In our upcoming issue of the Washington Monthly, we dedicate a lot of effort to examining how the Democrats can do a better job of winning back some support in rural America. It’s something I’ve personally been focused on since I saw the results of the 2016 elections. A lot of the progressive left is resistant to pursuing voters they see as irrevocably lost and morally suspect due to their support for Trump and attitudes on race, immigration, and cultural issues. What bothers me most about this schism is that it is so often cast as a strict either/or choice. I hope you’ll take a good long look at our new issue which should be available online next Monday.
There’s a third way of looking at the electorate, however, and we can see it by looking at the following observations from The Economist.
“Ever since district borders in America’s House of Representatives were redrawn in 2011, Republicans’ share of seats has exceeded their proportion of the vote. In 2012 Democrats won 51% of the two-party vote but just 46% of seats.”
“The Congress that began on January 3rd, however, has no such imbalance. Democrats won 54% of the total two-party vote—and also 54% of House seats. Whatever became of the vaunted pro-Republican bias?”
“Many Republican mapmakers tried to neutralize Democratic voters by burying them in suburban districts full of educated whites. They never imagined that this ruse would backfire, but Mr Trump drove these once-loyal Republicans into Democrats’ arms.”
It’s simply not true that once reliable Republican voters are unreachable. In the suburbs, they’ve already been leaving in droves and the trend seems to be building momentum. I believe this is the most dangerous of several troubling developments for the Republican Party. It has already cost them the House of Representatives and it’s going to put some red states in play in 2020.
In order for the Democrats to have the kind of overwhelming Electoral College victory that Nixon enjoyed in 1972 and Reagan achieved in his two elections, the Dems will need to accomplish two more things. They’ll need to turn out their base, including especially younger voters and lower income urban voters who don’t reliably show up at the polls. This was accomplished in the midterms and it can probably be replicated in a presidential election.
The final piece is winning back as many rural voters as possible. Some of this may happen simply as fallout from the imminent crack-up Donald Trump’s administration, much as Bush’s once loyal base splintered on the shoals of the Iraq War and financial crisis. Some of it is going to have to happen through new policies and new messages, as well as by exploiting broken promises made by the other side.
Assuming the suburbs continue trending away from the president and the GOP, that the Democratic base turns out, and that some real inroads can be made with rural voters, it is not at all unthinkable that 2020 could deliver a near unanimous verdict in favor of the Dems.
To accomplish this, the candidate will need to give permission to as many non-Democrats as possible to vote for them. The ideal candidate would combine three hard-to-reconcile characteristics.
They would be acceptable to the suburban voters, many of whom were previously Republicans, who turned against the party in the era of Trump.
They would also create at least some genuine enthusiasm from a Democratic base which seems to want to push any advantage they’ll have in 2020 to move public policy as far to the left as they can.
And they’ll have to make a lot of other voters, whether rural Republicans or right-leaning independents, feel safe about crossing over.
It’s a lot easier to figure out who best fits this model than it is to see how they could actually win the Democratic Party’s nomination.
The Democrats are more likely to pick someone who can win but not by a wide margin. They’ll imagine that a narrow presidential election victory will produce more than a wide one if the candidate seeks a more aggressive mandate.
This is almost surely wrong, but the real danger is in thinking that every effort to appeal to one group of voters is inevitably going to come at the expense of another group. A talented campaigner might be extremely progressive but also very good at selling themselves in rural areas. Another candidate might actually run on a fairly tame set of policies but still excite the Democratic base.
The only thing I think will definitely be a mistake is to nominate someone who simply does not have the potential to have a wide appeal. This could be because they can’t reassure right-leaning people that they’ll run the country responsibly. It could be because they spend most of their time attacking and berating the kinds of people they’d need to win a truly decisive victory.
I believe there will be massive fallout from Trump’s demise. Either that, or he’ll survive in the weakest state we’ve ever seen. Either way, the opportunity will be there for a huge victory that wipes aside all preconceived ideas about red and blue areas of the country.
