Hee-haw, y'all. The 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary

Politics & Elections
1821

1500 is a decent sample size. And it is not an item in isolation WSJ/NBC:https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/nbc-wsj-poll-biden-warren-top-2020-democratic-field-n1028971 Again, working on a premise that Obama-Trump voters are attracted to shaking things up, she handily leads the pack among voters who are looking for large scale change.

That aint only educated white women.

As to her speaking style … YMMV but those who have heard on the trail are generally leaving more impressed than they were expecting to be.

I’d like to see more variety in her style, more of Harris’s measured resoluteness, but she still connects with her audience.

1822

DSeid, you used a lot of words there without engaging my main point:

There are hundreds and hundreds of senators and representatives on that list. She came in dead last, unable to beat even the indicted Republican guy. Why is it not immediately obvious to any rational observer of politics that no party should ever take the risk of nominating someone like that for president? It’s the very definition, the ne plus ultra, of not appealing to swing voters or even soft Democrats. :smack:
ETA:

You are wrong about polling methodology, but the subjective part is spot on. I know you and I cannot be the only ones who perceive her that way.

1823

I have a hard time buying this is purely pragmatic. Come on, Senate coattails for Maine? I am pretty good at reading people and I think in your mild mannered way, you’re pissed Harris “went there” in the debate. In Harris and Warren, we have one scrappy campaigner and one crappy, even if people are “more impressed than they were expecting to be.”

1824

Sorry that I do not recall your cite nor what metrics “worst” is being defined by. I’ll throw this out there that recognizes that she has few bills that have passed with her name on them but huge impact nevertheless.

Would you really want to argue the point that Harris or Sanders have used their times in the Senate with greater impact on an annualized basis? They are both pretty thin and with Sanders having had years to accumulate his nothing.

They are not running on the number of bills they have sponsored and gotten passed.

1825

I would bet SlackerInc is talking election performance. Warren is a good Senator luckily living in a state where she doesn’t have to be a good campaigner.

Eta: here’s this

1826

I’m not talking about efficacy in the Senate or anything like that. I’m talking about something much more important, which is how well someone does in elections compared to the partisan lean of their state or district:

Many people don’t know about or understand this kind of thing. They see she won reelection by a comfortable margin and don’t think about it any further. But the presidential election will not be contested in Massachusetts, so any thinking person should see that she is Kryptonite to swing voters and even soft Ds.

BTW, I don’t know why you bring up Sanders, as if I had to choose between the two of them, it would be like choosing between poison ivy and poison oak.

ETA: Ninja’d!

1827

Oops, that’s from:

1828

Thanks for the link and sorry for my not getting the what was being referred to.

And yes that does give some pause. Although I don’t get their analysis. She won re-election with 60.34% of the vote. Clinton took the state with 60.0% of the vote. Warren won with 6 points more than she won it with in 2012. If they are saying that since the overall electorate was shifted, on average, by 8 points so she should have had a result of 68%, well that is dumb. There is less space to move when you are already winning in a landslide. Assuming a linear relationship with national popular vote margin on top of partisan lean is stupid. The bigger the partisan lean the smaller the impact that national vote partisan margin should be expected to have.

I also am not so sure that MA is all that meaningful for the specific blocs I am most interested in. MA is very white, fairly wealthy, well educated. It re-elected both Warren and Republican Governor Charlie Baker at the same time. Let’s accept minimally that as a state it is not a good proxy for PA, MI, or WI, just shifted Leftward 15 points or whatever.

IF nominated let us start off with her relative to HRC. If she does only just as well with each demographic then she is good shape (due to demographic shifts).

Will she pull the same or better turnout of younger more progressive voters? Yes and more likely better than just the same.

Romney-Clinton voters? Could lose a few, but many are never-Trumpers more than anything else. They’ll go back GOP when it is back to a Romneyesque sort but not until. I think MA has quite a few of them actually. Biden would do better with them though. Others worse.

Obama-Trump voters? A bigger bloc and critical in the must win states. Few of them in MA. Will a candidate who is honed in as a shake it up economic populism candidate do better with them than HRC did? Hell yeah. Better than Biden. It may be so. IF she can stand up to his tantrums and put him in his place well. Currently that’s important facts not in evidence.

Black turn out? Really I’m guessing that the Kerry and HRC numbers are reliable but not likely to be topped in the future. Obama’s turnout is not a standard to expect moving forward.

Relative to HRC she should do as well or better with each bloc. Maybe even relative to Biden. Maybe.

