My 2¢ is that back when I was 17-18 I wrote a series of articles for my high school newspaper arguing for reforms that would make it easier for more people to vote. At the time I thought this would probably help Democrats. As Matt points out that’s not true anymore. But I still think it should be easier to vote and I want more Americans to vote, and if that helps Republicans then so be it; it’s on us as Democrats to go back to the drawing board and work out a winning message.
The more marginal the voter, the less informed and skilled at making decisions is the voter. I'll just steal a quote from SamChvre who is said the rest better than I could:
"I've been involved with organizational decision-making in a lot of contexts, and I have never seen a context where adding more people who didn't know much and didn't care much led to better decisions by any metric"
I see it differently. Voting *is* a discussion, by proxy, on the topic: What kind of country do we want? It’s the only discussion that’s possible among 300+ million people.
Sure, but when uninformed people vote, you are counting people who by definition aren't even paying attention to the discussion. I don't really see what that adds and it's one of the reasons I usually use my own voting slip incomplete, particularly in primaries. If I haven't figured out anything substantial about the candidates why should I add noise to the process ?
This is how neighborhood meetings and zoning board type things are done (only the most informed people with the most free time show up), and the outcomes are generally not ideal.
This is true, and I even thought of bringing up as a caveat, but these negative results seem highly driven by tragedy-of-the-commons / nimbyist effects.
Well.... most free time is not identical to most informed.
Neighborhood meetings and similar are more three sets of people (a) highly motivated set of agenda oriented people (who probably can be qualified as having high level of information), (b) those either without work schedules that get in way (retirees, etc) or self-schedule setting, (c) Cranks & Loonies (who may be parts of (a) and (b) too I guess).
Highly informed but time constrained and not able to attend meetings is a bigger category. Meetings structurally are generally rather more time consuming than casting ballot and less amenable to schedule shifting.
So voting doesn't align well with meetings (or maybe better only partially aligns).
This is why I think Citizen's assemblies are a cool idea. You still get all voices represented equally (statistically at least, which is good enough for me). But the people involved in the assembly care a lot more because they know their opinion / vote matters, and it's worth it to spend the time to get informed before making their decision.
'the less informed and skilled at making decisions'
Yes, but so what really? There's no IQ requirement to vote. Elderly people with dementia can and do vote. Frankly the idea that almost any voter is 'skilled at making decisions' is hard to believe.
The point would be more that adding more won't help. Quite the contrary, you can probably presume it will make it worse.
Ideally, you would have a more informed voter, period. And sometimes people have outside information that can help decision makers. But it really is the odd "passengers out voting the pilots" cartoon. The pilots aren't just in the seat by chance. They were trained and had to learn a lot to get there.
I was taught this was a large part of why we have an electorial college vote, back in the day. The idea was that they should follow the will of the people, but that they would also be more informed than the people. The idea being to prevent situations where people are voting against their interests. That seems to have been dropped in teaching, it seems?
'Quite the contrary, you can probably presume it will make it worse.'
I don't think you can *at all* presume that. There's no reason to think that the ill-informed voters we currently have are better at making decisions than the ill-informed voters we don't.
There are two perspectives you can look at this from, a partisan one and a non-partisan one. From the non-partisan perspective, you argument essentially rests on the idea that being better informed or using a more logical approach to voting-decision-making naturally leads to 'better' outcomes (whichever party that may be at any one particular time). But there's really no strong reason to believe that having a more logical thought-process on an early November day in one year will lead to some objective, non-partisan, 'better' governance of the country 3-4 years down the road.
The alternative is a partisan perspective, but here we can just note that if we add voters who don't vote based on any logical thought-process then there's no strong way of predicting which way they will vote, so you're just adding random noise. If I add random amounts of either white or black pixels to distort an image, it might end up more white or more black, but if the process is random the outcome is too.
My assertion would be that ill-informed voters are not likely to just be uninformed. They are more likely to be misinformed. And I do think misinformed people involved increases the likelihood of bad decisions.
I should add that I don't think the contra of my assertion is true, either. I think you can assume more misinformed voters will decrease the quality of decisions. I don't think you can assume that you can produce only good decisions by increasing information.
I am also not aiming for logical votes, necessarily. My argument would be honestly informed votes. Such that my argument is less against Republicans, I think, and far more against populists. This is on the left, as well. Just, for Republicans, they happen to be the ones in power, as well.
One can call it an effect of Diminishing Returns on effort.
And at some point diminishing returns can become Negative Returns.
While having a large percentage of the population voting in a democracy is wihtout doubt a generally good thing, it doesn't follow that endless pushing for everyone to vote is a good thing.
At some point the return on effort becomes very low and even may be quite overall negative.
The so what is that the decisions get worse the more you drag down the average decision-making capability of the group. This doesn't seem controversial. Picture your own workplaces and imagine you're all voting on some important issue. The people closest to the decision and with the most information are generally going to have an easier time making the right decision. If you open the voting up to less informed people, say, I don't know, the just-hired interns or the janitorial staff, you're unlikely to get better outcomes.
My PMC BFF has told me before that seizing the means of production from "Capital" is a desirable and good thing. I work in a factory and thus have a different perspective, namely that the chuds I work with have no business at all doing the decision making at our plant.
Also, right there is no IQ requirement to vote and I'm not suggesting we make one. Similar to Matt, I would just way why spend time and effort arguing for additional reforms that would have the net impact of making it easier for low-motivation or low-info people to vote. There are better ways to spend your time or money.
Why even bother with the ceremony of elections at all then? Just pick a few "experts" and be done with it - think of how good the decisions would be if we only had a couple dozen voters!
I would posit that the purpose of broad franchise is not to produce optimal decisions (we know of no system for reliably doing this at scale, imo), but rather to give the populace ownership over and a stake in the direction of their society, whether that direction is correct or not.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Fine: my claim is that any willful reduction of the electorate is undemocratic. The slippery slope is not always a fallacy - you need a reasonable stop condition, which the logic presented in the parent comment does not stipulate. At what point do you stop restricting the franchise? When does it go from being just a little roster management and actively in IQ test territory?
I think it's important to draw a distinction between the principle "we want more people to vote" and the decision to use either political or financial capital to make that happen today rather than using that limited political and financial capital to accomplish another worthy goal.
Exactly. That's basically what Matt said about the Senate, that if you really care about democratic institutions, checks on the power of the Executive, etc as being vitally important then you have to act like it. Which means working out the winning message now and not helping Republicans.
I agree with you here, and kept a critical eye on Matt's suggestions, but I think it's fair to say that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital right now making it easier to vote (fighting voter ID laws), even if they a but that they also shouldn't go out of their way to make it harder.
Some people are better informed than others and some people also have more at stake than others. It’s not optimal to have everyone get an equally weighted say given these differences, and in no other context do we do this. For instance, in market transactions, people who want something more are willing to pay more outbid people willing to pay less, and this is generally accepted to lead to optimal outcomes rather than giving everyone an equal amount of every product. The problem with that approach is that it favors the rich so we can’t do it in voting, although it would be interesting to test something where each “vote” would cost someone some percentage composite of their wealth+income. But adding some minor frictions is a way to exclude at least the people who have the least at stake who don’t even care enough to overcome those minor frictions.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
Not sure how voter ID laws and other policies being argued for in this thread imply that all men aren’t created equal or they don’t have certain unalienable rights?
The situations where there’s only one place to get your ID in your rural Deep South county and the office is only open from 2-3pm every 5th Wednesday are wrong, and they should be called out as wrong.
But overall we’re talking about a situation where ~165 million+ voters (~96% of total eligible voters) DO have valid IDs.
In my view, the lack of access in some communities of getting an ID at all is an infringement on folks’s right to vote, not the voter ID law itself. Especially when the laws are popular, even among Dems.
Edit: did some sloppy math re: percentage of eligible voters with valid IDs — I originally did ~7M voters w/o divided by ~174M people who voted in 2024. There are actually ~244M eligible voters.
Perhaps not the best source to cite when arguing for universal suffrage, extensive efforts to get everyone to vote, and having all federal offices determined by popular vote and the will of the people.
They were very much for a wide-open democracy in the terms they understood it in their age, but we can all agree that America in 1787 was pretty far from what we would see as a universal democracy that relied on the express will of the people living there as a whole.
An interesting idea I've played around with in my head would be to give more votes - at some scale with strongly diminishing returns, like a log or cube root scale - to people based on the taxes they've paid. So if you're a billionaire avoiding all taxes you get 1 vote just like a poor person, but if you're paying billions in tax revenue then you actually get 500 votes or whatever.
I'm sure there's a lot of ways to bash that idea and you'd have to design it very well to make sure you don't accidentally just fully empower an oligarchy, but if it improved tax compliance that would be good, and there is something fair about the people who are paying into the system having the most say in how the money gets spent.
I think the idea you're looking for is participatory budgeting. The only way to decide binary outcomes (like R vs. D for president) is to give people an equal say. But if the question is "how much money should we spend on X vs Y priority" you can give people a pool of vote credits that they can spend on different items. It's too complicated and will never actually work, but it's a neat thought experiment.
Why should it be easier to vote? I say if you really want to vote in a despot who will tear down our democracy, the least you can do is crawl over broken glass to do so.
The coalitions are shifting. In a more functional country, this kind of thing would create an opening for bipartisan reforms aimed toward something beyond short-term partisan gain. Surely we can all agree we need elections that are secure and safe and widely trusted and transparent. Surely we can all agree that we should ease the path to voting, through things like making Election Day a holiday or giving reasonable accommodations to disabilities and so on. Surely?
But I think the thing about Supreme Court reform. Why can’t conservatives see that the path we’re on is a recipe for disaster in the long term, even if they’re giddy with victory in the short term? Why can’t liberals see the similarly negative consequences that flowed from the activist tendencies of previous courts? Why can’t the adults in the room take a step back and agree we have to make this system functional for the long haul, even if it means sacrificing some degree of immediate partisan gain? But I know the answer, really.
I say bring back voter tests before people can vote. Make them pass basic tests on economics and constitutional law (which they definitely should have to pass before graduating high school)
I think if more Americans voting means Donald Trump wins an unconstitutional third term, then that’s bad.
There is a difference between trying to restrict the vote and spending your limited time energy and capital trying to boost it among the least engaged people in society, when doing so also backfires politically.
I think this is the right answer. But the Dems need to rework their voter ID message. To a normal person, insisting that people shouldn't have to provide identification to vote sounds very fishy.
91% of driving age people already have licenses. If we are worried about the remaining 9%, it should be easy to create a program for ID by other means.
It’s a bit orthogonal to the piece, but given Matt’s intro I feel compelled to say: Just as it’s wrong to project from special elections to a high-turnout presidential race, it’s equally wrong to imply (as Matt seems to do) that 2026 will look like 2024 if the Dems don’t make ideological adjustments.
Dems will do well in 2026, even without making ideological adjustments, thanks to thermostatic public opinion and their more-likely-to-vote coalition. This is honestly why I’m not too worried about whether Dems do or don’t “moderate” in the immediate term.
IMO, the bigger argument / challenge is going to be between 2026 and 2028, when certain people will attribute 2026 success (assuming it happens) to the positions the Dems did or didn’t take rather than external factors. And when it does seem likely that moderating helps in a presidential election year.
Dems are forecast to comfortably lose the Senate in 2026. Getting the House while the other side has the Presidency, Senate and SCOTUS isn't "doing well", it's one step removed from losing all power at the national level. Dems have to try to properly win again.
Merely treading water due to thermostatic public opinion reaction while continuing discourse, politics that has and will continue clearly to lead to decade-on-decade slow acidic eat-away on electoral reach is the recipe to marginalisation and long-term further loss.
Not being worried is being more "intellectual self-satisfied cope" than real proper thinking.
Not to mention… Matt’s article inspires a bit of meta-criticism:
Matt’s advice is usually stuff that would generally be wonderful if the Democrats could execute even 80% faithfully to it.
But the party is broken. The gerontocracy, the robotic careerists, the Groups, the other side’s propaganda… we do not have a party that *does things* with even 30% competence.
If we did, Matt’s policies would often be absolutely right. But his own preferred solution of “leftists just unilaterally surrender” is just as absurd as the leftists’ preference for Yglesian Shills to surrender.
I think Democrats being incompetent is in part due to the base being so toxic. Look how they treat even people on the left. AOC had Freddie de Boer declare her to have abandoned her principles, DSA de-endorsing her, people harassing her in person. Liz Warren IIRC got treated horribly by Bernie's base. Then if you're a centrist like Joe Manchin, you get more in-person harassment and a streamer with a million followers (Hasan Piker) call for your kids to be prosecuted. And people are surprised there's not a flood of fresh leaders?
The sheer unpleasantness and personal attacks and factionalism of the left in the US is noteworthy, precisely because the stakes are low. The DSA isn't taking power any time soon, and they know it.
The base got toxic after generations of stymied progress. They started casting about for anything that looked like an end run around the problems. Various new ideological framings, “one wierd tricks”, etc.
I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees. "Leftists just unilaterally surrender" would produce more progressive outcomes than otherwise, on net.
No group ever unilaterally surrenders without a catastrophic defeat.
It’s a fantasy. It’s like when I say that if I were dictator for a day, I’d implement a parliamentary multiparty democracy and then cap it off with banning the words “goose”, “kitty-corner”, and the use of “refuted” to mean “denied”, and I indeed would consider that to be a better world for every fucking soul on the planet.
But the planet doesn’t just hand dictatorial power to random assholes like me.
So, Matt has either two options: Be realistic about how to bring the left to the table to negotiate a peaceful collaboration to save the country from authoritarianism, or start waging a Napoleonic-style campaign to quickly cow them into submission in order to pivot back to defeating authoritarianism.
He’s been banging on that latter one for the better part of 3 decades, and doesn’t have much to show for it.
It’s just that the way the US system is designed it is fairly easy for a party to entrench its rule over a long period of time and the other party needs to win a lot of elections in a row under different circumstances to dislodge it.
Very misleading about SCOTUS in 1994. Although it’s true that (initially) 8 of the judges were appointed by a GOP president, there were 4 strong liberals, 3 conservatives and 2 swing voters - hence the court was fairly liberal, which it stayed until Alito replaced O’Connor in 2005 which was a sharp turn to the right, and then another sharp rightward turn when Comey Barrett replaced RBG. There has been no clawing back at all. And it’s obviously not going to get any better under Trump. Wait until Aileen Cannon gets put up to SCOTUS…
Aileen Cannon will never sit on SCOTUS but your broader point is correct that Republicans used to sometimes pick people like Stevens and Democrats used to sometimes pick people like White, so the partisan split of SCOTUS was less meaningful.
The same people who killed Matt Gaetz's nomination. Same people who killed Harriet Meiers'.