The country will want a unifying leader rather than a radical, but they’ll base that assessment less on policy than trust and comfort level.
The Dems aren’t likely to nominate the best fit, but I hope they realize that there’s a chance to build a coalition against the modern GOP that is at least as big and broad as the coalition that Reagan built against the party of Carter and Mondale. It can happen, and it would bring more progressive change than a narrow feel-good victory that leaves the country largely divided.
Is it conceivable that a “narrow feel-good victory” (coming from a presumably more Lefty Dem) leaves the country INITIALLY more divided but ultimately — due to actual policy and staffing choices — MORE UNITED due to actual improvements in more people’s lives (including white, rural, even evangelical lives)?
Or am I putting words in your mouth in assuming what you are saying is that the narrow feel-good victor would be “Leftier” rather than JUST as left-y as a progressive who can MESSAGE better so as to have a wider margin of victory?
I know you have a fascination with winning back rural voters and it’s true that would be tremendously beneficial politically, but the reality is that we have been trying and trying with a variety of tactics and nothing has worked. In addition, none of the top names being proposed have a record of breaking into rural communities including O’Rourke. My personal take is that the rural media and social organizations (mostly churches) are so intensely biased for Republicans that rural voters simply aren’t going to hear about anything we do.
The reality is that we are almost certain to not make major inroads in the rural vote no matter what we do and we have to plan for dealing with that. The only chance IMO is if Trump does something so heinous he cracks the conservative monopoly on rural media and thinking, or something truly jaw-dropping comes out of the Mueller investigation. But neither of those is up to us, and if it happens all we need is a candidate not particularly toxic in rural areas and I don’t think any of them are.
On a side note, to quibble with the Economist, if you win an election by x% you should normally win the seats by more than x%. The fact that we didn’t with a pretty strong win actually does show gerrymandering. The other aspect, of course, is that the big shift in suburban voters scrambled the gerrymanders so they are less effective than they were in 2012. But they’re not gone, which is how Republicans control legislatures in WI, PA, and MI in spite of losing the popular votes there.
yeah, smaller state leg. districts make it easier to really pocket Dems into fewer districts. Congressional districts are big and make it much more difficult
Good to see you back. I feared you were gone forever.
Here’s a belated toast to JB Pritzer. May he do half of what he promised.
In any case, he’s got to be better than that dirtbag Rauner, who almost lost his own primary!
thanks, yeah I still read routinely just don’t feel the need to add anything recently
Yeah JB has a big job to fix what our current Gov broke for sure
At capitolfax.com I see him walking back the property tax relief. I didn’t really expect it anyway. At least the war on unions should be over. But nothing is surer than death and regressive Illinois taxes.
he can’t do anything about property taxes until the income tax gets fixed with a constitutional amendment, so it makes sense at least
One of the strange things about your argument is that it was the sudden and sharp loss of rural voters in 2016 that cost Clinton the election, and the biggest growth in the midterms came from these same areas. The snapback has already begun. So, just on the most recent evidence, you’re already wrong.
Um, no. The big gains were in suburban areas. Sometimes the same states, but not the same voters. You can see in the swing breakdown here that even as we had a huge nationwide swing to the Democrats there were still a fair number of rural areas swinging to the Republicans.
That’s a nice visual. Surprised to see the biggest (R) gains in 2018 were in inland California.
Sigh.
Also, Myth 3:
In 2018 rural areas maintained or increased their 2016 level of support for the GOP
White working class != rural. There was a big swing to us in the rust belt and I’ll bet there’s a lot of WWC in there. But the swings were still mostly in urban and suburban areas.
Everyone keeps talking demographic changes as an eventual default to the Democratic party.
News flash: there are old people being made every single day.
The rural vote can’t be won. The numbers can get back to 30-40%, maybe. But even that’s going to be a heavy lift. Your warnings about “beware celebrating high turnout last” were clearly warranted. If we had “normal” midterm turnout whereby opposition surges, independents crossover, and people in power are down, then Beto O’Rourke, Claire McCaskill, Joe Donnelly (maybe), and Bill Nelson are Senators.
