Yes, established that 1992 and 1996, the Bill Clinton elections, were very special years, unlike what came before and what came after. Before (‘80’, '84, and '88) white voters all leaned R by 20 plus points pretty much the same no matter what their education level. '92 and '96 saw that lean virtually disappear for both. And after the college educated white voters stayed without much R lean but the non-college educated ones went back to having the same lean. And it stayed that way from then and through both Obama elections with a pretty stable gap and with no further polarization during the elections of a Black man.
Clinton v Trump saw a change with fairly strong college educated white D support and a loss of D support from non-college educated whites.
We can agree on those facts I hope, as they are a direct read from your cite. Also from Pew is that “Trump won whites by virtually same margin as Romney in 2012” (And of course that in 1972 there was virtually gender gap between the parties but a 24 point one in 2016 …)
So I ask again before giving up on you, what was so special about Bill Clinton that he did so much better with white voters than the candidates in every other presidential election from 1980 to 2016? What kept college educated white voters from reverting to their pre-Clinton behavior of heavy GOP lean like non-college educated white voters did?
I wouldn’t vote for her unless someone truly incompetent was her opponent. Even then, I might just not vote in that contest. She’s a prime example of someone who simply trades on angry rhetoric to attempt to gain political power, in my opinion. And her policies are much too “liberal” for my tastes.
Disagree totally. What they need is to win the Rust Belt back from Trump, and the way to do that is by running a candidate who those voters feel they can relate to, and who can make an emotional connection to them. That candidate could be more progressive or more centrist, the candidate’s personal charisma and message matter more than the actual policies. I could see Biden, possibly, getting it done.
Nominating Warren would be the political equivalent of Budd Dwyer’s “nice shot.”
I’d be happy to eat my words in 2020 if she somehow makes it happen, but I really, really doubt it.
H. Ross Perot. Perot’s base was largely working-class & white, right? With working-class swingable voters heading toward Ross Perot in great numbers, the total number voting for Democrats and Republicans went down. Apparently this hit the GOP harder in that demographic? Maybe since labor unions could still mobilize them to vote Democratic.
And it’s notable that Perot was making a national-interest appeal. Since that time, the GOP have acted more nationalistic in order to get the Perot voters in the fold (if more crudely than did a nice guy like Perot). That’s probably why we now see a movement of Chinese-Americans, and other minorities that are further away from the “native-born Western Christian” stereotype, away from the GOP.
Except that one, there is no reason to think it would hit the GOP harder in way that would impact the gap and two, Perot was not anywhere near as much of a factor in '96 as in '92 yet the numbers for non-college educated voters showed the same lack of GOP lean (a lean that there had been before and was after those two elections). Nah. It wasn’t that Perot took white non-college educated white voters away from the GOP but left them alone on the D side.
Anyway, I’m not expecting Warren, or any other next Democratic nominee, to do as well with non-college educated whites as Bill Clinton did in '92 and '96. Whatever was special then was then. And while in net Clinton ended up with the same margin among whites against Trump as Obama did against Romney, I’d really like to a candidate does as well with non-college educated whites as Obama did, as well as Kerry and Gore had done. (Keeping the college educated white numbers as high or higher.)
That does not mean being Republican lite and it does mean more than just being charismatic. It means making sure that the candidate is able to communicate believably that they, the non-college educate whites, and their problems matter (too) … and to do that in a way that does not somehow communicate that the problems of others (whose turnout needs to be up there) matter any less.
As I understand it, the duties consist of watching cable news and tweeting from the toilet. Most anyone can handle that.
Much as I love Warren, her place is in the Senate. I don’t want the only issue of the 2020 campaign to be her Native American heritage or lack thereof. Give me someone who can win in the red states. Give me Beto.
Beto will come up against the “greenhorn” aspect and Trump will turn THAT into the primary issue of his campaign. If you thought he hit “little Marco” hard, wait until “Little Beto.”
At least Democrats don’t take voters into account like Republicans do, namely putting up barriers to voters and disenfranchising people less likely to vote for them.
I think the point is being missed, which is that Hillary lost the election, and she did so in large part because she wasn’t Obama. Black voters did not turn out to vote for her the way they did for Obama, and not because they voted for anyone else, least of all Trump. They didn’t vote at all. So now the idea is to nominate another extremely un-charismatic old white liberal woman.
How do you convince people to vote for her? “It’s her turn”? “Anyone who won’t vote for her is sexist/racist/homophobe”? “Anybody but Trump”? The same strategy in 2020 as in 2016, IOW?
It was said IIRC of the Bourbon monarchy after Napoleon was deposed the first time that “they had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing”.
I love Warren, and think the Senate is the perfect spot for her. She wouldn’t be a bad VP candidate, but I think she is too old and too polarizing to be elected at the top of the ticket.
Biden, another of my favorites, is also too old. Bernie is too old.
It goes without saying that I’ll vote for an old shoe before Trump, but I don’t care if the candidate is a POC, woman, or white male - surely we can find someone under 70 years old.
Assuming arguendo the premise that placating “the voters” means limiting nominees to those against whom the voters in question don’t have baseless prejudices, sure, that’s terrible.
I agree with others who think that Warren would lose if she was the nominee. She doesn’t have the charisma that Obama or Bill Clinton have, and would come off as to “professorly” compared to Trump. I think someone who is seen more as a “person of the people” would do better. Joe Biden is probably the best example of the big names, but I’m sure that some of the lesser known candidates are better at projecting that image than Warren is.
IMHO it’s because in 1992 Bill Clinton was seen as the southerner would better represent the interests of working class white people. He was the young, cool, hip guy who also happened to be a good old Arkansas boy. In contrast Bush the Elder was seen as a northeastern elite who seemed like he cared more about your bosses boss than he did about you (from the perspective of a working class white guy). He had raised taxes after saying he wouldn’t. IIRC back then the Bush clan was also more closely connected to places like Kennebunkport and Martha’s Vineyard rather than Texas. Those differences were more than enough to hand Clinton the victory in multiple southern states and the overall election.
I continue to be confused and baffled by the pre-occupation with the idea that being old is such a handicap to electability. It may indeed be a handicap to serving in office, but the important thing in this scenario is that TRUMP BE DEFEATED, and I don’t think that the age of the one challenging him is much of a factor there. People were massively enthusiastic about Bernie despite him being old. Now if someone is old and seems stiff and slow, that will hurt them, but it would hurt a younger person with the same characteristics just as much. But if you have an old guy who is aggressive and feisty and a firebrand like Bernie was and like Biden is capable of being, that will only make people like him MORE because generally people are impressed when old people are tough, animated, and passionate, precisely BECAUSE most people think of older people as being more slow, passive, and relaxed.
You get someone up on the stage like Biden who can forcefully deliver his message with a lot of vigor, bravado, and active body language, and people aren’t going to think “there’s an old guy”, they’re going to think “there’s a badass.”
Now, the question is does Biden have the energy to run what needs to be the most aggressive presidential campaign in history? THAT is not certain. And nobody can make that call except Biden himself.
Kamala Harris on the ticket for the Democratic Party as President, and probably as Veep, is just as much of a losing proposition as Warren, Sanders or Clinton.
The fact so many of my fellow leftist Democrats fail to get this point is exactly why I am more certain every day that Donald J. Trump will be reelected in 2020.