I’ve been beating the Andy Beshear drum for a while. I’m a Kentucky Republican (though very anti-MAGA) and it’s wild how well he does speaking to moderate Republicans.
Nate isn’t wrong about Kentucky’s soft spot for Democrats in state office historically, but this isn’t true in Beshear’s races. He was the only Democrat elected to statewide office in any of those races - no one else was even close. And he ran up the margin post Covid even though he shut down schools and lost a court battle over church gatherings like any blue state governor.
I think the Republicans will nominate a MAGA candidate and I think electing that candidate would be a disaster. Beshear is a great way to pull away independents and the few swayable republicans without losing the democratic base.
Just my .02. And no, I don’t work for an eventual Beshear campaign or even know the guy. :D
Fellow Kentuckian here and I agree with all of this. He communicates like a moderate (in a good way), and I think if progressives really got to know him, they’d realize he’s further to the left than they realize. He just communicates his “why” a lot better than most.
It's extremely refreshing to hear someone actually come out and say that a key qualifier for Democrats is a candidate who looks and sounds moderate but behaves like a progressive once in office. People act their part at mass scale these days when it comes to pretending any given Democrat is actually a moderate centrist, so having someone be honest about the scam is nice to see.
Yeah, an important distinction, otherwise you might confuse all those progressive Republicans out there.
And what MAGA colored glasses? What would make you think I like MAGA, instead of believing they and their cult leader have substantially destroyed the Republican Party and are prepared to hand at least several electoral cycles to the Democrats?
The entire party is progressive, they're just not as pants-on-crazy as the further left parts of the country. The last few even close to moderate Federal office holders were driven out either by Republicans in the general or by harassment from their own side.
Some, of course, as highlighted above, play moderates on TV. But, policy wise, the party falls in line. That's why a state like Minnesota can lurch really left when Democrats win 1-3 seat majorities.
And it's convenient that everyone who disagrees with you from the right has a 'MAGA mindset'. Why do I feel like, twenty years ago, Arlen Spector would be too far right for you?
I’m not the best person to answer but anecdotally he has no scandals and the bitching I hear about him is entirely ideological. I take from those facts that he’s not giving any openings for critics to assail his administration’s inner workings.
He has had to deal with several significant natural disasters and handled them very well - it’s one of the reasons his approval keeps going up in rural red KY because of how well he’s managed these disasters and taken care of people. Outside of that there’s been great job growth but with republican super majorities in both houses of the state legislature there hasn’t been many legislative wins.
Before you give Ruben Gallego a high marks, you need to consider he ran against Kari Lake, one of the worst Republican candidates to run for statewide office in Arizona in the 49 years I have lived here. I think any decent Democrat with a pulse would have beaten her.
Yeah. Nate is pretending that opposition candidate quality doesn't matter.
Yes, Harris had a close AG election. Cooley had won LA County three times, and if he had matched his previous vote totals there he would have defeated Harris. She convinced people who had repeatedly voted for him to switch.
To be fair he did point out that Shapiro's best performance came against Doug Mastriano, who may have been an even worse candidate than Lake. But yeah, just saying that "Gallego was 7.9 points better than Harris in AZ in 2024" doesn't tell the full story when you consider Gallego's opposition. With that said, Gallego winning on the same ballot as Trump is not nothing and he does seem to have some cross party and independent appeal. It appears that most Sinema voters broke for Ruben.
Speaking as someone who has voted mostly Republican for most of my life and currently lives in AZ... My benchmark for the past few elections has been "is this person running against Kari Lake?" and if the answer is yes, they have my vote.
The weakness of SB score is that it grades candidates relative to other candidates of the same party _in their state_ (or congressional district). That’s a useful data point, but what we really care about is how presidential candidates perform relative to other candidates of the same party nationwide (or in swing states).
For example, Gavin Newsom (full disclosure: I’m not a fan) runs behind the average replacement Democrat in California. But it matters a lot more how he performs in a general presidential election relative to the average replacement Democrat in Pennsylvania.
I mean, that’s absolutely true, but the only way we will know how Newsom performs in PA is with a presidential election where he’s the Dem nominee (or, far less likely, he moves to PA and runs for another office there). Nate is introducing a metric that can be used to compare different primary candidates and get a clue as to how they’d perform as a national candidate. It’s not apples-to-apples, but it’s the best we are gonna get. And this indicator, with those caveats, suggests Newsom is a weak option.
Obviously there's no way in 2026 to put together a foolproof set of metrics for identifying the best candidate — but it's still a useful dataset, a few results surprised me. Wes Moore, for instance, I would have expected a lower SB score. I knew Andy Beshear's numbers were strong, but I didn't realize he was thunder-dunking on the rest of the field. That said, I don't think any candidate can rely purely on how they outperform in their home state. For instance Joe Manchin I think would have struggled in a national election to win over democrats. If anything, I think data like this is most useful for weeding out weaker candidates — and then among the high performers, figuring out who has the strongest play on a national stage.
