Lol yes, this feels like the energy that got me reading Matthew Yglesias in the first place! It might be a mildly unworkable proposal but I am curious how other countries ended up with shorter cycles than we do. I guess because parliament tends to have more snap elections? No formal primaries?
Strongly agreed, I'm really looking forward to this series. Matt has professed reluctance to throwing out takes that consist of vastly new ideas, but I think there's much value doing so, even if the take ends up being bad or unviable, as we learn from it, and I'm very glad that Ben is willing to put himself on the take stage on the weekend, even if we in the audience end up booing him some times.
Nobody is actually forcing us to endure the nine months of crappy news cycles. We are fully able to limit or tailor our news intake. If you already know who you’re voting for, there is literally no benefit to watching cable news or doomscrolling about the election (unless it makes you happy for some reason). Donate, canvas, vote, and otherwise cut the damn cord.
I agree with this. This makes me think of a funny named but possibly salient concept created by Paul Campos of LGM, which he calls the Ariana Grande Theory Of Politics. [https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/04/the-ariana-grande-theory-of-politics] In short, he knows that Ariana Grande is a singer, but little more than that--while he also knows a heavy amount about politics. The concept is that most people know as much about politics as he knows about Ariana Grande.
For anecdotal evidence, it tested out well on my barber, who obviously knows who Biden and Trump are, but she had no idea they were going to a rematch until I told her. I think the dissonance we and others in spheres like ours have is that we're in the 99th percentile on following this stuff, and to Leora's point, if the seemingly endless nature of campaigning is exhaustion, just unplug from it and go do something that makes you happier.
This is also why the amount of mental anguish progressives have over NYT headlines is so bizarre. Even reading a NYT headline puts you in the 95th percentile of politics followers!
For those of us in a "swing state", the Presidential campaign is almost impossible to avoid, given the number of robocalls, emails, advertisements and direct mail that flood the zone between now and November. I'm often jealous of those of you who live in a "safe" state.
Unfortunately, a lot of people really *are* forcing us to endure nine months of crappy news cycles. I have no interest in following the presidential campaign at the moment, but it’s impossible to look at news headlines without a bunch of presidential campaign stuff (or worse, news about sexual harassment trials) filling my screen.
Try yahoo. It's 90% shark attacks, princess kate, and "here's what happened when i left my husband to move to moldova."
In seriousness, I see your point and would like to go back to a diet of the weekly news magazine. Most of the 24 hour cycle fades into irrelevance before the end of the week. If we read the economist or whatever for two hours on Sunday, we'll be informed and sane.
Having lived in one of those parliamentary countries with quick elections I think you're overlooking the fact that they are essentially campaigning 365 days a year. Other than than a few months after an election it is basically always campaign time. Especially because a snap election can always be called and already know at all times who the candidates are.
You know who the opposition leader is. They're out the every day running ads. The shadow ministers are making statements every single day. There's not exactly a meaningful difference between election season and non-election season.
Exactly, if you live in the UK you've been seeing stores about "What Keir Stammer thinks/says about X" for years now even though the election is still not scheduled. And before him there was The Jeremey Corbyn Show going on 24/7.
I'd draw a distinction between the normal business of being in opposition / government and contesting various policy issues vs 'campaigning'.
In Australia at least, exposure to political advertising and the obnoxious campaigning stuff really does feel quite brief (the official campaign period is about a month). We also have blackout laws that stop advertising in the final few days before the election.
When you add that to not having primaries and there being far less money in politics it does feel like you get a longer window where the parties aren't in campaign mode.
I'd love to see the US stop wasting such enormous amounts of resources on a totally non-productive activity.
Come on Ben! If you’re gonna through all the electoral traditions out - surely you get rid of the silliest one and put election day on a weekend so people can actually go out and vote. It absolutely baffles me why you use a Tuesday!
This can’t work, legally or practically. Start with the First Amendment; move on to the impossibility of adjudicating any legal challenge about early campaigning in a timely way; and then add that even if campaigns should be short, three days is too short. I think the current system is terrible, but this is so radical and doesn’t address the major obstacles in its way.
