I wonder if anyone has come up with workable definition of a base election. The idea is simple enough. Some elections are won not by winning an argument with the other side and persuading swing voters or independents or undecideds, but by doing a better job than your opponents in convincing your core voters to turn out to vote.
It seems to me that this is roughly how the Republicans won the 2004 presidential election, and also probably how they won the 2002 midterms. It’s definitely how they won the midterms in 2010 and 2014. On the other hand, I think the Democrats were successful in 2006 and 2008 precisely because they convinced people in the middle (and even many Republicans) to come over to their side. I think you can probably make the same case for 2012, although that seems to have been more of a hybrid of the two.
In any case, it seems to me that the Republicans last won a presidential election using a base mobilization strategy in 2004, and we shouldn’t forget how close of a call that was. When the polls closed, most people looking at the exit polls thought that John Kerry had won. And he would have won if Bush hadn’t done such a great job getting out his base in Ohio. Yes, there were also shenanigans in Ohio that may have changed the outcome, but it’s definite that the red parts of Ohio turned out in huge numbers, largely motivated by their opposition to gay marriage.
So, 2004 is a fairly recent example that shows that the Republicans could theoretically win a base election. It won’t be easy to replicate, though. First, demographic changes since 2004 have made it harder for the Republicans to win a base election because their base is now smaller and the Democrats’ base is now larger. Second, it helped Bush a lot that he was the incumbent and could direct media coverage and attention at will. It also helped that he had a willing partner in shenanigans in then-Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.
Since 2004, the Republicans have tried and failed twice to win an election by pandering to their base rather than pursuing voters in the middle. All the proof you need of that is that Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan were chosen as running mates, both of whom were supposed to please the mouth-breathers and rally them to the cause.
After the Republicans lost in 2012, the RNC’s after-report was clear about the futility of trying to win a base election again in 2016. Yet, the idea seems more popular right now than it was in the last two cycles. Perhaps the only thing that’s changed is the idea of how to give the base what it wants. Does it want someone who is frothing at the mouth about immigration even if they’re pretty inconsistent as a conservative on many other issues? Or, are they looking for the most hated man in Washington, DC, just because they hate Washington, DC so very much?
That’s really the choice they have between Trump and Cruz, although Trump promises to at least change the shape of the Republican base. That doesn’t mean he will enlarge it though.
This is admittedly a weird election season and unpredictable, but I think a base election is close to unwinnable for the Republican Party in a presidential year. If they win, I don’t think it will be because their base turned out and the Democrats’ base did not. If they win it will because the persuadable voters liked their candidate better than the Democratic candidate. And the more their candidate panders to the base, the less likely that the persuadable voters will like them better.
My county was ground zero in Ohio for the shenanigans in 2004. The Board of Elections was put on lock-down from what turned out to likely be a purposefully planted “terrorist threat”, which never seemed to be fully explained. Witnesses to the counting were barred from the building. It was a huge clusterfuck and probably went a very long way toward giving the election to The Shrub. It was a pitiful and disgraceful night in American political history.
Yes, the turnout in our overwhelmingly red county was large. It was 4 percentage points higher than in 2000. But the percentage has stayed pretty steady through the Obama years; within a percentage point of 2004. The base almost always reliably turns out here. The big question will be the Appalachian areas of Ohio. That will be an interesting thing to watch now that there won’t be black man at the top of the ticket. And Ted Strickland, who is running for Senate against Rob Portman, has always enjoyed pretty good support through the rural areas of Ohio. It is going to be fascinating to watch how things unfold.
It still infuriates me that this (and, to a lesser extent, Florida 2000) remains so maddeningly off the radar for most Americans.
We’ve had to listen to crazy theories about ACORN, about Vince Foster, about Obama and guns, about fake birth certificates, etc. etc. Probably every person in the country has at least heard of all of these.
But something clear and direct like the Ohio theft is just completely invisible, politically. It doesn’t exist. Even BooMan seems to shrug it off, like bad weather or something — not like an actual crime that could have consequences. It’s a profound cynicism at work.