Hopefully, just hopefully, Democrats don’t go with an “electability” candidate again. It has been a near losing proposition for them for a long time. Electability is a vague term that has shifted over the years. Hopefully they go with the best candidate that has conviction in what they believe, and seems like they will have ability to bring about their platform.
In this way it is actually good that Newsom isn’t really the most “electable” candidate just looking at past wins. Because I’m not sure he has a clear modus operandi as a politician, or a reason to be running on behalf of the people. But if I hear about electability again instead of what a person actually believes in I’m going to lose my mind. Elections are just about getting elected, they’re about getting elected to enact policy. Americans are smart enough to know that policy matters. That’s why there is a gap in many of these races between the state/local level and national level, the candidate’s positions and values matter. Candidate quality, not just in terms of past elections matters. This all feels like apples to oranges comparisons, which I think ultimately highlights my point: the nuances of each race matters more than past results in separate elections.
I intended competence to be implied by the ability to advance policies, but I agree that should be part of the package.
On that front, Newsom has done OK.
The housing mess will take a while to fix, but he has helped with legislation to unblock creation of more housing..
He kept things moving forward on the electrification conversion, including keeping nuclear plants running to help bridge to solar + battery coming online.
Homelessness is improving now that we are no longer under a Federal court ruling restricting the ability to deal with "tent cities".
Between Covid and the fires he has managed pretty well on the disaster front.
And meanwhile the state economy continues to grow.
This is a horse race perspective, which is interesting but not even near the whole story.
Winning by a larger margin and then falling on policy execution is not the goal.
My biggest concern about Beshear is that we will get Obama 2.0. A tellegenic nice guy speaker who tries to work with the Republicans, and in the end hardly anything of value was accomplished.
It isn't just about MAGA. That is just the latest and worst rallying cry.
It is obvious that an effective Democratic leader will get fewer Republican crossover votes. That doesn't mean it would be the wrong decision.
"this is conceptually related to the 'wins above replacement'”
I disagree. Simple Benchmark is conceptually similar to Wins Above Average, and the difference matters here.
Wins Above Average measures a player's performance versus the league-year average player, whereas Wins Above Replacement measures versus a hypothetical replacement player. WAA uses a real control--based on aggregated real performances of real players--while WAR uses a synthetic control--based on estimates of what hypothetical players would have done.
While synthetic controls are necessarily more subjective than real controls, the advantage of WAR is it has a natural zero point. Two 4.0 WAA players are not worth an 8.0 WAA player, because if you traded the two for the one you'd have to find an MLB-average player to fill out your roster, and those are hard to find and expensive. In theory, if your WAR estimates are sound, two 4.0 WAR players are worth one 8.0 WAR player because you can easily fill the roster spot for the MLB minimum salary, which you have to pay in any case. Similarly, having an 8.0 WAR player for half a season is worth having a 4.0 WAR player for a full season. That calculation doesn't work with WAA.
Looking at it another way, a player like Pete Rose had an inflated career WAR (79.7) relative to WAA (29.1) because he played a lot of below-average seasons that added to WAR (he was better than a minor-league replacement) but subtracted from WAA (he was worse than a league-year-average player). Rogers Hornsby was the opposite with a relatively low WAR (127.0) relative to WAA (97.5). Hornsby had no below-average seasons with more than a handful of plate appearances.
In this case we might want to give more credit for outperforming Barack Obama in 2012 than Kamala Harris in 2024. Obama was clearly an above-average candidate, while Kamala Harris might be considered close to replacement level (that is, the Democrats had a large pool of comparably strong candidates who would have been happy to run, although of course logistical considerations were reasons to stick with Harris).
While there's not enough data to do this with any confidence, for what it's worth if we use Harris 2024 as a replacement candidate, we can add 5 points to any 2020 outperformance versus Biden, 6 points to any 2016 outperformance versus Hillary Clinton, 10 points to any 2012 outperformance relative to Obama and 2 points to outperformance versus Obama 2008. Those numbers strike me as broadly reasonable, although we also should consider the strength of the Republican opponent. We can similarly get numbers for the off-years.
While Replacement Baseline doesn't radically shake up the ordering versus Simple Baseline, it does make some changes. Cory Booker ran in the elections with the strongest benchmarks (the strongest Democratic Presidential candidates) and his average SB of +0.3 jumps to +7.7 RB, putting him in the middle of the pack. Harris gets the second biggest adjustment raising her from -9.7 to -3.7 and putting her ahead of Pete Buttigieg. John Ossoff gets the third biggest increase, moving from -3.6 to +1.3. But the top SB scores all got similar adjustments so the top stays about the same.
Which approach is better? In baseball, WAR is far more popular among sportswriters and analysts, because they tend to discuss trades and salaries and team construction and strategy. A state party trying to allocate potential candidates among statewide offices, with ability to recruit new candidates or promote from the minors (that is, district officials) and even sometimes trade as when a candidate moves to qualify for an office, might look at performance above replacement. This is how things tend to work in proportional representation legislatures.
