I think this is mostly right, except that Republicans can’t really win a majority with any coalition. One narrow Trump victory followed by a bigger Trump loss (and some Senate losses in purple states) isn’t exactly indicative of their success with this new coalition.
I think it’s noteworthy that the Democratic two-party vote share (ie D share of D+R votes) in presidential elections since 2008 has been within a really narrow band:
- 2008: 53.7%
- 2012: 52.0%
- 2016: 51.1%
- 2020: 52.2%
So is the Trump GOP coalition really stronger than the Romney GOP coalition? Seems they’ve just swapped a certain set of voters for another set of voters without actually increasing their total number of votes. And as you say, the more engaged voters are now Democratic voters. A bad trade!
> Seems they’ve just swapped a certain set of voters for another set of voters without actually increasing their total number of votes.
Yes, but they've distributed those votes more favorably (Obama-Romney didn't have much electoral college bias, but Biden squeaked it out in '20 despite a 4.5 point win!), and developed a base that will allow basically unlimited norm-breaking (so that they can, say, openly steal a Supreme Court seat that would ultimately repeal Roe). Both of those are advantageous for the GOP.
It used to be that low-propensity voters were Democrats, and therefore the party benefited from high turnout. And that the people likeliest to vote - college-educated white middle/upper-middle class people, to be a bit reductive - voted Republican.
Now, that same group prefers Democrats. And the people who are less likely to vote (downscale whites and possibly Latinos) prefer Republicans.
So Democrats now do better in low turnout elections.
So what I’m saying is that it looks like the GOP now has a coalition that doesn’t vote in off-year elections, but that still isn’t big enough to consistently win them the presidency. That’s a bad place to be!
Look at Trump's Hispanic support between 2016 and 2020, or his pickups with immigrant voters.
I posted elsewhere that blue collar voters are switching to the GOP even as white collar professionals migrate to the DNC and that Trump is the inflection point of that process. He's a symptom, not the cause. Most critically for your point that inflection point occurred relatively recently (2016).
I suggest that the process is still ongoing because while Trump/the new Republicans have largely won over white blue collar workers the same migration of minority blue collar workers has yet to reach culmination. That is why the media shows a keen interest in minority voting trends for Trump: the question is how much support does he get?
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but none of it seems to address the fact that Democrats now do better in low-turnout, low-salience elections, whereas before they did worse under those conditions.
And that the reason they did well last night is that they now have a majority of high-propensity voters — not because “the more engaged voters are political partisans”.
High propensity voters are political partisans and political partisans are high propensity voters.
If you recall the myth that Democrats have long cherished is that they do better in high turnout elections while the GOP relied on low turnout/voter suppression. If that perception has flipped then that's remarkable. Way back when I was watching MSNBC on election night 2016 and one of the talking heads pointed out that not only would the GOP never be the same again after Trump but the DNC was also going to change irrevocably. Interesting times.
The thing is that all they need is to repeat 2016's performance and they have the presidency, both houses of Congress, AND the federal judiciary. That's complete and total control. They can (and will) figure out how to keep it afterwards.
For the umpteenth time both R's and D's typically take control of Congress while they gain control of the executive. That's just the pattern of the last few elections.
I don't think that holds, "generic republican" polls well and youngkin did very well getting elected. I think their issue is the base voting against moderate non-crazy republicans in primaries, not moderate republicans being unable to win.
Everyone hates the situation we're in. Almost no one looks at the current state of American politics, even within their own party, and goes "things are going well and I basically trust my elected officials". Even hardcore partisans like me hate our own party establishment, we just hate the *other* party with the fire of a thousand suns. See Nate's previous post, looking at polling that finds Generic Republican outrunning Trump and Generic Democrat outrunning Biden, both by 12 points, in a matchup against Biden/Trump respectively.
So there's a very real sense in which "literally anyone but what we have" is a legitimate widespread voter opinion at this point, and a generic candidate gets the benefit of being Someone Else who doesn't have a concrete history or policy position to hate.
I'm not saying the GOP knew that Trump was the means to this strategy ahead of time. None of us really did, right? Trump's win was a surprise, and his ability to Teflon off scandals that would be the end of a political career for most people every five minutes is exceptional.
If you'd said, in March 2016, "Donald Trump will win the primary, then win the general, then become the central and controlling figure of the entire Republican Party such that party membership will largely depend on loyalty to him, he'll survive multiple legal scandals, the worst pandemic in a century, and a fairly open attempt to overthrow the government of the United States to remain the Republican nominee - and one with a tossup chance of winning again - in 2024", you would have sounded totally nuts.
They still want that. Or rather, there's a sizable faction that wants that, and the rest of the Republican party hasn't figured out how to tell them no.
The GOP is now the Whigs…just an anti-Democratic Party party. I honestly believe Rove understood that in 2000 because the only way Bush would get re-elected in 2004 was the craft a Medicare prescription drug plan…and the only way to do it was with liberal policies. So the Regan Revolution was running out of steam and so they needed a path forward and unfortunately 9/11 happened and Bush/Cheney chose the worst possible path of all of the options…and that’s how you get Trump.
The GOP needs to find a sunny conservative who is not angry and conspiratorial and run them. A Reagan Republican. I think Glenn Youngkin would be an excellent choice. I disagree with him on many issues but he is not nutjob and I think would appeal to moderates.
The Conservative movement in general has driven itself into a ditch by supporting various extreme anti-intellectual and anti-science positions. This excites the base but doesn't bring moderates in and also has the problem of exciting liberals as well.
The Youngkin fetish is weird. He just got his ass handed to him in Virginia after making an abortion ban a centerpiece of his campaign and barely won in 2021 in a covid shutdown backlash year.
There are no John Kasich types left. More importantly, Republican voters would not nominate then if there were.
>There are no John Kasich types left. More importantly, Republican voters would not nominate then if there were.
This is the key point. Youngkin got nominated as a moderate because the state party scrapped its primary in order to pick him. He couldn't have come through a primary as a moderate.
Then, because he is ambitious and because Virginia has an idiotic one-term limit, he pivoted in office to market himself to a future national Republican primary audience.
I voted for him and am annoyed about that, although I'm not sure I would have loved a Dem trifecta either. What I wanted was a Larry Hogan, basically, but those are an endangered species under polarized primaries.
