to pick up, and they still need to defend five seats in the top 25 most Republican leaning states.
The math is simply not good for Democrats, even in 'favorable' years. That doesn't make it impossible, but it makes it really hard! Why? Because (historically) Democrats don't just need to outperform the states' partisan leans: they likely need to do so in Republican leaning environments.
Your retort to this is: we have good candidates and lots of money. As I pointed out: Democrats had this in 2020 (and 2018) and they still failed to pick up any seats in states Trump won in 2020. I do not see why 2022 should be radically different than 2020 or 2018.
Yeah, the 2018 election results (huge win nationally, but losing those three Senate seats (IN, ND, MO) despite "good" and "lots of money" incumbents) is a giant warning light.
Well, given the Republican Party's current, genuinely radical views on democratic governance (they're basically against it to the extent it provides Democrats the opportunity to govern) it seems quite plausible they'll use their next stint at holding the political branches to cement their grip on power through illegitimate, explicitly anti-democratic or authoritarian means. For starters it's quite easy to imagine a Republican Congress flat out refusing to allow a Democratic nominee's legitimate Electoral College victory to proceed. I think it's pretty doubtful, for instance, that Republicans in Congress will allow Biden a duly-won second term if they hold both chambers in January of '25.
Basically, banana republic stuff along those lines.
Yeah I can't predict these Banana Republic moves and fully agree they'd be a terrible thing for the country.
Also speculating - but wouldn't obviously fraudulent moves turn sizable % of swingy voters and power centers ( big business, S&P 500 ) against them?
Or, if they just win the presidency fairly and squarely, wouldn't 4 or 8 years of what Matt Yglesias and other liberals believe would be terrible governance most likely erode their support much quicker than forever? If you actually hold all branches of government for a significant period of time it eventually gets pretty hard to pass the buck. Even Putin is having problems with that right now.
>>>Also speculating - but wouldn't obviously fraudulent moves turn sizable % of swingy voters and power centers ( big business, S&P 500 ) against them?<<<
Authoritarian regimes generally aren't too concerned about voters, "swingy" or otherwise. That's the whole point: elections no longer matter. I do think loss of business support is a concern for them now, pre-coup. But if they pull off suspending US democracy in '24, I doubt it'll matter. As countless dictatorial regimes have shown over the years, businessmen are no match for the people who control state security. Just ask Jack Ma.
Points all taken, but I think you're pulling from fairly maximum examples. The relative power of the state vs private business in the US is not comparable to what it is in China and Russia.
But even in those regimes, an awful lot of energy is expended towards staying popular. You might even argue Putin and the CCP put more all-out effort into staying popular than do our political parties and leaders, although they don't have to worry much about voters, per-se.
Are you saying a decent into authoritarianism wouldn't be that bad because our new dictatorial overlords would still find it advantageous to court public opinion? Also, whose opinion will they be courting? Probably the MAGA base's, which is likely to mean militant isolationism, draconian restrictions on immigration, the evisceration of our alliances, the erosion of press freedoms and a disastrous lurch back into the carbon economy. For possibly decades.
I absolutely don't think worst-case scenarios are inevitable. But I really do think free and fair elections very possibly might soon become a thing of the past, and if this occurs, the ruthlessness of the party that brought this situation about translates into a very dangerous, unpredictable dynamic given the lack of checks on their authority. History doesn't owe the United States a happy ending, and I see no reason America would be magically exempt from some of the less savory features we've seen under authoritarian systems (imprisonment of political opponents, the exercise of emergency powers, kangaroo courts, torture, etc).
But sure, "forever" is a long time. I recall doing a bit of googling to try to get a take on the average time a former democracy spends under authoritarianism. Spain's purgatory lasted forty odd years. That sounds about right.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to whom this has occurred, but the corollary to the perception that Obama had to tread carefully on progressive policy priorities (lest he be stereotyped, because of his race, as an angry radical; some of you will you remember the infamous New Yorker cover) was the enhanced ability that his racial background -- his Blackness, if you will -- gave him to stand up to his party's left flank.
