Any Democrat or Republican who goes about in real life trying to “advise” the other side on what they ought to do in order to win stands a good chance of being a concern troll, but similar to how sports coaches spend a lot of time analyzing the opposing team’s strengths and weaknesses, how well would “If I were a Democrat/Republican, here’s what I’d do” strategies work out?
If a diehard Democrat or Republican were put in charge of electoral strategy for the opposing side (and, hypothetically, put in 100% good-faith effort to win elections, just like a hired sports coach,) how well would they perform?
In their 100% good-faith effort to win elections, are they required to adhere to the party platform or can they adopt any policy position, so long as they believe it will help their party win?
ETA: for example, I sincerely believe gun control efforts are an electoral loser for Dems, at least beyond a handful of coastal states. Am I allowed to recruit pro-RKBA Dem candidates in red states to try to win back the Senate?
Depends if you’re talking about someone who is a professional campaign manager who has worked for one side their whole career, switching over to work for the other side; or if you’re asking if a partisan for one side could have good ideas for the other side.
On the former, I think James Carville could run a very effective campaign if he chose to work for a Republican; and Steve Schmidt could run a very effective campaign if he took on a Democratic client. I see folks like this as being more or less like lawyers: they are going to make their client look good because that’s their job.
However, I don’t think Ted Cruz would do well if he worked for a Dem; nor Bernie Sanders if he worked for an R. I would just see people like that as wanting to press their own agenda on the other side, to better achieve their own goals.
You can push/recommend any policy approach, any electoral tactic, as long as it wins. Think of it as the DNC hiring you to be their main electoral-strategy guy. Your job performance, like a sports coach, is measured by how many votes/seats/elections the Democratic Party wins with you at the helm.
So you can push for gun rights, whatever you want.
That isn’t how campaigns work at all.
So are you proposing something more like a fantasy football league, where the way the NFL actually works is completely disregarded, so as to make a fantasy football participant feel like he’s doing the job of a “coach,” even though what he’s doing and what a real coach does are completely different?
In that case, it comes down to how much people value labels as opposed to actual policy differences. If people rationally ignored labels, then the same policy positions that win when labeled as one party would still win when labeled as the other party. I’m sure it wouldn’t work out that way, because people do irrationally value labels, but please don’t ask me to quantify how irrational people are.
Sure, no party would hire a campaign manager that way. But there are lots of people who leave comments to the effect of “If Republicans or Democrats would do this, they’d win more votes, but they’re too blind to do so” (and the R’s or D’s being the opposite of the commenter’s own political allegiance.)
So I just wondered how well each side knows what the other side needs to do to win. Sometimes your adversary knows your weaknesses best, just like in sports - they know that you have a weakness in your pass protection, your rebounding, etc.
Edit: For instance, there were many Democrats a few years who argued that Republicans could make inroads in the Hispanic vote by supporting a path to citizenship, because many Hispanics are socially conservative and religious and would support the GOP if it weren’t for the immigration issue.
I always advise Democrats to support a middle-of-the-road candidate in 2020, and to avoid a progressive champion that ticks the right diversity boxes this go around. It’s certainly not concern trolling. The only way Democrats lose is by nominating a contentious candidate with policies that lack broad appeal. For example, I can’t imagine a racial plank is going to be particularly helpful in marshalling the votes required to win the presidency.
Every Republican presidential loser has been a conservative white guy. They shouldn’t nominate any more of those.
Every woman the Democrats ever ran for POTUS has lost. They should stop doing that.
Every winner too.
I think that was his intended joke/sarcasm.
You may be still missing my point – what you’re describing is not what campaign managers do.
The vast majority of those are just people wishing the other side saw controversial issues more like they do: like liberals telling conservatives to embrace universal health care to win votes; or conservatives telling liberals to take pro-life positions to win votes. In reality, campaign managers spend more time focused on how to communicate the benefits of their candidate and the drawbacks of the opponent, not telling the candidate what positions to take.
Let’s remember that primary voters select candidates democratically. The issue I keep coming back to is that your scenario is built around someone telling candidates what positions they need to take, as opposed to things like where to campaign, where to fundraise, how to use volunteers, reading data, etc.
It’s obvious that there is a lot of money associated with the telling of political parties, sports teams, financial investors, car buyers, clothes purchasers, razor users, etc. as to what is best for them. The object of these “advisors” is to influence voters, investors, and consumers choice, and get paid to do so. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
Currently, Democrats won’t work with Republicans. Democrats won’t even talk to Republicans. Republicans think Democrats have more loose screws than a Studebaker. If a diehard Democrat or Republican were put in charge of electoral strategy for the opposing party, the rank and file would not follow their advice. And they would probably oust from their party whoever made such a selection possible.
The Democrat and Republican leadership, and their “advisors”, are only guessing/hoping that their strategy will result in wins for their party. And they have their own guidelines. The proof only comes after the election. After an election, political parties will either be happy that their strategy worked, disappointed that their strategy didn’t work, or surprised that their strategy didn’t work. If they’re happy or disappointed, it’s because they understood the other parties strategy. If they are suprised, it’s because they didn’t listen to, or chose to ignored, what their opponents were actually saying. There have been many surprise results recently.
