Trump might have won by 8 points against Hillary Clinton, but he’s very unlikely to win by 8 percentage points against a centrist or center-left Democrat with less baggage. Sanders or someone perceived as far left, OTOH, might lose by double digits if the economy’s still buoying Trump by that point.
By contrast, the recent races show that Florida is becoming tougher and tougher for even moderate and center-left pragmatists. It’s not just that Trump beat Clinton; it’s also Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis winning as well in years when Trump and the GOP were much less popular nationally than they were two years ago.
Again, I think the country was just uninspired by Clinton and this was something that plagued her in every close contest. A different kind of candidate with more energy and buzz would probably carry the states that Obama did.
I’m with you that FL is not lost … but it is the place most assured to break a Democrat’s heart!
The issue with FL is the ROI. You need a strategy that does not need FL. Last cycle FL got a huge chunk of the budget. Was it worth it? Win the Northern Path and you do not need FL. And if you do not need it maybe the outsized investment of money and time is better spent elsewhere.
You are, of course, correct that the D side needs to defend NV and NH. That said in midterms Ds won the House popular vote in NV by 6 points and NH by 12. (OH? Lost by over 5 in a wave year.)
The 538 article I linked to above for the Northern Path quote played with the midterm results and shifted them 6 point R-ward for a “neutral year”. If all shifted in concert Ds would still be in position to win NV in a squeaker and would solidly win NH.
FL (and Iowa) are very winnable. AZ, NC, and even TX are worth making the R side defend and as investments for future cycles. But have a strategy that does not need any of them.
The contention that I think you’re rebutting is the notion that while a number of candidates have been able to garner a bit more support than the 1% range, Brown isn’t one of them.
Your counterclaim is that they’re practically all down there, or close enough to it to make no never mind.
But while that one poll asks the question of support differently, it disadvantages (or the standard way of asking the question advantages) all candidates equally. But however you put it, when reminded of the candidates’ names, voters say of several other candidates, “Yeah, I like her/him.” But Brown’s not getting any of that action.
I think that one poll you favor is a measure of more solid support, while the other is a measure of what may be a more ephemeral level of support, of leaning towards a candidate rather than being solidly in their camp. (People in that latter situation don’t need to be reminded of the name of the candidate they’re supporting. :)) But if a candidate can’t even get those leaners, he’s not going to turn them into solid supporters.
(ETA:–>) My point is that IA and NH winnow much more than you think.
New Hampshire, of course, has been part of the winnowing process since time immemorial. Iowa first became part of the winnowing process in 1976, and with the exception of 1992, where all the Dem candidates skipped Iowa to let Tom Harkin have an uncontested win, it’s been part of the winnowing process for both parties ever since.
And in all those cycles where Iowa and NH have both been part of the winnowing process, the nominees of each party have won either Iowa or New Hampshire. In none of them has someone whose best finish in IA and NH was a second or third won the nomination, no matter how much they may have beaten expectations.
Maybe this cycle will break the pattern; patterns don’t hold up forever - especially given the whiteness of those two states, and the racial and ethnic diversity of the Dem coalition. But (a) it’s hard to see Brown being the guy who breaks through in SC or NV on the basis of his greater appeal to blacks or Hispanics after losing in IA and NH, and (b) I’d bet my bottom dollar that nobody’s going to win the nomination after their best result in IA and NH is a third-place finish, no matter how much they exceeded expectations by.
I know you handwave Bill Clinton’s winning neither away. But more so how often has the D side been this big? The collapse of lanes in a big field may be as much a special case as one candidate being a favorite son.
I’m in agreement with most of what asahi and DSeid said in their posts but I will clarify what I meant. The idea that Florida is lost has to do with the 2018 midterms as well as 2016. As was mention the ROI is meager at the moment for the Dems. HRC made Florida her focus for time and resources and all it got her was that she lost by 2%. At the same time she took it for granted that PA, MI and WI were solidly in her camp and that she would probably take OH but if she got the other three she didn’t need it. Clearly this was a major error on the part of her campaign. Of course there is no guarantee she would have won if she had put her focus in those states and given up on Florida but the 2018 midterms suggest it would be wise for the Democrats to have a nominee in 2020 who will be able to carry those states. Florida, not so much because if they manage to hold all the states HRC carried and add MI, WI and PA the Democrats will win. Whether Brown is the candidate who can pull that off remains to be seen. I’ve yet to see anything that makes me think Harris, Sanders or Warren can connect with voters in those states.
The closeness in NH and NV had more to do with what a lousy campaign HRC ran.
It saved Bill Clinton in 1992, who cannily parlayed it into a “Comeback Kid” narrative.
I’ve been worrying about this for a while now. Today the University of Iowa’s basketball announcer got suspended for saying that when the opponent’s 6’10" forward, who is black, rebounded and tipped in the winning basket, it was a “King Kong” move. (Next, I guess it will be verboten to say a nonwhite player had a “monster” game.) I wonder what would happen if someone in the Democratic field spoke up to say that this is going too far with political correctness? They’d be instantly dead in the water, I think.