Yup, a counterexample of a politician failing to take advantage of that opportunity is Romney. Due to his background, family and let's face it CEO central casting looks he had a lot of credibility to slap the business wing of the Party in a way that a normal Republican couldn't. Instead he leaned into his CEO image, picked the most business friendly GOP as VEEP and fought a campaign on enemy territory.
How dumb the whole concept of Abolish Ice is was obscured by the dumbness of Defund the Police. But just barely. Mind you the whole concept of a wall on the Mexican border is ludicrous. Unless there are boots on the ground to intercept people going over or under that wall then it is just a very expensive way to slow immigrants down for a few minutes. If you have those boots on the ground then you don't need a wall. That is something I think every rational person understands but politically not building the wall or getting Mexico to pay for it was both damaging to Trump and usable politically since it served as an icon of the swamp that was ostensibly standing in the way of his ostensibly 'common sense' solutions.
Now I happen to believe immigration is a great good. But a completely porous border is not. Demographic trends on birth rates domestically being what they are it literally would not matter if any immigrants were permitted to cross that border. Those tides, which are going to make it very difficult for Republicans to win statewide or national office using race as lever, are irreversible. In the meantime however failure to have a rational policy for dealing with that border allows the Republicans to play that race card effectively and feed very dangerous replacement myths. And they know it.
What are you referring to with respect to Demographic tides? I'm not sure if you're referencing birth rates within the United States or birth rates here compared to other countries in Latin America.
In either case - racial rhetoric that emphasizes differences between White Americans an Hispanic Americans is probably doomed in the long term because of how big and growing the latter population is. But divisive rhetoric about Natives vs Immigrants can continue indefinitely if that's what turns out the votes. Likewise for Blacks vs Others, especially given the pace of Hispanic assimilation in this country that I think is lessening the salience of Hispanic identity over time
Policy has little, if anything, to do with it. The GOP has adopted the public persona of "schoolyard bully." The Democrats have adopted the public persona of "kid who runs away from schoolyard bully because fighting is wrong." Everything the Dems do is reactive, not active. The general election electorate, particularly swing voters, need to see the Democrats clock the bully and humiliate him in front of his classmates. They need to change their brand from "wuss" to "scrappy, hard-hitting underdog." They need to run attack ads that attack, not scold, and they need to stop letting Facebook chain letters and conservative media set the conversation.
I feel like Republicans are adopting the persona of victim. They worry about being canceled. They worry about Christians being oppressed. They worry about their guns being taken away. And they complain about liberal elites looking down in their food choices and lifestyle. If you watch Fox you will get the impression that they are victims who a tough guy to protect them.
The situation at the border has been "disappeared" by the left-of-center media outlets. I can go for days or weeks without seeing any coverage of the situation from CNN, MSNBC (never), WaPo, NYT, etc. The issue just somehow doesn't exist.
It increasingly seems like news coverage is being driven by activists, in both parties. On the right, Rush Limbaugh found that the base has shifted more than he had, and he had to play catch-up. Fox News tried to dis Trump in 2016 and after the 2020 election, but the base of viewers wasn't having it. OAN and NewsMax gave the base what they wanted and Fox responded. The same thing happens on the left. So another 'fantasy" among Democrats is that Fox is driving the agenda on the right. Seems like Fox is enabling, rather than driving, the agenda, in order to keep up their ratings. The left's interpretation of what is happening is driven by a collective delusion, wishful thinking.
Kamala Harris is very much in this camp and if she faces DeSantis or another saner version f Trump, she will lose badly. We don't have to go down this road, but I don't see how we can avoid it, given how the D party is evolving. The left is misreading the room. They have gone much farther left than the country is willing to go. We need to stop blaming the Electoral College, or "sub-human" WWC voters (to quote a commenter on Dan Pfeiffer's Substack). Agree 100% with Matt's project of trying to pull the party back to reality.
I would add that just improving the margins in some of these places would be enough to make a difference. Losing rural Friendship County in WI 60-40 will win you a lot more elections than losing 80-20.
I would add that just improving the margins in some of these places would be enough to make a difference. Losing rural Friendship County in WI 60-40 will win you a lot more elections than losing 80-20.
I’m both sympathetic and skeptical of this view. From what I saw, Obama got the worst of both worlds on immigration. He got zero credit on the right for more aggressive border enforcement, and the left hated him for it.