However, what we have seen is that R’s are turning out at ridiculous numbers given the political science and past history. My own pet theory is that this is because their base is in that 55-75 yo age group of reliable voters that always turnout no matter what. This can’t be countered but to an even draw until they start dying, unless more non-voters are activated.
Trump (if he is able to run for re-election) will get at minimum 40% of the vote, and likelier closer to 45 than 40 (sorry but it’s true). Nothing can be done about that, even a good nominee.
Are you seriously saying that Trump who got 46% of the voters that bothered to vote in 2016 will get roughly the same percentage in 2020 after the disastrous performance of his presidency to date (and 2019 is likely to be far worse than the last two years were)? With respect, I think you are way off base there. It is likely the economy will go into recession this year, which sets the stage for a a further flight of suburban voters. And, unless the Democratic messaging machine remains as bad as it usually is, Trump wiill get blamed.
Assuming Trump is still President in 2020 and not completely disabled, which I think is quite conceivable and assuming he is nominated and runs (not sure this is sure-fire either), I think he would end up with well below 30% of the vote if facing a credible, progressive candidate with wide appeal, e.g. Sherrod Brown, Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.
30% of the vote? Show me the numbers on that spreadsheet, cause I don’t see where it comes from. You think it’s disastrous, but Republicans see success. He will get 40% of the vote, minimum. That’s assuming things stay in the range they’ve been from his low points (2017 elections) to his average points (2018 elections). If Mueller manages to knock some haymakers I can see a drop in his approval to 30-35%, but 40% is the floor.
Again, with respect, you appear to think that the composition of the electorate has not changed since 2016, epecially withh respect to the Democratic and Republican voter ratios. I think they have. First, that 46% were not all rural voters; there just aren’t that many rural voters period. Most of Trump’s votes came not from the disaffected WWC but the comfortable GOP suburban voters. I’m betting he’s lost a big fraction of those or at least the GOP inclined Indies.
In any event, popularity polls are not a good reflection of actual voting outcomes either on the left or the right for all kinds of structural reasons. This is especially the case for someone like Trump whose hardcore poll approvers just don’t make up a large enough percentage of the likely electorate. And, as we saw in the midterms, the “likely voter” profile has changed especially in the case of younger voters.
Herbert Hoover was totally discredited in 1932 and still got almost 40% of the vote. That was one of the most disastrous elections for a political party in the entire history of the country, especially on the congressional level. But, also, FDR was reelected three times and followed by Truman.
That’s adequate for our purposes.
But do you think Trump’s ceiling is necessarily higher than Hoover’s floor? I don’t.
Trump’s ceiling is probably right around 50-55% depending on the situation.
His floor is right around 45%.
Here’s to hoping you’re right and that I’m a pessimist, and not a realist.
50 to 55%??? He’s never polled anywhere near that high.
“Depending on the situation” is the key in my statement.
Bush Jr September 10 2001 Approval: 51%
Bush Jr September 11 2001 Approval: 90%
Depending, uh, on the situation. Real life matters.
I’d put Trump’s ceiling at 45-48%, but that depends on third party vote. In real world examples I’d put it closer to 45. But his floor is high: 40%. If he’s knocked to 27-30% approval, he might be at 38%.
At least 45%, regardless of whether the country is literally on fire or under 10 feet of water.
Such a bizarre insistence.
Why adopt such a worldview?
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
What was Strongman Trump’s disapproval polling as of November 8th, 2016? Gallup has it at 61%. Disapproval.
61% disapproval net him 46% of the electorate. Not too shabby.
Why? Because right-wing authoritarians don’t necessarily love their rightful authority. They just have to enable it. You know, by voting.
Just because Strongman Trump loses support among some people over 4 years doesn’t mean that he doesn’t gain support by other people over 4 years.
I think it’s a bizarre insistence that Strongman Trump will:
A. Be impeached and removed from office.
B. Leave office by any means other than through electoral defeat.
C. Doesn’t have a massive advantage in the fact that he’s the sitting President. See, 2004, Bush, George.
None of that means I’m right and you’re wrong, it’s just my opinion.