A Larry Hogan scenario would only happen in a situation where the Republicans had no chance of getting enough power to fundamentally change how the state operates, you let yourself get tricked
Who do you think is a good example of an electable Republican on the national stage that would be good for the Republican Party and the country as a whole
"electable Republican on the national stage" which includes a Republican primary and "good for the Republican Party and the country as a whole" at this point are contradictory elements. They don't go together. Full disclosure. I am a Democrat. I will never love a Republican nominee. Even a Kasich or a Sununu type. That being said, I don't think having a conservative party that is anti-democracy, anti-government, anti-intellectual, and super invested in post-truth politics is good for anyone as much as I enjoy how it contributes to them losing elections.
We are in a time of major electoral coalition shifts. Both parties are changing. The Republicans a bit more violently and visibly than Democrats but both are truly changing. We have to see how that shakes out and if the future of the conservative party is more Hawley/Vivek or is there is a larger reevaluation within the party. I tend to think there will not be due to how strong the social conservative wing of the party is and you cannot compromise when your approach is one of moral absolutism.
Reagan and his people let over a hundred thousand people die of AIDS and laughed about it because many of them were gay. That's when they weren't hiring every right-wing psycho in Latin America to rape nuns in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Hateful enough for you?
No, but Trump is just a symptom of a very old disease within the GOP.
Trump's inner circle was full of people who've been in the shadows of GOP politics for decades. Roger Stone got his start with Nixon and was involved with basically every Republican campaign since, including shenanigans in South Florida during the 2000 election. Manafort was an advisor to Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Dole. Both had Southern Strategy author, former RNC chairman, Bush Sr. campaign manager, and "N-word, N-word, N-word" Lee Atwater as a senior partner at their lobbying firm.
And post-truth politics is very old, it was just contained until Trump made it malignant. Conservative talk-radio and Fox have been insane ragebait since I was listening to/watching them in my teens in the early 2000s, and "birtherism" was a big thing almost a decade before Trump. All Trump did was actually act like everything the Republican Base was being told was true, and so they ate it up. That's why they think he "tells it like it is" - he affirms the lies they've spent decades being propagandized into by the Republican establishment for their own benefit. The establishment knew (and knows) they're lies, of course, but that's how they get the votes. It's basically the "Evil Is Not A Toy" trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsNotAToy) playing out in actual reality.
So yes, Trump is the immediate malignancy, and cutting out that cancer is our first priority. But we also shouldn't forget the GOP has been chain-smoking insanity for a long time.
Trump is just the final evolution of something that's been percolating since Goldwater. Read Rick Perlstein's books, especially Nixonland and Reaganland. Reaganland especially, you see the beginning of the careers of all of America's worst people in that book
I'm gonna tell you the same thing I tell everyone who whines about how major cities keep electing the "same" candidates despite their problems instead of voting for Republicans: find better alternatives, candidate- and policy-wise.
Conservatives have literally picked everything that would make them hated by 60% of voters. They won't budge on their hate based policies and all it takes is people showing up to vote for the conservatives to lose outside of their strongholds.
If Democrats ran an abortion referendum in every state during the Trump election along with a referendum to give back the right to vote to all convicts and felons, they would probably finish off the Republican party.
It's likely it does because a lot of people who came out to vote will not go in now. If abortion was on the ballot in 2024 there's no chance he would win. There's no doubt that more people hate Trump than like him. But the real measurement is how many people can overcome the opportunity cost to go vote/ will forgive the Democrats for not delivering a liberal policy platform.
To some extent, maybe, but the racial demographics of prisoners (I couldn't find anything on felons *per se* as a population with a quick look) is very very very nonwhite in a way that should favor Democrats on demographic bases alone. Working-class black voters may have shifted somewhat rightward but they're still *really* blue.
Lots to think about here. I’m gonna work through a thought or two that you got me thinkin’. 🤔
Trump’s disruption of the GOP works to a large extent because he’s changed the magnitude of interaction between personality and politics - in that personality needs to be extreme AND genuine, now.
For instance, you can have *genuine* charismatic bombast (Trump) or *genuine* tightwound schoolmarm prudistry (Mike Johnson) to succeed.
Most GOP candidates didn’t had *genuine* and *extreme* in their personality lexicon before Trump. Lots of GOP since might try on extreme but it doesn’t code genuine, or capable.
Herschel Walker? No. Desantis? No. Jim Jordan? Not even him.
You can’t run *against* that in-group without looking fake. Whoever wants to next run the GOP needs a maxed out charisma stat that’s based on something real within them.
Anyone else interested in how this idea might play out should check out Geoff Cohen’s excellent “Party Over Policy” paper from ... 2003.
I think that's a good analysis, and it explains the failure of tepid characters like Mitt Romney, who I think would have probably made a great president, and who I think probably WAS genuine, but his *extremity* rating would have been as low as you could go.
Also people who were making waves (Ted Cruz) but fell apart when they tried on Trump's clothes but it doesn't work because it's blatantly phony.
Other genuine actors I think get locked into their smaller roles--Rand Paul, etc--probably because genuineness is less adaptable than extremity.
Unfortunately, the *extreme* has become more important than the *genuine*. I think it probably stems from a fear that *genuine* gets run over by the MSM that the right does not trust--they feel that only an *extreme* personality would be able to withstand a (perceived or real) hostile media environment.
I recently read (can’t remember where) that Dems are becoming/have become the party of low-turnout elections (although the jury was always kind of out on whether higher turnout really did help them or not) -- can you speak to this swing at all, both in terms of the claim’s veracity and how it intersects with the trends you’re seeing here?
It’s definitely true and is likely responsible for Dems winning the VA state house, for example.
As I posted above, the people likeliest to vote - college-educated white middle/upper-middle class people, to be a bit reductive - used to vote Republican.
Now, that same group prefers Democrats. And the people who are less likely to vote (downscale whites and possibly Latinos) prefer Republicans.
So Republicans do better with Trump on the ballot because he brings out low propensity voters (or because it’s a presidential year and those voters are more likely to come out anyways - it’s kind of hard to separate the two at this point). And they do worse when Trump isn’t on the ballot / it’s not a presidential year and those voters don’t turn out.