However, both Obama and Biden express a more vanilla pro-law enforcement, pro-patriotism, pro-capitalist message that resonates with most Americans, even as it alienates the left. This kind of stuff is a no-brainer to me. You may be able to win a deep blue House district on “America, not so great,” but that’s almost certainly going to fail in a statewide or national race (Bernie did pull it off in Vermont, so it’s not impossible).
However. I have never seen a presidential race that didn’t boil down to “the beer test.” Hillary Clinton lacked the common touch that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and yes, that other guy had.
It’s harder to write hundreds of articles on “charming, approachable candidates win,” so I understand why this isn’t a popular pundit theory.
One thing I’ll point out, Matt, is that many of us “people of color” are closer to those “downscale white people” than those young white college graduates on those social issues where Obama moderates. My parents (immigrants from a Muslim country) loved Obama back in 2008. They like Biden fine. But my mom has said she will not vote for Harris, and my dad’s hoping she never wins the nomination.
Right now democrats are in okay shape because (1) republicans are being nuts; (2) inflation is low; and (3) Biden is a credible leader for all the people of color who will caucus with socially liberal white people, but to a point. If any of things things change it could be a Corbyn-style bloodbath for democrats.
To close out that thought: what I mean is inflation is low so democrats can buy votes. If austerity becomes necessary, then the combination of extreme social liberalism combined with economic moderation will become a boat anchor around the party’s neck.
"She talked about how she’d moved to West Virginia from Florida, where her grown daughter was in law enforcement. She had become upset by illegal immigration, she said. She had no problem with immigrants, and she had long been okay with the influx of Latinos. But it had just gotten to be too much in their Florida community, and it was contributing to the crime that her daughter had to deal with professionally."
I *seriously* doubt that this woman is representative. How many Midwestern Obama->Trump voters moved to the Midwest from places that actually have lots of immigrants? I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing that that number is pretty tiny.
But we do know that "almost all" of the white working class Obama->Trump switch happened around the month that Trump got nominated: https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1352991433519726594 Which means that nothing that happened between 2012 and 2016 mattered for those voters. Including Ferguson, Baltimore, DACA, the 2013 attempt at immigration reform, the 2014 Central American migrant crisis, ISIS, etc. Which is not all what we would expect to see if changes in Democratic rhetoric from 2012 to 2016 were the primary cause of the broader WWC shift.
If Obama's pre-2014 "respectability politics" did help win over any demographics, my guess is that it most likely helped win over black "small-c" conservatives, IE John McWhorter types. According to some sources, Obama got more than 95% of the black vote. You can't get numbers like that without appealing to some very conservative people. https://catalist.us/wh-national/#pp-toc-608eee40d2225-anchor-2
Of course, whether such a strategy would work as well nowadays, with a Republican party that has slowly but steadily gained ground among working class black voters in the last two elections, is an open question...
Great post, Matt. Thank you.
As unhappy as I am to hear the message, and no matter how much I would like to be able to achieve a working majority while imposing some manner of orthodoxy, I fear that your take is absolutely correct. The greatest risk is failing to slow the rise of authoritarian voices in the GOP.
As Matt has pointed out before, Democrats also need to govern well where they have power. I think a lot about policing and crime, recently.
If this murder wave were happening in our neighborhoods, we'd be treating it as the emergency that it is. Educated black activists are well represented in our leadership and media, black people who live in dangerous neighborhoods are not. It's always uncomfortable to admit when Trump is right, but he was largely right about Democrats controlling the cities where we're having the most problems. We need to lead.
Are we comfortable following the science, so to speak? Can we even get away with it? It looks like more police in more places definitely plays a role in preventing crime. Are Democrats even comfortable saying that part aloud? Have we allowed or created an environment where we can't? If I were still working as a lefty activist, I certainly wouldn't, not if I wanted to keep doing that work. I'm a white guy who still has a trace of a southern accent, for Pete's sake.
I see several issues where data might lead us in a direction, but it feels like our activists and media would tear us apart. I'm sure I'm not the only one who notices Matt stepping gingerly around some of these things. David Shor came through the other side and now does it loudly and proudly, bless him. Are our politicians and journalists capable of same, or will they try to destroy anyone who steps out of line with ist/phobe type accusations? We don't just need a Sister Souljah moment, we need a Sister Souljah movement.
