I am missing the evidence, or even the evidence-free reasoning, behind the too-soon argument with respect to electability.
Instead, I think the less of a record the candidate has, the easier it is for them to appeal to the median voter without being vulnerable to charges of flip-flopping.
Now, it may be that Democratic primary voters are unwilling to vote for someone with weak qualifications. This would be in contrast to GOP primary voters, who went with Trump in 2016. This could be an electability weakness of the Democratic Party.
IMO, Democrats spend far too much time worrying about “electability” and meta gaming and trying to appeal to the mythical “Reagan Democrats” instead of running on policies their own voters support. It worked exactly once in 1992 and the party has been chasing that high ever since.
Ah the rub is knowing what that is until after the fact, after they are successfully elected.
Something I noticed while my kids were in High School: anyone who desperately wanted to cool wasn’t. A prerequisite for being considered cool was that you just did what you did without worrying what others thought. I think electability is like that. Focus on being electable is a recipe for not getting elected.
Just like cool kids, the most successful politicians don’t follow the trends; they create them. The public suddenly always thought that way; they already knew that.
Yes, but i think you can look at a candidate and ask how much raw charisma they have. That’s what makes someone “electable”. Not having average boring positions, or worse, having no positions.
First of all, that piece of shit Katz is just pandering to his base - everybody here with half a brain (so, not his base) knows that what’s he’s suggesting isn’t possible and isn’t going to happen.
Second of all - the Likud might no longer be in power by then. Our elections are on October 27, a week before yours. Maybe we should table all Israel-Palestine aspects of this discussion until two months from now, when we have a clearer view of the future.
Unfortunately, that means your election isn’t until well into our campaign cycle. Most people will have already made a decision. With early voting and mail-in voting, many people will already have voted. And “Israel is slaughtering Palestinians, what will you do about that?” is going to be a campaign issue, regardless of how much or little influence the US president has over that.
The Israeli general elections are on October 27 2026 - that’s, what, 7 weeks from now? Well within the midterm campaign cycle, sure, but the presidential cycle hasn’t really started yet, hasn’t it?
Electability is a lot of ideas crammed into one and it has two different subsets. Estimations made before an election based on vibes, and justifications made in hindsight, also based on vibes.
I think people who weren’t following the election in 2012 would probably be surprised at how people thought it was a coin flip until election night. Then afterwards Obama was considered an electable charismatic super candidate.
Bush Sr looked undefeatable after Desert Storm, that’s why a b-tier small state governor got the nomination. Then after the LA Riots, Perot, and a shockingly damaging primary Clinton won comfortably, and the legend of Slick Willy was born.
On the foresight side, I wonder how the average democratic voter would rank Amy Klobuchar’s electability compared to a Raphael Warnock. (And this isn’t to bag on Warnock because he’s just a great dude) but I think they’d be surprised that Klobuchar is by far the bigger election night overperformer:
Yet again my Nate Silver fanboy sensibilities are triggered…
The mass media did promote the narrative that the 2012 election was going to be close, but anyone who knows how to read polls knew Obama was actually way ahead.
And governors don’t have unpopular past actions? The only way to avoid that trap is to run candidates with no political history. Which I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s a bad idea.
It won’t happen, but the Israeli government can still do a lot of damage in trying to make it happen.
I think that part of the problem is that “close” and “way ahead” are relative, and different people set different thresholds. Like, a 55-45 election is, by modern standards, a landslide, but it’s also true that 55 and 45 are very close numbers.
Obama had a smaller victory than Biden by raw vote % (and much much fewer votes), but had an insane electoral college margin. He could probably have won the election even if he lost the popular vote.
Weirdly dems have benefitted from an EC advantage most years except for 2000, 2016, and 2020.
So I claim that the mainstream media misread the polls in 2012 and you respond with a cite of…a mainstream media site misreading the polls in 2012? Real Clear Politics and most of the rest of the media was telling us it was razor thin, Silver said Obama had a 91% chance of winning and correctly picked the outcome in every single State.
So your interpretation of “mainstream media” is literally every poll ever? I’m not sure what makes one aggregator more mainstream than the other. I would say if you were following the raw polling averages in 2016 you probably had a better understanding of how close the election was compared to Silver.
Why in the world would you say that? In 2016, Silver was telling us Clinton was only a 2:1 favorite, while most other “pundits” were assuring us that Clinton had it in the bag.
Once more, with feeling: 25% probability of something happening is HUGE.
If you had four cartons of milk in your fridge, and you knew one of them was spoiled and would make you retch horribly, would you just grab one at random, suck it down, and say, “well, Nate Silver said there was only a 25% chance, so it can’t happen! It’s simply impossible!”
Silver was one of the few experts ringing the alarm bells.
True nuff. And what it isn’t is something best determined by focus groups and chasing what the polling currently says is what the median voter now says they want. That risks being where the ball was, not where it is going.
What is necessary is having a possible path. For the nomination and in the general.
Right now “electability” is selling a story of a path.Who has a path through to the nomination? Who if nominated has a path to a majority of the EC, and preferably of voters as well!
One thing in favor of nominating Pete Buttigieg: He never served in congress where he had to make controversial voting decisions.
Of course, every candidate has weaknesses. So Buttigieg having been part of the Biden administration is a general election weakness, partially made up for him not having a congressional voting history.
You do not have to explain anything, but I’m not sure why you think it a bad idea.
I don’t think the Democrats would, anytime soon, nominate a candidate with no political history. But I do not see why it is a bad idea from a general election electability standpoint.
It can be a bad idea from a standpoint of having experience that would make you a good president. But I wouldn’t push that too far. Having been a three star or higher general may be at least as good experience as having been in congress. Same with having been secretary of state.
The thing I’d worry most about someone with little political history is you don’t know what they’re in it for. People get a lot of chances to sell out or check out as they climb the ladder. I’d like to know if someone is a Fetterman or a Sinema earlier than when they’re at the resolute desk.