I’ve been seeing this quote going around lately from Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape. He said, “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.”
I like the quote not because it strikes me incredibly astute or wise, but because it seems like it fits in with the present situation facing political analysts in this country. There’s always a place for a piece like this one from Ezra Klein that wisely counsels us to remember that there are many historical examples of presidential candidates catching fire early on only to fizzle when people got focused on electability as a top priority.
To put the history into a context that is relevant to today, there are four candidates who I thought would be the Republican nominees but who I sometimes wondered if they could really pull it off. Let me walk through them for you.
In 2000, prior to John McCain’s massive, decisive win in the New Hampshire primary, I never gave him even the slightest chance of winning the nomination. I had to briefly reconsider that assessment, but McCain acted like the dog who caught the car and didn’t seem to know what to do with his momentum. That seemed evident during his victory speech in New Hampshire and it never improved. After his ugly defeat in South Carolina, order was restored.
In 2008, it was completely unthinkable that anyone other than John McCain would win the nomination but the base hated him and he completely ran out of money and had to stop and retool his campaign. He was just lucky that Mitt Romney wasn’t a stronger alternative. No one else in the field (Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee) could pass the basic laugh test. McCain won because the alternatives were so unrealistic.
If anything, 2012 was a clearer case of this. Mitt Romney was an unattractive candidate with a record uniquely unsuited for the times and mood of the Republican base. But there was no one else to choose. After flirting with every other declared candidate, the party grudgingly gave the nomination to Romney because they still cared about electability.
And, ever since 2012, and long before he indicated any intention of running, I identified Jeb Bush as the only candidate who could fit this mold. He was the only Republican in the country who could make any kind of plausible case that he might win the Electoral College in anything resembling normal circumstances. And, yes, this is a straightforward electability argument, which shows that I honor the data and am willing to use it as a guide.
Still, this electability thing is subjective and it’s not just some abstract concept that sits there fixed and immutable. There are mechanisms that are used to build up a candidate’s electability and to challenge the electability of others.
When Howard Dean caught fire, the establishment worked to convince people that he wasn’t electable. And they worked to convince us that John Kerry was electable. Right now, the Republican establishment is attempting to do the same thing with Donald Trump vis-a-vis Bush, Walker, Rubio, and, seemingly, Carly Fiorina. The Democratic establishment is rousing itself to do the same thing to Bernie Sanders for Hillary Clinton’s benefit.
What we’re talking about here, though, is a limited data set. And it’s not the case that the parties always succumb to the logic of electability. The Republicans clearly rejected this logic in 1964 when they nominated Barry Goldwater over Nelson Rockefeller. And the Democrats rejected it in 1972 when they chose George McGovern over Ed Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. In 1976, the Democrats rolled the dice on an unknown governor from Georgia and wound up winning the presidency. It’s certainly possible for a candidate who has big questions about his or her electability to win the nomination, and not completely impossible for them to go on to win in the general. We’ve seen these things happen and that’s part of the data, too.
We already know that some data models are not working. By precedent, the Republican runner-up in 2012 should be beginning this contest as the favorite. That’s what happened after 1976 when Reagan came in second place. It’s what happened after 1988 when Bob Dole came in second place. It’s what happened after 2000 when John McCain came in second place. It’s what happened after 2008 when Mitt Romney came in second place. But Rick Santorum, the runner-up in 2012, is so low in the polls that he barely registers.
I think we are really entering a phase of American politics that is unpredictable and where precedent isn’t our surest guide. Or, maybe, it’s still our best guide, but it just isn’t an adequate or reliable one.
So, that gets us to feel. I think a good analyst right now has to have a feel for the mood of the electorate, and they need to combine that with a mastery of the mechanics of how the nominations are won and an understanding of the way new election finance rules are changing the game.
This is a tall order, and it’s one that presents a daily challenge as I try to figure out what the hell is going on.