I really don't think a lot of liberals understand how conservatives view the Supreme Court. It's a LOT more far reaching than "let's do whatever the President wants". They have developed a whole system for grooming smart legal conservatives for those positions-- they aren't going to throw it out to seat a lightweight for 40 years just because Trump likes her.
And the fact that Republicans kept accidentally picking liberals is the raison d'etre of the Federalist Society, founded in 1982. It took a while for them to get Republicans to start successfully nominating and confirming ideological judges, though.
Democrats need to expand the number of states they’re competitive in, no way around that. We need to find a way back to intra-party ideological diversity, having moderate candidates in states where that fits the electorate, and left leaning candidates in states where that is popular. The idea that we can have one person be the face of the Democratic party without losing one side or the other is an illusion. Even Obama couldn’t do that, and it’s worth noting that it was during his presidency that the Democratic party cratered in terms of numbers of elected officials nationwide.
I have come to the conclusion that Democratic leadership should loudly, publicly refute the idea that it is a "left wing" party and assert themselves as ideologically diverse. Point out that some Democrats are outright conservative, like Henry Cuellar. That what unites the party right now is not policy, but a commitment to the idea that we get to choose our policy.
The former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh joined the party recently - not that he appears to have much power in it beyond a successful social media presence, but that isn't nothing - highlight guys like that and Kinzinger. (For a bunch of reasons it's not worth getting into, it's probably good to put Cheney in a closet.) Then, not only do you appeal directly to moderates and center-right voters, you can bask in the shower of disdain from the most hated and least respected people in American politics, hardcore leftists, which can only benefit Democrats, especially since hardcore leftists have basically left our coalition. One long Sista Soulja moment. Fund the police, bro.
Democrats are disadvantaged but Biden and Trump each won 25 states in 2020 so 2020-level results would produce a tie in the Senate. The problem is more that only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for election every time so Democrats need to win 2020-level results three times in a row.
2020 was an exceedingly weird year in all kinds of ways. The best takeaway from 2020 should be, “let’s not do that again.” Democrats almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory that year, and failed to set themselves up to stay in power in 20224.
If you give up on every state where they don't come close in Presidential elections then you are basically sentencing yourself to an absolute hard limit of 52, 54 seats, and all it takes is a Pennsylvania there and a Georgia here to put you in the minority.
For some reason a lot of people don't seem to think we have to do anything about this.
"No more Souters" is the reason the Federalist Society and its attendant efforts was founded. The result is every Republican nominee now is thoroughly vetted for years prior to their nomination to ensure complete doctrinal, and more evidently now partisan, orthodoxy.
The median Senate scenario IMO is that Democrats gain no seats. Honestly Democrats losing a seat is just as likely as them winning a seat. Their best pickup opportunity is either Maine (against Susan Collins, a tough challenge) or North Carolina (another tough race). They have several vulnerable incumbents too.
Calling SCOTUS “Republican” in 1994 is inaccurate, in 1994 SCOTUS was not yet partisan. In terms of today’s ideological lines, only two were what would now count as hard-right (Scalia and Thomas), and even then hard to say if Scalia would have been supportive of Trump. In the 90s it was still possible for Republican-appointed justice to be liberal (also worth noting: Earl Warren was a Republican).
"it's one step removed from losing all power at the national level."
If you are going from not having the House to having the House then it's one step AWAY from having no power at the national level.
Derivatives matter. Momentum, rates of change.
And like, no shit Democrats are forecasted to lose the Senate in '26. We've known that since 2020. They are just going to have to try to beat the forecast. That is something that CAN BE DONE, especially in an out-of-power midterm. Despite the many liberals who have fully surrendered to fatalism about a world where we get to 50 seats for two years out of every six and can't do any better.
Ok but the presidency and Supreme Court aren’t on the ballot in 2026. Getting the House and picking up a couple of Senate seats is a pretty good outcome and sets them up to potentially take the Senate in 2028.
In the aftermath of Dem presidential loses, pollsters and the media are almost always overly pessimistic about the Dems taking back Congress. They are usually wrong.
Yeah but charisma is weird and intangible and subjective. The "charismatic" candidate who is currently in office is absolutely repulsive, on a personal level, to a majority of the country's population. And he's been suffering from cognitive decline and often fails to even make sense when he talks (and doesn't have the excuse that Biden did, which was age-related slowing thought/action/reaction time which made his lifelong stuttering techniques stop working the way he needed them to, which made him sound confused when he was "merely" profoundly inarticulate. Trump just decides to say some words, successfully does so, and they make no sense.)
I saw someone recently talking about how we misuse the concept of "charisma" and that it doesn't exactly mean "you can get people to like you" or "you can convince people of things." Was it Matt himself?
Charisma is definitely a strange thing, but it’s something Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama and Donald Trump all have among their parties. If I pined for Peronism and traditional gender roles, Trump would be pretty charismatic. I can sort of see his charisma even though I’m not taken in by it.
Also, what has always been unclear in Matt's writing is who these "Democrats" are who need to moderate. It seems to be "anyone who pops up in social media at the moment." Democrats don't, and never will, go in lockstep. They don't all go out each day with the talking points issued from on high (by whom?) If Rashida Tlaib says something outrageous, is that a failure of "Democrats moderating"? If MGP says 100 centrist things, does that show that "Democrats are moderating"? It's a big party and a big tent.*
The moderating thing will only kick in for 2028 when the Democrats select a leader, one who has more standing than any other to "speak for the Democrats." That's why I wish potential candidates would declare right now, so we can begin that focused debate.
* Except for the DNC. Shut down that clown show right now, along with its land acknowledgments.
I swear to God, we keep having the “Democrats must moderate!!!!” conversations here on SB and we never get a satisfactory answer to “ok but we have a big unwieldy coalition without a cult leader, how do we avoid the Median Swing voter judging us by what some lefty extremist posted on Bluesky?!?” It’s like bashing my head against a brick wall.
I think a lot of this is that the SB commentariat is very conservative, since a lot of them seem to be former Republicans who got pushed out of their party when it got couped.
A lot of the discussion around here (and even Matt's arguments) seems to be:
Step 1: moderate policy
Step 2: ???
Step 3: be perceived as moderate.
To Matt's credit I think he explicitly says that step two is up to people who are better at it than him. But that leaves a lot of people who just want more moderate policy arguing amongst themselves without ever really engaging with the actual challenge of effectively communicating moderation.
Isn't Matt's Common Sense Democrat Manifesto exactly step 2? If not, what more detail are you looking for? I think he lays out these nine moderation examples in hyper detail.
No I don't think it is. Matt's common sense manifesto seems to argue that all Democrats needs to do to be perceived as moderate is adopt moderate policy. He lays out policy ideas he thinks are popular, he does not lay out any plan for effectively communicating those policy plans or ideas to voters. The central challenge of a moderate agenda is to get those ideas to "break through."
I don't think this is an argument AGAINST Matt's manifesto. His theory just seems incomplete - I think of it as necessary but not sufficient.
One real frustration I have with Matt is that hiss manifesto argues that Democrats need to be a big tent party that is more chill and accepting. Which will lead to that perception of moderate, but my sense is he has backed off that idea in his more recent writing. I get a little frustrated with Matt both arguing for a big tent and spending a lot of time picking factional fights that undermine the idea of a big tent party. he seems to say the right things, but practice the wrong habits (especially on Twitter).
I think the list of blacklisted words is exactly the wrong way to approach the problem. It's the same poll-tested, consultant driven approach that has brought the party to where it is today. I think Dan Pfeiffer said it well when he pointed out that Democrats need to talk like real people and a list of banned words is going about things the wrong way. https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/the-obsession-with-woke-language
I'm wondering if we can find a 2028 candidate who can put forward a more positive vision that largely ignores Trump. I think after 9+ years, the American people are tired of arguing about Trump.
To me this is like Obama's ascent in 2007-2008. The debate centered over Bush for years, and people were ready to move onto to something else. Obama didn't have to spend much time bashing Bush - Bush was already unpopular - and also slamming Bush in the 2008 campaign alienates the people who voted for him twice.
I may have selective memory but I appreciated Obama touting his bipartisan credentials and his record working with Republicans in Illinois and Congress (stump line something like "no party has a monopoly on good ideas") - and of course he famously spoke relentlessly about our greater aspirations as a nation.
We can't arrive there yet, we still have a 2026 mid-term election that will be a referendum on Trump 2.0, but after that, I hope we can find candidates who can replicate in spirit and tactics what Obama successfully did in 2007-2008.
“…put forward a more positive vision that largely ignores Trump.”
Admiral Ackbar: “It’s a trap!”
Harris did try to run on a “positive vision” last year. The themes of her campaign were “Joy” and “I want a country that works for everyone;” her running mate was an aw-shucks down-to-earth Midwestern guy who was like, “Where I come from, we help our neighbors even when we disagree.”
She got slammed for being clueless and out of touch while America was suffering from high grocery prices, never mind that a) America had one of the strongest post-COVID economies in the world and b) any informed person could see that Trump’s proposal to lower prices using tariffs was a steaming pile of bulls hit.
As to ignoring Trump - it wouldn’t have made sense, he wasn’t just a standard Republican who disagreed with her on policy, he had attempted a freaking self-coup to try to stay in power! She pretty much had to spend some time talking about it, like, “this man is unfit to be reelected for xyz reasons.”
Trump's base came out in force even after a huge pandemic. The Democratic base didn't entirely come out after a few years of grocery price increases and some foreign policy they didn't like. Changing that makes a difference too.
What exactly could they have done to stop her? She could have broken with Biden even if it hurt his feelings. It's not like he was out there stumping for her very much anyway, since he put his foot in his mouth half the time when he did!
"As to ignoring Trump - it wouldn’t have made sense"
I think you entirely misconstrued what I was saying. I was in no way saying Harris should have largely ignored Trump. I wasn't commenting on the 2024 election or strategic choices made. (FWIW, I think Biden's VP by its role was dealt a bad hand and idk how much pivoting to wherever would have helped)
I'm saying I hope we can get a 2028 candidate who can put forward a positive vision that largely ignores Trump, in the same way Obama largely ignored George W. Bush in his 2007-2008 ascent, and in lieu of focusing on the prior president, focus on a unifying positive vision that people will want to vote for.
Obama did not electrify crowds and young people because he was anti-Bush, and because he constantly rattled off all Bush's crimes and abuses. He prioritized messaging about national unity and vision - more so than in a way every candidate includes platitudes about it in their speeches.
This will be a lot more challenging because Bush quietly exited the political scene and went off to go do some watercoloring or whatever.
Trump, even if he doesn't try to use a loophole to run for a 3rd term, is not going to do the same, or ever let the media narrative not be on him. But I think we need someone who doesn't go chasing down every anti-Trump attack, and instead has a larger positive narrative they can tell the American voter.
Thermostatic public opinion adjustments are not all created equal. In 2022: Republicans "did well" and "won the House" largely due to thermostatic public opinion (and Biden's mismanagement of inflation). They did not have a good midterm. Thermostatic opinion also helped Republicans win the governor's mansion in Virginia, and make a run at New Jersey. If Democrats had THAT kind of mid-term, combined with some bad mid-census redistricting shenanigans from Republicans: there's a decent chance they barely win the House. They probably lose ground in the Senate.
Relying on "thermostatic public opinion" to do your work is completely idiotic. Democrats did well in 2018, for instance, because of "thermostatic public opinion" and ALSO because they ran good candidates in a variety of races (Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana, Joe Manchin in W. Virginia), AND because many Democrats ran good campaigns (think Gretchen Whitmer's "fix the damn roads" campaign).
EVEN THEN: Democrats STILL lost ground in the Senate due to a brutal Senate map, and lost crucial elections they still have not recovered from. Imagine if Democrats had managed to keep ONE of Florida, Indiana or Missouri. The Florida loss particularly stings: if Democrats win Florida, they are not as dependent on Manchin and Sinema in 2020 and 2022, and maybe Biden has a stronger Presidency. Hell: maybe the odds of keeping part of Florida blue increases.
This is why you can't just depend on 'thermostatic opinion' to do your hard work. It's a terrible strategy.
Let me clarify: when I call 2024!Sherrod and 2024!Tester “bad candidates,” I’m using a 100% consequentialist definition: a good candidate is one who won, a bad one is one who lost. I am not judging these men’s character or policy positions, which I believe are good! Just, I’m pointing out that they lost.
Dems won NJ governor by 14 in 2017 and 3 in 2021. So the GOP picked up 11 points there in your allegedly bad midterm. Virginia had the same 11 point swing from D+9 to R+2.
If Dems have “that kind of midterm” - where they get an 11 point swing in their favor in 2026 vs 2024 - they’ll easily win Ohio and even Texas would be in play.
"if Democrats win Florida, they are not as dependent on Manchin and Sinema in 2020 and 2022, and maybe Biden has a stronger Presidency."
If Democrats had an additional seat in the Senate, there is a good chance they pay a lot more laws giving them some additional political advantage. They would have also spent WAY more money, likely spiking inflation even higher than it already was. Not sure that would have been a good trade off for them.
How much more could they have spent? Using existing consensus figures, a 10% increase in spending would have amounted to an additional 0.3-0.5pp added to the cumulative price level. Sort of hard to imagine that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. That's in exchange for $465b in additional spending.
Agree about midterms with the addendum that it takes a while steer the battleship as it were when you are talking about a giant decentralized political party in a huge diverse nation of 330 million people. If you want to see changes in how Dems run in 2028 you need to start those changes now or you could easily find yourself with presidential candidate AOC (or insert a candidate of your choice) making very well produced shorts about why we need for a national assault weapons ban and the need to ban gas powered cars in the summer of 2028 while Vance is laughing all the way to the bank.
That, by the way, is what a full and open primary for the 2024 nomination would have produced. Along with a "denounce Israel and cut all ties" plank in the party platform.
You can be all “lock the lefties in the nearest cellar and pretend they don’t exist” OR “we should have had a real primary, not a Harris coronation” but you can’t have both!
Yeah, the whole claim that Biden dropping out in the summer of 2023 instead of the summer 2024 would have significantly change the outcome that people like Tapper and Nate Silver make all the time is pretty ridiculous when you break it down.
The problem was not Biden (as long as he wasn't actually on the November ballot). The problem (apart from inflation) was that the Democratic brand was trash.
But is the thermostat enough to win the Senate? And is it not possible that Trump can be outrageous enough to make 2026 a high turnout election? He can win on volume what he loses on margin?
I get that this is the question being asked, and one step at a time, but the party should be thinking of a grander vision to achieve 55-60 seats. 51 votes doesn't really allow you to pass much of your agenda, and it seems vulnerable to being clawed back time power changes hands.
If the economy turns bad enough over the next year, Democrats may be able to pull an inside straight. NC and OH, maybe Maine and a surprise pickup somewhere else (Texas? Nebraska?) and you've got your Democratic Senate.