The elections while Trump was president were about voting against the incumbent's party. That's normal. 2021 was very good for Republicans while Biden and the Democrats had control in Washington. Again, normal. What's changed since? It's ABORTION. If you pay attention to the facts on the ground, to what Republicans are doing, rather than to the conservative talking points, it looks like plans for a theocracy, and Americans don't want that. (If you want the evidence there's an excellent substack by Jessica Valenti, who's been covering the issue since Dobbs).
The voters turning out in these elections, however, are self-selected to care more about this issue and this threat. In an election when everybody turns out, like next year's presidential election, it's not at all clear that Democrats can maintain an edge. I think the results of elections while Biden has been president are completely consistent with polling showing him losing to Trump.
The voters who will decide this election are those who really dislike both candidates. Within that group, it's the voters who haven't voted since 2020 that I would be most concerned about as a Democrat. And again, this is consistent with the polling. The good news for Democrats is these are lower info, lower engagement voters, and they really aren't sold on Trump, so there's an opening for persuasion. The bad news is they have really really negative views of Biden, and if that changes it will be because of changes in the real world environment, not anything the campaign does. If Biden is going to be the nominee, and that's still an if afaiac, the only option I see is to convince these voters that Republicans are worse. Normally you would say Biden's numbers are bad enough that this can't work, but then these Republicans are exceptional too, so who knows. I think this is a rare case where you can argue 'this time IS different'. But I think that just introduces more uncertainty rather than changing who's favored.
As Sunder said, one part is primaries, and the other part is values. De-emphasizing less popular positions might be good for winning, but at some point you have to take a stand. In other words--even if a position is unpopular on the left, if it's a ride-or-die issue for the base, it's probably right to at least support it (even if you aren't running on it explicitly).
If some closely held left position suddenly became unpopular (pick whatever you want, taxing corporations or trans stuff or gun control or whatever), you would hope that your elected officials would still support it even (perhaps especially) if it was unpopular, right?
Regarding picking sane candidates: yes, absolutely. I don't know what's going on there. It's freaking crazytown.
The US system seems to strongly favor two-party equilibriums, but there have been a few historical changes of which parties those were. What would it take to trigger another such change?
The First Party System ended when the Federalists fractured under internal disagreements, leaving the Democratic-Republicans effectively unopposed. In this case, the minority party fractured; the Federalists had been out of power for a decade and a half.
After the Era of Good Feelings, the Democratic-Republicans fractured into the Democrats and the Whigs again over internal disagreements (the Democrats of the early 1800s were the "state's rights"/individual liberties/limited government party; the Whigs inherited the Federalist tradition of a strong central government). The Second Party System lasted until the 1850s, when the Whigs fractured over slavery. Again, the minority party was the one that broke (with former Whigs forming the Republican Party).
Since then, it's been the same two parties. There's been changes in power, but the only huge coalitional change was the North-South flip starting around 1960 and completing around 1990 largely over issues of race or proxies for such.
----
In short: American political coalitions have pretty much always been regional and/or racial factions, at least since the decline of the Federalists c. 1800, and race in particular has been the motivating factor for both major realignments since.
However, separately from outright collapse of a party, there have been two eras of substantial dominance by one party: the Fourth Party System, dominated by Republicans during the Progressive Era, and the Fifth, dominated by Democrats under the New Deal coalition, both economic. Given the current negative-to-put-it-mildly perceptions of the American public towards their economic prospects, it seems like one party might be able to seize a long-term majority if they can come up with a really popular economic plan.
Probably the most-likely point would be if somehow the Republican leadership managed to "stop" Trump, and him trying to make a run as an independent, taking a huge swath of MAGAs with him. That would have a chance of crushing the Republicans on a national level, which over time would push them into irrelevance at the state and local levels as well. We would probably then see something similar to what happened in the early 1800s, as Thisisnot Arealname discussed: the Democrats would become dominant, but would eventually start to fracture until the more moderate Dems split off and joined with the more moderate former-GOPers to create a new opposition party.
Otherwise, the best trigger would likely come through structural changes (increased use of ranked-choice, open primaries, and similar voting procedures, elimination or circumvention of the Electoral College, etc.) that offer realistic paths for alternatives outside of the two-party system.
i assume you have received my first response, but this exchange highlights the fundamental problem we are having in our country now; ie., the ability to have honest discussions about important, sensitive topics. Topics we hope to find a common ground without resorting to name calling, misinformation challenges, or a general lack of good faith. I think I have implied several times how my position on this topic has changed and seek to find what is an acceptable half-way point from left. Is the only acceptable position now that abortion is now unrestricted up to and including the moment of birth? Is it all or nothing? Even under Roe vs Wade, limited abortion was allowed but Dobbs was only about whether the right was embedded or implied in the Constitution and whether it should be a right graded by the states. Some states and communities have taken different positions as our funding fathers intended in the method they used of creating this country. I may not like what Minnesota did but it is their right. All I can say is that I worry what 2024 will bring us. We have become so polarized that we cannot talk to one another
I cannot find the exact situation right now from the Minnesota law passed in March of this year and perhaps I slightly overstated its effect but essentially the law passed by the legislature legalizes abortion up to and including the moment of birth. So what does the moment at birth mean? you tell me.
Thisisnot Arealname I am delighted by your fine writing, apt diction, and good humor. Thank you!
A lifelong Democrat in New England, I worked hard at times to get some Republicans elected. Where one party (Democrat or Republican) had been dominant, then grew corrupt, there existed another party wherein you could find an honorable competent candidate who was moderate and practical.
I very much miss New England republicans. Tolerant tension with us Democrats made the path straighter towards good government. Today, valid interlocutors for a conservative point have left the GOP.
One cannot overstate the vast harm done to the US by the Fox propaganda machine. It has taught a generation to abandon truth for lies and improbable belief for evidence. There is much to be done.
The media loves Trump. They love to cover how awful he is, they love to cover his heterodoxies to argue that he is secretly moderate, they love to say he has an unbeatable cynical power over voters, they love to say the Democrats are causing this all to happen. In general, the media loves to cover candidates that voters hate, because voters love to read about what they hate and fear.
But Biden shows that moderates can win with voters, even if the media is complaining about it in sporadic fits of boredom. Strategically what the GOP has to do is clear, it's the primary electorate that they have to convince of this. That's the real trap.