I know a lot of people who are in denial, but we do have a speech problem on our side, leading to the letter that Matt signed. b the reaction to that anodyne free speech endorsement was alarming.
This issue isn't a simple matter of ignoring some activists. We have to find our way back to a speech environment that allows us to unabashedly use data to approach problems. All the messaging in the world can't save us if we cannot approach problem solving in an honest, effective way.
So why did Obama do better with non-college whites earning less than $27,000 than Hillary or Biden?
My hot take: it had little or nothing to do with what Obama said or what was in the Democratic platform. It had to do with whom they ran against. Obama ran against McCain and Romney. the latter two ran against Trump. The 2008 and 2012 candidates were standard Republican models in the eyes of the vast mass of American voters; Trump was not. Trump instead activated underlying motivations, anger and resentment that the former two were incapable of (remember McCain saying, "Obama isn't an Arab; he's a good man" Um . . . what?)
So that's how Trump got lots of putatively Democratic-supporting poorer, and rural whites to support him. So . . . good for him, I guess. But politics is about addition and subtraction. When your opponent makes choices (like targeting racial resentment, misogyny, bullying assholery) to get one slice of the population, that gives you an opportunity to grab putatively Republican-supporting voters away from him, like suburban Republican women. You gotta know how to play the game.
Ah, but we can't "give up" white rural voters. Indeed, we have to *pander* to them:
>>But the Senate map (and to a lesser extent the Electoral College) makes it absolutely necessary to pander the views of rural white people.<<
Really? So here are the top ten states by % rural population (some of which have lots of non-white rural residents) in descending order: Maine, Vermont, West Virginia, Mississippi, Montana, Arkansas, South Dakota, Kentucky, Alabama, North Dakota.
Not a swing or purple state in the whole group.
So where do the swing states rank in terms of % rural?
Wisconsin #19
Minnesota #25
Georgia #28
Pennsylvania #32
Texas #36
Arizona #42
Florida #45
(Source: https://stacker.com/stories/2779/states-biggest-rural-populations)
I'd say that the Republicans in following Trump may be making a huge strategic mistake. If the Democrats can lock up the suburbs, they are absolutely golden. The question is how to do that.
Not your main point but I think you, like a lot of people, are really misconstruing McCain’s “he’s a good man.” Watch the clip again: in context, “he’s a good man” is in response to the questioner’s whole take on Obama, that he spends time with terrorists, etc., and the questioner’s “he’s an Arab” is supposed to be one more reason Obama is bad. In that context “No, he’s a good man” makes perfect sense, because he’s responding to the totality of the question, not just the Arab point. Of course if he put it that way in a speech it would be offensive, but in conversation it’s a perfectly natural response.
Also it was pretty obvious that the woman was fishing for the word "Muslim" and came up with "Arab" (there's a whole bunch of disfluencies there because she can't remember the right word). And "he's not a Muslim, he's a good Christian" would be a perfectly sensible response.
I think McCain was expecting her to get to "Muslim", decided to follow where she went not where she intended to go, and had to reconstruct the sentence on the fly.
Fair point!
"Obama says “people knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and L.G.B.T.Q. issues and so forth.”
But did they?"
This was my EXACT thought at that moment in the interview. Because the answer is clearly no.
I voted for Romney in 2012, and then moved to Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Bluntly, I firmly agree with Matt here, because if Mitt Romney was the candidate (running a relatively similar campaign) I'd strongly consider returning to the GOP. I find Donald Trump deplorable, a danger to our democracy, and now his party must be stopped. But given better choices, I would find the Democratic Party far less palatable, especially if the Bernie Sanders/AOC wing takes charge.
This is me 100%. There's no home for even moderately Libertarian tendencies unfortunately. The situation now demands that we strive to achieve a solid majority (>55%) for rule-of-law, even if we have to compromise on almost everything else. I will continue trying to pull the Democratic party a bit more toward Libertarianism, if only at the margins, simply because there is no better hope.