The legal objections aren't interesting for a fun hypothetical exercise, but the practical objections are. What counts as campaigning and why / why not other things?
Ok, but that’s only one of the problems I noted with the thought experiment. Even if constitutional problem could be addressed, what remains isn’t very well thought through or appealing. Three days? Because of the Purge movies?
I guess my take on this is: if we're going to ponder that which is utterly fantastical and implausible, why not go the full monty and just convert to a parliamentary system? Doing so wouldn't be any more far-fetched than what Ben proposes here.
Also, given the immense powers of the US presidency—and the next to non-existent institutional gatekeeping with respect to the major party nominations—I've grown increasingly sympathetic to the idea that the grueling, many months long US presidential campaign is a feature, not a bug. It didn't save our bacon in 2016. But maybe it'll do so in 2024. And it might have helped do so in 2020.
For the record I'd say campaign duration is another thing that parliamentary democracies get pretty much right. They typically last one or two months. That's enough time for politicians to fully make their arguments to the electorate—but not excessively long.
Fixed election dates, which seem fairer at first glance, have, when implemented, served to effectively extend the campaign period in parliamentary democracies. Thankfully I don’t think it’s an idea that’s taking hold.
I much prefer an election cycle that exists within a shorter time period, like the UK six-week elections, but it wouldn't work in the US for two reasons.
1. Politicians NEVER stop campaigning, even if they don't claim to be. Hillary Clinton spent almost two years going on "listening tours" which were campaign stops in all but name before announcing her candidacy the first time. DeSantis did the same thing. Restricting the election cycle would only leas to more of this "unofficial" campaigning, and down ballot presidential hopefuls would tailor their Congressional or governor campaigns around a message that they could use in a presidential election.
2. The media won't cooperate. Political media thrives on "Who will the next challenger be?" stories. I've not seen a presidential election yet that didn't have reports of who the next candidates will be within 24 hours of election day, followed by months of analysis about those people, trying to determine what impact the latest events will have on their (as yet unannounced) presidential campaign.
3. The political parties won't support it. They can't fundraise off of opposition to an opponent who hasn't been identified, and they raise less money off of vague "defend America against the radical Republicans/Democrats". Because the parties exist as for-profit businesses, they will oppose any changes that impact their income streams.
4. It requires stifling Political Action Committees from campaigning on behalf of individuals before the candidates are announced, which runs into free speech issues.
It would have been a great idea 50 years ago, but the current ecosystem doesn't support a shorter election cycle.
Yes, I know I said two reasons, but thought of others as I was writing and can't go back on my phone to fix it.
UK perspective: your first point is absolutely true. We may have a six-week election cycle on paper, but our politicians are very much campaigning now, and the news is full of endless speculation on when the next General Election will be called.
I love the idea of a take bakery, but I think even under-developed ideas should grapple with central objections to the proposition. In this case, that means the first amendment questions it raises. Formal campaigning is already overwhelmed by informal campaigning in the form of political speech, particularly media commentary and analysis - it's hard to see why the former should be treated differently than the latter.
I think primaries are Bad, but I don't agree that presidential primaries are low turnout affairs where only the hardcore partisans show up. I agree that's a true statement about say House primaries, but AFAIK turnout is actually reasonably high for the presidential ones- at least when the race is still competitive.
If we changed campaign finance laws to allow parties (and not just candidates) to take on more funding, then the parties would have a big cash haul that they can distribute to their favorite candidates as they see fit. Sure The Groups and so on could still contribute to candidates- it's just that the parties would have more cash. Combine that with starting the presidential primaries in large states that have expensive media markets, and you could almost recreate The Party Decides era with the early elections being in states that require a lot of campaign cash- that only the parties really have on hand. Would be a subtle but realistic change
The idea of restricting cash contributions to parties rather than to individual candidates is a winner. Donors would still be able to bribe individual candidates by ear-marking donations, but it would move the needle back toward party control a bit. If we consider that the goal of having elections is to select candidates who are most appealing to the general public, then I think that our present system of having the first primaries in small, sparsely populated states is best. These primaries allow the candidates to actually interact personally with voters. It is the fact that American politics is increasingly a form of mass media entertainment that has so debased our system.