I think their best bet to make that transition would be someone who is not a whiny "anti-Trump" Republican or a "Trump 2.0" Republican, but a courageously heterodox Republican inspired by Trump's disruption model. I don't know who that is - I don't think Nicki Haley or Chris Christie are cutting it. But suppose for example they magically nominated Andrew Yang - I think that would quickly reset the GOP brand.
I am not sure passing Unrestricted Abortion is anything to brag about, but then I have maintained for a while that Dobb's is a case of winning a battle but losing the war. At the present time, I think women are generally better educated (as a group) than men and are energized to vote on social issues. More getting degrees, more staying single and getting married later, more not having children, etc.
Ever since 2016 and perhaps even before, but ever since Trump, Democratic Candidates have seriously outspent Republican. Did some quick checks this morning and just looking at the 6 year financial summary for the Senate, Democrats outspent Republicans by $238 million to $114 million (FEC data https://www.fec.gov/campaign-finance-data/congressional-candidate-data-summary-tables/?year=2024&segment=6) Just look at the spending on the AZ Senate race and the amount of money Adam Schiff and Katherine Porter are getting.
There is a lot of truth to what Nate Silver has to say, but I also think there are a lot other elements affecting the vote. For sure the censorship industry is playing a big part and a lot of money behind making sure that tech people get their way. Even so, Republicans in the states, generally are not doing bad with approximately 27 state Legislatures controlled by Republicans. As Nate would say, all (almost) elections are local, but it is disconcerting that last night did not seemed to be affected by world events. I am worried about 2024. Not by who may be elected but by the upheaval being forecasted.
"I am not sure passing Unrestricted Abortion is anything to brag about"
The issue isn't one side pushing for "unrestricted abortion" and another side pushing back. The issue is one side pushing for absolutely-no-abortion-period-full-stop-zero-exceptions-coming-for-birth-control-next. That's not a reasonable position, and even arguing that the other side wants "unrestricted abortion" isn't effective anymore when placed in that context.
I believe in my next line I commented that "Dobbs was a case of winning a battle, but losing a war'....I am a cradle Catholic brought up to believe in the sanctity of life. It was hard for me, but came around to believe in abortion in the first trimester, and perhaps in the second, but not unrestricted and/or like Minnesota allows after birth which is not abortion, but murder.. Look around you, the reality is that our society values life less and less. How can we, our society tolerate the massive homelessness and the horrible deaths from fentanyl? Soon we will get were Canada is in allowing assisted suicide and perhaps euthanasia. Where does one draw the line?
Instead of letting your argument rest on the merits you have to twist things beyond willful misinformation into outright lying. That is why you are losing; reasonable people simply do not believe you are arguing in good faith, and reject the arguments outright.
I'm a conservative and I don't know a single person who wants to eliminate birth control. I even know a few catholics (not many, I'll admit), and none of them have ever mentioned wanting that. They may not USE it in their personal lives, but I've never had them talk to me about it.
There probably are a lot of no-abortion-period conservatives (I'm not one, even though I personally think it's bad), but I can tell you 100% that that isn't a slippery slope to no birth control.
"Birth control is overwhelmingly supported within the GOP, with a 2022 FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll showing that 93 percent of Republicans support birth control pills in “all or most cases.” A slightly smaller number of Republicans support other forms of contraception, with 82 percent supporting IUDs and 62 percent supporting “emergency contraception like Plan B.”
Some of those numbers are actually higher than the general public, of which 89 percent support birth control pills, 81 percent support IUDs and 70 percent support emergency contraception. But those numbers also show that contraception is overwhelmingly popular across party lines."
I'm sure there are a few nuts who don't want any birth control, but this isn't an issue that the republican party is voting for when republicans support birth control at HIGHER rates than the population at large (I suspect because there are still a large number of democrat catholics). There are a few nuts on either side--on either side!--who believe literally any insane position you can imagine.
This is the left wing equivalent of the right wing facebook conspiracies.
At best it's a mischaracterization of the differences between moral viewpoints--do we need to fund planned parenthood or should people have to buy their own birth control, etc--which reflect left v right views on the role of government in people's lives, not whether something should be legal.
For example, if abortion were 100% legal but planned parenthood was 100% defunded so you have to pay for it yourself, I suspect that the left would say that the republicans are trying to "block access" to abortion while the right would say that democrats are "allowing abortion in any instance" and both would be upset, because both view the roles of government intervention differently.
And I'm sure we'll disagree on that! But it still doesn't mean that there is any momentum on the right to *ban* birth control--especially when republicans are MORE in favor of it than the population at large.
The voters may not want to, yet anyway, but the activist groups have been calling the shots. It's not a strategy designed to work overnight. Read Jessica Valenti on this for a good explanation. And I would say what's most concerning to people who care about these issues is that the Republicans seem to only be moving in one direction, and we have yet to see anything pull them back towards the center, at least in what they're actually doing, not necessarily the rhetoric. The voters may not like it, but if the Republicans can gain power without compromising on it it seems they will. That's what we're very afraid of.
Isn't this easily summarizable as:
* Republicans could no longer win a majority with their old coalition, so
* They needed a coalition that punches way above its weight in the electoral college/senate/gerrymandered states
* That coalition is one of rural voters, especially non-college whites (and increasingly working-class Hispanics), but
* That coalition doesn't show up for off-year elections, flipping the historical midterm turnout edge from slightly red to deeply blue
The question is whether the new coalition is rural whites or just blue collar workers in general.
I think this is mostly right, except that Republicans can’t really win a majority with any coalition. One narrow Trump victory followed by a bigger Trump loss (and some Senate losses in purple states) isn’t exactly indicative of their success with this new coalition.
I think it’s noteworthy that the Democratic two-party vote share (ie D share of D+R votes) in presidential elections since 2008 has been within a really narrow band:
- 2008: 53.7%
- 2012: 52.0%
- 2016: 51.1%
- 2020: 52.2%
So is the Trump GOP coalition really stronger than the Romney GOP coalition? Seems they’ve just swapped a certain set of voters for another set of voters without actually increasing their total number of votes. And as you say, the more engaged voters are now Democratic voters. A bad trade!
> Seems they’ve just swapped a certain set of voters for another set of voters without actually increasing their total number of votes.
Yes, but they've distributed those votes more favorably (Obama-Romney didn't have much electoral college bias, but Biden squeaked it out in '20 despite a 4.5 point win!), and developed a base that will allow basically unlimited norm-breaking (so that they can, say, openly steal a Supreme Court seat that would ultimately repeal Roe). Both of those are advantageous for the GOP.