One question I have is whether/what proportion of the high propensity voters over the last ~25 years switched from voting Republican to voting Democrat, or whether this effect is more the high propensity voters of the Bush/Obama era aged out and the high propensity voters who aged in are/were always Democrats? Is this the Liz Cheney Republicans circa 2003 shifting blue or are these grown up Obama-ites Doing the Work?
I don't want to overstate this but my thesis is that it's really class based. Educated voters with good jobs and their lives in order tend to know when elections are and have the wherewithal to follow through with their intentions to show up and vote. People who aren't like this by their nature are just less reliable in general, be it to show up on election day or for anything else. That former demographic, particularly with Boomers, leaned Republican but over the last 20 years it has very slowly but surely switched.
I agree but I think it is important to remember the median low propensity voter is probably White, secular, married, employed and 55 with low interest in politics rather than being someone in a dysfunctionial life situation.
Sure, I'm taking it as a given that we're really talking about the marginal voter who may or may not show up in any particular election, is more likely to turn up in presidential elections years than mid terms, etc. That's a different voter than the median voter.
My comment was about the median low propensity voter. I think the secular bit is important, old people with fewer community ties swung significantly from Red to Blue under Trump and they are hard to get out to vote.
I mean, generational replacement is not a peculiar idea and 25 years is plenty of time for working class professionals to age out of one demographic segment and into another.
Look at fancy suburbs and you will see ten point swings left between 2012 and 2016, which have largely held up every time Trump is in an election but not necessarily in Congressional races.
The appealing choice for a sensible educated adult who wanted other sane people running the country has changed in recent years from R to D, even if you prefer low taxes and less regulation on the margin, speaking for myself.
Used to be, or at least appear, like hard nosed commie fighting budget hawk realists against pinko sympathizing welfare spenders. Now it’s pinko sympathizing welfare spenders against lunatics who are equally big spenders but with more debt who are also setting fire to the commons and attacking all the parts of civil society educated normal people like, like the fed and universities and the medical establishment.
Over 25 years we’re looking at markedly different of cohorts of voters. Some people have changed their minds and views, but many voters 25 years ago are now dead, or have come of age to vote. Some have even been born AND come of age to vote. Across time spans some people change their politics, but politics just also change through generational turnover.
One piece of context on the DE special election: the incumbent was an older woman who had some kind of medical condition such that she hadn’t shown up to work *once* in 2025.
Everyone in the state Democratic Party knew and covered it up, and voters were *pissed*. I live in Delaware, but not that district, and it was the only thing people here could talk about while it was happening. Even people who can’t name two elected statewide officials were talking about it. I can only imagine how salient it was for the people in that district.
I’m guessing the results were bad because everyone was mad at the Democratic Party covering up a debilitating medical condition of an older elected official who couldn’t perform her duties.
Funny, this rhymes with the DNC's shameful coverup of Biden's obvious cognitive decline during his second term, helping to gift Trump the win last November. Maybe we should take some lessons?
On a related note, I just re-watched "The Death of Stalin" last night and it hits different today than in 2017: Still hilarious. A little more harrowing.
Yea, and there's a LOT of this at the state level. There was a huge power struggle in the RI Senate, where the Senate President didn't want to relinquish control, and he ended up dying less than a year later.
I mean the president controls the party apparatus so it is shameful but it's not really like "we" can take any lessons since this was just basically Biden's people protecting him.
I know Matt isn't a big believer in charisma, which admittedly is a bit ineffable, but having the candidate with the most charisma is precisely valuable with these low propensity voters.
At the very least is able to go on different media and speak like a normal and has a relatable and emotionally coherent story to tell should be minimums. And that ranked above the exact details of their health-care or climate change plan that's never going to pass.
During Trump I, there was brief period when Oprah was being pushed as the next Democratic nominee for president. I didn't like the idea (and still don't), but I am also fairly certain she would have won.
Donald is hilarious (especially when he was younger and less crazed and senile) but he just seems like an absolute crazy person, not charismatic, to me. I don’t know how people look at his crazy uncle Facebook post tweets and think “ah, a charismatic statesman” but I guess some people really really do.
I think it's worth thinking about "what turnout is desirable" from a theory perspective, and somewhat discounting "does this help my preferred cause tactically."
I've been arguing since Bush was president that broader participation in elections is not likely to be a good thing. I've been involved with organizational decision-making in a lot of contexts, and I have never seen a context where adding more people who didn't know much and didn't care much led to better decisions by any metric. I would expect voting to be the same.
Note too that turnout is fairly high for things where the effects are easy to understand and people have opinions. State Auditor "candidate A I've never heard of vs candidate B I know nothing about" get lower turnout than referenda on gay marriage.
Australia has compulsory voting and politics there seem healthier than in other countries.
An election is different to a meeting, which is how most "organizational decision-making" occurs. People don't need to give a speech, they just vote.
The fact private organisations freely spend a lot of money on surveys of "people who didn't know much and didn't care much" also indicates such information does have value.
When I was in the military I participated in a few exercises in the Western Pacific that included the Australian military. I was struck by how they described illegal immigration enforcement, which was very focused on intercepting boats and taking the immigrants to unpleasant detention camps in New Guinea. They were always very quick to point out that Australia has a tiny population and they would be flooded without extremely aggressive enforcement.
It seems to me that it's hard to separate what part of the alleged healthiness of Australian politics is attributable to mandatory voting versus other features of its electoral system like proportional representation.
They don't really have proportional representation. They do in the Senate but it's by far the weaker of the two chambers. The House is first-past-the-post but with transferrable votes.
OK, but I think the point stands that the Australian electoral system has several distinguishing characteristics from the American electoral system that obscure which, if any, of those characteristics is actually important in making Australian politics "healthier" than American politics.
Exactly this; there are good ideological reasons to favor compulsory voting but isolating its effects and pronouncing them beneficial seems very presumptive. Even 'Australians like it' (true of the ones I've met, though it must presumably be unpopular with many) doesn't actually tell you that effects are 'healthier'.
Australian politics are healthier because of demographics, about twice the foreign-born percentage as the US. This makes people more accepting of diversity and less susceptible to the xenophobia that is damaging other countries.
It was understood (I think correctly) to be a voter suppression measure, and voter suppression used to be bad for Democrats. Democrats haven't really internalized that voter suppression is good for us now, which is why Matt is writing this piece.
Voter ID laws actually don't seem to meaningfully suppress turnout, but it wasn't as clear 20 or so years ago when this was a really hot button issue and the parties polarized around it.
the other point to remember is that when dems decided they were against voter id requirements, there genuinely were people with incompltete govt records and some difficulty presenting suitable id.
but that was a long time ago. those people are now mostly dead.
"It was understood (I think correctly) to be a voter suppression measure"
I don't think that's a correct thing to assume at all. Having a ID is a REALLY basic requirement. You need it's required for numerous adulting activities, like banking, flying on an airplane, buying alcohol.
It was always extremely insulting for Democrats to think their voters couldn't handle this basic task
From at least the 1930s until 2016, the marginal voter was a Democrat. So anything that prevented people from voting at the margin tended to hurt Democrats. So voter suppression was bad for Democrats.
That flipped since 2016. This is the point of Matt's essay -- the marginal voter is now Republican, so voter suppression is good for Democrats and they should stop wasting effort (a) registering the marginal voter, (b) encouraging the marginal voter to turn out, and (c) blocking Republican voter suppression measures.
(a) and (b) are right, but as others have pointed out, (c) doesn't necessarily follow. The Republicans are aware of all of this research too, so any voter suppression measures you see from them in the future are going to be aimed not at lowering turnout in general but rather targeting Democratic constituencies.
The good news is that there probably isn't an effective way to target educated people for voter suppression, although maybe I'm just lacking in imagination at the moment.
I'm actually not sure Republicans are, at least not at the rank and file level. I think they are more likely to see lack of stringency as a scam to let illegal immigrants vote (for Democrats of course) than as a lubricant for the moron MAGA faction that doesn't know what day it is.
Yeah, Republicans have the opposite problem from Democrats -- they haven't internalized that they're the party of low-propensity voters and need to goose turnout.
It's just hard to do (legal) targeted voter suppression measures. High-propensity voters will vote one way or another, and any un-targeted suppression will mostly hit low-propensity voters.
The best they've come up with is gimmicks like limiting early voting to one site per county, because Democrats tend to do more early voting. But early voters are high-propensity voters -- that's why they're showing up early! -- and will show up on election day if the early voting lines are too long.
I don't think actually attempting to suppress voting is a good idea. I've also always had a feeling that the debate about suppression/illegal voting was more downstream of sour grapes than any kind of empirical analysis. I read MY's point as more simple, namely that turnout efforts should be carefully targeted rather than general, not an endorsement of trying to make voting harder via introduction of various friction points.
Certainly it should be something to give in on as it doesn't have real effect and frankly isn't so terrible overall as a fraud suppressant (not that fraud is the problem it is spun to be but having system checks against possible redevelopment is not a terrible idea - as recent years should show system complacency can be a terrible trap if something bad returns or comes in)
Voter ID requirements disenfranchise voters. That's not necessarily true in principle--you could have a universal national ID card scheme that makes sure everyone has photo ID and then it would be a modest inconvenience at most. But it is true in practice. And democratic rights matter, and they matter whatever the net partisan effect of disenfranchising people is.
Its not common but it absolutely happens. If you're an elderly person who doesnt drive, has lived in the same place for decades, and everyone there knows you, why would you have an ID? And even if they do have one somewhere, they might forget to bring it if the only time they need it is once every 4 years.
This: older people who don't drive are the people most likely not to have ID. They are also a pretty Republican group of voters nationally, and areas where they aren't (e.g. urban areas which have more non-drivers than suburban/rural) tend to be so heavily Democratic that their absence won't affect results.
If there were lots of non-citizen immigrants voting illegally because of the lack of an ID requirement, then that would be counterbalanced by stopping them voting, but there is absolutely zero evidence that this group is at all significant.
It doesn't affect results in Detroit or Philly or Atlanta city elections or in districts within the city - and since it would also reduce turnout in rural/exurban Michigan or Pennsylvania or Georgia, it also doesn't affect state results.
Was the leftward cultural tilt really driven by some turnout delusion, or was the turnout story just a rationalization to cover positions that obviously didn't poll well?
It's kinda a tell that they don't seem to be conceding on this stuff. It's part of their internal factional coalition building that's been successful for them at least on those terms. Since the priority is always winning the internal factional fight first, I assume they will fall back to other arguments.
I do think that the embrace of academic progressivism by party leadership is in response to the massive turnout that Trump had with white people in 2016. Democrats had convinced themselves that the only way a Republican could break the Blue Wall was massive turnout, while Trump got. That shock, and the incorrect belief that Trump did this with radical policy proposals, produced an accelerated shift that culminated in 2020 and probably muted Biden’s victory over an unpopular and incompetent incumbent. As Matt has pointed out several times here, Trump moderated on key issues of Social Security and Medicare, if not immigration and rule of law.
I would say a lot of the movement started before Trump's election, especially just below the top leadership but also in HRC's primary campaign.
There is certainly a cardre of true believers in academia, the non-profits, staff and online left that is going to adopt whatever arguments are at hand. The leadership level is probably more complicated, but pleasing this internal crowd was always a significant consideration.
While the energy in 2016 felt like it was on the left, it should have been a tell that Bernie always did his best in the most restrictive voting setting of the caucuses.
I agree the beginnings started in Obama’s second term, with DAPA and their other ‘Buck-it’ items they pursued, as well as the police shootings during that time. I feel that the mass acceleration began in the shock of 2016
I remember arguing with people in 2016 that Bernie's strength was mostly illusory because he was only winning in the least democratic processes. The push back was ridiculous, "No, no that he's winning in caucuses means enthusiasm for him is both high and intense, and shows the people are demanding him. That intensity is the evidence that all the people demand him and in a general election he'll surely win." It was bonkers, he can't win a primary is proof he'll win a general.
The math said he was never going to win the nomination, and I think Hilary would have been better off treating him like a sure second place finisher rather than an actual threat. But I suppose that was harder to believe then, and the instinct to want to run up as big a win as possible by moving away from her original positions was hard to overcome.
This strategy actually goes back to 2010. Popular wisdom was that Obama won a massive majority campaigning on hope and change, immediately moderated upon winning office, and turned the largest majorities any president has had in decades into a series of lukewarm but decidedly centrist policies while bailing out the banks, leading to a historic drubbing in the 2010 midterms in which a huge share of his voters stayed home. It was not at all unreasonable in that context to think that bolder policy could increase turnout.
Yes there is also the theory dating back at least to Howard Dean that you can organize your way to better electoral results. I think a lot of people think with more sustained investment Obama could have built a durable election winning machine that was resilient to years like ‘10 and ‘14.
There were a lot of people who believed in this in the ‘16 Bernie camp. It seems unlikely there’s any truth to this… the number of people who wanted to knock doors for Obama was more a reflection of enthusiasm for him and correlated with his great performance rather than an apparatus that drove his victory. And enthusiasm always wanes after you win and have to start making hard choices.
I'm very skeptical that if the Democrats were to "give Trump a win" on voting by mail,. as Matt suggests, that it would help them. Based on the evidence on who votes by mail and who stays home, I think it would be catastrophic.
I am also highly skeptical that general tendencies about who is more likely to vote necessarily apply to targeted efforts aimed at disenfranchising specific communities (as GOP states try to make voting harder in urban centers, for example).
I can, however, buy that nonpartisan voter registration drives are counterproductive.
This is a great point. Black voters are on average are less likely to vote than whites (this was true even when Dems won the black vote by more than they did in 2024). To the extent Republican states are trying to make it harder for Black people to vote, that’s bad for Dems - I don’t think you can just say “well the most dedicated Black people, who are a bluer pool, will still find a way to vote so that’s ok.” The marginal Black voter is still likely to prefer a Democrat.
The black voters least likely to vote also swung towards republicans the most. Black voters not voting because it is harder are unlikely to be a particulary democratic group.
Sure we want to turn them out. But the same rules that disenfranchise low-propensity black voters will also hit low-propensity white voters. Which is a bigger and way more republican group.
Not necessarily, it depends on the rule. We’ve have had over a hundred years of experience figuring out ways to targetedly disenfranchise black voters.
Voting by mail is a bit more complicated than going to a polling place, so it is favored by more sophisticated people with a greater motivation to vote but few of those people would have difficulty voting in person if that were their only option. Those who could not would likely be eligible to vote absentee.
Are we so confident here? It’s possible things changed from 2020 to 2024 by a lot, but the very best work indicates that raising the cost to vote will hurt Democrats.
