# How good would Harris be in the general? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** kamala-harris\ **Created:** [June 28, 2019, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218 "2019-06-28T14:21:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/241 "2019-08-07T14:30:20Z")
I think one of Warren’s advantages in a GE is she was once a registered republican (although she will probably be pushed into explaining it in the primary). You see, we often here about cases of once democrats turning republicans. The best example is Reagan but there are plenty of others. You hear things like “I was a Kennedy democrat” or “I voted for Carter” before they were swept by the Reagan revolution for better or worse. Well Warren officially changed party registration in 1996 at the age of 47. To her credit she says the only time she voted a Republican for president was Ford in 76’. But at the time she switched affiliation we were past the eight years of Reagan and four years of Bush. We were heading into Clinton’s re-election. And she decided at that moment was the time to change. That her buying into the GOP being the party of fiscal responsibility was a sham through her studies of bankruptcy. She can use that transformation and how she ended up being a progressive leader in the Senate to open up people’s eyes to the facts. She will be ripped by conservative media on “how the hell are you going to pay for that” and she can respond “the same way you guys love your corporate tax cuts at the cost of the middle class and actually do the opposite of reducing the national debt as you all promise.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/242 "2019-08-07T15:07:18Z")
This is yet another one of these defenses of Warren’s electability which rely on an optimistic theory of the case rather than on facts. DSeid has talked about Warren’s anemic reelect numbers in 2018, compared to other statewide candidates in Massachusetts, but I think it’s particularly instructive to focus on one other race. Attorney general is a high profile position, and in this case the incumbent, Maura Healey, was, like Warren, a Democratic woman running for her second term. Warren won her race by 654,161 votes. Healey won hers by 1,069,577 votes—a margin 63% larger! :eek: So if Warren’s Republican background appeals to soft Republicans and independents, how do you explain these droves of voters who voted for Healey, but split their tickets (in an era, keep in mind, when ticket splitting has become much less common) and voted for the Republican against Warren? ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/243 "2019-08-07T15:21:21Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Actually, very, very true - not sure what 538’s talking about here, but if you go back to 2008, Barack Obama didn’t take a lead in the national polls until February 2008. That was AFTER the first primary/caucuses. In August of 2007, Hillary Clinton was beating him by 14 points. In October, some 3 months later, she was beating Obama by 26 points! In November, Clinton started a long, slow decline, which began to speed up just before the first few primaries. > > And guess what, the same thing happened in 2016. In July of 2015, Clinton had a 50-point lead over Sanders. By September that lead was down to just 15 points. Clinton increased that lead to 25 points in late November/early December before the race went into a long trend of tightening. Clinton’s lead in the polls was down to 1% during the primaries before winning the California primaries and winning the nomination. > > ETA: I read the article, and that’s just a case of math geeks playing with politics. Sure, if someone enters the race with a household name and lots of money, as Hillary Clinton did during the 2015-16 election cycle, odds are she will win. Nevertheless, the polls actually did move, and quite a lot. And in 2008, not only did they move, but Hillary Clinton ended up losing the nomination. And as I mentioned, Donald Trump was “unelectable” and entered the race polling at just under 5% before taking the lead. I don’t think voters are really paying attention just yet. From the quoted article; > [@](#): > > Of the 84 highly recognized candidates who polled below 10 percent in surveys from the first half of the year before the primaries, only President Trump went on to win his party’s nomination. So, you’re dissing the model because it accurately predicted outcomes only 98.8% of the time?:dubious: They’re looking at binary outcomes; Clinton DID win the nomination in 2016, and the fact that it was closer than it looked like it was going to be in 2015 is beside the point. Given a large enough data set (and they looked at every candidate since 1972) , the winners who _almost_ lost should be balanced out by the losers who _almost_ won, so this isn’t really a problem. Candidates similar to HRC08, who entered the race with high name recognition and polling numbers over 35%, won their races 75% of the time. That means they lost 25% of the time. You could argue that we are in a period of political crisis, and things work differently now than they did in even the fairly recent past, so that models based on data from 1972 shouldn’t be relied upon to predict 2020. I am actually quite sympathetic to that argument, but as Nate Silver would be the first to tell you, his models can’t help us determine whether it is true or not; they rely on the assumption that past outcomes have predictive value. So either Trump was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, or politics have become weirder than they used to be. There’s simply no way to know with certainty which is the case from our perspective in 2019. But your rejection of this model based just on cherrypicking a few cases where the less likely outcome occurred is like those people who after the 2016 election said “THE POLLS WERE ALL WRONG HURR HURR HURR”. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/244 "2019-08-07T15:29:39Z")