The more engaged voters are political partisans because it's 2023, not 2024. Plus turnout seems to be even lower than normal.
Not sure I follow.
It used to be that low-propensity voters were Democrats, and therefore the party benefited from high turnout. And that the people likeliest to vote - college-educated white middle/upper-middle class people, to be a bit reductive - voted Republican.
Now, that same group prefers Democrats. And the people who are less likely to vote (downscale whites and possibly Latinos) prefer Republicans.
So Democrats now do better in low turnout elections.
So what I’m saying is that it looks like the GOP now has a coalition that doesn’t vote in off-year elections, but that still isn’t big enough to consistently win them the presidency. That’s a bad place to be!
Look at Trump's Hispanic support between 2016 and 2020, or his pickups with immigrant voters.
I posted elsewhere that blue collar voters are switching to the GOP even as white collar professionals migrate to the DNC and that Trump is the inflection point of that process. He's a symptom, not the cause. Most critically for your point that inflection point occurred relatively recently (2016).
I suggest that the process is still ongoing because while Trump/the new Republicans have largely won over white blue collar workers the same migration of minority blue collar workers has yet to reach culmination. That is why the media shows a keen interest in minority voting trends for Trump: the question is how much support does he get?
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve written, but none of it seems to address the fact that Democrats now do better in low-turnout, low-salience elections, whereas before they did worse under those conditions.
And that the reason they did well last night is that they now have a majority of high-propensity voters — not because “the more engaged voters are political partisans”.
High propensity voters are political partisans and political partisans are high propensity voters.
If you recall the myth that Democrats have long cherished is that they do better in high turnout elections while the GOP relied on low turnout/voter suppression. If that perception has flipped then that's remarkable. Way back when I was watching MSNBC on election night 2016 and one of the talking heads pointed out that not only would the GOP never be the same again after Trump but the DNC was also going to change irrevocably. Interesting times.
The thing is that all they need is to repeat 2016's performance and they have the presidency, both houses of Congress, AND the federal judiciary. That's complete and total control. They can (and will) figure out how to keep it afterwards.
For the umpteenth time both R's and D's typically take control of Congress while they gain control of the executive. That's just the pattern of the last few elections.
? I never said anything to disagree with that.
I don't think that holds, "generic republican" polls well and youngkin did very well getting elected. I think their issue is the base voting against moderate non-crazy republicans in primaries, not moderate republicans being unable to win.
Generic *anything* polls well.
Everyone hates the situation we're in. Almost no one looks at the current state of American politics, even within their own party, and goes "things are going well and I basically trust my elected officials". Even hardcore partisans like me hate our own party establishment, we just hate the *other* party with the fire of a thousand suns. See Nate's previous post, looking at polling that finds Generic Republican outrunning Trump and Generic Democrat outrunning Biden, both by 12 points, in a matchup against Biden/Trump respectively.
So there's a very real sense in which "literally anyone but what we have" is a legitimate widespread voter opinion at this point, and a generic candidate gets the benefit of being Someone Else who doesn't have a concrete history or policy position to hate.
The most popular man in town is the backup quarterback.
The GOPe fought Trump until the bitter end in 2016…the GOPe wanted abortion illegal with no exceptions up until a few weeks ago.
I'm not saying the GOP knew that Trump was the means to this strategy ahead of time. None of us really did, right? Trump's win was a surprise, and his ability to Teflon off scandals that would be the end of a political career for most people every five minutes is exceptional.
If you'd said, in March 2016, "Donald Trump will win the primary, then win the general, then become the central and controlling figure of the entire Republican Party such that party membership will largely depend on loyalty to him, he'll survive multiple legal scandals, the worst pandemic in a century, and a fairly open attempt to overthrow the government of the United States to remain the Republican nominee - and one with a tossup chance of winning again - in 2024", you would have sounded totally nuts.
It doesn't really sound any less nuts today either.
They still want that. Or rather, there's a sizable faction that wants that, and the rest of the Republican party hasn't figured out how to tell them no.
The GOP is now the Whigs…just an anti-Democratic Party party. I honestly believe Rove understood that in 2000 because the only way Bush would get re-elected in 2004 was the craft a Medicare prescription drug plan…and the only way to do it was with liberal policies. So the Regan Revolution was running out of steam and so they needed a path forward and unfortunately 9/11 happened and Bush/Cheney chose the worst possible path of all of the options…and that’s how you get Trump.
The GOP needs to find a sunny conservative who is not angry and conspiratorial and run them. A Reagan Republican. I think Glenn Youngkin would be an excellent choice. I disagree with him on many issues but he is not nutjob and I think would appeal to moderates.
The Conservative movement in general has driven itself into a ditch by supporting various extreme anti-intellectual and anti-science positions. This excites the base but doesn't bring moderates in and also has the problem of exciting liberals as well.
The Youngkin fetish is weird. He just got his ass handed to him in Virginia after making an abortion ban a centerpiece of his campaign and barely won in 2021 in a covid shutdown backlash year.
There are no John Kasich types left. More importantly, Republican voters would not nominate then if there were.
>There are no John Kasich types left. More importantly, Republican voters would not nominate then if there were.
This is the key point. Youngkin got nominated as a moderate because the state party scrapped its primary in order to pick him. He couldn't have come through a primary as a moderate.
Then, because he is ambitious and because Virginia has an idiotic one-term limit, he pivoted in office to market himself to a future national Republican primary audience.
I voted for him and am annoyed about that, although I'm not sure I would have loved a Dem trifecta either. What I wanted was a Larry Hogan, basically, but those are an endangered species under polarized primaries.
A Larry Hogan scenario would only happen in a situation where the Republicans had no chance of getting enough power to fundamentally change how the state operates, you let yourself get tricked
Who do you think is a good example of an electable Republican on the national stage that would be good for the Republican Party and the country as a whole
This
Does
Not
Exist
"electable Republican on the national stage" which includes a Republican primary and "good for the Republican Party and the country as a whole" at this point are contradictory elements. They don't go together. Full disclosure. I am a Democrat. I will never love a Republican nominee. Even a Kasich or a Sununu type. That being said, I don't think having a conservative party that is anti-democracy, anti-government, anti-intellectual, and super invested in post-truth politics is good for anyone as much as I enjoy how it contributes to them losing elections.
