AKA my theory on why Democrats struggled in the 2020 and 2021 elections.
I used to think that the problems Democrats faced in mid-term and off year elections, especially with a Democratic incumbent, were something like this. Those on the far left get disenchanted with the lack of progress and stay home. Maybe some moderates flip flop, or vote Republican to “keep the Democrats honest” or because they genuinely prefer a divided government that doesn’t accomplish much of anything. I now think both of those ideas, while maybe playing a slight role in the 2020 and 2021 elections, are missing the biggest issue.
My guess is that what has happened is Trump and the Republicans tapped into a fairly large group of people who are conservative but previously didn’t vote. All the current stuff being spewed by the far right, about cancel culture, the various anti-vaxx and anti-mask stuff, the stolen election narrative, etc. finally succeeded in mobilizing a large. group of white, high school educated voters who previously stayed home, even as recently as 2018.
By focusing on the failures of the 2016 election, which probably was due more to disenchanted liberals staying home and flip floppers voting R because we had just had 8 years of a D, Democrats are missing the mark on what they should be doing. How this group of voters can be demobilized is a difficult question. Even being open about this being the primary problem that needs solving would, ironically, run the risk of painting Democrats as the ones wanting to suppress people from voting. The only option that I can think of is to come up with ways to fight all the false information that is out there and getting these voters riled up.
What do you all think? Am I off the mark here, or do you all think this is what happened in 2020 (which should have been a bigger D victory, maybe not a blowout but at least a solid win) and this year (which in VA should have at least been a close D win)?
As I just posted, the advice given by Youngkin’s campaign manager this morning on CNN about why Democrats lost in Virginia and are poised to continue to lose is their incessant obsession with Trump and tying Republicans to Trump.
GOP got behind Trump and remain influenced by him and his acolytes. There is no shaming them out of that and Democrats need to stop wasting time, energy, money and ads in attempting to continue to tie Republican candidates to Trump. It does nothing to change minds of those who can be persuaded to vote Democrat. It’s like listening to your friend complain endlessly about a bad relationship. At some point you get tired of the whining and their inability or unwillingness to move on. There is no such thing as bad publicity when it come to Trump. Trump should become persona non grata in every Democratic campaign going forward.
That doesn’t solve anything. If Democrats stop doing that, it won’t make a difference, because it’s Republicans who keep tying themselves to Trump and taking up his mantle. Democrats aren’ t out there making Trump continue to hold rallies. Democrats aren’t out there talking about cancel culture and woke mobs (I assume at this point that Aaron Rodgers isn’t a Democrat). Democrats aren’t out there talking about how Real Americans need to Take Their Country Back. It’s Republicans doing all those things.
Even granting your analysis of what happened in 2016, I think your conclusion is an odd one. Why is it the “primary problem” that you need to get people to not care as much about the election, if what happened in 2016 was that your own team didn’t vote? While it’s of course true that one of the factors that works in your favor in an election is low turnout for the other side, I don’t see how you arrived at this single solution being the only one that matters, without any obvious alternatives.
What about offering something for the disenchanted people and the people who don’t vote, which according to your calculus is the thing that made for Trump’s win? I am confused by how increasingly far away from anything like actual political issues people who don’t want Trump to win keep getting, in the attempt to keep Trump from winning.
The mistake Democrats are making is that they are treating everyone who isn’t a Democrat like they are Trump Republicans. Youngkin was not a Trump Republican. McAuliffe insisted on tying him to Trump. It didn’t work. So time to try something else in prep for 2022.
There’s an opinion by several people who did the data campaign for Youngkin in the WaPo. The comments are, as you might expect, full of people calling the authors liars and other things. Like Youngkin or hate him, when people who were involved in the campaign actually tell you what they did to win (and it’s not like they had to write this opinion) and your response is to go back to all the “Trumpkin”, “CRT liars”, “activated racists”, and so on, you’re missing what could be valuable information. Now, does the predictable rage of some commenters on the WaPo matter? Not really. But I hope the Democrats that actually matter when it comes to campaigning pay some attention.
