Look past the percentages and consider what the results in Iowa actually show. Biden was on the ground in Iowa, and he got out-worked by Buttigieg. And he had the advantage of having Sanders and Warren tied up in impeachment hearings. Shit, Klobuchar was a relative single-digit no-name who was also tied up in impeachment and she got a lot closer to Biden than most thought she would.
What does all of this tell you?
It tells us something that a lot of us already knew before the race even began: Joe Biden just isn’t that good at campaigning. I don’t know if it’s that he doesn’t hire the right people, or that he just doesn’t bring it, or what, but this was true in 1988, in 2008, and now, in 2020, it seems just as true now as it was back then. Joe Biden was obviously good at campaigning in Delaware, just as Tom Harkin was good at campaigning in Iowa back in his day, but that doesn’t mean shit when you run for president. It’s a race like no other.
Don’t hold your breath for Joe Biden’s firewall. A firewall cannot save a candidate who just isn’t that good at campaigning.
I think the above link is what was referred to earlier - Sanders being more likely to win SC. Nate’s model is more than just polls - it also builds bounces and such based on the expected wins beforehand.
A young political scientist has controversial views on American elections. IIUC she has discovered that energizing the base is far more important than appealing to swing voters. The article may be an interesting read. I hope she’s correct when she predicts Democratic victories this year.
(Many analysts disagree with Bitecofer:
)
And today’s polls were in the field before Iowa’s results. Moreover they were already falling some.
I generally agree with Bitecofer. I think what her critic is missing is that there was a realignment in process; white rural working class voters have moved from the Democrats to the GOP, and educated middle class suburbanites have moved in the opposite direction. 75% of Obama-Trump voters plan to vote for Trump again. They’re not swing voters, they’ve just moved from one base to the other. And it is also true that as the campaign has gone on, the differences between the performances of Democratic candidates in head to head polls against Trump have shrunk, suggesting that, yeah, the choice of candidate may not be super crucial.
I’m increasingly irritated by Politico’s click-baity type articles, and this is a prime example. Like the Rich Lowry piece that was linked last night, I opened the article and was almost immediately confronted with something that jumped out as a red flag in terms of validity.
If her argument is that there’s no swing voter, last year’s mid-terms are not the evidence to cite. Mid-terms are typically reactions against whoever’s perceived to be in power at the time. Moreover, any reaction to Trump being in power is going to be extreme. Mid-term elections typically do favor who can fire up the base; presidential elections, OTOH, are far more complicated. Generally speaking, they are referendums on incumbents.
Some of us have been explaining this since 2016. There is no sane reason this should be controversial, but we’re not in sane times.
It is less a discovery than an ongoing expression of one position of a longstanding debate that has many aspects to it. The position, the view, and the debate are certainly not novel.
IMHO the “energize the base” construct is naively simplistic. Those who argue for such almost always define “the base” as those who happen to share their opinions. The base of the Democratic party is a big tent of overlapping demographics and points of view. Sometimes energizing one “base” depresses the other “base”.
In any case virtually no one argues that turnout does not matter. And few argue that there are no swingable voters or that they do not matter. Anyone who “explains” otherwise is frankly making a dumb argument. The sane discussion is how to balance appealing in ways to maximize turnout of various aspects of the base and different portions of swingable voters, and how that differs for national elections vs House and Senate seats, and in presidential years vs midterm years. Even specifically in the electorally critical states. And what actually accomplishes any of those goals.
Not any more naively simplistic than believing the best nominee is the one who is the most palatable to swing voters. Most Biden supporters seem to fall into this camp, whether they want to admit it or not.
What’s telling is that you rarely hear them touting his effectiveness, his smarts, or his passion for the people. You never hear them make a case for him being the best leader. It’s his appeal to independents, moderates, and undecideds that his supporters only seem to talk about.
She doesn’t.
Not sure what “most” do or don’t believe. And as I personally don’t have mind-reading abilities, I will make no claims about what people believe in their heads that differ from what they say.
Personally between Sanders and Biden I think Biden would be much much more effective (and have read many discussions about that), think neither is all that super smart (Warren, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg all seem MUCH “smarter” to me), that they each have the same passion for the people (expressed very differently to be sure, Biden by the doing, and honestly seeming more “real” and less self-serving to me), and that Biden has MUCH better leadership skills. Many of those things are WHY he’d appeal more to independents, moderates, and undecideds. I also think, based on demographics, that in the electorally key states those voters matter more than the segment of the base that would come out for a harder progressive but stay home for a more center Left candidate. I think the same is true in states that have competitive Senate races and would benefit from coattails. But that is nevertheless very debatable.
That said the fork is being raised over him and may descend if he is 4th in New Hampshire.