And what I think a lot of people don’t understand is that Democrats’ losing ground with white males is not the same as the GOP losing ground with black women. There are more non-Hispanic white male voters in the U.S. than there are black male, black female, Hispanic male, and Hispanic female voters COMBINED. And as I noted in that thread, “Even in 2016, only 62% of white men voted for Trump, while 94% of black women voted for Hillary”. So even with the big demographic changes in the country, it only translates to a Democratic majority if we keep that number from going up to 65-70% (or, obviously, higher). Making white men (more specifically, straight cisgendered white men) personas non gratas is not going to help us keep at least a third of them in our camp.
Ohio in 2018 is a weird situation though. I don’t have the House popular vote numbers, but I think it’s interesting (and perhaps instructive, but I’m not sure of exactly what) to look at their gubernatorial election. Progressive candidate Richard Cordray lost by 3.7 points in a good Democratic year, 'tis true. But he received more than two million votes in a losing cause, and in fact got more than twice as many votes as the Democratic candidate from the previous election in 2014. In that election, John Kasich won by thirty points, but still didn’t manage to get to the two million vote mark himself! So I think it’s difficult to predict what the electorate in the next presidential year election in Ohio will look like.
So much this!
(1) Yeah, good point. PA was so narrowly lost.
(2) Cosigned. A lot of extreme purity testing going on, and it needs to stop.
(3) It’s a definite concern for sure. And Brown isn’t even my top candidate right now. But I do think it’s very possible Trump (or, more importantly, Kellyanne) is more scared of Brown than anyone else.
I’m not in favor of eliminating the filibuster. Too dangerous. I was glad to hear Bernie Sanders expressing reluctance to do this on MSNBC last night.
Beto is an interesting cat though. He does have a moderate voting record, and clearly was able to appeal to people who usually vote Republican. But he had lots of progressives all over the country (including some of my friends, who pay pretty close attention to politics) convinced he was one of them. Neat trick if you can pull it off! That’s actually something that appeals to me about him, as I think it’s a great political strength.
Some of you are overthinking the Electoral College.
[ul][li] The Democrat must win all of MN, MI, and PA.[/li][li] The Democrat must win at least one of AZ, WI, FL.[/li][li] None of the other 45 states make any difference.[/li][li] If Ohio goes D, the D is winning a landslide anyway.[/li][/ul]
Which Democratic candidate is most likely to win Michigan and Pennsylvania? This is the only question that even matters over the coming 15 months of frenzy.
When discussing the Electoral College only a pedant would feel the need to type out Every.Single.Time in full, “51 states where for the purpose of discussing electoral votes the District of Coumbia is included among the states.”
How can it be more dangerous than a near-complete failure to meaningfully act to deal with global warming?? If we get rid of the filibuster, will we get hit by the giant meteor?
I’d point out, though, that in 2018 Florida Ds had a center-left pragmatist running for Senate, and a progressive leftist running for Governor, and they lost by nearly identical margins. So this doesn’t support your implied thesis that it’s “safer” to nominate moderates.
It does when you consider that Andrew Gillum’s opponent was much more flawed and extreme than Rick Scott.
Ron “Don’t Monkey this Up” DeSantis and Donald Trump ran racist campaigns - and won. Bill Nelson would have defeated Ron DeSantis for governor; he didn’t defeat Rick Scott for Senate.
Yeah, but Nelson had the advantage of incumbency. So maybe all those factors just cancelled each other out, or maybe partisanship is really strong right now.
They both had incumbency advantages IMO. I don’t think there’s much advantage to being the incumbent for the particular office up for vote: both of them had won powerful statewide offices.
There’s still the idea that Trump won by less of the vote than other Republican candidates lost by. If this is true, then enthusiasm for the nominee may be the more important issue than pulling in the people in the middle who could go either way. Sure, it still has to be in those states, but maybe the way to do it is to get more young people in those states enthused enough to vote.
To me, it always seems the candidate who inspires the most enthusiasm wins–at least, in my lifetime. I don’t mean the most fervent supporters, but the one that can get the most people excited. While people hated Trump, he got more people excited that Clinton did. Same with Obama, both Bushes, and Bill Clinton.
I’m really still pulling for someone who can make Democrats excited to vote again.
I guess my point about Florida is that even though there are tight margins, the Republicans have been on a pretty good winning streak there lately. They’ve won the governorship the last several elections. They now have two Republicans in the Senate, this despite having one guy running a race-baiting election. It doesn’t matter that the Democrats were close; the bottom line is that they keep losing, and they keep failing to find the formula for victory in Florida. A progressive loses, a moderate loses. Obama somehow cracked the code, and I’m guessing that the conclusion I come to is that you want someone like Obama who can be a ‘safe’ progressive, but also one who can inspire people. But even if you nominate someone like that, Obama last won Florida in 2012 - that was more than 6 years ago now.
Ohio, despite Republican strength, is still more in play, in my view. As is PA, WI, and MI.