How many USians remember how LBJ got in the Senate?
We were terrified Cleveland had been stolen in 2012. Rove seemed so certain Romney had it. Are you in Cleveland or Cincy? We lived near Cleveland in the 60’s. Tough years there.
yes, Rove was so certain Rmoney had won. what do you think of Anonymous’ claim to have prevented Rove hacking the vote?
Seriously doubt it. Rove’s anger was because “we are hitting our targets”. To mess with the vote, Anonymous would have had to ADD votes to the total, not change from R to D or subtract R votes.
Never say never, but I doubt it.
I am about 30 miles north of Cincy.
Mike, I’m in Dayton, and I, too, remember that disgusting election. Of course, SW Ohio has been gerrymandered half to death to keep the Republicans in Dayton and Cincinnati united. Boehner saw to that.
But rural Ohio and the wealthier parts of the larger cities, the suburbs of Cincinnati and such, will be red forever. And SE Ohio, closer to coal country is red, because the miners loathe Obama and the Democrats for working toward cleaner fuel. We have to struggle to keep the Democrats strong in as many areas as possible because the Republican base is well-planted here.
They’ve not attempted a base mobilization election with a nominee for president that excites the base since 1964. We know how that turned out, Miss Daisy. The insiders think their best chance is to put up an establishment guy who can soft-pedal the platform while pandering to the base with the platform and the VP slot.
What the base seems to want most of all is someone who channels their anger. That’s the qualification that matters most. Not specific policies. Just raw, ugly hatred. Not a great strategy for reaching independent voters. So, yeah, base election. One for the ages.
I’m not so sure about your conclusion re Independents. I sure want someone that channels my anger and not someone who tells me to shut up and be a good little epsilon and do what DWS tells me.
Like the song says, I’m in the mood for a little confrontation.
Maybe they’ll fall so flat re ’64 that an actual Socialist (in the Upton Sinclair tradition not the Josef Stalin tradition) might get elected? Assuming the DLC doesn’t run their candidate on third party like 1934.
The reason Kerry lost the 2004 election was because he was a weak candidate. The Republicans took almost nothing and made him a virtual laughing stock with Kerry helping them by saying things like, “I was for the Iraq war before I was against it.” He voted for that war same as Hillary. It made my face hurt holding my nose long enough to complete my Kerry vote, sort of the opposite of instilling voter enthusiasm.
Hillary is every bit as weak maybe a weaker candidate than Kerry was. We may be “tired of hearing about her damn emails” but the FBI isn’t, now expanding their investigation into conflicts of interest between the Clinton Foundation and her actions as SOS.
Hillary keeps doing things to ensure her primary victory that are totally unnecessary inviting a potential to backfire. First, limiting the debates to keep Bernie from closing the name recognition gap as Obama did in 2008 not only pissed off a lot a people but also weakened the Democratic brand by ceding the field to the Republicans. Second, putting Bill Clinton on the campaign trail while the public is still dealing with the horror of Bill Cosby can only reinforce Clinton fatigue for Democrats and stir up hatred on the Republican side.
Trump says about Hillary, polls say I’m already beating her and I haven’t even started on her yet.
“…it helped Bush a lot that he was the incumbent and could direct media coverage and attention at will.”
I may be wrong but I don’t think Bush even as President could direct media coverage and attention at will at the same level as Trump.
One thing that is different in this election that did not exist in those previous elections is the presence a large populist movement that cuts across party lines. If it comes down to a nose holding Democratic base and a frothing enthusiastic Republican base with the persuadable voters deciding the difference, you better hope those persuadable voters don’t want to stick it in the eye of the establishment because you might just see the result you fear the most.