(I am somewhat surprised that this paper has not blown up on election twitter, given its relevance; I imagine that it’s because structural IO demand estimation is quite intimidating to outsiders. It’s important though! You should read it! The methods for estimating demand curves for discrete products can be mapped 1:1 onto voting for candidates).
It's long been a challenge to reconcile the deeply democratic instinct to maximally enable voting with the reality that low-propensity voters are conspiratorial by nature, poorly-informed, poorly-reasoned, and easily swayed by demagogues. Short-form video is only going to make this worse. Very "a republic, if you can keep it" energy.
Most voters fundamentally have a zero-sum view of the world. So this means a growing economy + taxes on the rich + a generous welfare state is a good solution when going against a pro-business party since it allows a the liberal party to position itself as anti-rich.
But the traditional liberal/labor party cannot defeat an anti-immigrant/anti-trade party because the new conservative type party offers even more zero-sum solutions. Of course opposing immigration and trade makes everyone's quality of life worse compared to the alternative, but voters would rather have their lives be worse but have others' living standards and status (more importantly) decline by more.
One takeaway for me is that anyone with the money to give should be investing in not just politics directly, but the *information ecosystem* of swing states essential to take back the House (and more importantly, the Senate) in 2026. An informed voter is a Democratic voter. And keeping those higher-propensity, Democrat-leaning voters informed, engaged, and *motivated* is crucial. Oftentimes, they feel totally isolated in what seems like a cesspool of MAGA bullshit on TV, radio, and everywhere else (amplified by social media and propaganda). So they give up. They feel alone and nihilistic. Throw them a lifeline! Imagine that you're smuggling radios into Communist Poland or beaming Radio Free Europe into the GDR!
That means, for example, targeting struggling NPR stations that just lost 25-50% of their funding and might be the only source of hard news in an otherwise local news desert: Iowa Public Radio, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Michigan Radio, High Plains Public Radio or Marfa Public Radio in Texas, WKSU or WVXU in Ohio, and WUNC or WFAE in North Carolina. It might not seem like keeping the classical music or "This American Life" on in distant parts of the country matters politically, but it absolutely does!
Maybe you even digital-subscribe to or donate to local newspapers that serve the Blue Cities in Purple or Red States, like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, or Iowa Capital Dispatch. You might even enjoy getting a window into another state's goings-on. Keep the torch lit!
Or, if donating to a random radio station or newspaper in a community you don't live in seems a waste, spread that money around strategically with the American Journalism Project (AJP) or Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), who directly fund hard news and investigative reporting in those states where your fellow Democrats are starved for it.
Sorry, I stated this confusingly (so I've edited): It's better to say that we're nurturing the (normally) *high-propensity* voters who might not be as high-propensity without the civic ecosystem of information and community that keeps them engaged.
Regarding the ads telling people to just go vote: When I was younger, I would tell people that I think fewer people should vote. Everybody, of course, has the right, but with that right comes the obligation of making an informed decision. If you don't take the time to understand the candidates and their positions, then don't vote! At the time, I recognized that fewer people voting would benefit Republicans, but it's an even easier position for me to take now
My instinct is that there's a moral obligation to inform yourself about elections. "If you don't take the time to understand the candidates and their positions", then you have committed a profound moral offense against the polity that you live in and benefit from.
I don't have a proper way to deal with people who don't inform themselves - either to identify them or to punish them - but they should understand that they are freeloading on everyone else and should feel ashamed of themselves.
Not voting I don't have a problem with, but not being informed is awful.
It's not something that I think there should be a law against or anything. But I will definitely think less of you if you do it.
It's remarkably hard to inform yourself, though, about the elections where you have the most influence.
For example, in the last City Council election in my small city, there were 8 candidates for 5 seats, and it's a non-partisan race. Other than the incumbents, it was hard to find out anything about the candidates positions on any topic that the council actually has control over.
Oh, I agree with that! Way too many candidates advertise themselves based on factional positioning within the party rather than specific policies in the position they are running for (often because they don’t have any specific policies in the position they are running for).
“Barack Obama was a popular and charismatic pop culture figure”.
TLDR summation here. You can adjust to “Trump is a charismatic pop culture figure”.
So much of this turnout discourse is just that. Which begs the question; how much does this turnout discourse change if Trump is no longer running for office?
Look I made this mistake. I was under the belief that Obama ushered in a left of center new Reagan coalition. And oh yeah, because GOP voters were disproportionately older, the Dem advantage would only grow. And while I didn’t think or advocate for super lefty ideas around race or gender that became prevalent circa 2020, I did say that Dems shouldn’t be afraid to advocate for gay marriage and marijuana legalization in 20111-2012 (on those two issues I was right it turns out). So count me among those who was dumbfounded there could be voters who voted for Obama twice than voted for Trump (I’ve read the reasons why. But on a gut level it still boggles my mind).
I’m as alarmed as you are about Trump’s increasing authoritarianism. I said here the other day that I think we all need to consider this is the time for protests and even civil disobedience. I know I’m thinking about it. But assuming we still have fair elections. Trump is probably the most unique political figure in American history (seriously who else beats him). We need to really ask ourselves who’s turning out to vote if someone else is GOP standard bearer
* I listened to your podcast discussion about Trump’s weird hand discoloration. And I agree that it’s kind of a “hopium” that this means Trump is exiting this mortal coil like any day now. But man it’s hopium to say he is clearly declining and declining fast. Even if he’s not dying in the next month or next year, honestly what are the chances he has the physical wherewithal to literally run for president again in 2028.
I'll reiterate, the "Trump is dying" claim is likely untrue (at least if we're talking say next 6-12 months or something). Obviously, at his age, some sort of heart attack or stroke is not out of the question. I mean heck that's not out of the question for a healthy 25 year old. But definitely for someone approaching 80. But yeah, I'm firmly in the camp that the splotches on his hand or the purple discoloration likely from an IV are not signs he's about to keel over in like a week.
But they are definitely signs of failing health. Which again at his age is pretty normal. And you can see it in the way he speaks. Because he's been in our lives as a political figure for 10+ years and because he's been in our lives as a pop culture figure since the mid 80s, I think it's been hard for some people to realize that he actually sounds way more coherent in 2016 than now (even if he wasn't particularly coherent or sane in 2016). Point being, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say that even if he isn't in imminent danger of keeling over dead in the near future, there are serious questions to be asked whether he will be physically able to do the job as President or run in 2028.
A note of caution: once men get through "The Great Filter" when a lot of us die of heart disease in our 50s and 60s, we do tend to live longer than averages around life expectancy would suggest.
According to CDC life tables, the average life expectancy for a U.S. male *who has already reached age 79* is around 8–9 more years. That means, on average, someone his age might expect to live to about 87–88. Another way of putting this: Trump has a 85–90% chance (statistically speaking) of making it to the end of his second term.
Now, whether he's coherent and functional by then? Well, I don't consider him coherent today, but he certainly is vigorous and functional in terms of being able to do his Trump schtick 24/7 in a way that I would struggle with at half his age. He doesn't actually *work* that much, per se, given how much of his daily schedule is "executive time" (with the TV) or out golfing. But he's certainly putting in the hours as an influencer and can still get a crowd going (incoherently) for hours.
What will be interesting to see is if he suddenly and visibly falls off a cliff, vitality-wise, like Biden did. It wouldn't surprise me, at his age. Aging often comes in spurts. And, for Trump, that would be devastating. His whole thing is being strong and ALWAYS ON to dominate every news cycle.
Yeah that last part is sort of what I was getting at. Since as long as I can remember, GOP being tagged as the "Daddy" party and Democrats as the "mommy" party has been a thing. It's obviously dumb, but it almost certainly a part of why GOP is more trusted on issues like crime or economy and Dems being more trusted on stuff like health care; it's partly downstream of this dichotomy.
Trump takes this dichotomy to 14 on the "Spinal Tap" scale. In probably my most "liked" post I noted so much of what Trump administration is doing even on stuff like being anti-green tech is just "manly man man man man man" guttural machismo. News junkies like us know he's repeatedly fallen asleep at his trial, meetings with various world leaders, cabinet meetings etc. But unfortunately this stuff has been mostly page 8 news; in other words it's unlikely swing voters have any idea. However, if he doesn't have energy to do rallies or if he looks just "out of it" in a rally in 2028, I don't know how that isn't noticeable to everyone.
Their news sites just wouldn't cover it, and it would still be mostly page 8 news on mainstream sites. And even on their news sites, it would be about the hypocrisy of the media because Biden was worse. Trump's fine. Remember Biden. Biden coverup. Rinse repeat.
I see in your thinking the same thinking that lead us to Biden trying to POTUS at 82. 80 is really fucking old - way too old to be working a full time job. He's 79 and was one of 5 kids - he only has one living sibling. I think people are wildly underestimating the chance that one day the marine calls to wake him up and the phone just rings.
Especially since he apparently doesn't do much to take care of himself. And has been abundantly evident just in the past few months, he lashes out at anyone who tells him news he doesn't want to hear.
I know right now he's likely being treated by "real" doctors but how long does that last if they start telling him medical news he doesn't want to hear? This is a man who fired the BLS head for providing supposedly "bad" job numbers even though bad job numbers would actually help his case that the Fed should cut rates. This is not a man who as any self control anymore about news he doesn't want to hear.
Yeah, that part about his family history is very salient.
As are his "lifestyle factors."
On the plus side, he doesn't drink, has a lot of money, and retains high-status socially (surprisingly conducive to health and longevity).
On the downside, he drinks Diet Coke like it's his job, loves fast food, is obese, does no physical activity (unless you count his many hours on the golf course), seems to retain no faith or really any higher purpose other than himself, and (most crucially) has no real friendships or (apparently) even any intimate relationships with family.
As I commented below, I'm not betting on his dying before his term is out, but I would give 50/50 odds that he's as frail and low-energy as Biden, which will cause a major dilemma for the MAGA movement. Even if he doesn't defy the Constitution and runs again, he'd be needed as a vigorous and visible kingmaker and MC for the next GOP candidate.
And falls are a huge risk at that age. If he slips on some wet pavement he could be severely injured and at almost 80 you're never coming 100% back form an injury. And Trump is very vain - Biden switched to sneakers to reduce fall risk Trump isn't going to do that.
My 2¢ is that back when I was 17-18 I wrote a series of articles for my high school newspaper arguing for reforms that would make it easier for more people to vote. At the time I thought this would probably help Democrats. As Matt points out that’s not true anymore. But I still think it should be easier to vote and I want more Americans to vote, and if that helps Republicans then so be it; it’s on us as Democrats to go back to the drawing board and work out a winning message.
The more marginal the voter, the less informed and skilled at making decisions is the voter. I'll just steal a quote from SamChvre who is said the rest better than I could:
"I've been involved with organizational decision-making in a lot of contexts, and I have never seen a context where adding more people who didn't know much and didn't care much led to better decisions by any metric"
Adding more uninformed people to discussions doesn’t help the discussions - but voting is just counting, not discussion.
I see it differently. Voting *is* a discussion, by proxy, on the topic: What kind of country do we want? It’s the only discussion that’s possible among 300+ million people.
It isn't a discussion though. It's the outcome at the end of the discussion (which was the campaign).
Sure, but when uninformed people vote, you are counting people who by definition aren't even paying attention to the discussion. I don't really see what that adds and it's one of the reasons I usually use my own voting slip incomplete, particularly in primaries. If I haven't figured out anything substantial about the candidates why should I add noise to the process ?
This is how neighborhood meetings and zoning board type things are done (only the most informed people with the most free time show up), and the outcomes are generally not ideal.
This is true, and I even thought of bringing up as a caveat, but these negative results seem highly driven by tragedy-of-the-commons / nimbyist effects.
Well.... most free time is not identical to most informed.
Neighborhood meetings and similar are more three sets of people (a) highly motivated set of agenda oriented people (who probably can be qualified as having high level of information), (b) those either without work schedules that get in way (retirees, etc) or self-schedule setting, (c) Cranks & Loonies (who may be parts of (a) and (b) too I guess).
Highly informed but time constrained and not able to attend meetings is a bigger category. Meetings structurally are generally rather more time consuming than casting ballot and less amenable to schedule shifting.
So voting doesn't align well with meetings (or maybe better only partially aligns).
This is why I think Citizen's assemblies are a cool idea. You still get all voices represented equally (statistically at least, which is good enough for me). But the people involved in the assembly care a lot more because they know their opinion / vote matters, and it's worth it to spend the time to get informed before making their decision.
'the less informed and skilled at making decisions'
Yes, but so what really? There's no IQ requirement to vote. Elderly people with dementia can and do vote. Frankly the idea that almost any voter is 'skilled at making decisions' is hard to believe.
The point would be more that adding more won't help. Quite the contrary, you can probably presume it will make it worse.
Ideally, you would have a more informed voter, period. And sometimes people have outside information that can help decision makers. But it really is the odd "passengers out voting the pilots" cartoon. The pilots aren't just in the seat by chance. They were trained and had to learn a lot to get there.
I was taught this was a large part of why we have an electorial college vote, back in the day. The idea was that they should follow the will of the people, but that they would also be more informed than the people. The idea being to prevent situations where people are voting against their interests. That seems to have been dropped in teaching, it seems?
'Quite the contrary, you can probably presume it will make it worse.'
I don't think you can *at all* presume that. There's no reason to think that the ill-informed voters we currently have are better at making decisions than the ill-informed voters we don't.
There are two perspectives you can look at this from, a partisan one and a non-partisan one. From the non-partisan perspective, you argument essentially rests on the idea that being better informed or using a more logical approach to voting-decision-making naturally leads to 'better' outcomes (whichever party that may be at any one particular time). But there's really no strong reason to believe that having a more logical thought-process on an early November day in one year will lead to some objective, non-partisan, 'better' governance of the country 3-4 years down the road.
The alternative is a partisan perspective, but here we can just note that if we add voters who don't vote based on any logical thought-process then there's no strong way of predicting which way they will vote, so you're just adding random noise. If I add random amounts of either white or black pixels to distort an image, it might end up more white or more black, but if the process is random the outcome is too.
My assertion would be that ill-informed voters are not likely to just be uninformed. They are more likely to be misinformed. And I do think misinformed people involved increases the likelihood of bad decisions.
I should add that I don't think the contra of my assertion is true, either. I think you can assume more misinformed voters will decrease the quality of decisions. I don't think you can assume that you can produce only good decisions by increasing information.
I am also not aiming for logical votes, necessarily. My argument would be honestly informed votes. Such that my argument is less against Republicans, I think, and far more against populists. This is on the left, as well. Just, for Republicans, they happen to be the ones in power, as well.
One can call it an effect of Diminishing Returns on effort.
And at some point diminishing returns can become Negative Returns.
While having a large percentage of the population voting in a democracy is wihtout doubt a generally good thing, it doesn't follow that endless pushing for everyone to vote is a good thing.