WAA is preferred by sabermetric folks for evaluating top players for Hall of Fame or similar discussions. In fact, among the many measures used for this purpose are some that compare only to the best other players--such as seasons leading the league in important categories. If you want to find the best, you want to concentrate on comparisons with the best. If an AI routine were considering every qualifying American citizen to select a candidate, it would likely concentrate on comparing the most qualified people against other highly qualified people.
In 2028, I suspect the Republicans will field a replacement-level candidate or worse. Some of their strongest candidates by traditional criteria will be disqualified due to Trump-related issues--either they embarrassed themselves supporting him, or angered him or, in an impressive number of cases, both. Finding someone acceptable to MAGA and respected by traditional Republicans will likely result in a weak, compromise candidate no one really loves or knows much about--a dark horse. Or the nomination could go to a divisive figure like JD Vance or Ted Cruz who is nobody's idea of a replacement candidate but who might poll at similar levels.
If you're going to run against a replacement candidate, it makes sense to look at performance in elections against replacement candidates. That means a potential Presidential nominee should get positive points for underperforming a strong Democratic Presidential candidate in a state or local election rather than a negative. More generally, a more experienced candidate who has not been a disaster could be a wiser choice than a less experienced one with one or two spectacular successes versus weak Democratic Presidential candidates.
I doubt we should ever be using election results in blue states or blue districts as a basis for any conclusions regarding national elections. Or using primary results to project general election results. If Ocasio-Cortez is on the general elections ballot I will be voting for her, but I will doing it while fully understanding that D are losing, again. FSM save us. Luckily, I am from Michigan and my choices are clear.
I would like to see AOC take a path to House leadership.
It is somewhat unfortunate that Jefferies is also NYC, so it would be tricky to move up that path too far.
I don't see her as executive material (yet?), and hope that the 2028 Democratic primary voters agree. I think she would lose the general unless the R's nominate one of Trump's kids.
Why is everyone here ignoring the evidence Gavin Newsom is a moderate, mainstream, electable Democratic presidential candidate? Take a look below. I'd argue this type of evidence is probably going to weigh more heavily with "swing" voters than any mentioned in these comments. (Yes they exist, and I count among "swing" voters those who swing between voting and not voting in presidential elections as well as those who sometimes vote D and sometimes R.)
Looking for something more substantive than a family portrait (as excellent as the one I found is)? How about this: "A CalMatters analysis published in 2019 found Newsom's political positions to be more moderate than those of almost every Democratic state legislator in California." And that isn't just some analyst's opinion. Newsom has vetoed hundreds of bills passed by the California legislature - the total veto count may be approaching 1000 by now. Some of the most important vetoes were because he believed particular bills were too expensive and would harm the state's finances. A fact he could use to claim moderate credentials in a presidental campaign.
The Democratic Party exists for the wealth transfer and wealth confiscation.
Both agenda at odds with economic growth.
They only create an endless moral hazard.
As for your remark on Republican Presidents, I would remind to you that the obstruction of Democratic Congresses have shackled those Presidents from implementing fundamental deconstruction of the welfare state.
History is history.
Look at Mandami as yet another example of the horror of Democratic, socialist, leftist governance.
Because there are actual numbers to back up my point.
The total US tax burden (Fed / State / local) is small. You are falling for propaganda from the top tiers who don't care about actual return on investment as long as tax cuts make them seem richer.
Why not? They earned it --- American business has revolutionized the world, in communications and every other way. AND they pay essentially ALL the taxes, while the bottom 40% pays zero, that's 000.
Not all of that is earned. At l;east some of that transfer is because of power partly gained through the political arena. Would you deny that the top income people in the country have disproportionate power and have used it effectively?
I an not arguing against private property nor disputing the success of the market system. I an saying it is not perfect in that it is not working for a significant number of people. The wealth gap has increased significantly over the last 50 yt the failings of the system. ears and continues to do so. Meanwhile we continue to add to the advantages of the wealthy by failing to correct the failings of the system. The bottom half of the income distribution also contributes to the system and thus deserves to earn enough to be able to access food, health care, education and other necessities of life. If you like the market system you must admit that some modification of how it works is necessary. Characterizing it as a question of capitalism or socialism is simplistic.
I could see Ruben Gallego being a high-level candidate (tho that might be undermined by him being a bit more liberal than a general electorate would prefer), but the fact there was no mention of his opponent being Kari Lake was a huge miss in this article. Ruben Gallego would not be in the Senate had Rs nominated anyone center right in that race, but instead they went with one of the shittiest candidates in the country.
Newsom has five dollar a gallon gas in California. Try selling that in a general election nationwide. Republicans would love him to be the nominee. I do think Rubio will get the Republican nomination over Vance.
California gas prices are a side effect of long term policies to improve air quality. Long term means since 1992, not since Newsom was elected.