We are in a time of major electoral coalition shifts. Both parties are changing. The Republicans a bit more violently and visibly than Democrats but both are truly changing. We have to see how that shakes out and if the future of the conservative party is more Hawley/Vivek or is there is a larger reevaluation within the party. I tend to think there will not be due to how strong the social conservative wing of the party is and you cannot compromise when your approach is one of moral absolutism.
The conservative movement is all about anger. Why would someone who isn't angry be a good pick to represent them?
A Reagan Republican is a hateful Republican. You are completely ignoring his policies and his effect on American history.
"hateful" is becoming so overused and vague nowadays. What does it even mean when people say this now?
It means full of hate.
Reagan and his people let over a hundred thousand people die of AIDS and laughed about it because many of them were gay. That's when they weren't hiring every right-wing psycho in Latin America to rape nuns in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Hateful enough for you?
You prefer Trump?
No, but Trump is just a symptom of a very old disease within the GOP.
Trump's inner circle was full of people who've been in the shadows of GOP politics for decades. Roger Stone got his start with Nixon and was involved with basically every Republican campaign since, including shenanigans in South Florida during the 2000 election. Manafort was an advisor to Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Dole. Both had Southern Strategy author, former RNC chairman, Bush Sr. campaign manager, and "N-word, N-word, N-word" Lee Atwater as a senior partner at their lobbying firm.
And post-truth politics is very old, it was just contained until Trump made it malignant. Conservative talk-radio and Fox have been insane ragebait since I was listening to/watching them in my teens in the early 2000s, and "birtherism" was a big thing almost a decade before Trump. All Trump did was actually act like everything the Republican Base was being told was true, and so they ate it up. That's why they think he "tells it like it is" - he affirms the lies they've spent decades being propagandized into by the Republican establishment for their own benefit. The establishment knew (and knows) they're lies, of course, but that's how they get the votes. It's basically the "Evil Is Not A Toy" trope (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilIsNotAToy) playing out in actual reality.
So yes, Trump is the immediate malignancy, and cutting out that cancer is our first priority. But we also shouldn't forget the GOP has been chain-smoking insanity for a long time.
Great comment!
Trump is just the final evolution of something that's been percolating since Goldwater. Read Rick Perlstein's books, especially Nixonland and Reaganland. Reaganland especially, you see the beginning of the careers of all of America's worst people in that book
I prefer Democrats become the new right wing party and we get a real left wing party.
Except Democrats aren't right wing and for various reasons will never appeal to conservative voters.
So funny to write this after Nov 2023
Youngkin is a Bush Republican…no thanks!
You prefer Trump?
I'm gonna tell you the same thing I tell everyone who whines about how major cities keep electing the "same" candidates despite their problems instead of voting for Republicans: find better alternatives, candidate- and policy-wise.
Conservatives have literally picked everything that would make them hated by 60% of voters. They won't budge on their hate based policies and all it takes is people showing up to vote for the conservatives to lose outside of their strongholds.
If Democrats ran an abortion referendum in every state during the Trump election along with a referendum to give back the right to vote to all convicts and felons, they would probably finish off the Republican party.
What do you want to bet that Ohio goes for Trump in 2024 regardless of tonight's abortion referendum?
It's likely it does because a lot of people who came out to vote will not go in now. If abortion was on the ballot in 2024 there's no chance he would win. There's no doubt that more people hate Trump than like him. But the real measurement is how many people can overcome the opportunity cost to go vote/ will forgive the Democrats for not delivering a liberal policy platform.
"There's no doubt that more people hate Trump than like him."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/05/us/politics/biden-trump-2024-poll.html
Ironically the Republicans want to make those voters ineligible to vote 😏
Convicts can’t vote, nor can felons serving a sentence. Many post-sentence felons have voting restrictions.
To some extent, maybe, but the racial demographics of prisoners (I couldn't find anything on felons *per se* as a population with a quick look) is very very very nonwhite in a way that should favor Democrats on demographic bases alone. Working-class black voters may have shifted somewhat rightward but they're still *really* blue.
Lots to think about here. I’m gonna work through a thought or two that you got me thinkin’. 🤔
Trump’s disruption of the GOP works to a large extent because he’s changed the magnitude of interaction between personality and politics - in that personality needs to be extreme AND genuine, now.
For instance, you can have *genuine* charismatic bombast (Trump) or *genuine* tightwound schoolmarm prudistry (Mike Johnson) to succeed.
Most GOP candidates didn’t had *genuine* and *extreme* in their personality lexicon before Trump. Lots of GOP since might try on extreme but it doesn’t code genuine, or capable.
Herschel Walker? No. Desantis? No. Jim Jordan? Not even him.
Gaetz? Yes. MTG? Yes. Boebert? Yes. Lake? Hell yes.
You can’t run *against* that in-group without looking fake. Whoever wants to next run the GOP needs a maxed out charisma stat that’s based on something real within them.
Anyone else interested in how this idea might play out should check out Geoff Cohen’s excellent “Party Over Policy” paper from ... 2003.
( Christ, time flies. )
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2003-09138-003
I think that's a good analysis, and it explains the failure of tepid characters like Mitt Romney, who I think would have probably made a great president, and who I think probably WAS genuine, but his *extremity* rating would have been as low as you could go.
Also people who were making waves (Ted Cruz) but fell apart when they tried on Trump's clothes but it doesn't work because it's blatantly phony.
Other genuine actors I think get locked into their smaller roles--Rand Paul, etc--probably because genuineness is less adaptable than extremity.
Unfortunately, the *extreme* has become more important than the *genuine*. I think it probably stems from a fear that *genuine* gets run over by the MSM that the right does not trust--they feel that only an *extreme* personality would be able to withstand a (perceived or real) hostile media environment.
I recently read (can’t remember where) that Dems are becoming/have become the party of low-turnout elections (although the jury was always kind of out on whether higher turnout really did help them or not) -- can you speak to this swing at all, both in terms of the claim’s veracity and how it intersects with the trends you’re seeing here?
It’s definitely true and is likely responsible for Dems winning the VA state house, for example.
As I posted above, the people likeliest to vote - college-educated white middle/upper-middle class people, to be a bit reductive - used to vote Republican.