Ruthless message discipline would definitely help, but Obama was able to get away with a lot of things that other candidates can’t get away with because he was enormously charismatic, personally popular, and his essential vibe was sympathetic and thoughtful. I led some large volunteer contingents in 2008 and my primary challenge as an organizer was finding spaces large enough to hold all the volunteers and enough work for them to do. That’s not a typical challenge. Other politicians recognize a winner when they see one, so they fell in line.
Is it really possible for other candidates to make the same kinds of compromises and impose the same party discipline when they are just less popular?
Matt says “lose your majority **FOREVER** when West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana go red in 2024”.
I'm hearing a lot of people like Matt describe upcoming elections as ones where, if the GOP wins, they win FOREVER. Another variation is "Permanent Minority Rule" where the minority is conservatives. I'm not sure how seriously I'm supposed to take these claims and what logic or evidence supports it.
Does anyone want to try and explain what it means or make the case on why I should take FOREVER seriously?
Are you reading much from David Shor? I am, and I am very afraid.
We seem to get this talk of a permanent majority when a president gets re-elected, like 1996, 2004, 2012.
Forever, in political terms, probably means the next few presidential election cycles. And frankly, Matt's being deadly serious here.
Let's game this out. What's the most likely outcome in the 2022 midterms for the Senate? Probably that Democrats lose a few senate seats. Here are the seats in play in 2022:
PURE TOSS UP:
Georgia (Warnock), Arizona (Kelly), Pennsylvania (OPEN), Wisconsin (Johnson)
LEAN REPUBLICAN:
Ohio (OPEN), N. Carolina (OPEN)
LEAN DEMOCRAT:
N. Hampshire (Hassan), Nevada (Masto)
Let's look at those states. Arizona and Georgia went for Biden by less than half a percentage point, and while Democrats represent all four senate seats, the largest victory in those states is a tie between Krysten Sinema and Mark Kelley in AZ by 2.4 points. Sinema's victory came in a Democratic wave election, and Mark Kelley beat a crappy candidate (who lost the previous election). In a mildly Republican year (which is likely best case scenario for Democrats in 2022 given electoral history): Republicans take both those senate seats back. Next on the tossup list is Wisconsin, where Ron Johnson beat Russ Feingold twice by over three points, and Biden barely won the state. Again, a mildly Republican year likely keeps Johnson in office. Pennsylvania is an open seat, and Democrats probably hold a slight edge, but this seat is likely the Democrats best pickup opportunity, but realistically Republicans still are slightly favored.
Ohio and North Carolina have gone for Republicans in every major race in the state besides: A) Sherrod Brown in 2018, and
B) Roy Cooper (who barely won in 2016, and it was still competitive in 2020)
Neither of these states are good states for Democrats in mildly Republican years, even without incumbents defending those seats.
Now, I do think Democrats can hold the two Lean D seats (unless Sununu runs, in which case it's competitive). But our gaming out at this point leaves Republicans at least up one seat in 2022, which gives them the majority.
Next: 2024, where the most endangered Democrats are up for re-election. Jon Tester has lucked out and ran in three democratic years ('06, '12 and '18) winning tough races in a pretty red state. Sherrod Brown won two races in what was a purple state in those same years, and then barely won re-election in 2018. Joe Manchin is a miracle, and while he scraped by in 2018: I would be surprised if he won again in 2024.
That's three more seats lost, and Democrats also need to defend seats in Arizona, Maine, Nevada and Wisconsin. The only decent offensive opportunity is Florida (which has been a white whale for Dems since 2016). But let's again be kind and assume Democrats only lose the three seats in deep red states, and hold the others.
That means Democrats are down four seats to Republicans. Where are they going to pick up more senate seats? Dems would have to wait until 2026 to find halfway decent pickup opportunities where they can (again) challenge Susan Collins as she (potentially) runs for re-election.
So yea, it's not far fetched to say that after 2024 Democrats are doomed in the Senate 'forever' (in political terms).
Another way to look at this is that Biden won 25 states with a 4.4% in the popular vote. So the Democratic Party needs to average that lead over three cycles just to split the Senate.
The three red state Democrats are Tester, Brown and Manchin; the three blue state Republicans are Collins in Maine, Johnson in Wisconsin and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania.