The unfortunate thing is that the oil companies managed to get the policies implemented in a way that enables them to manipulate the price of gas in California, for example by closing certain refineries during periods of high demand.
I agree that this is a losing issue, and it is a side effect of bad policy.
Modern engines are much more efficient and the special California formulation actually is not that much better. 15% to 20% sounds like a lot, but some of this could be addressed with tighter vehicle standards and point solutions (eg. electrification of drayage trucking).
If the actual policy goal is to drive prices up to reduce demand and encourage the move to electric vehicles, the right policy would be to eliminate the special California formulation, raise the gas tax, and help E-vehicle subsidies.
(And yes, I know that a large portion of our electric generation causes pollution. It is substantially less, and far cheaper to "scrub" than the gas formulation surcharge).
Because every E-vehicle on the road saves a lot more than 15%, and money for this conversion is better than money for oil companies.
Of course that is the real problem. Oil companies like the higher price, so they are in a politics makes strange bedfellow alliance with the uninformed environmentalists to keep the special formulation.
And of course the ethanol lobby helps since is is a major player in any politician's national ambitions because of the history of the Iowa caucus.
The fact is that if California eliminated the special formulation, there would be a lot of very unhappy people in Iowa and Nebraska. Annually, California burns about 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol, which is about 10% of US production.
Finally, the special formulation was implemented under a Republican governor (Wilson) based on an environmental policy board established by another Republican (Reagan).
But by all means blame Newsom. Facts and history are not part of selecting leadership for a big slice of the country.
Here is my problem with those assessments: the presidential elections have been decided solely by battleground states. Candidates from deep blue states are actually in a disadvantage, in this case, because regardless of what their actual positions are, they will be tied to their home state policies and politics. Blue state policies, although maybe favored by the people in that state, usually are not that popular at all in battleground states. People who don't like MAGA aren't automatically linked to progressive. They could dislike the left wing of the Dem equally if not more. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day that if Thomas Massie decided to enter the race in 2028 he might even have a good chance to smoke just about anyone Dem can offer. Not like he can win the GOP primary under current circumstances so it was more or less just a joke but that assessment does have its own merit.
Yeah except I said it was a disadvantage, not THE determining factor. What about Harris then? How much did her Californian origin contributed to her loss in all battleground states? Maybe not the Midwest or Eastern states, but what about NV or AZ?
Harris was a bad candidate that got the nomination without going through any sort of vetting process. Maybe California hurt her (its certainly plausible) but I think its more likely that she was just a bad choice.
It is empirically true that successful Democratic candidates this century have been from blue states.
Your hypothesis does sound plausible to me, but the data does not back it up. Probably because there is not enough data. I'd certainly prefer Beshear or Whitmer over Newsome in any case, but mostly because I get a really slimy vibe from Newsom.
True true, I'd love to some more data analysis on deep blue state candidates popularity among independent voters in battleground states.
I dislike Newsom, mostly because he adopted the progressive Trump tactics. I didn't like the whole you vs me idea, regardless which side it is originated from
The March 4 GOP draft should be pretty boring: First pick will be J.D. Vance; second pick Donald Trump Jr.; the remaining picks won't matter since one of the first two will get the nomination.
I’ve been beating the Andy Beshear drum for a while. I’m a Kentucky Republican (though very anti-MAGA) and it’s wild how well he does speaking to moderate Republicans.
Nate isn’t wrong about Kentucky’s soft spot for Democrats in state office historically, but this isn’t true in Beshear’s races. He was the only Democrat elected to statewide office in any of those races - no one else was even close. And he ran up the margin post Covid even though he shut down schools and lost a court battle over church gatherings like any blue state governor.
I think the Republicans will nominate a MAGA candidate and I think electing that candidate would be a disaster. Beshear is a great way to pull away independents and the few swayable republicans without losing the democratic base.
Just my .02. And no, I don’t work for an eventual Beshear campaign or even know the guy. :D
Fellow Kentuckian here and I agree with all of this. He communicates like a moderate (in a good way), and I think if progressives really got to know him, they’d realize he’s further to the left than they realize. He just communicates his “why” a lot better than most.
It's extremely refreshing to hear someone actually come out and say that a key qualifier for Democrats is a candidate who looks and sounds moderate but behaves like a progressive once in office. People act their part at mass scale these days when it comes to pretending any given Democrat is actually a moderate centrist, so having someone be honest about the scam is nice to see.
You do understand that you leapt from "progressives" to "Democrats", don't you?
Your MAGA colored glasses may be on just a little too tight.
Yeah, an important distinction, otherwise you might confuse all those progressive Republicans out there.
And what MAGA colored glasses? What would make you think I like MAGA, instead of believing they and their cult leader have substantially destroyed the Republican Party and are prepared to hand at least several electoral cycles to the Democrats?
Progressives are less than 1/8th of the Democratic party, so you are 88% wrong.
You can have a MAGA perspective without liking MAGA candidate. That is the whole point of the right wing echo chamber.