Again, I am still weakly in Biden’s camp and this is predicated on his flubbing his performance yet again and proving that he does not have the campaigning right stuff. She is the understudy who might take over the leading role. If he comes out solid next debate then I still betting on him as enough change coupled with white working class cred to get the Obama-Trump voters who can be gotten without losing as many Romney-Clinton ones, and maybe doing marginally better with Black voter turnout. But if not? I’m warming to her doing fine is all.

1829

I think Castro would be an excellent VP candidate. First, of all the lesser candidates, he’s the one who’s impressed me most. And second, it would almost surely help mobilize Hispanic voters, whose turnout substantially lags that of most other groups.

1830

RTF, agree about Castro. In 2016 I kept saying Hillary should have nominated a Latino running mate for the same reason. I think she probably would have won if she had.

DSeid: No offense, but I trust 538’s number crunching more than yours (or anyone’s). And I would argue that every four years we should look for them to hopefully do this again and then we should eliminate anyone below average, or certainly dead last like she is.

I understand why Warren excites a certain kind of choir when she preaches to them. But then the choir talks themselves into thinking “oh yeah, and swing voters will love this stuff too!” No. No they will not.

1831

I’ve been arguing all along that ‘swing voters’ aren’t the people we need. For one thing, there are precious few of them. It’s all about that base, 'bout that base, no treble…(sorry, briefly got possessed by the spirit of Meghan Trainor, sorry about that)…I’ve been saying all along that our base is bigger than theirs, and if that base is as motivated in 2020 as it was in 2018, we’ll swamp 'em.

1832

No offense taken, but this isn’t about the crunching, it is about parsing the meaning of the crunch.

Performance relative to partisan lean is a meaningful metric. How to parse the meaning of the metric is the question.

Do you have any argument to make against the analysis I offer for how to interpret the metric other than that appeal to authority? (Especially when the authority starts off characterizing what they present as a very simple model.)

I will illustrate the argument with the absurd extreme: Candidate A lives in a state with a partisan lean of 80. In a 50/50 national popular vote that state will go 90/10 to one party consistently. In a specific election the national popular vote goes +40 to that party (70/30). Candidate A does great, winning 97% of the vote. But they are only +14 over their partisan lean in an election that was +40! They underperformed by -33!!! Hell, if they got 100% of the vote they’d have underperformed. Is it indeed rational to interpret that result as a poorer than expected performance?
As to Castro and the claim that a Hispanic running mate would have tipped the election to HRC …

  1. Which states do you think some marginally better Hispanic turnout would have swung? Not likely PA, MI, and WI. Sun Belt states are just not yet ripe for the picking. (And FL Hispanics might vote based on Cuban identity but not Mexican heritage as the draw.)

  2. If Hispanic voters didn’t get off their asses after being the target of Trump’s othering hate speech, why would a Hispanic VP have done it?

While a two woman ticket might be much I’d wonder most about Stacy Abrams. Honestly I don’t think a two woman ticket would lose anyone that a one-woman ticket hadn’t already lost, and she’d help both shore up some Black turnout and maybe help with the NC Senate race … It would be an interesting ticket if nothing else!

1833

Well, you may still think it’s dumb, but they included district “elasticity” in their calculations. From the article:

1834

Oh I read that. It isn’t addressing the point I raised however.

1835

I think it does, in large part. The elasticity of Massachusetts’ voting history is very much attached to the landslide aspect. It most certainly addresses your complaint that a linear relationship with the national vote is stupid.

1836

Special pleading for a candidate you personally like.

1837

Yeah, like Chump winning. Still, I can’t see Biden settling for VP again. I’m voting for him in the Hawaii primary.

1838

No really it doesn’t.

“Elasticity” applies in both directions equally, at least in that formulation of it, a basic linear equation, of the y=mx+b sort. My point is precisely that such is not the case. Elasticity is expected to decrease nonlinearly as the popular vote margin increases at the extremes of partisan lean in the direction of the partisan lean.

But in any case, bottom line is that that number doesn’t worry me much.

OTOH the fact that home state voters prefer Biden to her, at least so far, does. 22% Biden over her second at 11%. That has been a big red flag in my mind. Of course Harris loses in CA too, and was in fourth! When those who know you best say that person, President? Nah. Well that does say something and that something aint good

Those results certainly factor in to my continuing to think of Biden as the better choice right now. But if he flops debate-wise again? We need a back-up.

1839

Here’s another, from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/01/politics/elizabeth-warren-2020-warning-signs/index.html

1840

You realize that’s what was cited by 538 as how that might have implications in a presidential race?

Again, that was not the focus of the 538 analysis.