The problem is more that there are lots of blue states that are very narrow - Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan were all within 3% in the Presidential election, and would all favour the Republicans in a 50-50 national election - and only North Carolina is that close on the other side (Florida was 3.36% in 2020; the next state is Texas).
btw - aren't you from the UK? how do you know so much about US politics?
I am - originally from just a few miles out of Wigan.
But the answer is that the US is very important and I pay attention to it.
Also, I studied comparative electoral politics at university and I found it interesting and have kept up with it ever since.
If there's good news here in that data it's that Arizona, Georgia, NC and Texas are noticeably trending left most election cycles. And the partisan age divide in those states is much bigger than in most of the country. Unfortunately for dems, that partisan age divide is at it's most minimal in the cracked "blue wall" states of PA, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan
an apt description of the Democrat's problem right now
And of course they get no relief from reapportionment in the 2030s, given that it's the Senate.
yup, in retrospect the biggest failure in 09/10 was not doing
1. DC Statehood
2. PR Statehood
3. Filibuster elimination
We had a real shot at permanant structural changes that would have helped the Party. It seems like none of the then Power Brokers: Obama, Pelosi, Reid even considered pushing for it.
They really didn't see the collapse of support from non-college-educated white voters coming.
I think it all adds up to the Dems have formed an electorally-terrible coalition that will prevent them from holding. They probably shouldn't have done that
The key is to actually expand the coalition, find more Joe Manchins and Sherrod Browns. I don’t expect the party to do so
Gain senate seats in 2022, eh? See you on PredictIt!
What unpopular positions will they have to take to please Trump? I suppose some of the voting-rights stuff, but I personally have no idea on how that will play to a swing or marginal voter.
The thing the media, and consequently many liberals, missed on Trump was his positions on many things were more popular than the GOPs positions. It's just personality and twitter-style of conducting himself that made him less popular. I feel like trumpism without Trump could do much better electorally
I'm certain that "Trumpist ideology without Trumpist personality" would do a lot better than Trump. Heck if he had kept his promise and not tried to cut health care + signed an infrastructure bill he would have won.
The alternative in the GOP to Trump is Ryanism: big tax cuts, enormous entitlement cuts, pro-immigration and Dubyaesque foreign policy. That is way more hated than Trump platform
GOP nomination is going to be interesting, especially if Trump decides not to run. If he does run, it will only be real interesting if a half-way decent challenger decides to step in.
But if Trump bows out...I just have a hard time imagining him staying on the sidelines without trying to throw his weight around. Maybe they'll just compete with each other for his praise, but at some point if you're going to be president you'll have to break a bit with your predecessor and Trump's reaction then should be interesting
It is entirely possible that your analysis is accurate, but here's the deal: that's not (historically) how midterms generally work. The ruling party has lost senate seats in every single midterm election this century (except for 2002). More often than not: the ruling party gets clobbered in the midterms. Maybe 2022 will be the exception...but your argument: "our candidates are really good and they'll ahi more money!" is not convincing. Democrats had 'good' candidates and more money than Republicans in 2020, and they still lost every single state where Biden lost.
Here's the list of senators representing states not won by their party's nominee in the 2020 election:
Sherrod Brown (D, OH), Jon Tester (D, MT), Joe Manchin (D, WV), Ron Johnson (R, WI), Pat Toomey (R, PA), and Susan Collins (R, ME). It's not a long list, and I suspect best case scenario for Democrats is they only win senate seats in states Biden won. If that trend holds that would mean Democrats win an additional two seats in 2022, but then lose the majority in 2024 when the three Democrats holding seats in deep red states lose re-election.
Either way: the math is not good for Democrats, and they need to find MORE Joe Manchin-esque candidates to hold the majority. But, unfortunately, the Democratic Party seems less interested in heterodox candidates than in the past.
The best pickup opportunity for Democrats in 2022 is probably Pennsylvania, and it's a state that's 2.9 points more Republican than the country as a whole, and Democrats need to defend two seats even more Republican leaning than Pennsylvania.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-red-or-blue-is-your-state-your-congressional-district/
Keep in mind, you're calling that a 'favorable' map.