The Bernie cult has the same effect on the left end of the spectrum.
The entire party is progressive, they're just not as pants-on-crazy as the further left parts of the country. The last few even close to moderate Federal office holders were driven out either by Republicans in the general or by harassment from their own side.
Some, of course, as highlighted above, play moderates on TV. But, policy wise, the party falls in line. That's why a state like Minnesota can lurch really left when Democrats win 1-3 seat majorities.
And it's convenient that everyone who disagrees with you from the right has a 'MAGA mindset'. Why do I feel like, twenty years ago, Arlen Spector would be too far right for you?
From the inside perspective, how good are Beshear's administration/management skills?
People are focusing on the charisma side (media and speaking skills) of the horse race.
It would also be nice to get a President with some executive skills.
I’m not the best person to answer but anecdotally he has no scandals and the bitching I hear about him is entirely ideological. I take from those facts that he’s not giving any openings for critics to assail his administration’s inner workings.
No major messes is a good starting place, especially in a state that leans R pretty heavily.
He has had to deal with several significant natural disasters and handled them very well - it’s one of the reasons his approval keeps going up in rural red KY because of how well he’s managed these disasters and taken care of people. Outside of that there’s been great job growth but with republican super majorities in both houses of the state legislature there hasn’t been many legislative wins.
I am already sending him money from MI. "Democrat",'Republican" became useless labels in the era of T.
Before you give Ruben Gallego a high marks, you need to consider he ran against Kari Lake, one of the worst Republican candidates to run for statewide office in Arizona in the 49 years I have lived here. I think any decent Democrat with a pulse would have beaten her.
Yeah. Nate is pretending that opposition candidate quality doesn't matter.
Yes, Harris had a close AG election. Cooley had won LA County three times, and if he had matched his previous vote totals there he would have defeated Harris. She convinced people who had repeatedly voted for him to switch.
To be fair he did point out that Shapiro's best performance came against Doug Mastriano, who may have been an even worse candidate than Lake. But yeah, just saying that "Gallego was 7.9 points better than Harris in AZ in 2024" doesn't tell the full story when you consider Gallego's opposition. With that said, Gallego winning on the same ballot as Trump is not nothing and he does seem to have some cross party and independent appeal. It appears that most Sinema voters broke for Ruben.
Speaking as someone who has voted mostly Republican for most of my life and currently lives in AZ... My benchmark for the past few elections has been "is this person running against Kari Lake?" and if the answer is yes, they have my vote.
The weakness of SB score is that it grades candidates relative to other candidates of the same party _in their state_ (or congressional district). That’s a useful data point, but what we really care about is how presidential candidates perform relative to other candidates of the same party nationwide (or in swing states).
For example, Gavin Newsom (full disclosure: I’m not a fan) runs behind the average replacement Democrat in California. But it matters a lot more how he performs in a general presidential election relative to the average replacement Democrat in Pennsylvania.
I mean, that’s absolutely true, but the only way we will know how Newsom performs in PA is with a presidential election where he’s the Dem nominee (or, far less likely, he moves to PA and runs for another office there). Nate is introducing a metric that can be used to compare different primary candidates and get a clue as to how they’d perform as a national candidate. It’s not apples-to-apples, but it’s the best we are gonna get. And this indicator, with those caveats, suggests Newsom is a weak option.
Obviously there's no way in 2026 to put together a foolproof set of metrics for identifying the best candidate — but it's still a useful dataset, a few results surprised me. Wes Moore, for instance, I would have expected a lower SB score. I knew Andy Beshear's numbers were strong, but I didn't realize he was thunder-dunking on the rest of the field. That said, I don't think any candidate can rely purely on how they outperform in their home state. For instance Joe Manchin I think would have struggled in a national election to win over democrats. If anything, I think data like this is most useful for weeding out weaker candidates — and then among the high performers, figuring out who has the strongest play on a national stage.
Hopefully, just hopefully, Democrats don’t go with an “electability” candidate again. It has been a near losing proposition for them for a long time. Electability is a vague term that has shifted over the years. Hopefully they go with the best candidate that has conviction in what they believe, and seems like they will have ability to bring about their platform.
In this way it is actually good that Newsom isn’t really the most “electable” candidate just looking at past wins. Because I’m not sure he has a clear modus operandi as a politician, or a reason to be running on behalf of the people. But if I hear about electability again instead of what a person actually believes in I’m going to lose my mind. Elections are just about getting elected, they’re about getting elected to enact policy. Americans are smart enough to know that policy matters. That’s why there is a gap in many of these races between the state/local level and national level, the candidate’s positions and values matter. Candidate quality, not just in terms of past elections matters. This all feels like apples to oranges comparisons, which I think ultimately highlights my point: the nuances of each race matters more than past results in separate elections.
100%
Newsom is flawed, but on day one he would stand up against Republicans to advance policies to clean up the mess they have made.
Those should be the table stakes.
