By the same theory, I see another senator who is progressive enough to be able to win Democratic primaries and yet has a proven ability to attract swing voters. This is New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, who, back when he was a House member, twice won districts that went for Trump. The second time (2020), it wasn’t even close, with Kim running 8 percent ahead of Trump.
Not white? Correct. And Kim’s ability to win in a Trump district shows to me that, at least in his case, it doesn’t matter. And he somehow did it without becoming a centrist like Joe Manchin or Jared Golden.
This suggests Shapiro. Pennsylvania has the most electoral votes of any swing state, and he remains popular here.
I feel a little dirty switching back from data based punditry to speculation, but it seems to me pretty obvious that there are some political similarities between the swing states, as summed up in the word Pennsyltucky.
Also, even if Pennsylvania is no more politically similar to Arizona than we are to California or the Bronx (most of AOC’s district) — which I doubt — there is the matter of candidate experience. I want a candidate who has won a tough general election race before.
I think back to 2008, when I attended an Obama rally. People remember him as “yes we can,” as vapid hopeful puffery, but that wasn’t the rally I attended. No: he spent like half an hour of the rally laying out a detailed 3-point plan for improving health care, involving digitalization of record, reform to insurance, and something else. It was super-wonky.
Wonkiness gets a bad rap. You can’t just mutter into a spreadsheet and hope to win elections; but I do think that running on a specific platform of specific changes is a good idea. That’s what Newt Gingrich did in 1994, to deadly effect, and that’s what I hope the Democratic candidate will do.
Hell, think of how often you heard Harris driving home the accomplishments of the Biden administration and talking about specific legislation she would propose. Then think of how often you heard her talking about glittering generalities and making fun of Trump’s weirdness. I heard a helluva lot more of the latter than the former.
Have a slogan, by all means. But folks are dissatisfied, and a specific plan for rebuilding our communities that isn’t “Persecute trans folk and deport all foreigners” is going to be vital; and the candidate needs to run on these specifics and be able to communicate their value.
Obama’s wonkiness was great, but I don’t think it was a big part of his wide appeal. His wonkiness wasn’t extra special, or extraordinary. It was his charisma that was extraordinary.
I’d argue that she simply couldn’t. She couldn’t sell what the administrator had done, she couldn’t find any way to separate herself from the administration, and she couldn’t give a coherent, meaningful policy idea to save her life. Nor could she handle any sort of pressure in an interview.
I agree that you need something to actually sell. Not just “look at how unacceptable my opponent is” or abstract concepts like “protect democracy” or “protect the system” when many people don’t think that the system or democracy is working for them. People complain about the Contract With America, about Project 2025, but at least the Republicans had something to point at for good or bad. While the Democrats had their standard laundry list of a platform meant not to actually change anything while also leaving men out of “who we serve”.
I never want to see a vacuum of charisma like Gore or Kerry or Clinton or Harris again.
Biden oversaw the biggest domestic spending in a really long time. He made an infrastructure deal that’s eluded the past half-century of presidents. She had a great fucking record to run on, if she’d been willing to address inflation honestly and talk about next steps wonkishly.
Harris pledged to send Congress legislation to outlaw price gouging.
Honesty would have been to say that the inflation spurt was worldwide and over, so there were no next steps to take beyond letting Jerome Powell alone to do his good work..
My guess is that honesty would have resulted in Trump winning by an larger margin, and the House would not be as evenly divided as it is now. Just a guess.
The problem with my guess, though, is there’s no evidence behind it. Maybe voters would have appreciated the unprecedented honesty. I would have. But, then, I was willing to vote for Harris regardless.
My bigger guess is that guesswork will not defeat MAGA. Let’s look for a candidate who has a history of defeating MAGA in purple constituencies, rather than guess at messaging.
P.S. There might actually be evidence, from focus groups, that honesty concerning the worldwide COVID-associated inflation was a electoral loser. I just meant that I have no such evidence.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: a big part of it is simple innumeracy. When something costs $5 in year 1, $10 in year 3, and $11 in year 5, there has been very little inflation from year 3 to year 5. The thing in question will not cost $5 again someday. If it did, we’d be in big trouble. That would be serious deflation.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but so many people still don’t get this. (Please don’t nitpick how this doesn’t apply neatly to all goods and services, etc., etc. The basic point is valid, very important, and widely misunderstood.)
How is this relevant to this thread? Not much, actually – no amount of Democratic (or Republican) messaging can fix this massive error in reasoning.
(And no, I’m not invalidating the reality of serious post-Covid inflation, and how most Americans really have been hurting, to varying degrees. The Dems in 2024, like Trump now, were off-message in not sympathizing enough about this. But only to a degree. Fundamentally, the idea that inflation was continuing just as badly as before – and the massive, oversized political (and thus real) consequences of this idea – was due to this basic innumeracy.)
Problem was she was running against an opponent who was much better at convincing people that she was chained to an administration with a terrible record. He even convinced many Democrats.
The Biden administration had an excellent record. Crime was down, the economy was great, and inflation was under control at the end. And i dont know if any dems voted for trump.
You mean Trump lied about Biden’s record being terrible? You don’t say!
Democrats didn’t vote for Trump, but Trump steered the conversation, and the conversation was about how things were bad. Then Democrats talked about things being bad.
The very fact that we debate how much of a handicap being a woman, black, Hispanic, or gay would be constitutes proof that we all recognize that it is, to some greater-than-zero degree, a handicap. With the survival of the Republic on the line, why take the chance? The cost of being wrong is simply too high. Find a candidate who can energize the left, capture the center, and peel off a few center right types who are rightly disgusted with the trajectory of the Republicans. Personally, I don’t think just winning is enough, I think that MAGA has to be stomped on (metaphorically, of course) so thoroughly that Republicans, who are going to want to win again someday, won’t go near it again.
The economy wasn’t great under Biden. It is much more accurate to call it mixed. Inflation was way up during Biden’s term even if it get better towards the end . Housing and rent costs went up a lot. The job market was mixed, but it clearly became more challenging to find a new job, particularly when just starting off. GDP did great, which meant if you were already established or had wealthy parents you probably did well, but a lot of people the Biden years exasperated tough situations. You can say this wasn’t Biden fault, which I think is mostly but not entirely true, but the fact is that a large swath of the country, particularly the young, were struggling.
We want people to see the GOP as liars and many of them do. The problem is if you tell people something is great when it isn’t, well all of sudden they aren’t choosing between truth and lies, they are choosing which lie they like better. For many they are going to go with the side that at least acknowledges there is a problem and wasn’t in power most recently.
Lots of people believing something doesn’t constitute proof. Obama won twice. Hilary got the majority of the voters. Harris almost certainly outperformed what Biden would have done. I’m not going to say is a zero factor, but I don’t much evidence it is a particularly important one. A much bigger factor is having an open and perceived fair contest so that voters believe that the winner was genuinely selected by the will of the people.
Yes, to start, but that was left over from trump. As you say GDP was roaring and unemployment was down. So over all, pretty damn good at the time of the elections, which is when people were complaining.
So, comparing the ACTUAL state of the economy in 2024, vs the GOP lies- the economy was great.
Three Big Lies of the GOP in 2024- The economy is terrible. (actually, pretty good in 2024) Crime is out of control (violent crime was down) The Open borders have let millions of criminal brown people swarm across the border. (no open borders, most were honest people looking for work, and the numbers werent high)