There aren’t many ideal presidential candidates. Obama was an unusual talent. Bill Clinton was in his own way too. Each of those guys was once in a generation. In Obama’s case, perhaps once in a lifetime. Hillary’s flawed but she’ll mop the floor with Sanders. She’s the strongest we’ve got for a general election right now. I don’t think the Republicans will stand a chance if they nominate Cruz or Trump. Can’t see Christy playing well in Peoria. Kasich’s their best remaining candidate. Rubio would try to look moderate but I think the dirt in his closet would undo him. Bush is a terrible politician. I’ll go with our candidate, imperfect as she is, against any of theirs.
She is? From what I can tell she’s a gaffe machine who doesn’t motivate ‘must have’ demographics that we don’t already get.
Of course, I don’t put much as stock into the personal efficacy of candidates when it comes to winning elections as much as I do with (perceived) ideological alignment of the candidate with the voting base.
But even if I did, I’d be forced to conclude that Hillary Clinton is a pretty mediocre candidate. I’d put her at Dukakis level, really. I definitely wouldn’t hang my hat on her being able to take advantage of the current electoral situation more than Generic Democrat.
“Hillary’s flawed but she’ll mop the floor with Sanders.”
If she can do that she needs to get that mop out, quick, before she loses both Iowa and New Hampshire and loses all her inevitable momentum.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/quinnipiac-january-poll-dems-iowa
“She’s the strongest we’ve got for a general election right now.”
Sorry, I know that’s what she says but the polls don’t back up her claim.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/sanders-clinton-is-right-electability.html
what they said! and I’m interested, anecdotally, that she’s not appealing to the young voters, whereas Sanders is. There was a long comment on tpm, a commenters daughter very enthusiastic about Hillary before she attended a Hillary event, disappointed by Hillary in person. but I was pretty horrified to see the NYTimes magazine this week last page mini-interview of DWS; asked about young women she said they are complacent, their entire lives lived since Roe v Wade – !!!??? wow, can you say tone deaf and stupid?!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/debbie-wasserman-schultz-thinks-young-women-are-complacen
t.html?_r=0
Very glad to hear the FBI is expanding investigation into conflicts of interest between her activities as SOS and Clinton Foundation. Hope it’s in time to help Sanders. if you have any links to post, would really like to read them
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/fbi-expanding-investigation-of-hillary-clintons-private-email-use-re
port/
thanks!
When you look at the pool of clowns and losers from which the Republicans are stuck choosing their nominee, you have to conclude that the Republican Party has utterly despaired of winning this presidential race and has decided to take over states one at a time (like WI, NC, and KS).
Unless, God forbid, they have a plan to massively mess with the election machinery so that it will actually drag one of those losers across the finish line.
The problem with this analysis is that it makes an assumption about what issue defines the election.
The GOP majority was based on 3 things:
It the dominant issue is either 1 or 2, the GOP will struggle to get to 50 (unless the economy tanks). If the issue is 3 they can absolutely win, and by a significant margin.
It is worth noting that since 1988 the GOP got over 50 once: 2004 – in an election where foreign policy dominated.
This whole thing is really quite simple: The Republicans have nothing left but the base and a few hangers on. For years we bemoaned the paucity of independents. Then viewed with alarm conservative shifting of the “new” independents. These are not independents. They are Republicans that won’t claim the name.
I think this election will be the one where the R establishment accepts (they realized it in 2012) that they won’t EVER get another president while associate with the Tea Party. I think they will be beginning to realize that they won’t be able to hold on to the House or the Senate for more than 2 more cycles. And not because the 2020 census is coming up, but because more and more people are going to refuse to vote R or just refuse to vote. I look for a splinter party to be formed in 2017-2019 that will expressly reject the Tea Party.
The well has been truly poisoned by the reactionaries pushing the bodies of actual conservatives into it.
Is this reflected in any trends?
Because election-to-election, midterm demographics have been pretty damn stable for the past few cycles despite the changes in Presidential elections. What exactly do you expect to change in 2018 and 2022?
Also, more and more people refusing to vote R or just refusing to vote doesn’t translate into Democratic advantage. Absolute turnout in midterms can still drop (like it has been) and still have the same results if the drop has been in putatively Democratic-leaning demographics. It’s especially illuminating to compare this to the second question I asked earlier. Because from what I’ve seen, the drop in turnout between 2008 and 2012 wasn’t in Republican cohorts. It was with the youth.