By precedent, the Republican runner-up in 2012 should be beginning this contest as the favorite. That’s what happened after 1976 when Reagan came in second place. It’s what happened after 1988 when Bob Dole came in second place. It’s what happened after 2000 when John McCain came in second place. It’s what happened after 2008 when Mitt Romney came in second place. But Rick Santorum, the runner-up in 2012, is so low in the polls that he barely registers.
Except Santorum is bat guano crazy. And he lost re-election to an office he held by 20 points. So he’s “electable”? Is Sanders “un-electable” when all the data geeks tell me that the Democrat would have the advantage thanks to the electoral college?
The 2012 primary votes FOR Santorum were close to his current polling numbers. The remainder were votes AGAINST Romney who also couldn’t stomach any of the others.
The fact that Santorum lost a Senate campaign doesn’t help him either. Losers who keep plugging don’t gain respect by repetition.
Didn’t Nixon lose a bid for both the Presidency, as well as Governorship of California before winning the Presidency?
I once asked a friend in PA how Santorum was elected Senator and he said that it was a mystery to him.
But looking back at that Senate seat is revealing. John Heinz III was elected in 1977 and remained in office until he died in a plane crash in 1991. Gov. Casey appointed Harris Wofford who then ran and won the special election that November against Thornburgh, former PA governor. The next election for the full term was in November 1994 (a bad year for Democrats) and Santorum beat Wofford. 49-47%.
Appointing a replacement Senator is always tricky for a governor. Wofford was a DEM appointment for a GOP seat plus he was from the eastern PA (Philadelphia area) whereas Heinze was from western PA as was Thornburgh. Casey stock with the voters must have been high in 1971 for Wofford to win the special election. However, it broke the tradition of one Senator from the east and one from the west. 1994 was an opportune time to correct that. The 2000 DEM nominee wasn’t well known or politically strong. Plus, PA voters had been comfortable being represented in the Senate by two Republicans for decades.
If was after the 2000 election that voters began to recognize that Santorum is a dick and not a moderate Republican as they were used to. So, in 2006, Casey Jr stepped into the race and wiped the floor with Santorum — 59-41%.
CA had once had a tradition of one progressive and one moderate Senator. Often both were Republicans. Then it transitioned to one GOP and one DEM (progressive). A couple of decades into that, they settled on one DINO and one DEM.
Tpm has a good article on Trump
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/youre-a-loser-vote-for-me
Trump’s comments are erratic, but I think at bottom he is very disciplined and always on his message: “I win.” Everything he does and says builds on this same core pitch, which he laid out in his opening campaign speech:
Do you feel like a loser? Well, guess what, you should. You are losing. We are losing. To the Mexicans. To the Chinese. To Iran. To bossy women. To Everybody. It is not morning in America; we suck right now. You suck.
Are you tired of it? Are you fed up with being a loser? Are you tired of getting pushed around and getting your ass kicked? Do you want to win (again)? Instead of losing, would you rather kick ass, be the boss, sleep with models and get rich? Then vote for me. I win. I kick ass. I get rich. I marry models but kick them out if they give me any lip. I tell people I don’t like to shove it on a daily basis and I never, ever apologize.
Let’s win again. Let’s kick ass together. Let’s Trump. …..
Like I said, powerful stuff that is hitting a nerve. I would think primarily with the target, working class white men, but maybe it’s even broader than that.
You are losing. I win. Join me and win again. Powerful, seductive, and very hard for the GOP to counter. Like many others, I’m really starting to wonder how or if they can.
Polls indicate that Trump’s appeal is wider than working class white men, but they’re still almost exclusively people that only vote for Republicans.
In other words people who want to win and know they’re losing, but are too stupid or bigotted to understand the president who would help them win is Sanders. They think the onlu victory they can get is by pushig the left diwn. Hell if there’s one thing everyone in the country understands its that the powers that be can kick the shit out of you with impunity.
IOW Faux Noise watchers.
What we’re talking about here, though, is a limited data set.
Thank you! That’s the fundamental problem with any and all attempts to data mine past presidential elections. There have only ever been 57 of them.