You write:
I am sorry, but I must keep emphasizing this one enduring fact.
Gallup and the other pollsters are full of shit!!!
End of story.
This particular instance?
Easily explained by one idea.
They didn’t poll the right people.
Did they do this on purpose or is it simply built into the whole entitlement-biased corporate culture?
I am not sure anymore.
Either way, citing “polls” as evidence for possible future action is not the way to go. I knew Trump was going to win a year and a half earlier than the election simply by going out amongst the people and listening.
I have been out listening again over the past months, and what I hear is a serious decrease of enthusiasm for Trump in the rural areas. These are not necessarily “crude” people, n1cholas. Not all of them, by a long shot. I think Trump’s truly appalling crudeness has begun to wear on them.
Especially on the women.
Watch.
AG
I’m not citing Gallop because I want to use it as a credible source. I’m saying that what people tell a pollster, and how they’ll vote doesn’t mean a thing.
What I’m saying, from my parent comment in the thread, is that Strongman Trump’s floor is about 45%. The “disapproval” rating doesn’t mean all that much. And, I honestly believe that while Trump may have lost support in certain areas, it doesn’t mean that he hasn’t won other people back from certain areas.
Essentially, no matter how much people want to think that 2018 was a referendum on Strongman Trump…Strongman Trump wasn’t on the ticket. I think a lot of the people who didn’t show up this time around, were Republicans who are only going to vote for Strongman Trump.
Meaning 2020 isn’t some gimme election. Not to mention that even if Democrats can pull off 2020 and get the Trifecta, it’s the 2022 election that is extremely important.
. . . It’s a sad, ugly thing to have to witness.
Also too, please link to your prediction of Trump win 1 1/2 years before election day. Cuz you “knew” then he was gonna win, you say. So surely you must have forthrightly predicted that win here then, too, right? I mean, as soon as you “knew”, right? Cuz you’d never withhold such valuable “knowledge” from us now, would you?
Go pick your nits, nitpicker. I spent a few minutes looking at old news and now I have better things to do.
Here is a fairly early look at my many postings during the Republican debates on what=y and how Trump would win. July 18, 2015-The Trump Problem. You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage. In it I made a number of points on what it would take for Trump to win and what might possibly stop him
If you have any reading skills whatsoever…other than your obsessive nit-picking in support of your own hatreds…it is very clear that I think he is going to beat his Republican opponents and then the Democratic Party as it then stood…the Clinton/DNC Democratic Party.
You disagree?
I don’t give a fuck.
The other fruit of my small search labor turned up this post.
Yes, I DO think That Trump Is Going To Win. Here’s Why. 5/20/16. I had watched the Dems fritter away any chance of successfully confronting him on anything except what a crude asshole he is, and I didn’t think that it would carry the election.
It didn’t.
You don’t like it?
Lump it.
I have wasted much too much time answering your plainly obsessive hatred.
Go take a pill.
AG
You claimed you “knew” Trump would “win” a year and a half before the election, but withheld that “knowledge” for a full year. (Obviously, it wasn’t actually EVER something you “knew” in advance, as you claimed. It wasn’t knowable!)
Clearly, your first link is irrelevant and your characterization of it (“it is very clear that I think [which wasn’t the issue: you claimed you “knew”] he is going to beat his Republican opponents and then the Democratic Party as it then stood”) false, because nowhere in it did you predict or claim to “know” Trump would win. In it, at most, you did what some astute political observers (Booman — who you actually linked doing so, atrios, digby, and the much-but-wrongly-maligned Nate Silver come to mind off the top of my head) were all doing: point out that the Trump danger was real and there was a plausible scenario in which he could “win” the election.
Quite interesting, though, to look at a few other examples of your prescient political prognosticator’s prowess in those two links, and ponder how well they did or did not stand the tests of time and Reality:
Something about a stopped clock . . . that’s set to military time.