TF, we often disagree but that was really good. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/245 "2019-08-07T15:39:59Z")
Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/246 "2019-08-07T15:41:39Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I could not disagree more strenuously. I often like your takes, and I even defended your political acumen on another board. but if there was ever an election to play it _safe_, this is the one. I heard a very smart pundit say that the ideal campaign platform for a Democrat would be to just promise to be boring and not say crazy shit on Twitter, etc. Return to normalcy. > > The election to be bold is when you are up against a super popular incumbent like Reagan in ‘84! Another election where you might want to be bold is in a primary race against an established candidate like Biden. Harris is way behind, and there are many, many other Democrats all elbowing each other. Biden isn’t an incumbent, but he used to be Vice-president, and he isn’t super popular, but he is currently enjoying a lead of double digits over Harris and most of the rest of the pack. “Never change a winning game; always change a losing game”. Harris has to do something to break out. “Slow and steady” is a Biden strategy. “Go for broke” is IMO changing a losing game, at least for the second tier. That means taking shots at Biden, and being prepared to look strong and Presidential when the other soon-to-be-also-rans take shots at her. The TL;DR version is she isn’t running against Trump. She is running in the Democratic primary. Biden isn’t exactly dripping with charisma, and, rather like 2016, people are not exactly tingling with excitement at a chance to vote for him. Sure, the Democrat primary voters are slavering for anybody but Trump. But everybody in the Democratic field is “anybody”. Harris, and the rest, need IMO to establish themselves as “somebody”. John Kerry was the last man standing after the Democratic primaries, and he was “anybody but Bush”. Obama was “somebody”. Clinton was “it’s her turn” and “anybody but Trump”. With the observed results. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/247 "2019-08-07T16:05:41Z")
That’s all true, but I was talking about the general election and therefore implicitly a wish that primary voters would go for strategery rather than boldness. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/248 "2019-08-07T16:10:03Z")
> [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > So, you’re dissing the model because it accurately predicted outcomes only 98.8% of the time?:dubious: > > They’re looking at binary outcomes; Clinton DID win the nomination in 2016, and the fact that it was closer than it looked like it was going to be in 2015 is beside the point. No, it’s absolutely not beside the point because contrary to what you wrote, Donald Trump is not the only exception. It’s not beside the point because Hillary Clinton had a ginormous lead over a cranky old man who ran on a far-left platform and who had little name recognition before the race started, and that guy gave her a much tougher nomination battle than anyone ever anticipated. And 8 years before that, she had a massive lead on Obama - a 26-point lead in November before the primaries - and she **lost**. Joe Biden does NOT have the luxury that Hillary Clinton had in 2016. I don’t have a crystal ball, and nobody can tell how news events and the individual candidates themselves are going to influence their campaign destinies, but my original point if you care to go back and look at it, wasn’t that Joe Biden couldn’t or wouldn’t win; it’s that it’s early in the race and history shows that the polls will shift considerably over the next few months. DSeid came back and suggested that this wasn’t really true and brought in the math to try and refute what I said – but I don’t see how it was in any way refuted. All you need to do is go to Realcearpolitics and find the historical polling averages to see that there will likely be some volatility. Could Biden still come out on top? Yes, I never suggested he couldn’t. What I do reject is the notion that these races are predictable and that you can use historical data to show that the polls are stable - that’s just not true. That’s how Sam Wang got his ass burned and why he stays out of politics now. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/249 "2019-08-07T16:26:06Z")