XKCD nailed it a couple years back:
https:/xkcd.com/1122
Someone at balloon juice asked the other day what would happen if the Oath Keepers or a group like them appeared at a Trump rally and pushed their way onto the stage, like BLM at Sanders’s rally.
Maybe this is the issue where Trump would reveal his distance from the GOP base: at the end of the day, he’s an East Coast, big city guy, no more familiar with rural and/or Southern traditions than Kerry or Romney before him. Maybe he’d be able to just say “I support you guys, but don’t hunt myself” or something, but it does seem like an opening, especially for some of his opponents who are steeped in that culture.
“I Like Ike.”
It seems so innocent now. It began the decoupling of politics and oratory and elections and policy. By the 1968 election, it had become noticeable enough for Joe McGinnis to write The Selling of the President, 1968 in which Nixon used staged policy dialogues (previous use of a dialogue format had been with independent journalists) and outlines if not actual scripts. And in an attempt to emulate the ebullient satirist Dick Tuck, Nixon’s pranksters began the GOP theater of cruelty.
What the GOP primary debate showed was the total uncoupling of campaign politics from any meaningful reference to governance. That bond has been loosening ever since 1946; I think a longitudinal view of the approval rating of the Congress is a good measure of its unraveling. And of course, everything is permitted in total war, and modern conservative has from its beginning been about total war with whatever fit the moniker of “socialism” or “Communism” (with a capital-C as long as “Soviet Russia” existed.)
The logic now is eyeballs divided by two equals votes. Ratings are elections. Moving the voter is the the absolute end purpose of the process, regardless of which direction the political consultants are running the lemming or the social consequences of this stampede.
Electability is the ability to create a stampede at the right moment in multiple places and that focus on one action — marking a ballot for the preferred candidate before leaving the booth, even if there is hesitation. If the action is unconscious and reflexive, so much the better. And that is what all those billions of Bernays-informed dollars of political ads aim to do. The last thing politicians want are rational choices. Reflexively believing rational choice theory as real is not a bad cover for the politicians and those who fund them. It then is easy to avoid criticism with “Well, you voted for it; it’s your own damn fault.”
So now that it is pure media, all the consequences of voting are hidden from view. To the extent that policy appears, its intent is to stoke emotions. The content of the policy itself doesn’t matter; the lobbyists have the legislation already drafted and waiting for inauguration day. And the Affordable Care Act made sure that the public never wanted to see legislation being made again. Never gonna see Marsha Blackburn in the early days of bill mark-up begging for rural health clinic funding formulas that benefit Tennessee. Never going to see Blue Dog Democrats throwing a monkey wrench into closing the Part D donut hole on the one side as Max Baucus and the Gang of Six play a four-corners offense on the other. Not going to be any definite stuff that can be construed as campaign promises either. Pure media. Playing to the John Wayne image in which simple words and tough talk get parsed as straight talking.
None of that background helps the handicappers of the horse race, however. That is because it ignores how this year is fundamentally different from campaigns of a generation ago. First of all, in just the two parties there are, what, 22 candidates. Second, the quality of candidates is uneven; just do a Harold Stassen comparison test. Third, money is not a handicap for minor candidates (unless they are campaigning against money). Fourth, everything is instant-polled, allowing the media another opportunity to put their fingers on the scale for the next poll. Fifth, media have open favorites and open dislikes; that is fundamentally what has caused Trump to surge, a chance to push back on the Wall Street media and its manipulation of political process. Sixth, the League of Women Voters is not conducting any debates; they really should. Seventh, access extortion by politicians is epidemic, none more obsessed with it than $55K a pop Hillary Clinton, which means that the League of Women Voters would likely host empty chairs.
In the face of all that media manipulation and wordsmithing and soundbites and carpet-bombed advertising, voter choices do become more random because they are more reflexive. Social networks, which used to help, now only are venues for team trash-talk.