2024 is worse. The most Republican leaning state Democrats need to defend is West Virginia (the 5th most Republican state in the union). Now, you can say Joe Manchin is so independent that it doesn't really apply, fair enough. The next most Republican state is Montana, a state with a 20 point Republican lean. This wouldn't matter TOO much if the Democrats had great pickup opportunities in 2024: they don't. Their best pickup opportunity is probably Florida, which is still 7.6 points more Republican than the country.
The fact of the matter is Democrats hold every senate seat in Democratic leaning states besides Susan Collins' seat. There are only four other senate seats even in the top 25 most Democratic states in the country available to pick up, and they still need to defend five seats in the top 25 most Republican leaning states.
The math is simply not good for Democrats, even in 'favorable' years. That doesn't make it impossible, but it makes it really hard! Why? Because (historically) Democrats don't just need to outperform the states' partisan leans: they likely need to do so in Republican leaning environments.
Your retort to this is: we have good candidates and lots of money. As I pointed out: Democrats had this in 2020 (and 2018) and they still failed to pick up any seats in states Trump won in 2020. I do not see why 2022 should be radically different than 2020 or 2018.
Yeah, the 2018 election results (huge win nationally, but losing those three Senate seats (IN, ND, MO) despite "good" and "lots of money" incumbents) is a giant warning light.
God I hope you're right.
Well, given the Republican Party's current, genuinely radical views on democratic governance (they're basically against it to the extent it provides Democrats the opportunity to govern) it seems quite plausible they'll use their next stint at holding the political branches to cement their grip on power through illegitimate, explicitly anti-democratic or authoritarian means. For starters it's quite easy to imagine a Republican Congress flat out refusing to allow a Democratic nominee's legitimate Electoral College victory to proceed. I think it's pretty doubtful, for instance, that Republicans in Congress will allow Biden a duly-won second term if they hold both chambers in January of '25.
Basically, banana republic stuff along those lines.
Yeah I can't predict these Banana Republic moves and fully agree they'd be a terrible thing for the country.
Also speculating - but wouldn't obviously fraudulent moves turn sizable % of swingy voters and power centers ( big business, S&P 500 ) against them?
Or, if they just win the presidency fairly and squarely, wouldn't 4 or 8 years of what Matt Yglesias and other liberals believe would be terrible governance most likely erode their support much quicker than forever? If you actually hold all branches of government for a significant period of time it eventually gets pretty hard to pass the buck. Even Putin is having problems with that right now.
>>>Also speculating - but wouldn't obviously fraudulent moves turn sizable % of swingy voters and power centers ( big business, S&P 500 ) against them?<<<
Authoritarian regimes generally aren't too concerned about voters, "swingy" or otherwise. That's the whole point: elections no longer matter. I do think loss of business support is a concern for them now, pre-coup. But if they pull off suspending US democracy in '24, I doubt it'll matter. As countless dictatorial regimes have shown over the years, businessmen are no match for the people who control state security. Just ask Jack Ma.
Points all taken, but I think you're pulling from fairly maximum examples. The relative power of the state vs private business in the US is not comparable to what it is in China and Russia.
But even in those regimes, an awful lot of energy is expended towards staying popular. You might even argue Putin and the CCP put more all-out effort into staying popular than do our political parties and leaders, although they don't have to worry much about voters, per-se.
Are you saying a decent into authoritarianism wouldn't be that bad because our new dictatorial overlords would still find it advantageous to court public opinion? Also, whose opinion will they be courting? Probably the MAGA base's, which is likely to mean militant isolationism, draconian restrictions on immigration, the evisceration of our alliances, the erosion of press freedoms and a disastrous lurch back into the carbon economy. For possibly decades.
I absolutely don't think worst-case scenarios are inevitable. But I really do think free and fair elections very possibly might soon become a thing of the past, and if this occurs, the ruthlessness of the party that brought this situation about translates into a very dangerous, unpredictable dynamic given the lack of checks on their authority. History doesn't owe the United States a happy ending, and I see no reason America would be magically exempt from some of the less savory features we've seen under authoritarian systems (imprisonment of political opponents, the exercise of emergency powers, kangaroo courts, torture, etc).