Lets watch Virginia. They got lots of gov. and private contractors who will shortly be in line at the unemployment office. How is the work requirement going to work for those needing medicaid/Snap benefits? Oh, and Obamacare may help those who cannot afford COBRA…or did the donald shut that down. I cannot wait to see how they deal with TSA and other airport workers who stop working because they are not getting paid. Will the GOP claim they were on strike and deny unemployment benefits? Or will the GOP go run and hide…abandon their posts? While this mess unfolds the donald is running around the WH yelling about walls and terrorists.
And…46.9%, above the floor I picked.
While the country is dying from a pandemic the President let rage on purpose, to boot. Notice how I chose natural disasters, and there was a natural disaster! Damn.
My comment aged very well. Just stopped by to congratulate myself on yet again seeing the big picture. Civil War is coming. Let’s hope I’m totally wrong about that.
Total necro of this comment thread 5.5 years later, but…
Trump 2020 vote percentage: 46.8%.
Unless the Republican candidate goes on live TV in early November and claims to be an atheist who wants to abort babies, they will get approximately 45% of the vote.
The Republicans were propped up in 2018 by absolutely insane turnout among white evangelicals. I can’t find the exact numbers, but I recall it’s something like 80%. They have remained 26% of voters even as their percentage of the population has dropped from 20% to 15% over the past 6(!) years (a staggering decline). If they are the same voter percentage in 2020 Trump won’t lose many votes. That said, to maintain their voter percentage in the face of further expected declines in the number of white evangelicals by 2020 and the higher general turnout they’d have to approach 100% turnout and that’s had to believe.
Yes, exactly. Experts keep telling people “demographics aren’t destiny” and they’re right in many respects, but the absurd resistance to an end to R hedgmony are white evangelical voters who won’t budge because of “culture” (racism, abortion, etc). Their percent of the population has declined drastically, but their voters continue to age (and are thus likelier to vote), and the older voters who were Dems are dead/dying to be replaced by these “all the time voters” who are overwhelmingly R.
Basically, Reagan’s Revolution still has another 5-10 years left in it until Millenials start hitting 35-45 and voting more frequently because old people who were more Dem for historic reasons are dead.
Suppose you are right about that 40 percent….
Let’s go to the video tape:
(1984)
Ronald Reagan / Walter Mondale
Running mate George H. W. Bush / Geraldine Ferraro
Electoral vote 525 / 13
States carried 49/1 + DC
Popular vote 54,455,472 / 37,577,352
Percentage 58.8% / 40.6%
But you know the country is far more polarized today. An R-10 result inverting 1984 and considering 2016 partisan lean would still leave them winning LA, MT, KS, AL, NE, SD, TN, AR, KY, ND, ID, WV, OK, UT, and WY. If votes for the Senate were the same we’d only be ahead 56-44, and there are 4 incumbent Republicans losing by squeakers in that count. Plus, given how stable opinion polling has been I think 60-40 is optimistic unless there’s a recession or some nice presents from Muellermas.
Not to be a broken record on this, but I’m so sick of Montana being lumped in with these other states. It’s politics are nothing like those of the other states listed, and it has always been winnable by Democrats if they try.
You cannot argue that a state that Obama lost by less than three points is a lock for Republicans. And I think it’s absurd to take the position that Trump’s win in 2016 marked some kind of irreversible sea-change in which everyone suddenly became raging bigots.
If you look at the county results, Clinton didn’t just under perform in liberal strongholds, she flat-out failed by staggering proportions. She only won 53% of Missoula County, compared to Obama’s 61% in 2008, 57% in 2012, and Tester’s 67% in 2018.
Similarly, Gianforte’s wins are as much due to Democratic disarray as anything else. Quist was not a bad candidate but he didn’t get the support he needed from national Democrats and was massively outspent by outside groups. Kathleen Williams, on the other hand, was a completely uninspiring candidate who ran on a platform of co-operation and compromise, and never stood a chance.
I don’t think you remember 1984 very well.
The world of 1984 was a far far different place than now.