Yeah. I have seen “trends”.
None of this is definitive. All of it falls into the category of verifiable personal experience which is suspect to say the least. But the fault lines are there. Y’allQuaeda, TeaHadist, Ammosexuals and Anti-abortionist witch hunters are currently running the show (supporters of Carson, Trump, Cruz, Fiorina, Christie) and they care nothing for the Party, except insofar as it can dish up fresh meat every election.
Base elections are not sustainable over time. The primary Republican demographic (you know, the one Arthur is currently seeking to propitiate with virgin sacrifice) is DYING. Literally.
I could easily be off on the time frame. But the end is in sight. But WHEN these things begin to happen they happen overnight (ok, 6 months).
Democrats ain’t doing too hot with a pure base election, either.
http://www.vox.com/2016/1/14/10761208/democrats-doomed
From John Judis, the person who wrote The Emerging Democratic Majority and gave us the whole ‘demographics are destiny’ meme in the first place:
But no, yeah. Let’s just continue to ignore the warning signs and keep running uninspiring ‘STFU about your aspirations and marry the local gainfully employed schlub, throw your novel draft in the trash, and eat your veggies more because you can’t do any better than that’ candidates.
Because the demographics are destined and we can just sit on our ass and ride our way to victory on top of a pile of plutocratic money.
A simpler way to put it is this: Are the Republicans going to be able to hold Texas when non-hispanic white people are no longer the majority there? Not as long as they continue to embrace open bigotry. Of course, the non-Republicans who wind up in control of Texas may not be to our liking, but the GOP in its current incarnation really is demographically doomed there.
If the broad strokes of Texas elections continues to be in the ballpark of 2014, with eligible Latino voter turnout being below 25% like it has in the past several midterms? Yes.
It was 17% last Texas election and Wendy Davis only won 55% — despite the GOP’s naked nativism from 2012-2014, it didn’t produce even a sniff of the electoral windfall the ‘sit on our asses and let demographics do the work’ contingent supported for.
If the GOP’s open bigotry is getting so bad that it makes up for the Democratic Party’s shortcomings in average-case scenarios, it sure as hell wasn’t shown in that election.
Maybe we should come up with a less useless plan.
That’s a prediction, not a plan. Democrats would be foolish to just sit back and wait for demography to deliver the goods. I didn’t even say that demographic changes are going to lead to a Democratic majority, just that they really are trouble for the Republicans. Maybe not two years ago, and maybe not this year either, but pretty soon.
They’re only trouble if the Democratic Party doesn’t capitalize on them. And the indications so far show that the Democratic Party is uninterested in capitalizing on the GOP’s weakness if it involves any major changes in party party.
Man, is this ever getting tiresome. Deathtongue (assuming you are not actually AG) I can’t do anything about gerrymandering in Pennsylvania, voter intimidation in Mississippi, police misconduct in Missouri or the Aryan Brotherhood in Idaho. I do what can. I’ve done what I could. And I don’t need to be preached at by someone whose political activism is a closed book. The sky is always falling for you guys.
In 2008 it was PUMA’s. They were going to wreck EVERYTHING.
In 2012 it was WHITE BACKLASH + the specter of Black apathy because the unemployment rate was so high in the Black Community (it was and is) + of course the “youth” vote of 2008 wasn’t going to show up.
And now its Marie3’s vague promises of catastrophic malfeasance on the part of Hillary which will appear only AFTER she’s gotten the nomination + Arthur’s legions of disaffected angry white people who have not bothered to vote in the last 3 elections + the complacency of the Hillary people (because lets face it Hillary doesn’t REALLY want it that bad) + … whatever else
I don’t know if there was catastrophic malfeasance in Hillary’s background. I know there is in Trump, Rubio and Cruz.