Now, that same group prefers Democrats. And the people who are less likely to vote (downscale whites and possibly Latinos) prefer Republicans.
So Republicans do better with Trump on the ballot because he brings out low propensity voters (or because it’s a presidential year and those voters are more likely to come out anyways - it’s kind of hard to separate the two at this point). And they do worse when Trump isn’t on the ballot / it’s not a presidential year and those voters don’t turn out.
"Joe Biden’s 4.5-point margin over Trump in 2022" - I assume you meant 2020?
The elections while Trump was president were about voting against the incumbent's party. That's normal. 2021 was very good for Republicans while Biden and the Democrats had control in Washington. Again, normal. What's changed since? It's ABORTION. If you pay attention to the facts on the ground, to what Republicans are doing, rather than to the conservative talking points, it looks like plans for a theocracy, and Americans don't want that. (If you want the evidence there's an excellent substack by Jessica Valenti, who's been covering the issue since Dobbs).
The voters turning out in these elections, however, are self-selected to care more about this issue and this threat. In an election when everybody turns out, like next year's presidential election, it's not at all clear that Democrats can maintain an edge. I think the results of elections while Biden has been president are completely consistent with polling showing him losing to Trump.
The voters who will decide this election are those who really dislike both candidates. Within that group, it's the voters who haven't voted since 2020 that I would be most concerned about as a Democrat. And again, this is consistent with the polling. The good news for Democrats is these are lower info, lower engagement voters, and they really aren't sold on Trump, so there's an opening for persuasion. The bad news is they have really really negative views of Biden, and if that changes it will be because of changes in the real world environment, not anything the campaign does. If Biden is going to be the nominee, and that's still an if afaiac, the only option I see is to convince these voters that Republicans are worse. Normally you would say Biden's numbers are bad enough that this can't work, but then these Republicans are exceptional too, so who knows. I think this is a rare case where you can argue 'this time IS different'. But I think that just introduces more uncertainty rather than changing who's favored.
"...it’s not clear how the GOP breaks out of the trap."
What if they...just started picking more electorally popular positions and selecting more sane candidates???
That only works if those candidates win primaries.
As Sunder said, one part is primaries, and the other part is values. De-emphasizing less popular positions might be good for winning, but at some point you have to take a stand. In other words--even if a position is unpopular on the left, if it's a ride-or-die issue for the base, it's probably right to at least support it (even if you aren't running on it explicitly).
If some closely held left position suddenly became unpopular (pick whatever you want, taxing corporations or trans stuff or gun control or whatever), you would hope that your elected officials would still support it even (perhaps especially) if it was unpopular, right?
Regarding picking sane candidates: yes, absolutely. I don't know what's going on there. It's freaking crazytown.
Like Stalin and Mao, Trump fever in the GOP will only break a year or two after Trump dies, when Republicans can safely criticize him.
Worked for Regan too 🤔
The US system seems to strongly favor two-party equilibriums, but there have been a few historical changes of which parties those were. What would it take to trigger another such change?
We can look to past party systems to inform us:
The First Party System ended when the Federalists fractured under internal disagreements, leaving the Democratic-Republicans effectively unopposed. In this case, the minority party fractured; the Federalists had been out of power for a decade and a half.
After the Era of Good Feelings, the Democratic-Republicans fractured into the Democrats and the Whigs again over internal disagreements (the Democrats of the early 1800s were the "state's rights"/individual liberties/limited government party; the Whigs inherited the Federalist tradition of a strong central government). The Second Party System lasted until the 1850s, when the Whigs fractured over slavery. Again, the minority party was the one that broke (with former Whigs forming the Republican Party).
Since then, it's been the same two parties. There's been changes in power, but the only huge coalitional change was the North-South flip starting around 1960 and completing around 1990 largely over issues of race or proxies for such.
----
In short: American political coalitions have pretty much always been regional and/or racial factions, at least since the decline of the Federalists c. 1800, and race in particular has been the motivating factor for both major realignments since.
However, separately from outright collapse of a party, there have been two eras of substantial dominance by one party: the Fourth Party System, dominated by Republicans during the Progressive Era, and the Fifth, dominated by Democrats under the New Deal coalition, both economic. Given the current negative-to-put-it-mildly perceptions of the American public towards their economic prospects, it seems like one party might be able to seize a long-term majority if they can come up with a really popular economic plan.
Probably the most-likely point would be if somehow the Republican leadership managed to "stop" Trump, and him trying to make a run as an independent, taking a huge swath of MAGAs with him. That would have a chance of crushing the Republicans on a national level, which over time would push them into irrelevance at the state and local levels as well. We would probably then see something similar to what happened in the early 1800s, as Thisisnot Arealname discussed: the Democrats would become dominant, but would eventually start to fracture until the more moderate Dems split off and joined with the more moderate former-GOPers to create a new opposition party.
Otherwise, the best trigger would likely come through structural changes (increased use of ranked-choice, open primaries, and similar voting procedures, elimination or circumvention of the Electoral College, etc.) that offer realistic paths for alternatives outside of the two-party system.
i assume you have received my first response, but this exchange highlights the fundamental problem we are having in our country now; ie., the ability to have honest discussions about important, sensitive topics. Topics we hope to find a common ground without resorting to name calling, misinformation challenges, or a general lack of good faith. I think I have implied several times how my position on this topic has changed and seek to find what is an acceptable half-way point from left. Is the only acceptable position now that abortion is now unrestricted up to and including the moment of birth? Is it all or nothing? Even under Roe vs Wade, limited abortion was allowed but Dobbs was only about whether the right was embedded or implied in the Constitution and whether it should be a right graded by the states. Some states and communities have taken different positions as our funding fathers intended in the method they used of creating this country. I may not like what Minnesota did but it is their right. All I can say is that I worry what 2024 will bring us. We have become so polarized that we cannot talk to one another
I cannot find the exact situation right now from the Minnesota law passed in March of this year and perhaps I slightly overstated its effect but essentially the law passed by the legislature legalizes abortion up to and including the moment of birth. So what does the moment at birth mean? you tell me.
Thisisnot Arealname I am delighted by your fine writing, apt diction, and good humor. Thank you!
A lifelong Democrat in New England, I worked hard at times to get some Republicans elected. Where one party (Democrat or Republican) had been dominant, then grew corrupt, there existed another party wherein you could find an honorable competent candidate who was moderate and practical.