I'm not proposing restricting anything (I mean, I would like to restrict some campaign donations, I just think that's unrealistic). I'm proposing *allowing* more donations to the parties directly, which as I understand it currently has more restrictions than just donating either to a candidate or their PAC. Or a PAC on behalf of the candidate.
Ideally the party would end up with more money than any 1 individual candidate, so they'd have more money to distribute- in exchange for good behavior/party discipline
"All election campaign activity ... will start 6 AM Saturday morning on the first weekend of November.... How do we enforce a three-day campaign period?"
One of the key features of parliamentary systems is that you don't know when the election is going to be. In Canada, or the UK etc., you can't start campaigning early since you don't actually know when the election is going to be. The campaigns are necessarily short because you may need to run one at basically any time in response of a confidence vote or the PM deciding that now is the time. The clockwork nature of American elections, means that regardless of however long the official campaign is PACs, politicians, etc. know when they should be campaigning (or at least "campaigning"), fundraising, etc.
The real solution is for the US to adopt a parliamentary system :)
Probably repeating a lot of comments here, but my take on this take:
--Restriction on campaign activity is a very, very bad First Amendment violation of free speech, and it would be rendered ineffective by surrogates discussing the campaign on the candidates' behalf.
--It would also be a First Amendment violation on freedom of association grounds to force the parties to choose and reveal their candidates at a certain date. Parties are private organizations that can choose how and when they nominate someone.
--I'm down with eliminating primaries, but there's a collective action problem in which each state wants to be the first or as early as feasible to influence the nominations, which stretches out the campaign length. Now, for members of Congress, Art. 1, §4 says that federal law can regulate the times, places, and manner of elections. Whether primaries qualify as "elections" is a good question. But for president, which this is all about, they are ultimately chosen by electors completely at the discretion of state legislatures. States could make a successful argument to SCOTUS that Congress lacks the power to regulate presidential races in this regard.
--Definitely down with universal vote by mail, and what I'd like to see is something like the postmark deadline being on Saturday, and then results start to come in on Sunday morning, and we can all learn the results at the same time without having to stay up to an ungodly hour to learn that.
I love this idea (not necessarily this specific topic, but the column in general)! It's provocative, and allows us to play with ideas a little bit more than the usual SB fare. I wouldn't want the whole Substack to go in this direction, but it's a nice once-a-week change of pace. Well done, Ben!
Whatever the merits of this particular proposal, I think we can all agree the Take Bakery is a brilliant idea and this was a highly entertaining read.
Lol yes, this feels like the energy that got me reading Matthew Yglesias in the first place! It might be a mildly unworkable proposal but I am curious how other countries ended up with shorter cycles than we do. I guess because parliament tends to have more snap elections? No formal primaries?
Most of the time they are voting for parties not for people, and parties are more consistent than people.
Also fewer elections on the ballot: your MP and maybe a mayor/town councilor.
Yeah, I think it's a totally terrible idea, but I *love* this format.
Strongly agreed, I'm really looking forward to this series. Matt has professed reluctance to throwing out takes that consist of vastly new ideas, but I think there's much value doing so, even if the take ends up being bad or unviable, as we learn from it, and I'm very glad that Ben is willing to put himself on the take stage on the weekend, even if we in the audience end up booing him some times.
And a brilliant name: "Take bakery" - *chef's kiss*
But should it be called The Takery??
Seconded!
"we can all agree the Take Bakery is a brilliant idea"
I hearted the article (before reading it) for that reason alone!
Nobody is actually forcing us to endure the nine months of crappy news cycles. We are fully able to limit or tailor our news intake. If you already know who you’re voting for, there is literally no benefit to watching cable news or doomscrolling about the election (unless it makes you happy for some reason). Donate, canvas, vote, and otherwise cut the damn cord.