I am slowly coming around to seeing the theory of Bloomberg’s electability case. His part of the base is urban and suburban voters who love his strong and unabashed positions on climate change, gun control, immigration, and public health issues, and are more comfortable with someone like him, scary economically smart, at the helm when we hit the overdue end of the current growth cycle with all the usual tools already burned up by the current administration. I don’t see fired up progressives who would stay home if the candidate is not a class warfare candidate as offsetting the pluses of sweeping the suburbs and leaving Trump with his base and not much more.
Bloomberg hasn’t even appeared in a debate yet. There’s going to be a debate TONIGHT and he isn’t even in it. Right now the ONLY thing that the average non-political-junkie American knows about Bloomberg is that he’s really really rich, and he was the mayor of New York. Move up one tier of knowledge and maybe they also know that he’s extremely anti-gun and that he tried to restrict the sizes of soda cups.
It has been almost a year since this contest began (i.e. all the candidates announced their running.) That’s one whole year that Bloomberg was NOT selling himself to the American people. I don’t give a fuck how much money he has, it’s too late in the game for him to catch up.
I’m just in awe of these people who think Bloomberg actually has a shot. All he is going to do is suck attention and energy away from the other candidates, who, flawed though they all may be in some way, have at least PUT THEIR TIME IN soldiering on through this campaign for the past year.
That Politico article left me intrigued as I never heard of Bitcofer. Here is her election forecast, which she released back in July (!):
https://cnu.edu/wasoncenter/2019/07/01-2020-election-forecast/
I tend to agree with her general idea that swing voters don’t really exist anymore, and all that matters is base turnout. But this “forecast” reads like an online psychic’s overly confident predictions. It’s absolutely bonkers that anyone would think they could accurately predict an election outcome before it’s even known who one of the candidates will be. She alludes to this at one point:
This is a massive asterisk. According to FiveThirtyEight’s own forecast, Sanders is currently the most likely nominee, with about a 1 in 2 chance of claiming the nomination. Just flip a coin to decide whether to throw out her prediction outright, I guess.
Hopelessly naive. There has been just one caucus so far, and various factions are already at each others throats over which candidate rightly won. It’s just going to get worse, with assists from foreign social media interferers and Republican concern trolls, of course.
Dr. Bitcofer seems like a nice lady who is passionate about politics. She almost completely nailed the Democratic gains in the House last time. This would be impressive if she didn’t also completely whiff on their Senate gains and governorship gains. A 1 out of 3 batting average does not inspire confidence imo.
The Bernie Bros have all the more intensity this year because they know most if not nearly all Democrats, motivated by fear of Trump, will line up squarely behind whoever the (D) nominee is by November. That adds fuel to the Bern because it makes Sanders all the more electable should he get the nomination.
20 other Democrats have put their time in in Iowa and New Hampshire and got nothing to show for it. I’m not sure Bloomberg’s strategy isn’t kind of brilliant. He may not be getting a lot of national attention (other than references to how much money he’s spending, but he’s getting recognition in the states that are actually having an election soon…and aren’t those the ones that count? All he’s lost are Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s delegates. If he scores on Super Tuesday, he won’t care about those at all.
A New Hampshire Bernie supporter on NPR this morning made a humorous but possibly intelligent point. Trump will attack the nominee viciously, whoever he/she is, and will brand them as “Socialist!!!” regardless. Most of the nominees will “scatter like cockroaches when the light goes on” if that happens, but Bernie will just lean into it.
I guess if you’re gonna be tarred as a socialist anyway we might as well nominate one.
A simple reality check: the economy is very good.
A general election pitch based on an economic populist disruptive revolution is a hard sell when middle class voters are personally doing well, even some who are disgusted with Trump and strongly disapproving of him otherwise on almost all issues. I don’t think they flip to Trump, but I can see some depressed turnout in the suburbs with Sanders at the top of the ticket. The Iowa results, limited in value as they may be, do give some warning of that: Sanders ran up his score in the cities/college towns there but lost handily in the suburbs and rural areas to Buttigieg.
For those who buy what Bitcofer is selling, it is of note that unless the D candidate “ends up being a disruptor like Bernie Sanders” she’s confidently predicted an electoral result of Democrat 278 to Republican 197 votes. She makes NO claim that “energizing the base” is key, or even matters at all, btw.
In a world where we say swing voters don’t exist, what does “the base” even mean?
So how do you explain that with no debate stage exposure to date, with all that time of not selling himself, the most recent national poll has him polling higher than the apparent underdog winner of the Iowa caucus, Pete Buttigieg, who has gotten a metric shitload of press? Okay the national polling after Iowa is limited, but even before in national numbers he’s been in the pack with Warren and Buttigieg.