What is going on is the collapse of democratic politics. It is the end logic of the current business as usual. And that favors the candidate with the biggest checkbook; follow the money. Trump is an unusual case; he doen’t have to pay the piper to the extent that he is the piper. He might get the most from his expenditures because he has cultivated a persona that attracts media money. Threatening to drop out of the primary when one is ahead might be the ultimate access extortion.
Save your opinion poll analysis until SuperTuesday, when you have some way of validating how traditional or untraditional this campaign is going.
Whatever is going on, it is not looking that great for governance so far.
The data set is much smaller than most seem to realize.
The GOP seems to have been a bit ahead of the DEM party wrt to a democratic process for the Presidential nomination. However, in 1952 the party bosses did effectively overrule the primary outcome, but hasn’t done so since then. (Not that then or after they haven’t played a large role in the primary elections.)
For several election cycles, they has a decent balancing act going with the base that wanted extreme right and the elites that wanted less extreme. With GHWB they seem to have lost theme of that model. Possibly because Reagan was too successful in being Goldwater with a public face of Ike. RR facsimiles are all they’ve had since — they might want to switch to a 3-D printer because the latest copies are getting ever more 2-dimensional.
This nomination loser to nomination winner the next election cycle or “whose turn is next?” is an accidental artifact. Doles in ’96 was supposed to be like Goldwater in ’64, feed the crazies. Except Dole had lost his ability for crazy-speak and ended looking like a doddering but quite sane old fool. GWB did manage to be a barely selectable RR impersonator. The others all come across as a mashup of #41 and #43.
They really should have fed the crazies in the 2012 election. That would have inoculated them against the rise of someone like Trump in this election cycle.
I get the feeling that Democrats are reasonably happy with Barack Obama’s presidency and willing to elect someone who will consolidate the gains he made and push to extend them. We may wish we had gotten single payer, or that military decisions with regard to the middle east were made differently, or that fracking were under control, or that the big banks had been better reined in – but we recognize our country again and are not fired up to stop the disaster as we were in 2008.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are convinced that the last 8 years are a total debacle and are looking someone with fire in the belly to put their world back in order. I think they would like someone with Obama’s charisma to move in a right-wing direction. I don’t see Jeb Bush fitting that profile. Trump doesn’t really fit it either, but at least he expresses their sense of outrage and urgency. Maybe Rubio? Rubio scares me.
We here in North Carolina no longer recognize our country nor do we recognize the Congress or the Democratic Party for that matter.
I think there is a segment of the low-information voters who would like a continuation of the direction that Obama has put us own. It shows the promise of better days and still does not require they pay attention.
But those who feel their traditional world slipping away and those angry but unable to kick the boss feel otherwise. And Trump among other Republicans appeals to that anger.
Only because political pundits have an irrepressible need to pontificate 365 days a year.
We don’t even know yet if the House will shutdown the government again this year over Planned Parenthood. Or some other such lunacy. What fun for Mitch McConnell.
Ted Cruz could shoot up to 30% or he could be reduced to zero. We don’t know. The most important event in the Republican nomination hasn’t even happened yet.
Lack of data my ass. We’re up to our eyebrows in data and can’t make heads or tails of any of it.
Campaign logic, elections logic, common sense and history tell us that the R’s are toast for the presidency this cycle.
Can anyone here name ONE blue state in 2012 that could realistically turn red in 2016? Not Wisconsin. Not Ohio. Not Pennsylvania. Not Virginia. Not Florida (assuming a white Democratic candidate).
Is there anyone here who thinks there is NO REALISTIC Chance to flip (presidential only) North Carolina? Georgia?
Remember, 2012 was not a close race. Romney got his ass whupped where it counted.
When you don’t have the racial dog whistle, how are you going to do better?
All of those presage a wave election.
What I sense is that the Democratic establishment is ready to kibosh a wave election because it would run more progressive. They are not going to have the candidates in place to take the Congress. They are not going to have the plan to create party infrastructure on the go (from the cowcathcher as it were) of a successful organizing for a Presidential campaign. They are going to look like the Republicans in 1988.
i surely hope you are wrong. Does Boo have the ear of the DSCC, DNC, DCCC and others? I don’t even think anyone is running against Isakson next year in my state. Another missed opportunity. Why is DWS still chair of the DNC?