I agree with this. This makes me think of a funny named but possibly salient concept created by Paul Campos of LGM, which he calls the Ariana Grande Theory Of Politics. [https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/04/the-ariana-grande-theory-of-politics] In short, he knows that Ariana Grande is a singer, but little more than that--while he also knows a heavy amount about politics. The concept is that most people know as much about politics as he knows about Ariana Grande.
For anecdotal evidence, it tested out well on my barber, who obviously knows who Biden and Trump are, but she had no idea they were going to a rematch until I told her. I think the dissonance we and others in spheres like ours have is that we're in the 99th percentile on following this stuff, and to Leora's point, if the seemingly endless nature of campaigning is exhaustion, just unplug from it and go do something that makes you happier.
And to Matt's longstanding point about the problem with the media covering horse races like this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW1-iUzI8Es
This is also why the amount of mental anguish progressives have over NYT headlines is so bizarre. Even reading a NYT headline puts you in the 95th percentile of politics followers!
Shit, I'm in the 95th percentile of politics followers, and I don't know what headlines the NYT is running.
If you don't know who you're voting for, I'm skeptical that cable news or doomscrolling is an effective way of making a choice.
Ha. Fair enough.
For those of us in a "swing state", the Presidential campaign is almost impossible to avoid, given the number of robocalls, emails, advertisements and direct mail that flood the zone between now and November. I'm often jealous of those of you who live in a "safe" state.
I promise, what we miss out in Presidential campaigning just gets moved down the ballot to local stuff.
Unfortunately, a lot of people really *are* forcing us to endure nine months of crappy news cycles. I have no interest in following the presidential campaign at the moment, but it’s impossible to look at news headlines without a bunch of presidential campaign stuff (or worse, news about sexual harassment trials) filling my screen.
Try yahoo. It's 90% shark attacks, princess kate, and "here's what happened when i left my husband to move to moldova."
In seriousness, I see your point and would like to go back to a diet of the weekly news magazine. Most of the 24 hour cycle fades into irrelevance before the end of the week. If we read the economist or whatever for two hours on Sunday, we'll be informed and sane.
"here's what happened when i left my husband to move to moldova."
…you suddenly start caring a lot about whether somebody speaks Romanian or Russian?
Watching PBS newshour on Fridays is usually sufficient for me.
Presidential candidates should have to pass the Presidential Physical Fitness Test.
I will not be taking questions.
"The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues..."
Having lived in one of those parliamentary countries with quick elections I think you're overlooking the fact that they are essentially campaigning 365 days a year. Other than than a few months after an election it is basically always campaign time. Especially because a snap election can always be called and already know at all times who the candidates are.
You know who the opposition leader is. They're out the every day running ads. The shadow ministers are making statements every single day. There's not exactly a meaningful difference between election season and non-election season.
Exactly, if you live in the UK you've been seeing stores about "What Keir Stammer thinks/says about X" for years now even though the election is still not scheduled. And before him there was The Jeremey Corbyn Show going on 24/7.
I'd draw a distinction between the normal business of being in opposition / government and contesting various policy issues vs 'campaigning'.
In Australia at least, exposure to political advertising and the obnoxious campaigning stuff really does feel quite brief (the official campaign period is about a month). We also have blackout laws that stop advertising in the final few days before the election.
When you add that to not having primaries and there being far less money in politics it does feel like you get a longer window where the parties aren't in campaign mode.
I'd love to see the US stop wasting such enormous amounts of resources on a totally non-productive activity.
Why not just let that octopus that picks sports teams choose the president? #FREEDOMPUS
#POTUSTOPUS
No, no, no, it’s #OCTOPOTUS
Much ink has been spilled predicting its decisions.
Way too dangerous - high likelihood he invokes the Air Bud rule and picks himself.
We need to start grilling potential Supreme Court justices on where they stand on the “Air Bud” rule.
Come on Ben! If you’re gonna through all the electoral traditions out - surely you get rid of the silliest one and put election day on a weekend so people can actually go out and vote. It absolutely baffles me why you use a Tuesday!
