The subject has come up many times in may threads and time for it to have its own thread I think. Of course real world is that no single candidate plays to just one theory and the the best candidates appeal to several theories at once. And some of these theories overlap some. Those caveats aside, which would you argue is the more important theory to think about when thinking about electability? Or even which is the least important? Feel free to make caveats for the general election vs local ones and specific to the states that are most electorally vital for the general election. When possible please bring data and an evidence based argument.
Excite the young progressive base.
Maximize turnout of Black and/or Hispanic voters.
Sweep the suburbs and increase their turnout. (Inclusive but not limited to keeping the Romney-Clinton voters.)
Win back the Obama voters who went Trump/3rd party/stayed home.
Appeal to rural voters and other non-college educated white voters decreasing the magnitude of the R advantage there.
Focus on those who want “change” and who really don’t care what the change is as long as it gives them another draw than the cards they have now.
I’m not including a focus on women voters as I personally believe the group is too heterogenous to focus on other than as overlaps with the other groups, but feel free to disagree!
Get the educated voters in the burbs that may have thrown up their hands with none of the above in 2016. That’s where the Comey letter may have hurt the worst. They’d come around to voting Clinton and then just didn’t want 4 years of ‘but her emails.’
I’m sorry but I don’t give a damn about the young progressive base if they even exist. Tweeting isn’t voting. Young people don’t turn out.
I don’t think there are a lot of Obama/Trump voters that actually think. Someone who voted against Romney because he looks like a prick boss who announces layoffs one day and then record executive bonuses the next isn’t a reliable voter. Especially if they turned around and wanted to smack that smirk off of Hillary’s face in 2016.
The rural and non college white voters are gone. They’re never coming back to our current Democratic Party.
Change voters are often flaky as well. They may want change but that might mean taco Tuesday at a new place on election day while not voting for anyone.
As far as the Presidential election goes I think the emotions of the electorate are the most important thing and I think there are two big aspects in the current climate.
Unfortunately the wings of the Democratic party are becoming more fractured (I won’t go as far as to say polarized because I think most of each group will still end up showing up to vote for any Democrat in this election). What this means is that it’s tough to come up with a set of policies where you hit all the Democrats and swing voters, and the best way to grab people across ideological lines is to appeal to emotion. I think there has been a huge undercurrent of resentment and anger at the establishment since the recession, and McCain, Romney and Clinton were all hurt because they tried to treat their elections as normal. I don’t actually think most of the group of angry voters wants you to specifically advocate for some policy that they see as a remedy or just sticking it to the establishment as much as they want to feel like someone “gets” their anger. I think this is essentially why Trump was able to pick up a lot of independent voters.
The other thing is that voters value “authenticity” and don’t want to feel like someone is just feeding them buzzwords. I’m using authenticity in quotes because this is the kind of thing that Trump despite being the most dishonest politician in decades gave them that Clinton didn’t. Trump’s brand of “authenticity” is essentially that he never hides how petty he is and he never apologizes. The Democrats don’t have someone like this and shouldn’t try to nominate a full-blown demagogue even if it was an option, so the next best thing they have is to stick to their guns. Whether a mainstream democrat or a progressive wins, they should avoid trying to pivot to reassure the other wing. Normally, this makes a ton of political sense but I think in the current climate, the public has more respect for people who make a public show of sticking to their guns than people who take on their rivals’ viewpoints. So this obviously means if you get Sanders, he should stay on Medicare for All the entire campaign, and likewise for Biden with sticking to the public option.
I recently saw someone mention - I think it was on this board, actually - that Democrats do well in Presidential elections when they nominate someone who is **young **and charismatic.
JFK (fits)
LBJ (kinda fits, not young but charismatic in his own way)
Carter (doesn’t really fit but fallout from Nixon pretty much guaranteed a win)
Mondale (fits)
Dukakis (fits - not charismatic)
Clinton (fits)
Gore (fits - not charismatic)
Kerry (fits - not charismatic)
Obama (fits)
H. Clinton (fits)
Seems like there’s a little merit to the theory, if it’s not infallible. But if so, why? Does young and charismatic energize the base? Or suburban soccer moms (to be a bit reductive)? Do you need someone who does both of those things?
Sweep the suburbs and increase their turnout. (Inclusive but not limited to keeping the Romney-Clinton voters.)
Win back the Obama voters who went Trump/3rd party/stayed home.
Appeal to rural voters and other non-college educated white voters decreasing the magnitude of the R advantage there.
Excite the young progressive base.
Focus on those who want “change” and who really don’t care what the change is as long as it gives them another draw than the cards they have now. (Although that overlaps with the Obama-Trump voters some.)
I’m currently most convinced by Nate Cohn’s take on a NYT battleground state poll in November. The two biggest chunks of low turnout voters to get out and/or to persuade are: “affluent voters repelled by the left on economics”; and young non-white non-college educated voters who are relatively culturally conservative and for whatever reason not so outraged at Trump’s outrageousness.