Newsom has been a lousy governor (as evidenced by him not fixing any major state problems).
I’d strongly prefer “can run a state competently” as the table stakes.
I intended competence to be implied by the ability to advance policies, but I agree that should be part of the package.
On that front, Newsom has done OK.
The housing mess will take a while to fix, but he has helped with legislation to unblock creation of more housing..
He kept things moving forward on the electrification conversion, including keeping nuclear plants running to help bridge to solar + battery coming online.
Homelessness is improving now that we are no longer under a Federal court ruling restricting the ability to deal with "tent cities".
Between Covid and the fires he has managed pretty well on the disaster front.
And meanwhile the state economy continues to grow.
What exactly were you hoping he would fix?
This is a horse race perspective, which is interesting but not even near the whole story.
Winning by a larger margin and then falling on policy execution is not the goal.
My biggest concern about Beshear is that we will get Obama 2.0. A tellegenic nice guy speaker who tries to work with the Republicans, and in the end hardly anything of value was accomplished.
It isn't just about MAGA. That is just the latest and worst rallying cry.
It is obvious that an effective Democratic leader will get fewer Republican crossover votes. That doesn't mean it would be the wrong decision.
"this is conceptually related to the 'wins above replacement'”
I disagree. Simple Benchmark is conceptually similar to Wins Above Average, and the difference matters here.
Wins Above Average measures a player's performance versus the league-year average player, whereas Wins Above Replacement measures versus a hypothetical replacement player. WAA uses a real control--based on aggregated real performances of real players--while WAR uses a synthetic control--based on estimates of what hypothetical players would have done.
While synthetic controls are necessarily more subjective than real controls, the advantage of WAR is it has a natural zero point. Two 4.0 WAA players are not worth an 8.0 WAA player, because if you traded the two for the one you'd have to find an MLB-average player to fill out your roster, and those are hard to find and expensive. In theory, if your WAR estimates are sound, two 4.0 WAR players are worth one 8.0 WAR player because you can easily fill the roster spot for the MLB minimum salary, which you have to pay in any case. Similarly, having an 8.0 WAR player for half a season is worth having a 4.0 WAR player for a full season. That calculation doesn't work with WAA.
Looking at it another way, a player like Pete Rose had an inflated career WAR (79.7) relative to WAA (29.1) because he played a lot of below-average seasons that added to WAR (he was better than a minor-league replacement) but subtracted from WAA (he was worse than a league-year-average player). Rogers Hornsby was the opposite with a relatively low WAR (127.0) relative to WAA (97.5). Hornsby had no below-average seasons with more than a handful of plate appearances.
In this case we might want to give more credit for outperforming Barack Obama in 2012 than Kamala Harris in 2024. Obama was clearly an above-average candidate, while Kamala Harris might be considered close to replacement level (that is, the Democrats had a large pool of comparably strong candidates who would have been happy to run, although of course logistical considerations were reasons to stick with Harris).
While there's not enough data to do this with any confidence, for what it's worth if we use Harris 2024 as a replacement candidate, we can add 5 points to any 2020 outperformance versus Biden, 6 points to any 2016 outperformance versus Hillary Clinton, 10 points to any 2012 outperformance relative to Obama and 2 points to outperformance versus Obama 2008. Those numbers strike me as broadly reasonable, although we also should consider the strength of the Republican opponent. We can similarly get numbers for the off-years.
While Replacement Baseline doesn't radically shake up the ordering versus Simple Baseline, it does make some changes. Cory Booker ran in the elections with the strongest benchmarks (the strongest Democratic Presidential candidates) and his average SB of +0.3 jumps to +7.7 RB, putting him in the middle of the pack. Harris gets the second biggest adjustment raising her from -9.7 to -3.7 and putting her ahead of Pete Buttigieg. John Ossoff gets the third biggest increase, moving from -3.6 to +1.3. But the top SB scores all got similar adjustments so the top stays about the same.
Which approach is better? In baseball, WAR is far more popular among sportswriters and analysts, because they tend to discuss trades and salaries and team construction and strategy. A state party trying to allocate potential candidates among statewide offices, with ability to recruit new candidates or promote from the minors (that is, district officials) and even sometimes trade as when a candidate moves to qualify for an office, might look at performance above replacement. This is how things tend to work in proportional representation legislatures.
WAA is preferred by sabermetric folks for evaluating top players for Hall of Fame or similar discussions. In fact, among the many measures used for this purpose are some that compare only to the best other players--such as seasons leading the league in important categories. If you want to find the best, you want to concentrate on comparisons with the best. If an AI routine were considering every qualifying American citizen to select a candidate, it would likely concentrate on comparing the most qualified people against other highly qualified people.