At some point the return on effort becomes very low and even may be quite overall negative.
The so what is that the decisions get worse the more you drag down the average decision-making capability of the group. This doesn't seem controversial. Picture your own workplaces and imagine you're all voting on some important issue. The people closest to the decision and with the most information are generally going to have an easier time making the right decision. If you open the voting up to less informed people, say, I don't know, the just-hired interns or the janitorial staff, you're unlikely to get better outcomes.
My PMC BFF has told me before that seizing the means of production from "Capital" is a desirable and good thing. I work in a factory and thus have a different perspective, namely that the chuds I work with have no business at all doing the decision making at our plant.
Also, right there is no IQ requirement to vote and I'm not suggesting we make one. Similar to Matt, I would just way why spend time and effort arguing for additional reforms that would have the net impact of making it easier for low-motivation or low-info people to vote. There are better ways to spend your time or money.
Why even bother with the ceremony of elections at all then? Just pick a few "experts" and be done with it - think of how good the decisions would be if we only had a couple dozen voters!
I would posit that the purpose of broad franchise is not to produce optimal decisions (we know of no system for reliably doing this at scale, imo), but rather to give the populace ownership over and a stake in the direction of their society, whether that direction is correct or not.
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
and here we have a fine pot-pourri of logical fallacies.
Excluded Middle, Straw man....
Fine: my claim is that any willful reduction of the electorate is undemocratic. The slippery slope is not always a fallacy - you need a reasonable stop condition, which the logic presented in the parent comment does not stipulate. At what point do you stop restricting the franchise? When does it go from being just a little roster management and actively in IQ test territory?
I think it's important to draw a distinction between the principle "we want more people to vote" and the decision to use either political or financial capital to make that happen today rather than using that limited political and financial capital to accomplish another worthy goal.
Exactly. That's basically what Matt said about the Senate, that if you really care about democratic institutions, checks on the power of the Executive, etc as being vitally important then you have to act like it. Which means working out the winning message now and not helping Republicans.
I agree with you here, and kept a critical eye on Matt's suggestions, but I think it's fair to say that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital right now making it easier to vote (fighting voter ID laws), even if they a but that they also shouldn't go out of their way to make it harder.
Some people are better informed than others and some people also have more at stake than others. It’s not optimal to have everyone get an equally weighted say given these differences, and in no other context do we do this. For instance, in market transactions, people who want something more are willing to pay more outbid people willing to pay less, and this is generally accepted to lead to optimal outcomes rather than giving everyone an equal amount of every product. The problem with that approach is that it favors the rich so we can’t do it in voting, although it would be interesting to test something where each “vote” would cost someone some percentage composite of their wealth+income. But adding some minor frictions is a way to exclude at least the people who have the least at stake who don’t even care enough to overcome those minor frictions.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
Not sure how voter ID laws and other policies being argued for in this thread imply that all men aren’t created equal or they don’t have certain unalienable rights?
Their right to vote is being alienated.
Linked elsewhere in the comments by David_in_Chicago, but only ~7M Americans have no non-expired form of government issued photo ID: https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/
The situations where there’s only one place to get your ID in your rural Deep South county and the office is only open from 2-3pm every 5th Wednesday are wrong, and they should be called out as wrong.
But overall we’re talking about a situation where ~165 million+ voters (~96% of total eligible voters) DO have valid IDs.
In my view, the lack of access in some communities of getting an ID at all is an infringement on folks’s right to vote, not the voter ID law itself. Especially when the laws are popular, even among Dems.
Edit: did some sloppy math re: percentage of eligible voters with valid IDs — I originally did ~7M voters w/o divided by ~174M people who voted in 2024. There are actually ~244M eligible voters.
Perhaps not the best source to cite when arguing for universal suffrage, extensive efforts to get everyone to vote, and having all federal offices determined by popular vote and the will of the people.
They were very much for a wide-open democracy in the terms they understood it in their age, but we can all agree that America in 1787 was pretty far from what we would see as a universal democracy that relied on the express will of the people living there as a whole.
In other words, we, the governed, can set up any sort of government we want to as long as we think it satisfies those goals.
An interesting idea I've played around with in my head would be to give more votes - at some scale with strongly diminishing returns, like a log or cube root scale - to people based on the taxes they've paid. So if you're a billionaire avoiding all taxes you get 1 vote just like a poor person, but if you're paying billions in tax revenue then you actually get 500 votes or whatever.
I'm sure there's a lot of ways to bash that idea and you'd have to design it very well to make sure you don't accidentally just fully empower an oligarchy, but if it improved tax compliance that would be good, and there is something fair about the people who are paying into the system having the most say in how the money gets spent.
I think the idea you're looking for is participatory budgeting. The only way to decide binary outcomes (like R vs. D for president) is to give people an equal say. But if the question is "how much money should we spend on X vs Y priority" you can give people a pool of vote credits that they can spend on different items. It's too complicated and will never actually work, but it's a neat thought experiment.
https://www.radicalxchange.org/wiki/quadratic-voting/
Agree. The answer is not "okay, let's make it hard to vote now", it should "make it so that the party appeals to people who don't typically vote."
Why should it be easier to vote? I say if you really want to vote in a despot who will tear down our democracy, the least you can do is crawl over broken glass to do so.
And, hey xkcd, just shut up, okay? https://xkcd.com/2361/
The coalitions are shifting. In a more functional country, this kind of thing would create an opening for bipartisan reforms aimed toward something beyond short-term partisan gain. Surely we can all agree we need elections that are secure and safe and widely trusted and transparent. Surely we can all agree that we should ease the path to voting, through things like making Election Day a holiday or giving reasonable accommodations to disabilities and so on. Surely?
But I think the thing about Supreme Court reform. Why can’t conservatives see that the path we’re on is a recipe for disaster in the long term, even if they’re giddy with victory in the short term? Why can’t liberals see the similarly negative consequences that flowed from the activist tendencies of previous courts? Why can’t the adults in the room take a step back and agree we have to make this system functional for the long haul, even if it means sacrificing some degree of immediate partisan gain? But I know the answer, really.
Voting isn't just a right it's a responsibility.
I say bring back voter tests before people can vote. Make them pass basic tests on economics and constitutional law (which they definitely should have to pass before graduating high school)
I don’t think we should be doing literacy tests
My guess is the barely literate would outvote you on that.
I think if more Americans voting means Donald Trump wins an unconstitutional third term, then that’s bad.
There is a difference between trying to restrict the vote and spending your limited time energy and capital trying to boost it among the least engaged people in society, when doing so also backfires politically.
Just want to say that as a longtime SB reader, it's fun to see Milan and Marc weighing in here!
I think this is the right answer. But the Dems need to rework their voter ID message. To a normal person, insisting that people shouldn't have to provide identification to vote sounds very fishy.
91% of driving age people already have licenses. If we are worried about the remaining 9%, it should be easy to create a program for ID by other means.
It’s a bit orthogonal to the piece, but given Matt’s intro I feel compelled to say: Just as it’s wrong to project from special elections to a high-turnout presidential race, it’s equally wrong to imply (as Matt seems to do) that 2026 will look like 2024 if the Dems don’t make ideological adjustments.
Dems will do well in 2026, even without making ideological adjustments, thanks to thermostatic public opinion and their more-likely-to-vote coalition. This is honestly why I’m not too worried about whether Dems do or don’t “moderate” in the immediate term.
IMO, the bigger argument / challenge is going to be between 2026 and 2028, when certain people will attribute 2026 success (assuming it happens) to the positions the Dems did or didn’t take rather than external factors. And when it does seem likely that moderating helps in a presidential election year.
Dems are forecast to comfortably lose the Senate in 2026. Getting the House while the other side has the Presidency, Senate and SCOTUS isn't "doing well", it's one step removed from losing all power at the national level. Dems have to try to properly win again.
https://www.270towin.com/2026-senate-election/consensus-2026-senate-forecast
Precisely.
Merely treading water due to thermostatic public opinion reaction while continuing discourse, politics that has and will continue clearly to lead to decade-on-decade slow acidic eat-away on electoral reach is the recipe to marginalisation and long-term further loss.
Not being worried is being more "intellectual self-satisfied cope" than real proper thinking.
Not to mention… Matt’s article inspires a bit of meta-criticism:
Matt’s advice is usually stuff that would generally be wonderful if the Democrats could execute even 80% faithfully to it.
But the party is broken. The gerontocracy, the robotic careerists, the Groups, the other side’s propaganda… we do not have a party that *does things* with even 30% competence.
If we did, Matt’s policies would often be absolutely right. But his own preferred solution of “leftists just unilaterally surrender” is just as absurd as the leftists’ preference for Yglesian Shills to surrender.
I think Democrats being incompetent is in part due to the base being so toxic. Look how they treat even people on the left. AOC had Freddie de Boer declare her to have abandoned her principles, DSA de-endorsing her, people harassing her in person. Liz Warren IIRC got treated horribly by Bernie's base. Then if you're a centrist like Joe Manchin, you get more in-person harassment and a streamer with a million followers (Hasan Piker) call for your kids to be prosecuted. And people are surprised there's not a flood of fresh leaders?
The sheer unpleasantness and personal attacks and factionalism of the left in the US is noteworthy, precisely because the stakes are low. The DSA isn't taking power any time soon, and they know it.
The base got toxic after generations of stymied progress. They started casting about for anything that looked like an end run around the problems. Various new ideological framings, “one wierd tricks”, etc.
I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees. "Leftists just unilaterally surrender" would produce more progressive outcomes than otherwise, on net.
Yes but it won’t happen.
No group ever unilaterally surrenders without a catastrophic defeat.
It’s a fantasy. It’s like when I say that if I were dictator for a day, I’d implement a parliamentary multiparty democracy and then cap it off with banning the words “goose”, “kitty-corner”, and the use of “refuted” to mean “denied”, and I indeed would consider that to be a better world for every fucking soul on the planet.
But the planet doesn’t just hand dictatorial power to random assholes like me.
So, Matt has either two options: Be realistic about how to bring the left to the table to negotiate a peaceful collaboration to save the country from authoritarianism, or start waging a Napoleonic-style campaign to quickly cow them into submission in order to pivot back to defeating authoritarianism.
He’s been banging on that latter one for the better part of 3 decades, and doesn’t have much to show for it.
Democrats are probably going to gain Senate seats in 2026, just not enough to take the chamber due to the map and staggered elections.
SCOTUS was 8-1 Republican in 1994 and Democrats have actually been slowly clawing their way back since then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_leanings_of_United_States_Supreme_Court_justices
It’s just that the way the US system is designed it is fairly easy for a party to entrench its rule over a long period of time and the other party needs to win a lot of elections in a row under different circumstances to dislodge it.
Very misleading about SCOTUS in 1994. Although it’s true that (initially) 8 of the judges were appointed by a GOP president, there were 4 strong liberals, 3 conservatives and 2 swing voters - hence the court was fairly liberal, which it stayed until Alito replaced O’Connor in 2005 which was a sharp turn to the right, and then another sharp rightward turn when Comey Barrett replaced RBG. There has been no clawing back at all. And it’s obviously not going to get any better under Trump. Wait until Aileen Cannon gets put up to SCOTUS…
Aileen Cannon will never sit on SCOTUS but your broader point is correct that Republicans used to sometimes pick people like Stevens and Democrats used to sometimes pick people like White, so the partisan split of SCOTUS was less meaningful.
For lots of reasons you're probably right about Cannon, but if Trump had the opportunity to and nominated her, who would oppose her?
The same people who killed Matt Gaetz's nomination. Same people who killed Harriet Meiers'.
I really don't think a lot of liberals understand how conservatives view the Supreme Court. It's a LOT more far reaching than "let's do whatever the President wants". They have developed a whole system for grooming smart legal conservatives for those positions-- they aren't going to throw it out to seat a lightweight for 40 years just because Trump likes her.
Aileen Cannon must be steaming. "When will *I* get my payoff?" she must be muttering all the time.
Aileen Cannon won't but James Ho might.
And the fact that Republicans kept accidentally picking liberals is the raison d'etre of the Federalist Society, founded in 1982. It took a while for them to get Republicans to start successfully nominating and confirming ideological judges, though.
That just shows that Republicans got more ruthless, not that Democrats lost power they never had.
When’s the next good senate map? It seems like they’re all bad, which suggests Dems have made themselves uncompetitive in the Senate.
Democrats need to expand the number of states they’re competitive in, no way around that. We need to find a way back to intra-party ideological diversity, having moderate candidates in states where that fits the electorate, and left leaning candidates in states where that is popular. The idea that we can have one person be the face of the Democratic party without losing one side or the other is an illusion. Even Obama couldn’t do that, and it’s worth noting that it was during his presidency that the Democratic party cratered in terms of numbers of elected officials nationwide.
I have come to the conclusion that Democratic leadership should loudly, publicly refute the idea that it is a "left wing" party and assert themselves as ideologically diverse. Point out that some Democrats are outright conservative, like Henry Cuellar. That what unites the party right now is not policy, but a commitment to the idea that we get to choose our policy.
The former Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh joined the party recently - not that he appears to have much power in it beyond a successful social media presence, but that isn't nothing - highlight guys like that and Kinzinger. (For a bunch of reasons it's not worth getting into, it's probably good to put Cheney in a closet.) Then, not only do you appeal directly to moderates and center-right voters, you can bask in the shower of disdain from the most hated and least respected people in American politics, hardcore leftists, which can only benefit Democrats, especially since hardcore leftists have basically left our coalition. One long Sista Soulja moment. Fund the police, bro.
Democrats are disadvantaged but Biden and Trump each won 25 states in 2020 so 2020-level results would produce a tie in the Senate. The problem is more that only 1/3rd of the Senate is up for election every time so Democrats need to win 2020-level results three times in a row.
2020 was an exceedingly weird year in all kinds of ways. The best takeaway from 2020 should be, “let’s not do that again.” Democrats almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory that year, and failed to set themselves up to stay in power in 20224.
If you give up on every state where they don't come close in Presidential elections then you are basically sentencing yourself to an absolute hard limit of 52, 54 seats, and all it takes is a Pennsylvania there and a Georgia here to put you in the minority.
For some reason a lot of people don't seem to think we have to do anything about this.
"No more Souters" is the reason the Federalist Society and its attendant efforts was founded. The result is every Republican nominee now is thoroughly vetted for years prior to their nomination to ensure complete doctrinal, and more evidently now partisan, orthodoxy.
FedSoc was founded in 1982. Souter was appointed to SCOTUS in 1990.
Not only vetted before, but handsomely compensated afterwards.
The median Senate scenario IMO is that Democrats gain no seats. Honestly Democrats losing a seat is just as likely as them winning a seat. Their best pickup opportunity is either Maine (against Susan Collins, a tough challenge) or North Carolina (another tough race). They have several vulnerable incumbents too.