I think the take bakery is a great change of pace and definitely adds more value to my SB subscription!
Also, Ben is a talented writer and a pretty funny read. Good idea SB team.
This can’t work, legally or practically. Start with the First Amendment; move on to the impossibility of adjudicating any legal challenge about early campaigning in a timely way; and then add that even if campaigns should be short, three days is too short. I think the current system is terrible, but this is so radical and doesn’t address the major obstacles in its way.
Just say the names of the candidates are national security secrets, bam, first amendment dealt with.
I'd prefer a three-month campaign, but that doesn't get around the problem of "how do you enforce this without violating the First Amendment."
Ben explicitly notes that this is probably unconstitutional
The legal objections aren't interesting for a fun hypothetical exercise, but the practical objections are. What counts as campaigning and why / why not other things?
Ok, but that’s only one of the problems I noted with the thought experiment. Even if constitutional problem could be addressed, what remains isn’t very well thought through or appealing. Three days? Because of the Purge movies?
I guess my take on this is: if we're going to ponder that which is utterly fantastical and implausible, why not go the full monty and just convert to a parliamentary system? Doing so wouldn't be any more far-fetched than what Ben proposes here.
Also, given the immense powers of the US presidency—and the next to non-existent institutional gatekeeping with respect to the major party nominations—I've grown increasingly sympathetic to the idea that the grueling, many months long US presidential campaign is a feature, not a bug. It didn't save our bacon in 2016. But maybe it'll do so in 2024. And it might have helped do so in 2020.
For the record I'd say campaign duration is another thing that parliamentary democracies get pretty much right. They typically last one or two months. That's enough time for politicians to fully make their arguments to the electorate—but not excessively long.
Fixed election dates, which seem fairer at first glance, have, when implemented, served to effectively extend the campaign period in parliamentary democracies. Thankfully I don’t think it’s an idea that’s taking hold.
That's true. For me, "excessively long campaigns" doesn't crack my top 100 problems.
"The Take Bakery" -- Possibly the best article title on this blog....ever?
I much prefer an election cycle that exists within a shorter time period, like the UK six-week elections, but it wouldn't work in the US for two reasons.
1. Politicians NEVER stop campaigning, even if they don't claim to be. Hillary Clinton spent almost two years going on "listening tours" which were campaign stops in all but name before announcing her candidacy the first time. DeSantis did the same thing. Restricting the election cycle would only leas to more of this "unofficial" campaigning, and down ballot presidential hopefuls would tailor their Congressional or governor campaigns around a message that they could use in a presidential election.
2. The media won't cooperate. Political media thrives on "Who will the next challenger be?" stories. I've not seen a presidential election yet that didn't have reports of who the next candidates will be within 24 hours of election day, followed by months of analysis about those people, trying to determine what impact the latest events will have on their (as yet unannounced) presidential campaign.
3. The political parties won't support it. They can't fundraise off of opposition to an opponent who hasn't been identified, and they raise less money off of vague "defend America against the radical Republicans/Democrats". Because the parties exist as for-profit businesses, they will oppose any changes that impact their income streams.
4. It requires stifling Political Action Committees from campaigning on behalf of individuals before the candidates are announced, which runs into free speech issues.
It would have been a great idea 50 years ago, but the current ecosystem doesn't support a shorter election cycle.
Yes, I know I said two reasons, but thought of others as I was writing and can't go back on my phone to fix it.
UK perspective: your first point is absolutely true. We may have a six-week election cycle on paper, but our politicians are very much campaigning now, and the news is full of endless speculation on when the next General Election will be called.
I love the idea of a take bakery, but I think even under-developed ideas should grapple with central objections to the proposition. In this case, that means the first amendment questions it raises. Formal campaigning is already overwhelmed by informal campaigning in the form of political speech, particularly media commentary and analysis - it's hard to see why the former should be treated differently than the latter.
It would be a lot more interesting to actually drill into the consequences of a bad take, that to make one and say, 'but I know it can't happen'.