In 2028, I suspect the Republicans will field a replacement-level candidate or worse. Some of their strongest candidates by traditional criteria will be disqualified due to Trump-related issues--either they embarrassed themselves supporting him, or angered him or, in an impressive number of cases, both. Finding someone acceptable to MAGA and respected by traditional Republicans will likely result in a weak, compromise candidate no one really loves or knows much about--a dark horse. Or the nomination could go to a divisive figure like JD Vance or Ted Cruz who is nobody's idea of a replacement candidate but who might poll at similar levels.
If you're going to run against a replacement candidate, it makes sense to look at performance in elections against replacement candidates. That means a potential Presidential nominee should get positive points for underperforming a strong Democratic Presidential candidate in a state or local election rather than a negative. More generally, a more experienced candidate who has not been a disaster could be a wiser choice than a less experienced one with one or two spectacular successes versus weak Democratic Presidential candidates.
I doubt we should ever be using election results in blue states or blue districts as a basis for any conclusions regarding national elections. Or using primary results to project general election results. If Ocasio-Cortez is on the general elections ballot I will be voting for her, but I will doing it while fully understanding that D are losing, again. FSM save us. Luckily, I am from Michigan and my choices are clear.
I would like to see AOC take a path to House leadership.
It is somewhat unfortunate that Jefferies is also NYC, so it would be tricky to move up that path too far.
I don't see her as executive material (yet?), and hope that the 2028 Democratic primary voters agree. I think she would lose the general unless the R's nominate one of Trump's kids.
I love the live shows. It is how I wish socializing was (instead of small talk). Huge fan of Clare's and Galen's (and obviously Nate's).
Why is everyone here ignoring the evidence Gavin Newsom is a moderate, mainstream, electable Democratic presidential candidate? Take a look below. I'd argue this type of evidence is probably going to weigh more heavily with "swing" voters than any mentioned in these comments. (Yes they exist, and I count among "swing" voters those who swing between voting and not voting in presidential elections as well as those who sometimes vote D and sometimes R.)
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oYag!,w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fbdac2f6e-8ca3-4b83-a67b-4d02037c21d3_1088x840.png
Looking for something more substantive than a family portrait (as excellent as the one I found is)? How about this: "A CalMatters analysis published in 2019 found Newsom's political positions to be more moderate than those of almost every Democratic state legislator in California." And that isn't just some analyst's opinion. Newsom has vetoed hundreds of bills passed by the California legislature - the total veto count may be approaching 1000 by now. Some of the most important vetoes were because he believed particular bills were too expensive and would harm the state's finances. A fact he could use to claim moderate credentials in a presidental campaign.
A national tragedy that you fail to condede.
Virtually all of these Democrats will advocate the wealth confiscation raison d'etre of the Democratic Party.
Will any of these potential candidates outright disavow that they will carrry out that fundamental objective?
Look at Mandami in NYC. Confiscating wealth to piss it away. Democratic orthodoxy to the core.
Admit it.
GDP and employment do better under Democratic leadership than Republican.
Maybe your beliefs about how economies work aren't consistent with the facts.
Ridiculous.
The Democratic Party exists for the wealth transfer and wealth confiscation.
Both agenda at odds with economic growth.
They only create an endless moral hazard.
As for your remark on Republican Presidents, I would remind to you that the obstruction of Democratic Congresses have shackled those Presidents from implementing fundamental deconstruction of the welfare state.
History is history.
Look at Mandami as yet another example of the horror of Democratic, socialist, leftist governance.
Got data?
Because there are actual numbers to back up my point.
The total US tax burden (Fed / State / local) is small. You are falling for propaganda from the top tiers who don't care about actual return on investment as long as tax cuts make them seem richer.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally
How do you feel about the transfer of wealth to the top over the last 25 years?
Why not? They earned it --- American business has revolutionized the world, in communications and every other way. AND they pay essentially ALL the taxes, while the bottom 40% pays zero, that's 000.
Wrong, and you know it.
Social security and medicare taxes are heavily regressive, and corporate taxes mostly get passed through to the end customer.
Yes, the bottom end of the income curve pays much less of the income tax, but personal income tax is only 52% of Federal revenue.
And every Democrat wants more of that confiscation of those that earn.
Just admit it.
Boo hoo. You hate taxes.
Got it.
Republicans are the party of free stuff. You might look at where the explosions in the Federal debt have come from.
Utterly ridiculous
The maintenance of unstainable social programs are the fundamental cause of any fiscal crisis the US faces , and most other Western democracies.
Just fine.
Those gains were earned.
You don't dispute that?
Or do you reject the concept of private property?
Not all of that is earned. At l;east some of that transfer is because of power partly gained through the political arena. Would you deny that the top income people in the country have disproportionate power and have used it effectively?
Not criminally
And the overall impact on the economy has been positive
Compare the US economic progress to any socialist alternative
Private property is fundamental to any successful economy and democracy
Along with election integrity
I say that as I condemn Trump for his tariff policy and his abject failure in respect of suporting Ukraine
I an not arguing against private property nor disputing the success of the market system. I an saying it is not perfect in that it is not working for a significant number of people. The wealth gap has increased significantly over the last 50 yt the failings of the system. ears and continues to do so. Meanwhile we continue to add to the advantages of the wealthy by failing to correct the failings of the system. The bottom half of the income distribution also contributes to the system and thus deserves to earn enough to be able to access food, health care, education and other necessities of life. If you like the market system you must admit that some modification of how it works is necessary. Characterizing it as a question of capitalism or socialism is simplistic.