I don’t see any of the current candidates having a huge advantage when it comes to the general election day in mobilizing Black and/or Hispanic votes. Maybe one who’d do less well than Clinton did (Buttigieg). The best way to mobilize the demographic in my mind is not pandering to the identity but running up the turnout in the cities and suburbs where they live and focusing on the issues that matter to them as Americans more than BLM activism does. So it is most important but not an item that discriminates between the candidates much. Given Cohn’s bit above a hard progressive might HURT turnout with the segment that needs to be convinced to turnout or be persuaded. Midterm results showed how much this group matters.
I fear some suburban affluents sitting it out with a hard progressive platform, disgust with Trump notwithstanding. Steyer is correct on this. Running on items that this group fear will blow the economy up is foolish. Buttigieg’s point about class warfare and exclusion is also on point. You cannot risk making the upper middle class feeling like they are the enemy. They also delivered important results for midterms and likely are the critical piece for flipping the Senate hopes.
Obama-Trump voters? I currently don’t see them as on the moderate side of the scale but on the progressive side. I think they just like to shake things up and don’t care what the shake is so much. An economic populist pitch can sell a few of them. But most will likely stay with the ongoing shake up that is Trump.
Undercutting rural voter GOP strength is with a VP and some messaging that signals an appreciation of the real problems they have. Clinton had the plans for rural America but she failed at communicating any empathy for them. This is Klobuchar’s on the money bit: they have to feel the candidate knows them - or at least gives a shit.
Young progressives who are engaged? Like other engaged Democrats they understand that the choice between trump and any of the viable candidates left is stark. Pandering to a the few who might stay home if not a progressive at the top of the ticket potentially costs too much otherwise.
It’s simple. Come Election Day, 40% of people will vote Democrat and a similar percentage will vote Republican. Those votes are effectively already cast, and it’s why Trump’s approval rating hasn’t dropped below 40% in four years. The election will be decided by the 20% in the middle and they always vote for the most charismatic candidate because they’re typically low information voters and the charismatic candidate makes them feel better than the other guy. It’s 100% all about charisma. Everything else is just so much fluff and wonkish nonsense.
Republicans value the direction of the courts more than Democrats. I think only now are people who lean liberal, some very liberal, but sat out of the 2016 election are now understanding that. 2016 was more important that 2020. Because Trump might get booted out but Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have a job for life on the highest court of the land and those nearly 200 federal judges he has appointed will be around for decades too. The damage that is going to do to reproductive rights, civil rights and religious rights will be with us for years. The fact that people are holding a bated breath whenever there is an update on Ginsburg is the ultimate indication of this. McConnell will rush through to get that seat filled if something happens to her this election year.
I don’t know if getting black turnout up is possible. Its normally 60% in a presidential election, and was 70% under Obama. But I doubt it goes up to 70% again.
What tactic works best in the northern midwest? There are a lot of suburbs filled with college educated people there who vote, peeling some of them off would flip those states.
The Sanders-supporter mantra (‘he’ll turn out new voters’) was completely undercut in Iowa. Perhaps New Hampshire will be different.
The enthusiasm gap (the first point from the NPR article) could be partially attributable to the hassle of caucusing—the commitment of hours, the need to be free for those particular hours, etc. A fairer test: New Hampshire (again).
Voting for Obama was also a special case. None of these candidates are Obama. But it cannot be dismissed based on caucusing being a hassle as it is was as much of a hassle in 2008 and 2016.
I was more surprised that Warren’s vaunted on the ground organization didn’t get people to the caucus events.
I know I’ve mentioned it before but 2008 was unique in another way. The caucuses were on January 3 2008, a Thursday. Many people are off work and school that 2 week period of Christmas and New Years, making turning out to a Thursday night caucus much easier with no work on Friday.
Probably doesn’t explain it all, but is a definite factor. Last Monday people caucused after a day at work perhaps made more stressful with coworkers calling in sick with brown bottle flu after super bowl parties.
EVERY election beginning in 1952 has been won by the more charismatic of the two candidates, with 1964’s LBJ over Goldwater the only close case. (If you don’t think Trump is very charismatic you need a new dictionary.)
I guess this is an argument for nominating Sanders.
Maggie Koerth had a good article about this on 538 the other day. TLDR quote:
I’m going with the “base turnout” theory, defining “base” as “any demographic group which is majority Democrat”. I don’t think there are any really “swing” demographics anymore. Like, educated suburbanites are* less *reliably Democratic than blacks, and rural white non-college folks are less reliably Republican than white evangelicals. But all other things being equal, increased suburban turnout is still super good for Dems.
In the context of this Presidential election, I feel that there is only one candidate who is capable of healing the divisions within the Democratic party and bringing the moderate and leftist wings together to work towards a common goal. That candidate is Donald Trump.
There are a few centrists who wouldn’t vote for Sanders, and a few leftists who wouldn’t vote for Biden, but there’s no real way to know which group is larger, and in any case the operative word there is “few”.