"SCOTUS was 8-1 Republican in 1994"
But that's certainly not how they voted, is it
Bush v. Gore?
Was very close. Also the court was not 8:1 then…
Calling SCOTUS “Republican” in 1994 is inaccurate, in 1994 SCOTUS was not yet partisan. In terms of today’s ideological lines, only two were what would now count as hard-right (Scalia and Thomas), and even then hard to say if Scalia would have been supportive of Trump. In the 90s it was still possible for Republican-appointed justice to be liberal (also worth noting: Earl Warren was a Republican).
"it's one step removed from losing all power at the national level."
If you are going from not having the House to having the House then it's one step AWAY from having no power at the national level.
Derivatives matter. Momentum, rates of change.
And like, no shit Democrats are forecasted to lose the Senate in '26. We've known that since 2020. They are just going to have to try to beat the forecast. That is something that CAN BE DONE, especially in an out-of-power midterm. Despite the many liberals who have fully surrendered to fatalism about a world where we get to 50 seats for two years out of every six and can't do any better.
Ok but the presidency and Supreme Court aren’t on the ballot in 2026. Getting the House and picking up a couple of Senate seats is a pretty good outcome and sets them up to potentially take the Senate in 2028.
In the aftermath of Dem presidential loses, pollsters and the media are almost always overly pessimistic about the Dems taking back Congress. They are usually wrong.
The direction of the party in 2028 will be driven largely by which presidential candidate is most charismatic.
We need a cranky iconoclast from Georgia with oodles of charisma as the party's leader.
What the hell are you waiting for, David?
lol.
Yeah but charisma is weird and intangible and subjective. The "charismatic" candidate who is currently in office is absolutely repulsive, on a personal level, to a majority of the country's population. And he's been suffering from cognitive decline and often fails to even make sense when he talks (and doesn't have the excuse that Biden did, which was age-related slowing thought/action/reaction time which made his lifelong stuttering techniques stop working the way he needed them to, which made him sound confused when he was "merely" profoundly inarticulate. Trump just decides to say some words, successfully does so, and they make no sense.)
I saw someone recently talking about how we misuse the concept of "charisma" and that it doesn't exactly mean "you can get people to like you" or "you can convince people of things." Was it Matt himself?
Charisma is definitely a strange thing, but it’s something Bill Clinton, Barrack Obama and Donald Trump all have among their parties. If I pined for Peronism and traditional gender roles, Trump would be pretty charismatic. I can sort of see his charisma even though I’m not taken in by it.
Wait, I thought it was going to be driven by success in our efforts to remove restrictive zoning laws in blue states! ;)
Also, what has always been unclear in Matt's writing is who these "Democrats" are who need to moderate. It seems to be "anyone who pops up in social media at the moment." Democrats don't, and never will, go in lockstep. They don't all go out each day with the talking points issued from on high (by whom?) If Rashida Tlaib says something outrageous, is that a failure of "Democrats moderating"? If MGP says 100 centrist things, does that show that "Democrats are moderating"? It's a big party and a big tent.*
The moderating thing will only kick in for 2028 when the Democrats select a leader, one who has more standing than any other to "speak for the Democrats." That's why I wish potential candidates would declare right now, so we can begin that focused debate.
* Except for the DNC. Shut down that clown show right now, along with its land acknowledgments.
THANK YOU FOR ALL THIS, FRIEND
I swear to God, we keep having the “Democrats must moderate!!!!” conversations here on SB and we never get a satisfactory answer to “ok but we have a big unwieldy coalition without a cult leader, how do we avoid the Median Swing voter judging us by what some lefty extremist posted on Bluesky?!?” It’s like bashing my head against a brick wall.
I think a lot of this is that the SB commentariat is very conservative, since a lot of them seem to be former Republicans who got pushed out of their party when it got couped.
A lot of the discussion around here (and even Matt's arguments) seems to be:
Step 1: moderate policy
Step 2: ???
Step 3: be perceived as moderate.
To Matt's credit I think he explicitly says that step two is up to people who are better at it than him. But that leaves a lot of people who just want more moderate policy arguing amongst themselves without ever really engaging with the actual challenge of effectively communicating moderation.
Isn't Matt's Common Sense Democrat Manifesto exactly step 2? If not, what more detail are you looking for? I think he lays out these nine moderation examples in hyper detail.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-full-common-sense-democrat-manifesto
EDIT: Also I view this Third Way memo as downstream from Matt's work but this feels very Step twoy to me.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/22/democrats-woke-language-blacklist-00519421
No I don't think it is. Matt's common sense manifesto seems to argue that all Democrats needs to do to be perceived as moderate is adopt moderate policy. He lays out policy ideas he thinks are popular, he does not lay out any plan for effectively communicating those policy plans or ideas to voters. The central challenge of a moderate agenda is to get those ideas to "break through."
I don't think this is an argument AGAINST Matt's manifesto. His theory just seems incomplete - I think of it as necessary but not sufficient.
One real frustration I have with Matt is that hiss manifesto argues that Democrats need to be a big tent party that is more chill and accepting. Which will lead to that perception of moderate, but my sense is he has backed off that idea in his more recent writing. I get a little frustrated with Matt both arguing for a big tent and spending a lot of time picking factional fights that undermine the idea of a big tent party. he seems to say the right things, but practice the wrong habits (especially on Twitter).
I think the list of blacklisted words is exactly the wrong way to approach the problem. It's the same poll-tested, consultant driven approach that has brought the party to where it is today. I think Dan Pfeiffer said it well when he pointed out that Democrats need to talk like real people and a list of banned words is going about things the wrong way. https://www.messageboxnews.com/p/the-obsession-with-woke-language
I'm wondering if we can find a 2028 candidate who can put forward a more positive vision that largely ignores Trump. I think after 9+ years, the American people are tired of arguing about Trump.
To me this is like Obama's ascent in 2007-2008. The debate centered over Bush for years, and people were ready to move onto to something else. Obama didn't have to spend much time bashing Bush - Bush was already unpopular - and also slamming Bush in the 2008 campaign alienates the people who voted for him twice.
I may have selective memory but I appreciated Obama touting his bipartisan credentials and his record working with Republicans in Illinois and Congress (stump line something like "no party has a monopoly on good ideas") - and of course he famously spoke relentlessly about our greater aspirations as a nation.
We can't arrive there yet, we still have a 2026 mid-term election that will be a referendum on Trump 2.0, but after that, I hope we can find candidates who can replicate in spirit and tactics what Obama successfully did in 2007-2008.
“…put forward a more positive vision that largely ignores Trump.”
Admiral Ackbar: “It’s a trap!”
Harris did try to run on a “positive vision” last year. The themes of her campaign were “Joy” and “I want a country that works for everyone;” her running mate was an aw-shucks down-to-earth Midwestern guy who was like, “Where I come from, we help our neighbors even when we disagree.”
She got slammed for being clueless and out of touch while America was suffering from high grocery prices, never mind that a) America had one of the strongest post-COVID economies in the world and b) any informed person could see that Trump’s proposal to lower prices using tariffs was a steaming pile of bulls hit.
As to ignoring Trump - it wouldn’t have made sense, he wasn’t just a standard Republican who disagreed with her on policy, he had attempted a freaking self-coup to try to stay in power! She pretty much had to spend some time talking about it, like, “this man is unfit to be reelected for xyz reasons.”
No one believed Harris though after 4 years of Biden. And of course she said she wouldn't have changed anything, even in hindsight.
Like literally WTF. You maybe wouldn't have changed border policy? Did a bit less stimulus, or at least pulled back some of the unspent stimulus.
Trump's base came out in force even after a huge pandemic. The Democratic base didn't entirely come out after a few years of grocery price increases and some foreign policy they didn't like. Changing that makes a difference too.
Biden's team tied her hands on this.
What exactly could they have done to stop her? She could have broken with Biden even if it hurt his feelings. It's not like he was out there stumping for her very much anyway, since he put his foot in his mouth half the time when he did!
If you can't tell your team NO, then you don't deserve to be president.
"As to ignoring Trump - it wouldn’t have made sense"
I think you entirely misconstrued what I was saying. I was in no way saying Harris should have largely ignored Trump. I wasn't commenting on the 2024 election or strategic choices made. (FWIW, I think Biden's VP by its role was dealt a bad hand and idk how much pivoting to wherever would have helped)
I'm saying I hope we can get a 2028 candidate who can put forward a positive vision that largely ignores Trump, in the same way Obama largely ignored George W. Bush in his 2007-2008 ascent, and in lieu of focusing on the prior president, focus on a unifying positive vision that people will want to vote for.
Obama did not electrify crowds and young people because he was anti-Bush, and because he constantly rattled off all Bush's crimes and abuses. He prioritized messaging about national unity and vision - more so than in a way every candidate includes platitudes about it in their speeches.
This will be a lot more challenging because Bush quietly exited the political scene and went off to go do some watercoloring or whatever.
Trump, even if he doesn't try to use a loophole to run for a 3rd term, is not going to do the same, or ever let the media narrative not be on him. But I think we need someone who doesn't go chasing down every anti-Trump attack, and instead has a larger positive narrative they can tell the American voter.
Thermostatic public opinion adjustments are not all created equal. In 2022: Republicans "did well" and "won the House" largely due to thermostatic public opinion (and Biden's mismanagement of inflation). They did not have a good midterm. Thermostatic opinion also helped Republicans win the governor's mansion in Virginia, and make a run at New Jersey. If Democrats had THAT kind of mid-term, combined with some bad mid-census redistricting shenanigans from Republicans: there's a decent chance they barely win the House. They probably lose ground in the Senate.
Relying on "thermostatic public opinion" to do your work is completely idiotic. Democrats did well in 2018, for instance, because of "thermostatic public opinion" and ALSO because they ran good candidates in a variety of races (Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana, Joe Manchin in W. Virginia), AND because many Democrats ran good campaigns (think Gretchen Whitmer's "fix the damn roads" campaign).
EVEN THEN: Democrats STILL lost ground in the Senate due to a brutal Senate map, and lost crucial elections they still have not recovered from. Imagine if Democrats had managed to keep ONE of Florida, Indiana or Missouri. The Florida loss particularly stings: if Democrats win Florida, they are not as dependent on Manchin and Sinema in 2020 and 2022, and maybe Biden has a stronger Presidency. Hell: maybe the odds of keeping part of Florida blue increases.
This is why you can't just depend on 'thermostatic opinion' to do your hard work. It's a terrible strategy.
“…they ran good candidates in a variety of races (Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Jon Tester in Montana…”
Um, Benjamin, I hate to break this to you, but…
I think you’re thinking of 2024
That was precisely my point! These "good candidates" who won in 2018 turned into "bad" or at least "not good enough" candidates by 2024!
(I do hope Brown can win the next election)
I completely disagree
Let me clarify: when I call 2024!Sherrod and 2024!Tester “bad candidates,” I’m using a 100% consequentialist definition: a good candidate is one who won, a bad one is one who lost. I am not judging these men’s character or policy positions, which I believe are good! Just, I’m pointing out that they lost.
This is bad math.
Dems won NJ governor by 14 in 2017 and 3 in 2021. So the GOP picked up 11 points there in your allegedly bad midterm. Virginia had the same 11 point swing from D+9 to R+2.
If Dems have “that kind of midterm” - where they get an 11 point swing in their favor in 2026 vs 2024 - they’ll easily win Ohio and even Texas would be in play.
And if that were the only part of the mid term I’d agree. But there were many other races where republicans underperformed.
"if Democrats win Florida, they are not as dependent on Manchin and Sinema in 2020 and 2022, and maybe Biden has a stronger Presidency."
If Democrats had an additional seat in the Senate, there is a good chance they pay a lot more laws giving them some additional political advantage. They would have also spent WAY more money, likely spiking inflation even higher than it already was. Not sure that would have been a good trade off for them.
How much more could they have spent? Using existing consensus figures, a 10% increase in spending would have amounted to an additional 0.3-0.5pp added to the cumulative price level. Sort of hard to imagine that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. That's in exchange for $465b in additional spending.
This is also possible
Agree about midterms with the addendum that it takes a while steer the battleship as it were when you are talking about a giant decentralized political party in a huge diverse nation of 330 million people. If you want to see changes in how Dems run in 2028 you need to start those changes now or you could easily find yourself with presidential candidate AOC (or insert a candidate of your choice) making very well produced shorts about why we need for a national assault weapons ban and the need to ban gas powered cars in the summer of 2028 while Vance is laughing all the way to the bank.
What a nightmare that would be.
That, by the way, is what a full and open primary for the 2024 nomination would have produced. Along with a "denounce Israel and cut all ties" plank in the party platform.
Yes, yes and yes.
You can be all “lock the lefties in the nearest cellar and pretend they don’t exist” OR “we should have had a real primary, not a Harris coronation” but you can’t have both!
Yeah, the whole claim that Biden dropping out in the summer of 2023 instead of the summer 2024 would have significantly change the outcome that people like Tapper and Nate Silver make all the time is pretty ridiculous when you break it down.
The problem was not Biden (as long as he wasn't actually on the November ballot). The problem (apart from inflation) was that the Democratic brand was trash.
Cue ties w/ Israel is the median view of the median normie Democrat -
https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3929
Among Democrats
Sympathize More With?
Palestinians 63%
Israelis 13%
Is U.S. Too Supportive of Israel?
Too Supportive 63%
About Right 18%
Not Enough 9%
Sending More Military Aid to Israel?
Oppose 75%
Support 18%
Israel Committing Genocide?
Yes 77%
The median normie Democrat is not the median Pennsylvania voter.
But is the thermostat enough to win the Senate? And is it not possible that Trump can be outrageous enough to make 2026 a high turnout election? He can win on volume what he loses on margin?
I get that this is the question being asked, and one step at a time, but the party should be thinking of a grander vision to achieve 55-60 seats. 51 votes doesn't really allow you to pass much of your agenda, and it seems vulnerable to being clawed back time power changes hands.
If the economy turns bad enough over the next year, Democrats may be able to pull an inside straight. NC and OH, maybe Maine and a surprise pickup somewhere else (Texas? Nebraska?) and you've got your Democratic Senate.
It’s more of an outside straight according to the prediction markets.
Be still my beating heart! Link?
Although given Democrats', er, propensities, I'd be happier if the prediction markets said it was like drawing a pair or better.
Yes, but we cannot count on it. And should come in with a program of institution repair, and curtailment of Presidential power.
One question I have is whether/what proportion of the high propensity voters over the last ~25 years switched from voting Republican to voting Democrat, or whether this effect is more the high propensity voters of the Bush/Obama era aged out and the high propensity voters who aged in are/were always Democrats? Is this the Liz Cheney Republicans circa 2003 shifting blue or are these grown up Obama-ites Doing the Work?