Good government is based on cooperation, and compromise. Neither side is currently willing to cooperate, or compromise. Only time will tell which parties strategy will result in a win. Turning party stategy over to diehard opposition party member would be a fruitless, but hysterical, endevor.
The problem is if you have certain policy preferences, do you hold those policy preferences because you want those policy preferences to be enacted, or because that’s the way to win votes?
If I’m in favor of gun control, why would I advocate for Democrats to abandon gun control, even if that meant more Democrats would win more elections? What’s the point of winning an election if you can’t get what you want by winning elections.
To take another example, 10 years ago same sex marriage was seen as a sure-fire electoral loser. I’m sure there were plenty of Republicans who would have said that if only Democrats would abandon gay rights they’d win more votes. And rather famously, lots of Democrats refused to endorse same sex marriage for exactly that reason. But now in 2019? It’s a political black mark to have been vocally against same sex marriage.
Or to take another example, Republicans could win a lot of votes from immigrants if they could only stop bashing immigrants. Hispanics and Muslims are naturally conservative people, who go to church and so on.
But if they embraced immigrants then they’d lose the white nationalist vote, and the Islamophobe vote. That’s a pretty large voting block. And how many Hispanic and Muslim voters are there anyway? They’d gain a few immigrants, but lose their white nationalist soul.
I the near term I don’t think the Republcans have much choice but to keep on their current path, of doubling down on fear, loathing, and voter suppression.
I’d like to be able to say that the Republicans should grow a spine, stand up to Trump and show that they can be the adults in the room that is willing to put country before party and get things done, but I don’t think that would actually work for them. Their brand is so damaged, that even if they did a 180 degree turn on their policies, there is no way they are going to be able to make any pick-ups the feminist or minority vote. So the best the can do is get as much leverage as they can from white men, and evangelical women. But this base has been co-opted by a pernicious positive feedback loop with right wing media. They want to watch right wing media because it supports their distroted view of the world, and they get that distorted view of the world because that what the media give them, and their media gives them that because that is what they want to watch. If the Republicans started being reasonable, these voters would simply kick them out and replace them with someone unreasonable.
The only bit of tweaking to their platform that I think would be helpful would be to go full populist and cut their cozy relationship with the wealthy. Radical policies based on raw emotion are not very good for business, and their based are beginning to figure out that the rich getting richer ain’t helping them none. So eventually they will have to choose whether to be the party of the wealthy or the party of the angry rural voter. With social media an avid base is better at getting the word out than deep pockets and TV ads, and if they lose the angry rural voter they got nothing left. So pick the former over the latter.
Finally do what they should do what they can behind the scenes to hamstring Trump. They can’t oppose him directly because they will lose their base, but the more time he spends in office the more likely he is to do something so bad that even that base will be unable to deny the reality. They’re probably better off having him lose in 2020 and going back to the pure obstructionist complaining that they do so well for four years, the Dems will get blamed for the bad state of the country after 4 years of Trump, and then they come back with someone like Cruz or Ryan to take over in 2024. Much better than having the country burn down on their watch.
It’s crazy to advise the Republicans to shaft the donor class. The donors pay the bills, the deplorables provide the votes.
If I were gonna advise the Republicans, I’d advise them to keep doing what they’re doing. Serve the needs of the donor class, pass those tax cuts for the rich, and make a lot of noise about the demands of the deplorables but never do a goddam thing for them. Where are the deplorables going to go? The Democrats?
There’s a lot of talk about how Trump’s victory proved that there’s a huge electoral market out there for conservative populism. But as I pointed out earlier, what’s the purpose of winning elections? To enact the policies you favor. The point of winning elections as a Republican is tax cuts for the rich, all the other stuff is for the rubes.
I’ve heard conservatives say this, but the problem is that ‘far left’ democratic proposals are very popular.
High taxes on the rich, action on climate change, single payer health care, breaking up the banks, higher minimum wage, etc. These are policies with 70% approval from the public.
Meanwhile supply side tax cuts and 0 action on gun control are not very popular, but the GOP keeps doing them.
It is bothersome when the right tells the left ‘stop supporting policies that 70%+ of the public support, it makes you look radical’.
At the end of the day, about 80% of the public know which side they’ll vote for long before the election. Its the 20% who barely understand the issues or the parties who decide elections. They have to be appealed to.
I’m not sure if this is in the spirit of the OP, but ISTM that Democrats still basically engage in politics in the old-fashioned way: being respectful most of the time and giving nuanced, technocratic responses on dumb proposals like the wall.
And also you had the whole thing of democrats voluntarily imposing a spending limit on themselves recently. Still acting like both sides will give concessions.
It doesn’t work in the current environment. Republicans and conservative media paint Dems as hysterical regardless, and the media in general will “both sides” everything. So now being as forceful, and as obstinate, as the Republican party is absolutely what’s called for.
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On the flip side of the coin, as much as it hurts to say it, ISTM trump could win another term. As low as his approval rating is, it’s ridiculously high given all the scandals and fuck ups; so the cult of personality is very strong.
I think if the economy holds, he throws out some goodies at the last minute to working/middle class and mueller’s investigation is a damp squib is all it will take for the dumbest thing to ever happen to happen again.