But sure, "forever" is a long time. I recall doing a bit of googling to try to get a take on the average time a former democracy spends under authoritarianism. Spain's purgatory lasted forty odd years. That sounds about right.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to whom this has occurred, but the corollary to the perception that Obama had to tread carefully on progressive policy priorities (lest he be stereotyped, because of his race, as an angry radical; some of you will you remember the infamous New Yorker cover) was the enhanced ability that his racial background -- his Blackness, if you will -- gave him to stand up to his party's left flank.
Yup, a counterexample of a politician failing to take advantage of that opportunity is Romney. Due to his background, family and let's face it CEO central casting looks he had a lot of credibility to slap the business wing of the Party in a way that a normal Republican couldn't. Instead he leaned into his CEO image, picked the most business friendly GOP as VEEP and fought a campaign on enemy territory.
How dumb the whole concept of Abolish Ice is was obscured by the dumbness of Defund the Police. But just barely. Mind you the whole concept of a wall on the Mexican border is ludicrous. Unless there are boots on the ground to intercept people going over or under that wall then it is just a very expensive way to slow immigrants down for a few minutes. If you have those boots on the ground then you don't need a wall. That is something I think every rational person understands but politically not building the wall or getting Mexico to pay for it was both damaging to Trump and usable politically since it served as an icon of the swamp that was ostensibly standing in the way of his ostensibly 'common sense' solutions.
Now I happen to believe immigration is a great good. But a completely porous border is not. Demographic trends on birth rates domestically being what they are it literally would not matter if any immigrants were permitted to cross that border. Those tides, which are going to make it very difficult for Republicans to win statewide or national office using race as lever, are irreversible. In the meantime however failure to have a rational policy for dealing with that border allows the Republicans to play that race card effectively and feed very dangerous replacement myths. And they know it.
What are you referring to with respect to Demographic tides? I'm not sure if you're referencing birth rates within the United States or birth rates here compared to other countries in Latin America.
In either case - racial rhetoric that emphasizes differences between White Americans an Hispanic Americans is probably doomed in the long term because of how big and growing the latter population is. But divisive rhetoric about Natives vs Immigrants can continue indefinitely if that's what turns out the votes. Likewise for Blacks vs Others, especially given the pace of Hispanic assimilation in this country that I think is lessening the salience of Hispanic identity over time
Policy has little, if anything, to do with it. The GOP has adopted the public persona of "schoolyard bully." The Democrats have adopted the public persona of "kid who runs away from schoolyard bully because fighting is wrong." Everything the Dems do is reactive, not active. The general election electorate, particularly swing voters, need to see the Democrats clock the bully and humiliate him in front of his classmates. They need to change their brand from "wuss" to "scrappy, hard-hitting underdog." They need to run attack ads that attack, not scold, and they need to stop letting Facebook chain letters and conservative media set the conversation.
I feel like Republicans are adopting the persona of victim. They worry about being canceled. They worry about Christians being oppressed. They worry about their guns being taken away. And they complain about liberal elites looking down in their food choices and lifestyle. If you watch Fox you will get the impression that they are victims who a tough guy to protect them.
The situation at the border has been "disappeared" by the left-of-center media outlets. I can go for days or weeks without seeing any coverage of the situation from CNN, MSNBC (never), WaPo, NYT, etc. The issue just somehow doesn't exist.
It increasingly seems like news coverage is being driven by activists, in both parties. On the right, Rush Limbaugh found that the base has shifted more than he had, and he had to play catch-up. Fox News tried to dis Trump in 2016 and after the 2020 election, but the base of viewers wasn't having it. OAN and NewsMax gave the base what they wanted and Fox responded. The same thing happens on the left. So another 'fantasy" among Democrats is that Fox is driving the agenda on the right. Seems like Fox is enabling, rather than driving, the agenda, in order to keep up their ratings. The left's interpretation of what is happening is driven by a collective delusion, wishful thinking.
Kamala Harris is very much in this camp and if she faces DeSantis or another saner version f Trump, she will lose badly. We don't have to go down this road, but I don't see how we can avoid it, given how the D party is evolving. The left is misreading the room. They have gone much farther left than the country is willing to go. We need to stop blaming the Electoral College, or "sub-human" WWC voters (to quote a commenter on Dan Pfeiffer's Substack). Agree 100% with Matt's project of trying to pull the party back to reality.