I don't want to overstate this but my thesis is that it's really class based. Educated voters with good jobs and their lives in order tend to know when elections are and have the wherewithal to follow through with their intentions to show up and vote. People who aren't like this by their nature are just less reliable in general, be it to show up on election day or for anything else. That former demographic, particularly with Boomers, leaned Republican but over the last 20 years it has very slowly but surely switched.
I agree but I think it is important to remember the median low propensity voter is probably White, secular, married, employed and 55 with low interest in politics rather than being someone in a dysfunctionial life situation.
Sure, I'm taking it as a given that we're really talking about the marginal voter who may or may not show up in any particular election, is more likely to turn up in presidential elections years than mid terms, etc. That's a different voter than the median voter.
My comment was about the median low propensity voter. I think the secular bit is important, old people with fewer community ties swung significantly from Red to Blue under Trump and they are hard to get out to vote.
The data very clear show barring mass-death there's no numbers that support a peculiar idea this is just age-bulge moving through.
Professional class (white collar, middle to upper-middle income, also lower-middle income white collar) shifted Dem.
working class non-white-collar shifted Trumpy direction.
I mean, generational replacement is not a peculiar idea and 25 years is plenty of time for working class professionals to age out of one demographic segment and into another.
if one has an entirely not-numbers rooted fantasy certainly. The change magnitudes otherwise make zero sense
Look at fancy suburbs and you will see ten point swings left between 2012 and 2016, which have largely held up every time Trump is in an election but not necessarily in Congressional races.
The appealing choice for a sensible educated adult who wanted other sane people running the country has changed in recent years from R to D, even if you prefer low taxes and less regulation on the margin, speaking for myself.
Used to be, or at least appear, like hard nosed commie fighting budget hawk realists against pinko sympathizing welfare spenders. Now it’s pinko sympathizing welfare spenders against lunatics who are equally big spenders but with more debt who are also setting fire to the commons and attacking all the parts of civil society educated normal people like, like the fed and universities and the medical establishment.
Over 25 years we’re looking at markedly different of cohorts of voters. Some people have changed their minds and views, but many voters 25 years ago are now dead, or have come of age to vote. Some have even been born AND come of age to vote. Across time spans some people change their politics, but politics just also change through generational turnover.
One piece of context on the DE special election: the incumbent was an older woman who had some kind of medical condition such that she hadn’t shown up to work *once* in 2025.
Everyone in the state Democratic Party knew and covered it up, and voters were *pissed*. I live in Delaware, but not that district, and it was the only thing people here could talk about while it was happening. Even people who can’t name two elected statewide officials were talking about it. I can only imagine how salient it was for the people in that district.
I’m guessing the results were bad because everyone was mad at the Democratic Party covering up a debilitating medical condition of an older elected official who couldn’t perform her duties.
Funny, this rhymes with the DNC's shameful coverup of Biden's obvious cognitive decline during his second term, helping to gift Trump the win last November. Maybe we should take some lessons?
Lesson: strengthen opsec so that no one finds about about ailing senior politicians. Implement soviet style media control.
On a related note, I just re-watched "The Death of Stalin" last night and it hits different today than in 2017: Still hilarious. A little more harrowing.
Yea, and there's a LOT of this at the state level. There was a huge power struggle in the RI Senate, where the Senate President didn't want to relinquish control, and he ended up dying less than a year later.
I mean the president controls the party apparatus so it is shameful but it's not really like "we" can take any lessons since this was just basically Biden's people protecting him.
People in an administration have a duty to the country first. They were clearly derelict in this duty.
And the fact that he remained president for the next 6 months was criminal IMHO. He should have been in a rest home
I don't disagree. However I would say people really have a misunderstanding of what the "DNC" is, and this is what I was pushing back on.
I know Matt isn't a big believer in charisma, which admittedly is a bit ineffable, but having the candidate with the most charisma is precisely valuable with these low propensity voters.
At the very least is able to go on different media and speak like a normal and has a relatable and emotionally coherent story to tell should be minimums. And that ranked above the exact details of their health-care or climate change plan that's never going to pass.
During Trump I, there was brief period when Oprah was being pushed as the next Democratic nominee for president. I didn't like the idea (and still don't), but I am also fairly certain she would have won.
Taylor Swift would make a fine President.
I don't think most Democrats would like Swift's tax and financial regulation policies.
Big deal. You want to win.
This is why Buttigieg is the right choice, IMO.
Donald is hilarious (especially when he was younger and less crazed and senile) but he just seems like an absolute crazy person, not charismatic, to me. I don’t know how people look at his crazy uncle Facebook post tweets and think “ah, a charismatic statesman” but I guess some people really really do.
Category error here. The people who want a statesman vote Dem. Lots of people don't care if the president is one.
I meant he doesn’t seem charismatic, especially these days. He seems unhinged (to me).
I think it's worth thinking about "what turnout is desirable" from a theory perspective, and somewhat discounting "does this help my preferred cause tactically."
I've been arguing since Bush was president that broader participation in elections is not likely to be a good thing. I've been involved with organizational decision-making in a lot of contexts, and I have never seen a context where adding more people who didn't know much and didn't care much led to better decisions by any metric. I would expect voting to be the same.
Note too that turnout is fairly high for things where the effects are easy to understand and people have opinions. State Auditor "candidate A I've never heard of vs candidate B I know nothing about" get lower turnout than referenda on gay marriage.
Australia has compulsory voting and politics there seem healthier than in other countries.
An election is different to a meeting, which is how most "organizational decision-making" occurs. People don't need to give a speech, they just vote.
The fact private organisations freely spend a lot of money on surveys of "people who didn't know much and didn't care much" also indicates such information does have value.
Australia also never had a recession like 2008 that strengthened the populists like it did in Europe/USA.
They also strictly control illegal immigration. Taking away one of the biggest advantages for right-wing parties in the west.
When I was in the military I participated in a few exercises in the Western Pacific that included the Australian military. I was struck by how they described illegal immigration enforcement, which was very focused on intercepting boats and taking the immigrants to unpleasant detention camps in New Guinea. They were always very quick to point out that Australia has a tiny population and they would be flooded without extremely aggressive enforcement.
It seems to me that it's hard to separate what part of the alleged healthiness of Australian politics is attributable to mandatory voting versus other features of its electoral system like proportional representation.
They don't really have proportional representation. They do in the Senate but it's by far the weaker of the two chambers. The House is first-past-the-post but with transferrable votes.
OK, but I think the point stands that the Australian electoral system has several distinguishing characteristics from the American electoral system that obscure which, if any, of those characteristics is actually important in making Australian politics "healthier" than American politics.
Exactly this; there are good ideological reasons to favor compulsory voting but isolating its effects and pronouncing them beneficial seems very presumptive. Even 'Australians like it' (true of the ones I've met, though it must presumably be unpopular with many) doesn't actually tell you that effects are 'healthier'.
Belgium also has mandatory voting, and also has famously stable, functional governments.
What do they do to you if you don't vote? Feed you to the kangaroos?
Australian politics are healthier because of demographics, about twice the foreign-born percentage as the US. This makes people more accepting of diversity and less susceptible to the xenophobia that is damaging other countries.
Wasn’t this true of Canada until the Trudeau wave of immigration?
Also who those foreign-born voters are (lots of Asians), and are not (almost nobody here illegally, overall fewer poor people who don't speak English)
Why did Dems adopt opposition to voter ID requirements?
Voter ID is incredibly popular, 56% of liberal Democrats and 75% of Black voters support it
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/02/07/bipartisan-support-for-early-in-person-voting-voter-id-election-day-national-holiday/
It was understood (I think correctly) to be a voter suppression measure, and voter suppression used to be bad for Democrats. Democrats haven't really internalized that voter suppression is good for us now, which is why Matt is writing this piece.
Voter ID laws actually don't seem to meaningfully suppress turnout, but it wasn't as clear 20 or so years ago when this was a really hot button issue and the parties polarized around it.
the other point to remember is that when dems decided they were against voter id requirements, there genuinely were people with incompltete govt records and some difficulty presenting suitable id.
but that was a long time ago. those people are now mostly dead.
"It was understood (I think correctly) to be a voter suppression measure"
I don't think that's a correct thing to assume at all. Having a ID is a REALLY basic requirement. You need it's required for numerous adulting activities, like banking, flying on an airplane, buying alcohol.
It was always extremely insulting for Democrats to think their voters couldn't handle this basic task
When was voter suppression bad for Democrats?
From at least the 1930s until 2016, the marginal voter was a Democrat. So anything that prevented people from voting at the margin tended to hurt Democrats. So voter suppression was bad for Democrats.
That flipped since 2016. This is the point of Matt's essay -- the marginal voter is now Republican, so voter suppression is good for Democrats and they should stop wasting effort (a) registering the marginal voter, (b) encouraging the marginal voter to turn out, and (c) blocking Republican voter suppression measures.
(a) and (b) are right, but as others have pointed out, (c) doesn't necessarily follow. The Republicans are aware of all of this research too, so any voter suppression measures you see from them in the future are going to be aimed not at lowering turnout in general but rather targeting Democratic constituencies.
The good news is that there probably isn't an effective way to target educated people for voter suppression, although maybe I'm just lacking in imagination at the moment.
I'm actually not sure Republicans are, at least not at the rank and file level. I think they are more likely to see lack of stringency as a scam to let illegal immigrants vote (for Democrats of course) than as a lubricant for the moron MAGA faction that doesn't know what day it is.
Yeah, Republicans have the opposite problem from Democrats -- they haven't internalized that they're the party of low-propensity voters and need to goose turnout.
I would agree that rank-and-file R voters are not reading academic papers of any sort. But these are not the people who will be writing R legislation.
It's just hard to do (legal) targeted voter suppression measures. High-propensity voters will vote one way or another, and any un-targeted suppression will mostly hit low-propensity voters.
The best they've come up with is gimmicks like limiting early voting to one site per county, because Democrats tend to do more early voting. But early voters are high-propensity voters -- that's why they're showing up early! -- and will show up on election day if the early voting lines are too long.
I don't think actually attempting to suppress voting is a good idea. I've also always had a feeling that the debate about suppression/illegal voting was more downstream of sour grapes than any kind of empirical analysis. I read MY's point as more simple, namely that turnout efforts should be carefully targeted rather than general, not an endorsement of trying to make voting harder via introduction of various friction points.
It is difficult, but not every likely Democratic voter is a high-propensity voter even if that's who the *main* Democratic constituency is nowadays.
Most voter ID fights were messaging for both parties with little intention to actually affect elections based on the specific mechanics at issue.
Republicans wanted a message that Democrats cheat and the immigrants here illegally were manipulating elections.
Democrats wanted to paint Republicans as racists and relive the voters rights fights of the 1960s.
Certainly it should be something to give in on as it doesn't have real effect and frankly isn't so terrible overall as a fraud suppressant (not that fraud is the problem it is spun to be but having system checks against possible redevelopment is not a terrible idea - as recent years should show system complacency can be a terrible trap if something bad returns or comes in)
Voter ID requirements disenfranchise voters. That's not necessarily true in principle--you could have a universal national ID card scheme that makes sure everyone has photo ID and then it would be a modest inconvenience at most. But it is true in practice. And democratic rights matter, and they matter whatever the net partisan effect of disenfranchising people is.
Is it particularly true in practice? How common is it for someone to have no ID?
Its not common but it absolutely happens. If you're an elderly person who doesnt drive, has lived in the same place for decades, and everyone there knows you, why would you have an ID? And even if they do have one somewhere, they might forget to bring it if the only time they need it is once every 4 years.
This: older people who don't drive are the people most likely not to have ID. They are also a pretty Republican group of voters nationally, and areas where they aren't (e.g. urban areas which have more non-drivers than suburban/rural) tend to be so heavily Democratic that their absence won't affect results.
If there were lots of non-citizen immigrants voting illegally because of the lack of an ID requirement, then that would be counterbalanced by stopping them voting, but there is absolutely zero evidence that this group is at all significant.
Your inference about urban voters is wrong--if you reduce voter turnout in Detroit or Philly or Atlanta that absolutely affects results.
It doesn't affect results in Detroit or Philly or Atlanta city elections or in districts within the city - and since it would also reduce turnout in rural/exurban Michigan or Pennsylvania or Georgia, it also doesn't affect state results.
" If you're an elderly person who doesnt drive, has lived in the same place for decades, and everyone there knows you, why would you have an ID"
To have a bank account, fly on a plane, buy alcohol
Do places ask 80 year olds for ID when they buy beer?
I think this is the kind of question LLMs are pretty good with. Est. is 3% of US voting population.
Sourced this post on a 2020 study: https://www.voteriders.org/analysis-millions-lack-voter-id/
ID requirements are Jim Crow 2.0.
Which explains the 75% support amongst Black voters.
They're suffering from false consciousness!
Was the leftward cultural tilt really driven by some turnout delusion, or was the turnout story just a rationalization to cover positions that obviously didn't poll well?
It's kinda a tell that they don't seem to be conceding on this stuff. It's part of their internal factional coalition building that's been successful for them at least on those terms. Since the priority is always winning the internal factional fight first, I assume they will fall back to other arguments.
I do think that the embrace of academic progressivism by party leadership is in response to the massive turnout that Trump had with white people in 2016. Democrats had convinced themselves that the only way a Republican could break the Blue Wall was massive turnout, while Trump got. That shock, and the incorrect belief that Trump did this with radical policy proposals, produced an accelerated shift that culminated in 2020 and probably muted Biden’s victory over an unpopular and incompetent incumbent. As Matt has pointed out several times here, Trump moderated on key issues of Social Security and Medicare, if not immigration and rule of law.
I would say a lot of the movement started before Trump's election, especially just below the top leadership but also in HRC's primary campaign.
There is certainly a cardre of true believers in academia, the non-profits, staff and online left that is going to adopt whatever arguments are at hand. The leadership level is probably more complicated, but pleasing this internal crowd was always a significant consideration.
While the energy in 2016 felt like it was on the left, it should have been a tell that Bernie always did his best in the most restrictive voting setting of the caucuses.
I agree the beginnings started in Obama’s second term, with DAPA and their other ‘Buck-it’ items they pursued, as well as the police shootings during that time. I feel that the mass acceleration began in the shock of 2016
I remember arguing with people in 2016 that Bernie's strength was mostly illusory because he was only winning in the least democratic processes. The push back was ridiculous, "No, no that he's winning in caucuses means enthusiasm for him is both high and intense, and shows the people are demanding him. That intensity is the evidence that all the people demand him and in a general election he'll surely win." It was bonkers, he can't win a primary is proof he'll win a general.
The math said he was never going to win the nomination, and I think Hilary would have been better off treating him like a sure second place finisher rather than an actual threat. But I suppose that was harder to believe then, and the instinct to want to run up as big a win as possible by moving away from her original positions was hard to overcome.