Slacker, I think you are overestimating the strength of the correlation between winning elections and taking the positions which poll best. It’s arguably true that of the Kerry-Obama-Clinton triad, Obama was the most centrist, but (my fingers are spasming as I type this) I agree with Shodan. The reason he won and they lost was that he had more personal charisma than they did, not that voters were carefully parsing their policy proposals; the vast majority of voters just aren’t that left-brained. The obvious example is Bernie Sanders, who is much, much more popular than the abstract concept of “Socialism” is. People worry that the “S-word” will be used as a bludgeon against Sanders in the general election should he be nominated, but it’s IMO much more likely that both loyal Democrats and swing voters who like Bernie’s style will decide that they are now Socialists than that they will reject Bernie on that account. Or on the other side: How many Republicans in 2014 would have agreed that enacting massive tariffs in order to provoke a trade war with China was sound economic policy? The people who liked Trump just switched their opinions in order to accommodate their desire to vote for Trump, and once he became the Party’s leader, the elites did too. I share your subjective opinion that Warren lacks the essential charisma, but if the data continues to show that Warren is getting more popular among the general public, I will go with the data over my gut. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/250 "2019-08-07T16:31:51Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > No, it’s absolutely not beside the point because contrary to what you wrote, Donald Trump is not the only exception. > > It’s not beside the point because Hillary Clinton had a ginormous lead over a cranky old man who ran on a far-left platform and who had little name recognition before the race started, and that guy gave her a much tougher nomination battle than anyone ever anticipated. And 8 years before that, she had a massive lead on Obama - a 26-point lead in November before the primaries - and she **lost**. > > Joe Biden does NOT have the luxury that Hillary Clinton had in 2016. I don’t have a crystal ball, and nobody can tell how news events and the individual candidates themselves are going to influence their campaign destinies, but my original point if you care to go back and look at it, wasn’t that Joe Biden couldn’t or wouldn’t win; it’s that it’s early in the race and history shows that the polls will shift considerably over the next few months. DSeid came back and suggested that this wasn’t really true and brought in the math to try and refute what I said – but I don’t see how it was in any way refuted. All you need to do is go to Realcearpolitics and find the historical polling averages to see that there will likely be some volatility. Could Biden still come out on top? Yes, I never suggested he couldn’t. > > What I do reject is the notion that these races are predictable and that you can use historical data to show that the polls are stable - that’s just not true. That’s how Sam Wang got his ass burned and why he stays out of politics now. Well, yes, he is. Who is your counterexample of another major party candidate since 1972 who was polling in the single digits with high name recognition in the spring before the election and went on to win his party’s nomination? Nobody is questioning that the polls will likely shift considerably, and nobody is claiming that Biden’s victory is either inevitable or impossible. But your claim that, historically, early polls haven’t been predictive of the final outcome is true only if you define “predictive” as “predictive with 100% certainty”. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/251 "2019-08-07T16:34:58Z")
> [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > Slacker, I think you are overestimating the strength of the correlation between winning elections and taking the positions which poll best. > > It’s arguably true that of the Kerry-Obama-Clinton triad, Obama was the most centrist, but (my fingers are spasming as I type this) I agree with Shodan. The reason he won and they lost was that he had more personal charisma than they did, not that voters were carefully parsing their policy proposals; the vast majority of voters just aren’t that left-brained. > > The obvious example is Bernie Sanders, who is much, much more popular than the abstract concept of “Socialism” is. People worry that the “S-word” will be used as a bludgeon against Sanders in the general election should he be nominated, but it’s IMO much more likely that both loyal Democrats and swing voters who like Bernie’s style will decide that they are now Socialists than that they will reject Bernie on that account. > > Or on the other side: How many Republicans in 2014 would have agreed that enacting massive tariffs in order to provoke a trade war with China was sound economic policy? The people who liked Trump just switched their opinions in order to accommodate their desire to vote for Trump, and once he became the Party’s leader, the elites did too. > > I share your subjective opinion that Warren lacks the essential charisma, but if the data continues to show that Warren is getting more popular among the general public, I will go with the data over my gut. What you say is all fair, but so far the data and the subjective impression of her lack of charisma align perfectly. And because of that, if it somehow came down to Warren versus Sanders (please, no), I would probably have to swallow hard and go with Bernie. I personally don’t find him appealing at all, but I recognize that he does seem to have more charisma with the broader public than Warren does, and he is much more popular in Vermont than she is in Massachusetts. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/252 "2019-08-07T16:59:21Z")