I very much miss New England republicans. Tolerant tension with us Democrats made the path straighter towards good government. Today, valid interlocutors for a conservative point have left the GOP.
One cannot overstate the vast harm done to the US by the Fox propaganda machine. It has taught a generation to abandon truth for lies and improbable belief for evidence. There is much to be done.
The media loves Trump. They love to cover how awful he is, they love to cover his heterodoxies to argue that he is secretly moderate, they love to say he has an unbeatable cynical power over voters, they love to say the Democrats are causing this all to happen. In general, the media loves to cover candidates that voters hate, because voters love to read about what they hate and fear.
But Biden shows that moderates can win with voters, even if the media is complaining about it in sporadic fits of boredom. Strategically what the GOP has to do is clear, it's the primary electorate that they have to convince of this. That's the real trap.
I think their best bet to make that transition would be someone who is not a whiny "anti-Trump" Republican or a "Trump 2.0" Republican, but a courageously heterodox Republican inspired by Trump's disruption model. I don't know who that is - I don't think Nicki Haley or Chris Christie are cutting it. But suppose for example they magically nominated Andrew Yang - I think that would quickly reset the GOP brand.
I am not sure passing Unrestricted Abortion is anything to brag about, but then I have maintained for a while that Dobb's is a case of winning a battle but losing the war. At the present time, I think women are generally better educated (as a group) than men and are energized to vote on social issues. More getting degrees, more staying single and getting married later, more not having children, etc.
Ever since 2016 and perhaps even before, but ever since Trump, Democratic Candidates have seriously outspent Republican. Did some quick checks this morning and just looking at the 6 year financial summary for the Senate, Democrats outspent Republicans by $238 million to $114 million (FEC data https://www.fec.gov/campaign-finance-data/congressional-candidate-data-summary-tables/?year=2024&segment=6) Just look at the spending on the AZ Senate race and the amount of money Adam Schiff and Katherine Porter are getting.
There is a lot of truth to what Nate Silver has to say, but I also think there are a lot other elements affecting the vote. For sure the censorship industry is playing a big part and a lot of money behind making sure that tech people get their way. Even so, Republicans in the states, generally are not doing bad with approximately 27 state Legislatures controlled by Republicans. As Nate would say, all (almost) elections are local, but it is disconcerting that last night did not seemed to be affected by world events. I am worried about 2024. Not by who may be elected but by the upheaval being forecasted.
"I am not sure passing Unrestricted Abortion is anything to brag about"
The issue isn't one side pushing for "unrestricted abortion" and another side pushing back. The issue is one side pushing for absolutely-no-abortion-period-full-stop-zero-exceptions-coming-for-birth-control-next. That's not a reasonable position, and even arguing that the other side wants "unrestricted abortion" isn't effective anymore when placed in that context.
I believe in my next line I commented that "Dobbs was a case of winning a battle, but losing a war'....I am a cradle Catholic brought up to believe in the sanctity of life. It was hard for me, but came around to believe in abortion in the first trimester, and perhaps in the second, but not unrestricted and/or like Minnesota allows after birth which is not abortion, but murder.. Look around you, the reality is that our society values life less and less. How can we, our society tolerate the massive homelessness and the horrible deaths from fentanyl? Soon we will get were Canada is in allowing assisted suicide and perhaps euthanasia. Where does one draw the line?
"Minnesota allows after birth"
Instead of letting your argument rest on the merits you have to twist things beyond willful misinformation into outright lying. That is why you are losing; reasonable people simply do not believe you are arguing in good faith, and reject the arguments outright.
I'm a conservative and I don't know a single person who wants to eliminate birth control. I even know a few catholics (not many, I'll admit), and none of them have ever mentioned wanting that. They may not USE it in their personal lives, but I've never had them talk to me about it.
There probably are a lot of no-abortion-period conservatives (I'm not one, even though I personally think it's bad), but I can tell you 100% that that isn't a slippery slope to no birth control.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/birth-control-is-next-republicans-abortion.html
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/daniel-cameron-kentucky-birth-control-ban-1234825358/
https://19thnews.org/2023/04/republican-party-birth-control-iowa-legislation/
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/women-rule/2023/10/13/the-gops-complicated-contraceptive-dance-00121419
You may not "know a single person", but that doesn't mean the people you vote for aren't thinking about it.
From your own politico article:
"Birth control is overwhelmingly supported within the GOP, with a 2022 FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll showing that 93 percent of Republicans support birth control pills in “all or most cases.” A slightly smaller number of Republicans support other forms of contraception, with 82 percent supporting IUDs and 62 percent supporting “emergency contraception like Plan B.”
Some of those numbers are actually higher than the general public, of which 89 percent support birth control pills, 81 percent support IUDs and 70 percent support emergency contraception. But those numbers also show that contraception is overwhelmingly popular across party lines."
I'm sure there are a few nuts who don't want any birth control, but this isn't an issue that the republican party is voting for when republicans support birth control at HIGHER rates than the population at large (I suspect because there are still a large number of democrat catholics). There are a few nuts on either side--on either side!--who believe literally any insane position you can imagine.
This is the left wing equivalent of the right wing facebook conspiracies.
At best it's a mischaracterization of the differences between moral viewpoints--do we need to fund planned parenthood or should people have to buy their own birth control, etc--which reflect left v right views on the role of government in people's lives, not whether something should be legal.
For example, if abortion were 100% legal but planned parenthood was 100% defunded so you have to pay for it yourself, I suspect that the left would say that the republicans are trying to "block access" to abortion while the right would say that democrats are "allowing abortion in any instance" and both would be upset, because both view the roles of government intervention differently.
And I'm sure we'll disagree on that! But it still doesn't mean that there is any momentum on the right to *ban* birth control--especially when republicans are MORE in favor of it than the population at large.
The voters may not want to, yet anyway, but the activist groups have been calling the shots. It's not a strategy designed to work overnight. Read Jessica Valenti on this for a good explanation. And I would say what's most concerning to people who care about these issues is that the Republicans seem to only be moving in one direction, and we have yet to see anything pull them back towards the center, at least in what they're actually doing, not necessarily the rhetoric. The voters may not like it, but if the Republicans can gain power without compromising on it it seems they will. That's what we're very afraid of.
Running normal-ish candidates in swingy downballot elections might be more the issue than Trump.