I don’t know if there are legions of angry people who will vote for Trump because BY GOD he’s saying things … although I doubt it.
I don’t know if the NOT RightWingNutJobs of the US are going to be complacent and sitting on the laurels of having elected a black man twice … although with BlackLivesMatter, Planned Parenthood under literal attack, ACA threatned with dismemberment, and the Supreme Court in the balance … I doubt it.
Just like I doubted the effects of PUMA, white backlash and the rest of the Unicorns have stopped farting crowd I doubt that the Klown Kar Kavalcade will pick a winner.
Fucking Sue Me for breathing.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your work is being wasted. And as long as the Democratic Party continues on its current path, it’s also going to be wasted for 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2020. Do you see our current strategy of social liberalism + economic centrism bearing fruit anytime soon despite the fact that the GOP is by all indications imploding? Does Wendy Davis’s disappointing performance with Latinos in the 2014 Texas midterms ring any firebells in the night for you?
Or are you going to keep listening to the people who tell you that the previous defeats and disappointments don’t mean anything in the longterm? That the Presidential and midterm demographic mismatches will eventually be corrected without a change in strategy? That despite four more years of projected gridlock the Democrats will be able to get their act together for 2020 and REALLY take advantage of Republican disarray? That the GOP will continue to be dysfunctional and alienating for a few more cycles to allow the Democratic Party will sort it out?
Maybe instead of getting mad at me, you should be getting mad that your sweat and hard work is being squandered by a pack of bloviating Chance Gardeners who don’t really understand how to get from point A to point B despite really really wanting to get there.
AUMF vote. That’s a fuck-up for the history books.
You should definitely be concerned about that, especially since HRC has given no indication that she’s learned to resist the factors that led to that vote. Or do you think that labeling Iran as an enemy that she’s proud to make and calling for no-fly zones doesn’t necessarily mean that she hasn’t learned her lesson?
yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’ve heard it before from others here and elsewhere. It’s just as true/false here as elsewhere.
It’s just more boring now than it used to be.
I don’t agree that 2004 was a base election. If not for the fear factor the GOP created Bush still doesn’t win that. Yes, the press was in the tank for Bush, hiding his obvious ear bud in the first debate (which would have ended most candidacies right there) and hiding other blindingly obvious mistakes while devoting all of August and most of September to the Swift Boat lies. But even with all of that the constant drumbeat of terror threats (remember there was that OBL threat that came out the Friday before the election – the daily pollsters said that there was a 3-point voting shift following that towards Bush) were what pushed Bush over the top.
I remember traveling for work and being constantly reminded in every airport that “the Transportation Security Administration has elevated the terror threat to Orange” – I would mentally add the words “in order to boost Bush’s election chances”.
So, what I’m saying is that even in 2004 they couldn’t win with just the base. They need something else. Vote suppression, terror fears, something. And of course they are trying both for 2016.
So. How’s that plan for Democrats to take back state houses between 2016-2020 going? Not so good? Okay, so how’s their plan to eat into the GOP base and/or turn out Latino/Asian/youth voters? Also not so good? Okay, how’s their plan to hold the Senate in 2018? Again, not so good?
Okay, then why the everliving fuck are we laughing up our sleeves about how poorly the GOP is doing? Who cares how disorganized and hopeless the party is if the Democratic Party isn’t able to take advantage of it?
Some poster in an earlier post said that the Democratic media’s focus on the foibles of the Republican Party is a form of nihilism. Seeing no real path to short-term or medium-term victory, they comfort themselves by laughing at the Republican Party. Of course, this requires them to ignore the Democratic Party’s own set of ongoing weaknesses, like having an urban appeal, slipping youth support, and of course being saddled with a gimcrack candidate that’s an out-of-touch gaffe machine.
It may always be 2004 and a base election for the GOP, but for the Democratic Party it’s always 1972.
These people are too much. Is anyone else seeing this “Stop ISIS at the border” ad? It’s the perfect accompaniment for this post.
At which border? I swear, ISIS are the Reds Under the Bed of today.