I think primaries are Bad, but I don't agree that presidential primaries are low turnout affairs where only the hardcore partisans show up. I agree that's a true statement about say House primaries, but AFAIK turnout is actually reasonably high for the presidential ones- at least when the race is still competitive.
If we changed campaign finance laws to allow parties (and not just candidates) to take on more funding, then the parties would have a big cash haul that they can distribute to their favorite candidates as they see fit. Sure The Groups and so on could still contribute to candidates- it's just that the parties would have more cash. Combine that with starting the presidential primaries in large states that have expensive media markets, and you could almost recreate The Party Decides era with the early elections being in states that require a lot of campaign cash- that only the parties really have on hand. Would be a subtle but realistic change
I think it was a huge mistake to limit funds going to the party and instead have all the funds go to PACs instead.
Cocaine Mitch said the same thing: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4507868/senator-mitch-mcconnell-bipartisan-campaign-reform-act
The idea of restricting cash contributions to parties rather than to individual candidates is a winner. Donors would still be able to bribe individual candidates by ear-marking donations, but it would move the needle back toward party control a bit. If we consider that the goal of having elections is to select candidates who are most appealing to the general public, then I think that our present system of having the first primaries in small, sparsely populated states is best. These primaries allow the candidates to actually interact personally with voters. It is the fact that American politics is increasingly a form of mass media entertainment that has so debased our system.
I'm not proposing restricting anything (I mean, I would like to restrict some campaign donations, I just think that's unrealistic). I'm proposing *allowing* more donations to the parties directly, which as I understand it currently has more restrictions than just donating either to a candidate or their PAC. Or a PAC on behalf of the candidate.
Ideally the party would end up with more money than any 1 individual candidate, so they'd have more money to distribute- in exchange for good behavior/party discipline
"All election campaign activity ... will start 6 AM Saturday morning on the first weekend of November.... How do we enforce a three-day campaign period?"
One of the key features of parliamentary systems is that you don't know when the election is going to be. In Canada, or the UK etc., you can't start campaigning early since you don't actually know when the election is going to be. The campaigns are necessarily short because you may need to run one at basically any time in response of a confidence vote or the PM deciding that now is the time. The clockwork nature of American elections, means that regardless of however long the official campaign is PACs, politicians, etc. know when they should be campaigning (or at least "campaigning"), fundraising, etc.
The real solution is for the US to adopt a parliamentary system :)
Probably repeating a lot of comments here, but my take on this take:
--Restriction on campaign activity is a very, very bad First Amendment violation of free speech, and it would be rendered ineffective by surrogates discussing the campaign on the candidates' behalf.
--It would also be a First Amendment violation on freedom of association grounds to force the parties to choose and reveal their candidates at a certain date. Parties are private organizations that can choose how and when they nominate someone.
--I'm down with eliminating primaries, but there's a collective action problem in which each state wants to be the first or as early as feasible to influence the nominations, which stretches out the campaign length. Now, for members of Congress, Art. 1, §4 says that federal law can regulate the times, places, and manner of elections. Whether primaries qualify as "elections" is a good question. But for president, which this is all about, they are ultimately chosen by electors completely at the discretion of state legislatures. States could make a successful argument to SCOTUS that Congress lacks the power to regulate presidential races in this regard.
--Definitely down with universal vote by mail, and what I'd like to see is something like the postmark deadline being on Saturday, and then results start to come in on Sunday morning, and we can all learn the results at the same time without having to stay up to an ungodly hour to learn that.
Ultimately, I agree with Leora that much of this is a function of people following politics too much. I'm going to edit in a link another comment in a little bit that's a reply to Leora to expound on this. (EDIT: here it is: https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-take-bakery-a-three-day-presidential/comment/51791182)
I love this idea (not necessarily this specific topic, but the column in general)! It's provocative, and allows us to play with ideas a little bit more than the usual SB fare. I wouldn't want the whole Substack to go in this direction, but it's a nice once-a-week change of pace. Well done, Ben!