All of these, but IMO some groups take more effort per vote than other groups. For instance, young progressives in the UK turned out to vote in 2017 for Labour, but not in 2019, or the 2016 referendum. They are less reliable voters and it’s harder to get them to turn out to vote in the first place.
Obama had gotten young progressives to vote for him, especially in 2008, but you can’t count on lightning striking twice. Obviously they should be encouraged to vote, but there are more reliable groups (such as middle-aged educated suburban dwellers) to focus on first.
Also note that focusing on one group can, sadly, hurt you with other groups. For instance, pandering to hyper-left supporters loses you centrist support.
Right, but OTOH, although the young progressives are less reliable voters, they’re always going to vote Democrat when they do vote (or vote Green, which is functionally the same as not voting), while a significant group of suburbanites will vote GOP.
For instance, say you have a group of 200 voters, 100 each of young leftists and centrist suburbanites.
If you nominate a centrist, half the leftists will vote Democrat and half won’t show up. Say 90% of the suburbanites will show up and two-thirds will vote Democrat. So the Dems win that group 110-30.
If you nominate a leftist, 85% of the progressives will vote, but only 60% of the centrists will vote, and half of them will vote Republican. So that’s a slightly better scenario, with the Dems winning 115-30.
Of course, I just pulled all those numbers out of my nether regions; you could get different results by plugging in different assumptions. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know what the “real” numbers are with any accuracy.
I think 4 and 5 are pretty much the same group of people. 6 is a mixture of those people and hardcore progressives.
The strategies which are most at odds are 1 and 3; anything that helps you with young progressives is likely to hurt you with suburbanites, and vice versa.
Hard to know what strategy would be best for maximizing minority turnout, given that the strategy of actually nominating a minority seems to be off the table. Right now Biden is leading among blacks, Sanders among Hispanics and “other” minorities. Since Hispanics are much less reliable voters than blacks, that’s maybe an argument for Sanders.
Sanders also does less badly than other Dems with the 4-5 group, white low education voters. But that group is overwhelmingly Republican now, so getting maybe a third rather than a quarter of their votes isn’t a game-breaker; it’s certainly possible that that gain could be outweighed by losses among Romney-Clinton types.
So Sanders is best with groups 1 and 4-6, a moderate would be better with group 3, and the magic eight ball is hazy wrt group 2. But you could plausibly argue that group 3 is more electorally significant than all the other groups put together. So in conclusion, who the hell knows?
I think it’s just demonstrating that charisma is best defined in hindsight! I wouldn’t agree that Nixon (!), Carter, either Bush or, yes, Trump, were obviously more charismatic than their opponents. Trump is a fat, inarticulate blowhard with a bad combover.
But even if you do want to posit that Trump was clearly significantly more charismatic than Clinton, that’s still not strong evidence for the charisma-as-destiny theory, since Trump* just barely *won.
If you’re a Buttigieg supporter, I guess you could point out that young handsome guys with skimpy resumes are 2-0 in that period (4-0 counting re-elections), but it’s too small a sample size to hang any major conclusions on.
(I should have worded my original post in such a way as to include facts like these from dalej42.)
I’ve never been able to see this (Sanders as being “charismatic”). His personal following certainly is passionate, I’ll grant you, but I’m not so sure it’s about Bernie as a person, so much as it is what he’s promising. A lot of people love that “us versus the Evil Corporations” storyline. There’s even the prospect of wealth being re-distributed!
Disclaimer as always: If Sanders is the candidate, I’ll vote for him. Even if he did break his promise to release his health records:
Today he said that what he’s released is “substantive” :
So…okay, whatever?
As for the effect of this on electability: Democrats tend to value transparency in a way that Trump voters obviously do not. So Sanders may have to revisit this issue, to stop negative talk.
Bernie should just get some pill mill doctor to write a letter taking about how he’s the healthiest human being alive, all his numbers are perfect and his energies are so well-balanced that he doesn’t urinate or defecate. And that he has really really big hands with long fingers. For serious
The Democrats need to learn to play the game they’re playing. I almost threw my dinner plate at my TV on Friday night when Elizabeth Warren started babbling about how she didn’t need billionaire money as long as everyone sent her $5.
Buttigieg was the only one that made any sense on the billionaire money thing, pointing out that Trump has a very well-funded campaign that they’ll need to fight against.
Besides we are going to be up against the nastiest dirtiest rat-fuckingest campaign in the history of Presidential campaigns. Biden’s dead in the water, he’s not going to survive Ukraine. The Senate is going to start investigating and I wouldn’t put it past Barr to start a very public DOJ investigation. This is where we are now.
And they will go after Sanders, they’re just holding back so we don’t have time to regroup and recover. They’ll go after his wife and her role in the problems with Vermont College, they’ll hint at criminality. They’ll go after the time he spent in Russia, they’ll have half the country thinking he’s a Manchurian candidate planted by Joe Stalin.
Just keep this in mind before you get worked up by the progressive vs moderate schisms. Republicans are amplifying this stuff and working you up. You’re being, to paraphrase Ted Cruz “being copulated by a rodent”.