Part of 2016 gains in the Chicago suburbs was from R’s being complacent. Some didn’t really start campaigning until two weeks before the election. They didn’t see the revolt.
A good example of an upset victory was Laura Underwood (IL-14). She didn’t depend on demographics. Look up her hometown. It’s a rich lakeside community with five five! African Americans, three of whom are surely Laura and her parents. She didn’t campaign by attacking white bigotry or calling for open borders or calling for means testing Social Security. She campaigned on universal health care concerns, concern for families and pointing out the incumbent’s ridiculous voting record. Similarly, Sean Casten (IL-6) took Henry Hyde’s old district, a bastion of conservatism by pointing out the incumbent’s anti-woman and anti-worker votes. Yes, he was helped by the growing Latino and Indian-American demographics, but Roskam lost white women in droves. Both Underwood and Casten were aided by having JB Pritzker at the top of the ballot running against the most unpopular Governor in Illinois history, including three governors who went to prison.
I don’t know who is going to run for President in 2020.
It looks like Clinton, Biden, Warren, or Harris. I have no problem voting for Warren, but I fear any of them will lose. Biden and Harris for policy reasons and Clinton or Warren for personality or lack thereof. I like Warren but she comes across as a scolding school teacher. No warmth. I don’t care about warmth, but most voters do.
You will not win the suburbs by showing contempt for white working men or calling them names.
Clinton won the district by four points, Underwood improved on that by winning it by five, although against an incumbent so the swing may be larger.
This isn’t to discount Underwood’s impressive win, and she was a perfect candidate for the area. However, the trends underneath us were moving all the same.
How did Obama do? Serious question. Asking because apparently you have easy access to those numbers.
Obama won it by 2 in 2008, but it was made more Republican after redistricting in 2010. Obama lost it by 5 in 2012.
Thanks. I hope you agree that complacency had a lot to do with her victory. Now, inertia is on her side. Her re-election in 2020 will depend in large part on the popularity of the (D) Pres nominee. Illinois no longer has straight party ballot voting, but many people vote the whole or most of the ballot based on the top race. Not political junkies like you and me, but most people are more annoyed by elections and the in-your-face non-stop TV ads than not.
I think she worked her ass off, and was partially discounted, but unless Republicans recruit a superstar, I don’t think she’ll have trouble winning re-election in 2020. It’s 90% urban, educated, and trending D.
I agree she worked hard. And Hultgren ignored her until just before the end.
I guess I concur with seabe and curtadams. I just don’t see us making any significant inroads with the rural vote, at least not for the foreseeable future. Politically, I think both the rural landscape and mindset has changed significantly since the 2008 election of Obama. The rural, conservative propaganda machine has simply changed the fabric of the rural culture in the last 10 years. I am close enough to rural here in SW Ohio to have seen and felt the changes. I can tell from the door knocking I have done over this period that most of the people are simply impenetrable to any message that is not hawked either from their pulpits, talk radio or Fox News. What I have witnessed is really a doubling down on the alternate reality. I know we like to think that if they see real improvements to their lives as a result of Democratic policies that the veil might somehow be lifted and they will recognize who is actually trying to help them and who is actually trying to kill them. But it really seems that if they were dying of thirst they would refuse water offered to them by a Democrat. That is how firmly entrenched their view is of our side, or any side that is not “THEM”.
In our upcoming issue we have:
How to Close the Democrats’ Rural Gap
Three Ways Democrats Can Fix the Farm Economy
The Forgotten Lessons of LBJ’s Domestic Legacy
Progressives’ Secret Weapon (the Federal Trade Commission)
A Tale of Blue Cities (on regional inequality)
All of these are about, to one degree or another, how the Dems are failing huge parts of the country, and how they can do much better.
Coincidentally, it was sitting in my mailbox when I got home an hour ago. I will definitely give it a read this evening. Appreciate your efforts and perspective.
With the right candidate and the right breaks, I can fairly easily see the GOP reduced down to basically just a dirty energy coalition, meaning they win states like West Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Dakotas, and that’s basically it.