> [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > Well, yes, he is. Who is your counterexample of another major party candidate since 1972 who was polling in the single digits with high name recognition in the spring before the election and went on to win his party’s nomination? See now we’re having an entirely different discussion than the one that began, but to respond to your question, Donald Trump may have been the only person to enter the race with single digit polling to win the nomination, but it’s hardly the only person with a substantial polling deficit to shake up the race – that’s been my point all along and I’d rather not go off tangent and move goalposts. > [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > Nobody is questioning that the polls will likely shift considerably, and nobody is claiming that Biden’s victory is either inevitable or impossible. Actually, DSeid did pretty much just what you said “nobody” did, which is why I responded to his post. > [@Thing\_Fish](#): > > But your claim that, historically, early polls haven’t been predictive of the final outcome is true only if you define “predictive” as “predictive with 100% certainty”. I never said that they weren’t predictive of the final outcome, though I’m not necessarily saying they are. I’m saying “We don’t know what will happen in the coming months,” which seems to be a pretty reasonable position to take, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/253 "2019-08-07T17:03:14Z")
I suppose, but that sounds like the position of someone who would find it a waste of time to talk about the primary race at this stage. ---
**Author:** ![Thing\_Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@Thing\_Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing_Fish)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/254 "2019-08-07T17:09:18Z")
OK, you’re sort of right. You said that the polls will likely shift significantly between now and the election, and he said that early primary polls are significantly correlated with outcomes, which…actually don’t even contradict each other. What were we arguing about again? ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/255 "2019-08-07T17:35:49Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I suppose, but that sounds like the position of someone who would find it a waste of time to talk about the primary race at this stage. It’s not a waste of time, but the polls most likely will change. I suspect the biggest movement will be the gradual decline of Joe Biden and the gradual rise of either Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris, and I would not write Harris off just yet. Just so we’re clear, I am not taking the position that Joe Biden will lose, but I do think that the race will tighten. One problem that Harris and Warren will have to contend with, though, is how to get around the Cult of Bernie. Sanders will probably be a double digit candidate for the foreseeable future. His worshipers are going to stay with him til the end, and he has the money to run a very, very long campaign, which is going to blunt some of the momentum that Harris and Warren might need to catch Biden. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/256 "2019-08-07T18:15:07Z")
It should be more a problem for Warren than Harris. ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/257 "2019-08-07T19:49:53Z")
Wrong thread ---
**Author:** ![Boycott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boycott/32/6741_2.png) [@Boycott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boycott)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/258 "2019-08-07T19:55:15Z")
Warren and Bernie occupy the progressive lane of the party but she is taking away some of his support from 2016 because I suspect she has life experience behind her viewpoints. She might come across stern or too much of a teacher but then she was a teacher. That’s a better style of communicating to me than Bernie who just has the same stump speech he repeats over and over. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2019, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/259 "2019-08-07T22:07:35Z")
In the way that a rash is better than a burn. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2019, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218/260 "2019-08-08T00:13:10Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > … I read the article, and that’s just a case of math geeks playing with politics. … Yup. 538 is JUST math geeks playing with politics. When it comes to the statistical probabilities what do math geeks know? 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-good-would-harris-be-in-the-general/836218.md?page=14)