None more than the militant rump of the Republican right who, it seems to me, have already given up on the general and are busy just smashing whatever is nearest at hand; starting with their own party.
Trump’s got ground game?:
Fired up and ready to go?
yeah.
See Ron Paul any election prior to this.
Was Obama considered electable in Aug 2007?
Of course not. For the past 27 years only a Bush or a Clinton has been deemed “electable.” As they’ve been right five out of seven times, they’re sticking with Bush and Clinton again.
When Clinton first appeared on the scene, the complaint was that none of the Democratic candidates cast a shadow. They were referred to as the Seven Dwarfs by the media. Only with hindsight did Clinton’s political talent come into focus.
If you think it is hard, you are right. But has always been hard. Consider:
9 of the last 13 leaders of the NH primary in November the year before the election lost their lead after Iowa.
Here are the leaders in Iowa in August the year before:
Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry led (Santorum was at 5)
Romney (Huckabee was at 8)
Clinton (in some polling lead by 10, in other August polling it was a close 3 way race)
Dean (kerry was in third, 10 back. Edwards, who would break 30 was at 5)
So the idea that this year is uniquely hard stikes me as nonsense. Politics is much more unpredictable than people thing.
I think you CAN say this:
GOP primaries from ’08 on look increasingly like Dem primaries did in ’72, ’76 and ’84.
This dem primary looks a lot like GOP battles in ’80, ’88 and ’96.
I don’t think it’s nonsense at all. Yes, it is true that the political mood of the country and the underlying fundamentals, so it’s always something of a moving target, which makes it hard at any time.
But Martin’s point is that sometimes things move even more than others — there are schisms, ruptures, break-points, catastrophic world events, etc. that may quicken the pace of change, such that your moving target is moving even faster. Now, it’s hard to REALLY know you’re in one of those times until it’s passed and you can see it clearly in retrospect. But it appears that this may be one of those times for the GOP. And that makes it even more unpredictable than usual.
Sorry — my second sentence got mangled. What I meant to say is:
Yes, it is true that the political mood of the country and the underlying fundamentals are always changing, so it’s always something of a moving target, which makes it hard at any time.
Now this is news.
Post and Courier: Bernie Sanders’ South Carolina campaign stops formalized
Greenville can pull from Asheville NC and Charlotte NC. The venue is a huge trade exhibit hall that likely can be partitioned to scale. Columbia can also pull from Charlotte NC and Augusta GA. Sumter is in the heart of James Clyburn’s district and can pull from Charlotte NC and Wilmington NC. Charleston can pull from Savannah GA. Nice positioning and the three major television markets of the state.
Relieved?
I note that your BFF, ISIS, is now implicated in sex trafficking, sex slavery and other disgusting practices.
I am trying to understand why anyone like you would support ISIS. Why is that?
huh? Have you mistaken me for KSA and one their BFFs? I Assure you I’m neither KSA nor one of its BFFs. And have never thought, much less uttered, a word in favor of ISIS or any other murderous thug operation around the world.
False. You criticized the US bombing in “The Progressive Divide”.
The US is trying to damage these folks. Say, did you know that your good buddies in ISIS not only engage in sexual slavery, but have made it a ritual religious process? They pray before and after rape.
The FBI It’s sad but true: here in this country, people are being bought, sold, and smuggled like modern-day slaves.
If ISIS were going about the business it was intended to do — take out the Assad regime, degrade Shia political power in Iraq, and destroy Hezbollah — would its funders/supporters have objected to the rapes, etc? Would any of that even have been reported in other than obscure leftie sources? No, but the USG always keeps these activities in its back pocket to pull out for PR purposes when it’s decided that the former buddy is now a scourge that needs smashing by US military might.