Nothing else is really safe for them, even states like Kansas and Nebraska that are very Republican, and even states in the Deep South that aren’t completely reliant on off shore drilling.
People are still vastly underestimating the shitstorm coming the GOP’s way.
You could very well be correct. And no one hopes this more than I do. It is sometimes too easy for me to get caught up in my own cynicism, largely because it seems as if there is simply no bottom for Republican insanity. I want to see all these people suffer unmercifully for what they have done. I will never be satisfied until the blood-letting of them is total and complete.
I agree with Booman about the importance of winning back rural areas, or, extending suburban areas.
Not necessarily because we’re going to run up EC votes by winning Kansas and Wyoming, but because it allows us to “rebuild” the blue wall, bringing back Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, and cementing in Virginia.
AlwaysBlueTM is 211 EC votes.
AlwaysBlueTM, plus Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Virginia = 270 EC.
If we can make inroads with rural/suburban suburbia, then we can pick up (all of) Maine, Ohio and Florida, bringing it to 321 EC’s, essentially a modern EC landslide.
And of course, if we’re picking up (all of) Maine, Ohio, and Florida, then other states like Iowa, North Carolina, and even Georgia, are possible pickups.
As long as Democrats aren’t performing their quadrennial CircularFiringSquadTM routine, then it’s possible 2020 can really change things. And winning Congress, the White House, and hopefully some more state legislatures, can possibly undo gerrymandering that has been hobbling the Democratic party for awhile.
Personally, I believe one of the most valuable messages that the Democratic party can put out and fucking own, is legislation that seeks to undo partisan gerrymandering nation-wide. It’s a selfless policy that can sell to all reasonable people, essentially telling Democrats and non-right-wing authoritarians, that Democrats want to be chosen by the electorate, instead of getting to choose their constituents. And it’s easy to understand without going into powerpoint mode.
Make the Republican party own partisan gerrymandering, out loud.
Pick up more reasonable, reachable people.
I have my doubts about whether a strategy based on flipping rural voters can break through the Fox/talk radio/InfoWars/Drudge sound barrier. It’s also important to remember that during times of deep party polarization, electoral strategies change. In Georgia, there was negative progress in rural areas in 2018; contra Booman, Georgia Democrats had their best midterm in years. Let me show how this dynamic plays out.
In 2014, here are the midterm results. Turnout was at 50%. Most of the statewide results are 7-8 percent Republican wins, and no Democrat came close to winning statewide. Casey Cagle stands out as an extraordinarily popular politician. It’s important to note that Tom Price won by election by 32 points in GA-06 and that Rob Woodall won by 20 points in GA-07. On the state legislative side, Democrats lost one seat in the 180-seat Georgia House of Representatives, going from 60 seats to 59 seats. (There was no change in the Senate; Democrats retained 18 seats of 56.)
In 2016, here are the presidential election year results. Turnout was 76%. Trump won by 5.16 points, significantly underperforming Senator Johnny Isakson’s 13 point margin. Price in GA-06 is at 23 points, Woodall in GA-07 remains at 20 points. In the legislature, Dems gained two seats in the House, increasing to 62 seats, and remained at 18 seats in the Senate.
In 2018, here are the most recent midterm elections. Turnout was 60%. All the statewide elections have moved in the Democrats’ favor- most winning margins have decreased to 2-4 points. In fact, two races went to a runoff, the Secretary of State race and the Public Service Commissioner race for District 3. (Libertarian margins have also decreased from 2014.) Lucy McBath beat Karen Handel in GA-06 by about 4,000 votes and Bourdeaux lost to Woodall in GA-07 by 400 votes. On the state legislative side, Democrats increased their numbers in the House to 74 seats, winning in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, and Henry counties. (Cobb, Gwinnett, and Henry are Romney-Clinton counties.) In the state Senate, three seats flipped: 2 in Atlanta, and 1 in Duluth (Gwinnett County).