This strategy actually goes back to 2010. Popular wisdom was that Obama won a massive majority campaigning on hope and change, immediately moderated upon winning office, and turned the largest majorities any president has had in decades into a series of lukewarm but decidedly centrist policies while bailing out the banks, leading to a historic drubbing in the 2010 midterms in which a huge share of his voters stayed home. It was not at all unreasonable in that context to think that bolder policy could increase turnout.
Yes there is also the theory dating back at least to Howard Dean that you can organize your way to better electoral results. I think a lot of people think with more sustained investment Obama could have built a durable election winning machine that was resilient to years like ‘10 and ‘14.
There were a lot of people who believed in this in the ‘16 Bernie camp. It seems unlikely there’s any truth to this… the number of people who wanted to knock doors for Obama was more a reflection of enthusiasm for him and correlated with his great performance rather than an apparatus that drove his victory. And enthusiasm always wanes after you win and have to start making hard choices.
I'm very skeptical that if the Democrats were to "give Trump a win" on voting by mail,. as Matt suggests, that it would help them. Based on the evidence on who votes by mail and who stays home, I think it would be catastrophic.
I am also highly skeptical that general tendencies about who is more likely to vote necessarily apply to targeted efforts aimed at disenfranchising specific communities (as GOP states try to make voting harder in urban centers, for example).
I can, however, buy that nonpartisan voter registration drives are counterproductive.
We know dems are very capable of switching voting method. There was a huge spike in voting by mail, which went down afterwards.
Another sign is that dems don't noticably underperform the fundamentals in states with little to no voting by mail.
This is a great point. Black voters are on average are less likely to vote than whites (this was true even when Dems won the black vote by more than they did in 2024). To the extent Republican states are trying to make it harder for Black people to vote, that’s bad for Dems - I don’t think you can just say “well the most dedicated Black people, who are a bluer pool, will still find a way to vote so that’s ok.” The marginal Black voter is still likely to prefer a Democrat.
Republicans also haven’t caught up with the new voting reality. Also Matt didn’t say don’t try to turn out votes, he said he targeted in your approach
The black voters least likely to vote also swung towards republicans the most. Black voters not voting because it is harder are unlikely to be a particulary democratic group.
Lower-propensity black voters just vote Democrat 80-20 instead of 95-5, Democrats still want to turn them out.
Sure we want to turn them out. But the same rules that disenfranchise low-propensity black voters will also hit low-propensity white voters. Which is a bigger and way more republican group.
Not necessarily, it depends on the rule. We’ve have had over a hundred years of experience figuring out ways to targetedly disenfranchise black voters.
What currently legal rule could be used for that?
Voting by mail is a bit more complicated than going to a polling place, so it is favored by more sophisticated people with a greater motivation to vote but few of those people would have difficulty voting in person if that were their only option. Those who could not would likely be eligible to vote absentee.
Politics is a dirty business.
...is a dirty business."
I'll grant it has its sordid sides.
But it's primmer than a parson's parlor compared to what happens in SB threads.
Commenting ain't beanbag.
Are we so confident here? It’s possible things changed from 2020 to 2024 by a lot, but the very best work indicates that raising the cost to vote will hurt Democrats.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w34149
(I am somewhat surprised that this paper has not blown up on election twitter, given its relevance; I imagine that it’s because structural IO demand estimation is quite intimidating to outsiders. It’s important though! You should read it! The methods for estimating demand curves for discrete products can be mapped 1:1 onto voting for candidates).
Progressives tend to hate economists for pointing out tradeoffs exist and then discredit our work.
I would wait and see. There are a lot of trends from this era that are fueled by Trump that won't outlive him.
It's long been a challenge to reconcile the deeply democratic instinct to maximally enable voting with the reality that low-propensity voters are conspiratorial by nature, poorly-informed, poorly-reasoned, and easily swayed by demagogues. Short-form video is only going to make this worse. Very "a republic, if you can keep it" energy.
Most voters fundamentally have a zero-sum view of the world. So this means a growing economy + taxes on the rich + a generous welfare state is a good solution when going against a pro-business party since it allows a the liberal party to position itself as anti-rich.
But the traditional liberal/labor party cannot defeat an anti-immigrant/anti-trade party because the new conservative type party offers even more zero-sum solutions. Of course opposing immigration and trade makes everyone's quality of life worse compared to the alternative, but voters would rather have their lives be worse but have others' living standards and status (more importantly) decline by more.
One takeaway for me is that anyone with the money to give should be investing in not just politics directly, but the *information ecosystem* of swing states essential to take back the House (and more importantly, the Senate) in 2026. An informed voter is a Democratic voter. And keeping those higher-propensity, Democrat-leaning voters informed, engaged, and *motivated* is crucial. Oftentimes, they feel totally isolated in what seems like a cesspool of MAGA bullshit on TV, radio, and everywhere else (amplified by social media and propaganda). So they give up. They feel alone and nihilistic. Throw them a lifeline! Imagine that you're smuggling radios into Communist Poland or beaming Radio Free Europe into the GDR!
That means, for example, targeting struggling NPR stations that just lost 25-50% of their funding and might be the only source of hard news in an otherwise local news desert: Iowa Public Radio, Georgia Public Broadcasting, Michigan Radio, High Plains Public Radio or Marfa Public Radio in Texas, WKSU or WVXU in Ohio, and WUNC or WFAE in North Carolina. It might not seem like keeping the classical music or "This American Life" on in distant parts of the country matters politically, but it absolutely does!
Maybe you even digital-subscribe to or donate to local newspapers that serve the Blue Cities in Purple or Red States, like The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Columbus Dispatch, or Iowa Capital Dispatch. You might even enjoy getting a window into another state's goings-on. Keep the torch lit!
Or, if donating to a random radio station or newspaper in a community you don't live in seems a waste, spread that money around strategically with the American Journalism Project (AJP) or Institute for Nonprofit News (INN), who directly fund hard news and investigative reporting in those states where your fellow Democrats are starved for it.
What fraction of low-propensity voters have ever listened to NPR?
Sorry, I stated this confusingly (so I've edited): It's better to say that we're nurturing the (normally) *high-propensity* voters who might not be as high-propensity without the civic ecosystem of information and community that keeps them engaged.
"An informed voter is a Democratic voter."
I guess that depends on how you define informed. There's a lot of old people that watch Fox News all day and are hard core MAGA.
Regarding the ads telling people to just go vote: When I was younger, I would tell people that I think fewer people should vote. Everybody, of course, has the right, but with that right comes the obligation of making an informed decision. If you don't take the time to understand the candidates and their positions, then don't vote! At the time, I recognized that fewer people voting would benefit Republicans, but it's an even easier position for me to take now
My instinct is that there's a moral obligation to inform yourself about elections. "If you don't take the time to understand the candidates and their positions", then you have committed a profound moral offense against the polity that you live in and benefit from.
I don't have a proper way to deal with people who don't inform themselves - either to identify them or to punish them - but they should understand that they are freeloading on everyone else and should feel ashamed of themselves.
Not voting I don't have a problem with, but not being informed is awful.
It's not something that I think there should be a law against or anything. But I will definitely think less of you if you do it.
It's remarkably hard to inform yourself, though, about the elections where you have the most influence.
For example, in the last City Council election in my small city, there were 8 candidates for 5 seats, and it's a non-partisan race. Other than the incumbents, it was hard to find out anything about the candidates positions on any topic that the council actually has control over.
Non partisan elections for low salience offices is just plausibly deniable incumbent protection
Oh, I agree with that! Way too many candidates advertise themselves based on factional positioning within the party rather than specific policies in the position they are running for (often because they don’t have any specific policies in the position they are running for).
Bring back civics education, and the moral obligation of a citizen!!!
“Barack Obama was a popular and charismatic pop culture figure”.
TLDR summation here. You can adjust to “Trump is a charismatic pop culture figure”.
So much of this turnout discourse is just that. Which begs the question; how much does this turnout discourse change if Trump is no longer running for office?
Look I made this mistake. I was under the belief that Obama ushered in a left of center new Reagan coalition. And oh yeah, because GOP voters were disproportionately older, the Dem advantage would only grow. And while I didn’t think or advocate for super lefty ideas around race or gender that became prevalent circa 2020, I did say that Dems shouldn’t be afraid to advocate for gay marriage and marijuana legalization in 20111-2012 (on those two issues I was right it turns out). So count me among those who was dumbfounded there could be voters who voted for Obama twice than voted for Trump (I’ve read the reasons why. But on a gut level it still boggles my mind).
I’m as alarmed as you are about Trump’s increasing authoritarianism. I said here the other day that I think we all need to consider this is the time for protests and even civil disobedience. I know I’m thinking about it. But assuming we still have fair elections. Trump is probably the most unique political figure in American history (seriously who else beats him). We need to really ask ourselves who’s turning out to vote if someone else is GOP standard bearer
* I listened to your podcast discussion about Trump’s weird hand discoloration. And I agree that it’s kind of a “hopium” that this means Trump is exiting this mortal coil like any day now. But man it’s hopium to say he is clearly declining and declining fast. Even if he’s not dying in the next month or next year, honestly what are the chances he has the physical wherewithal to literally run for president again in 2028.
> on a gut level it still boggles my mind
Well, on a gut level it can only boggle the gut.
The mind-gut interface is strong though.
I'd argue for Jackson as the closest analogue to Trump - and probably more unique.
This is correct.
The hopium reminds me so much of the decade-long rumor that Putin is dying.
I'll reiterate, the "Trump is dying" claim is likely untrue (at least if we're talking say next 6-12 months or something). Obviously, at his age, some sort of heart attack or stroke is not out of the question. I mean heck that's not out of the question for a healthy 25 year old. But definitely for someone approaching 80. But yeah, I'm firmly in the camp that the splotches on his hand or the purple discoloration likely from an IV are not signs he's about to keel over in like a week.
But they are definitely signs of failing health. Which again at his age is pretty normal. And you can see it in the way he speaks. Because he's been in our lives as a political figure for 10+ years and because he's been in our lives as a pop culture figure since the mid 80s, I think it's been hard for some people to realize that he actually sounds way more coherent in 2016 than now (even if he wasn't particularly coherent or sane in 2016). Point being, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say that even if he isn't in imminent danger of keeling over dead in the near future, there are serious questions to be asked whether he will be physically able to do the job as President or run in 2028.
A note of caution: once men get through "The Great Filter" when a lot of us die of heart disease in our 50s and 60s, we do tend to live longer than averages around life expectancy would suggest.
According to CDC life tables, the average life expectancy for a U.S. male *who has already reached age 79* is around 8–9 more years. That means, on average, someone his age might expect to live to about 87–88. Another way of putting this: Trump has a 85–90% chance (statistically speaking) of making it to the end of his second term.
Now, whether he's coherent and functional by then? Well, I don't consider him coherent today, but he certainly is vigorous and functional in terms of being able to do his Trump schtick 24/7 in a way that I would struggle with at half his age. He doesn't actually *work* that much, per se, given how much of his daily schedule is "executive time" (with the TV) or out golfing. But he's certainly putting in the hours as an influencer and can still get a crowd going (incoherently) for hours.
What will be interesting to see is if he suddenly and visibly falls off a cliff, vitality-wise, like Biden did. It wouldn't surprise me, at his age. Aging often comes in spurts. And, for Trump, that would be devastating. His whole thing is being strong and ALWAYS ON to dominate every news cycle.
Yeah that last part is sort of what I was getting at. Since as long as I can remember, GOP being tagged as the "Daddy" party and Democrats as the "mommy" party has been a thing. It's obviously dumb, but it almost certainly a part of why GOP is more trusted on issues like crime or economy and Dems being more trusted on stuff like health care; it's partly downstream of this dichotomy.
Trump takes this dichotomy to 14 on the "Spinal Tap" scale. In probably my most "liked" post I noted so much of what Trump administration is doing even on stuff like being anti-green tech is just "manly man man man man man" guttural machismo. News junkies like us know he's repeatedly fallen asleep at his trial, meetings with various world leaders, cabinet meetings etc. But unfortunately this stuff has been mostly page 8 news; in other words it's unlikely swing voters have any idea. However, if he doesn't have energy to do rallies or if he looks just "out of it" in a rally in 2028, I don't know how that isn't noticeable to everyone.
You're so right! There's nothing as traumatic to children as seeing your own dad become frail. And Trump is Daddy to at least a third of the country.
Their news sites just wouldn't cover it, and it would still be mostly page 8 news on mainstream sites. And even on their news sites, it would be about the hypocrisy of the media because Biden was worse. Trump's fine. Remember Biden. Biden coverup. Rinse repeat.
I see in your thinking the same thinking that lead us to Biden trying to POTUS at 82. 80 is really fucking old - way too old to be working a full time job. He's 79 and was one of 5 kids - he only has one living sibling. I think people are wildly underestimating the chance that one day the marine calls to wake him up and the phone just rings.
Especially since he apparently doesn't do much to take care of himself. And has been abundantly evident just in the past few months, he lashes out at anyone who tells him news he doesn't want to hear.
I know right now he's likely being treated by "real" doctors but how long does that last if they start telling him medical news he doesn't want to hear? This is a man who fired the BLS head for providing supposedly "bad" job numbers even though bad job numbers would actually help his case that the Fed should cut rates. This is not a man who as any self control anymore about news he doesn't want to hear.
Yeah, that part about his family history is very salient.
As are his "lifestyle factors."
On the plus side, he doesn't drink, has a lot of money, and retains high-status socially (surprisingly conducive to health and longevity).
On the downside, he drinks Diet Coke like it's his job, loves fast food, is obese, does no physical activity (unless you count his many hours on the golf course), seems to retain no faith or really any higher purpose other than himself, and (most crucially) has no real friendships or (apparently) even any intimate relationships with family.
As I commented below, I'm not betting on his dying before his term is out, but I would give 50/50 odds that he's as frail and low-energy as Biden, which will cause a major dilemma for the MAGA movement. Even if he doesn't defy the Constitution and runs again, he'd be needed as a vigorous and visible kingmaker and MC for the next GOP candidate.
And falls are a huge risk at that age. If he slips on some wet pavement he could be severely injured and at almost 80 you're never coming 100% back form an injury. And Trump is very vain - Biden switched to sneakers to reduce fall risk Trump isn't going to do that.
Being overweight at his age is actually probably mildly beneficial in terms of life expectancy since most people die of wasting diseases.
Also better protection from a broken hip.
I don't think Trump is particularly charismatic, he's just extraordinarily fortunate in his enemies.
He's particularly charismatic.
Republicans don't seem to be getting this either, judging from their love of making it harder to vote.
It is possible for people to take policy positions that you think are correct even if they work against your partisan interests.
For example, requiring voter ID is good, no matter which party is benefits