I’m not saying it’s the only problem, I’m saying it was the largest contributing factor in Democrats not having a blowout win in 2020 and a small victory in 2021. Those voters aren’t going to vote Democratic, no matter what the Dems do or say, so the only option is to try to demotivate them.
So your strategy is that since you can’t motivate the disenchanted voters to come out to vote Democrats, let’s demotivate them from voting for Republicans? If you can’t persuade a person to do something, what makes you think you can persuade them not to do something else?
You’re saying that you aren’t saying it’s the only problem, but then you’re also immediately saying “the only option.”
Personally, I 1. don’t accept that “those voters aren’t going to vote Democratic,” because by the rules you’ve established, these people were not partisans before 2016, and I 2. don’t accept that if it were true that those people would never vote for a Democrat, the only option remaining would be to focus on voter suppression. What about the people that stopped voting for you in 2016 because they were disaffected? You’re just assuming they’re coming back because they’ve learned their lesson?
I’m assuming they never went away, based on the results of the 2020 and 2021 election. Joe Biden got the most votes ever for POTUS, followed by Trump in 2020 as the second most ever. McAuliffe (2021) got the second most votes ever for VA governor, second only to Youngkin, who got the most ever. This isn’t about liberals (at least those liberals who are regular voters) staying home, it’s about a new batch of people who were already conservative but didn’t vote now becoming voters.
If that’s true, doesn’t that lend credibility to the argument that tying Republican candidates to Trump is an ineffective strategy for Democrats? They appear not to have been discouraged from voting for Youngkin.
I agree with this part, but disagree that it’s only Democrats doing so. Many Republicans are still loudly trumpeting Trumpism. And as I said in the OP, the Democrats are clearly following the wrong strategy. I’m just not sure what the correct one should be, other than that in part it should involve things like trying to convince Zuckerberg that Facebook should delete obvious lies about things like anti-vaxx rants, elections being stolen, etc.
2020 wasn’t a big win for the Democrats because the GOP has successfully tied tons of pandemic-related problems to them in voters’ minds. It’s getting worse because the obvious Trump incompetence is in the rear view mirror but people are still impatient about how long it’s taking to get back to normal.
Nothing else is going to matter enough to over come that as long as people see all the things they hate to see that relate to the pandemic.
Youngkin is a Trump Republican. He hasn’t repudiated the attempted treason of Trump – not even close. He tried (successfully, apparently) to deceive the voters into thinking he wasn’t.
That could be part of it as well. My hypothesis is based on the absolute numbers of votes cast in 2020 and 2021. These weren’t 1994 or 2010 style elections where the numbers were low, seemingly due to disenchanted far left types stayed home. These were high turnout elections where Democrats got most of their voters out, and that was just barely enough (2020) / still not enough (2021).
The conclusion I drew from that is that the Republican base is larger than the Democratic base, and if elections continue to be a matter of whose base is bigger, Democrats are going to be on the short end of the stick a lot more often than they realized back in, say, 2018. The unstated assumption (which I’m now obviously stating ) is that people’s political preferences are mostly locked in, even among new voters who mostly stayed home back in the days before Trump. Trying to change their minds probably isn’t going to work. The best Democrats can do is hope they lose their motivation and start staying home again.
In relation to that are decreasing approval ratings:
Also,
Americans overwhelmingly support the infrastructure bill Biden is about to sign, but they are split on the more expensive and further-reaching “Build Back Better” act being debated in Congress. Only 1 in 4 say the bill’s provisions would help them and their families.
) is that people’s political preferences are mostly locked in, even among new voters who mostly stayed home back in the days before Trump. Trying to change their minds probably isn’t going to work. The best Democrats can do is hope they lose their motivation and start staying home again.