Not saying that such terror and violence isn’t being perpetrated by ISIS against innocent people, but does bombing those innocent people help them?
ISIS is an evil force, and has been from Day 1. I see no evidence that the information about them has been withheld. Beheading innocent journalists, selling Yazidi women into slavery (and having buses ready and waiting during the assault on Yazidi areas to carry off the slaves), finding religious justification for slavery. The Yazidi information has just come out because some Yazidi captives were recently freed.
I don’t like the killing of innocents. However, ISIS is one of the worst and most dangerous movements in the contemporary world. Let ’em have it. Bombs away.
Criticizing US bombing efforts does not help. Criticizing the Turks for their cynical use of anti-ISIS campaigns to attack the Kurds is a different matter.
I’ll let you two have at it, except to note “bombs away” clearly is not getting the job done against ISIS, and may well be producing more recruits for them.
Only way to handle this is to bring in a true multi-national military force in the several hundreds of thousands, not led by the US, and including China, Russia, several Euro and ME countries. But currently there’s no major public call for such an approach. Very little discussion in the US media about alternative approaches.
Since the US and Turkey have been doing the bombing for just a short time, I’ll hold my judgement of the effectiveness of the approach for 6 months. I will say that a US-trained Iraqi force (on which we spent millions) lasted about 2 weeks. ISIS captured the leader, and the rest of the force has deserted. That was the boots on the ground approach.
Useless to try and draw lessons from a lipstick on pig limited and doomed to fail exercise like the U.S. training the notoriously third rate Iraqi army.
What’s needed are real professional soldiers trained the old fashioned way and from a number of countries, not just one, as noted above.
And we know why O has chosen the bombing route, far less for military than political reasons.
ISIS is an evil force, and has been from Day 1.
When was Day 1?
Evil? Sure. Uniquely evil? Don’t be stupid.
The country has been in a continuous fight against “evil forcees” since 1941. Were Japanese forces any less evil in Korea, China, and Indochina than ISIS is today? No, but Japan was an industrialized military power and able to spread its violence far and wide.
Syrian military forces could have dealt with ISIS if the US, KSA, Israel weren’t funding mercenaries to overthrow the Syrian government.
As the people in this country can’t even recognize all the evil that lives within our midst, whatever makes you think we can do that for those in foreign countries?
Oh, come on. You can’t be this oblivious. ISIS has been a force of evil now for about 2 years. In a BBC piece I just found, they say April 2013. They began by beheading people from the get-go, innocent journalists. Their campaign against the Yazidis (incorrectly identified as Christians; I understand that Yazidi beliefs are non-Christian) was particularly heinous.
Their campaigns have been marked by unusual savagery, high levels of really terrible behaviour like mass killings of 700 Iraqi soldiers and the butchery of all men in every town they capture, etc.
So bombs away. I have no issue with any US bombing campaign against this group.
And I have no problem recognizing that ISIS is an evil force, much more evil than persons in the US. Making this equivalence is just nutty. Honestly. It’s nutty to make an equivalence between ISIS and US actions.
Not relieved until I see the comparative turnout in the primaries up to SuperTuesday and see who is on the stage standing with Bernie in South Carolina.
Joe Biden getting into the race would make things even more .. interesting. I understand he still has, or thinks he has, considerable clout in the SC area. Not sure if he’s getting in, but it does seem he’s seriously considering, as his camp has issued no firm denial since the story broke a few weeks ago. Clearly the rumor is not unfounded.
And he would hurt Hillary far more than Bernie, obviously. SC is supposed to be her firewall, the primary that puts her back in the driver’s seat or at least rights the ship, assuming Bernie does well in the first two contests.
The Dem primary process could turn into a 3-way much like 2008, and while that would be much more interesting to watch, it could mean a badly split party going into next fall, diminishing our chances at the WH.
Continuous high level fretting between now and then isn’t good for one’s health.
Watch the good stuff and fret when stuff seems off-track or off-time.
So far the ground game is materializing at a better than expected clip. Bookmark this Poltico report from NH.