The reason why I mentioned negative progress earlier was because in 2018, 133 counties had higher margins for Brian Kemp than for Donald Trump two years prior. And Kemp is truly despicable, a vote-suppressing deadbeat who stated during the GOP primary, “I got a big truck, just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself”. Sure, some rural voters in 2016 didn’t show up in 2018. But the massive swing in suburban Atlanta is going to be a focus for Democrats in 2020. I’m not suggesting abandoning rural areas, I just don’t think they’re the path to statewide success.
As a lifelong Georgian, thank you for this. The higher margins for Kemp in 133 of the 150 counties is, imo, rooted solely in the color and gender of his opponent, as talented a politician as Abrams was and is. Racism and tribalism. Democrats should focus on the Atlanta metro area in 2020. And, maybe Abrams will run against David Perdue and win and I will be extraordinarily happy, even though I believe she’s better suited for the Governor’s chair.
Bingo.
The mistake I think most of these discussions make is that we talk about voting as if it’s a binary (R or D) choice. “None of the above” is a decision that huge numbers of voters make every election. Pursuing Republican voters may be worth a few percentage points at the margins and the risk of losing votes of frustrated Democrats. Convincing non-voters to get to the polls has much greater potential and creates the opportunity to build the party beyond a single election. Republicans have known this for years, which is why they spend so much energy putting up obstacles to voting in the first place.
Turnout is the key. In 2014, 37% of Americans voted. In 2018 49% did. The difference was about 25 million people. Likewise in 2008, Barack Obama won 10 million more votes than John Kerry had 4 years earlier, while John McCain received only 2 million fewer votes than George Bush had. Democrats didn’t sweep those elections by winning over Republican voters. They did it by motivating millions of people who normally don’t vote at all.
I have no problem with Democrats trying to appeal to rural voters, but that’s not where the winning strategy lies.
Bingo twice!!!
Precisely.
Thank you.
And I would add to that what I said above. Policy is one reason that people vote a certain way. “Culture” is another…it is the prime driver behind identity politics as far as I am concerned…and a third is respect.
Trump’s policy statements…such as they were …were aimed squarely at the white middle and working classes who felt that the previous Clinton I/Bush II/Obama years had harmed their economic prospects enormously. He also acted as if he shared their culture to some degree. But respect? He was a crude sonofabitch from the getgo!!! Maybe they thought that this was just another act, or at least wished that it was.
It wasn’t.
And they are tired of it.
Plus, their “economic prospects” are really no better…despite the crowings of the Trumpist media..than they were then. The country is teetering on the brink of a serious recession if not worse, and consumer prices are rising ever higher.
Watch.
I think that Trump has peaked.
Watch.
AG
Sounds like a job for Bill Clinton!
I we need to field a candidate that is AT MOST 2 of those 3 criteria.
I think this is kinda facile, maybe shallow – but true.
Wow, you have NO finger on the pulse of the electorate. Did you sleep through the midterms and the seating of the new Congress? Or was that some next level snark?
Here’s the specific problem I see with appealing to rural voters:
I can see where there are lots of opportunities to show how Dems will much better represent their interests on jobs and health care, which are 2 bedrock issues. And foreign policy is something on which most voters are fairly malleable and/or don’t make it a top priority. So, all good there.
But as you say, the ideal candidate to get the Johnson>Goldwater magnitude whupping has to BOTH excite the base AND convince former Republicans that it’s OK to cross over. And there are 2 issues that I see as Third Rail Issues in this regard:
These are 2 issues on which the Dem base will DEMAND action — hell, I’M gonna demand action — but any reasonable action will make a candidate radioactive to potential crossover voters.
So how do you square that circle, Martin? Do you just give up those issues altogether? Or give them up during the campaign and spring ’em after the election, and risk alienating your brand-new crossover voters? Or do you really think the right candidate can slide by on these, when even Obama couldn’t do it?
Excellent question.
Start with strengthening background checks which is wildly popular.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/374692-poll-97-percent-support-background-checks-f
or-all-gun-buyers
Don’t let the NRA control the narrative on this issue.
I hope there is an election in Nov 2020.
That too…
AG