Still waiting for Silver to call Democratic economic illiteracy
Still waiting for a Republican president who doesn't screw over the US economy, lol.
Red states are pretty bad at GDP per capita.
Especially if you ignore extractive business since that is pretty much luck of the geographic draw rather than policy based.
I guess Utah is your beaming demonstration of success.
"Woot! We're number 18, we're number 18!"
Edit : oops - turns out more than 10% of Utah's economy is extractive. So next up is .. Indiana "We're number 30, We're number 30!"
I could see Ruben Gallego being a high-level candidate (tho that might be undermined by him being a bit more liberal than a general electorate would prefer), but the fact there was no mention of his opponent being Kari Lake was a huge miss in this article. Ruben Gallego would not be in the Senate had Rs nominated anyone center right in that race, but instead they went with one of the shittiest candidates in the country.
Newsom has five dollar a gallon gas in California. Try selling that in a general election nationwide. Republicans would love him to be the nominee. I do think Rubio will get the Republican nomination over Vance.
Any of the MAGAs are fine with me -- Rubio, Vance, whomever. No never-Trumpies, that's all.
California gas prices are a side effect of long term policies to improve air quality. Long term means since 1992, not since Newsom was elected.
The unfortunate thing is that the oil companies managed to get the policies implemented in a way that enables them to manipulate the price of gas in California, for example by closing certain refineries during periods of high demand.
I agree that this is a losing issue, and it is a side effect of bad policy.
Modern engines are much more efficient and the special California formulation actually is not that much better. 15% to 20% sounds like a lot, but some of this could be addressed with tighter vehicle standards and point solutions (eg. electrification of drayage trucking).
If the actual policy goal is to drive prices up to reduce demand and encourage the move to electric vehicles, the right policy would be to eliminate the special California formulation, raise the gas tax, and help E-vehicle subsidies.
(And yes, I know that a large portion of our electric generation causes pollution. It is substantially less, and far cheaper to "scrub" than the gas formulation surcharge).
Because every E-vehicle on the road saves a lot more than 15%, and money for this conversion is better than money for oil companies.
Of course that is the real problem. Oil companies like the higher price, so they are in a politics makes strange bedfellow alliance with the uninformed environmentalists to keep the special formulation.
And of course the ethanol lobby helps since is is a major player in any politician's national ambitions because of the history of the Iowa caucus.
The fact is that if California eliminated the special formulation, there would be a lot of very unhappy people in Iowa and Nebraska. Annually, California burns about 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol, which is about 10% of US production.
Finally, the special formulation was implemented under a Republican governor (Wilson) based on an environmental policy board established by another Republican (Reagan).
But by all means blame Newsom. Facts and history are not part of selecting leadership for a big slice of the country.
Looking forward to what position you draft Donald Trump in :)
Here is my problem with those assessments: the presidential elections have been decided solely by battleground states. Candidates from deep blue states are actually in a disadvantage, in this case, because regardless of what their actual positions are, they will be tied to their home state policies and politics. Blue state policies, although maybe favored by the people in that state, usually are not that popular at all in battleground states. People who don't like MAGA aren't automatically linked to progressive. They could dislike the left wing of the Dem equally if not more. I was joking with a friend of mine the other day that if Thomas Massie decided to enter the race in 2028 he might even have a good chance to smoke just about anyone Dem can offer. Not like he can win the GOP primary under current circumstances so it was more or less just a joke but that assessment does have its own merit.
Obama was from Illinois and had ties to Hawaii, and yet he won twice.
Yeah except I said it was a disadvantage, not THE determining factor. What about Harris then? How much did her Californian origin contributed to her loss in all battleground states? Maybe not the Midwest or Eastern states, but what about NV or AZ?
Harris was a bad candidate that got the nomination without going through any sort of vetting process. Maybe California hurt her (its certainly plausible) but I think its more likely that she was just a bad choice.
It is empirically true that successful Democratic candidates this century have been from blue states.
Your hypothesis does sound plausible to me, but the data does not back it up. Probably because there is not enough data. I'd certainly prefer Beshear or Whitmer over Newsome in any case, but mostly because I get a really slimy vibe from Newsom.
True true, I'd love to some more data analysis on deep blue state candidates popularity among independent voters in battleground states.
I dislike Newsom, mostly because he adopted the progressive Trump tactics. I didn't like the whole you vs me idea, regardless which side it is originated from
The March 4 GOP draft should be pretty boring: First pick will be J.D. Vance; second pick Donald Trump Jr.; the remaining picks won't matter since one of the first two will get the nomination.