John Kerry beat George Bush 44-41 percent of RV viewers of the 2nd presidential debate, with 13 percent undecided in an ABC News Poll. But Kerry beat Bush among self-identified independents 44-34 percent. (The respondents were self-identified 35 percent Democrats, 32 percent Republicans and 29 percent Independents.)
Kerry beat Bush 47-45 percent of RV debate-viewers in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. But Kerry beat Bush among self-identified independents 53-37 percent. (The respondents were self identified 38 percent Republicans, 32 percent Democrats and 30 percent Independents.)
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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April 25: Can “Reverse Coattails” Help Biden Win?
A relatively new term is popping up in articles on 2024 strategy for Democrats that I explained and explored at New York:
When you have a presidential candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm in the party base, it’s natural to look for some external stimulation. In the case of Joe Biden, the most obvious source of a 2024 boost is the deep antipathy that nearly all Democrats, many independents, and even a sizable sliver of Republicans feel toward Donald Trump. But in case that’s not enough, Team Biden is looking at another avenue of opportunity, albeit a risky one: the possibility of “reverse coattails” taking him past Trump on a wave of turnout that incidentally benefits the president of the United States.
That’s not the conventional wisdom, as the term reverse coattails makes clear: Normally, it’s the head of the ticket from whom all blessings flow, which makes sense insofar as presidential-election turnout dwarfs that of off-year and midterm contests in no small part because people who don’t necessarily care about the identity of their senator or governor are galvanized by the battle for the White House. But as Russell Berman of The Atlantic explains, this year is different:
“Faith in the reverse-coattails effect is fueling Democratic investments in down-ballot races and referenda. In North Carolina, for example, party officials hope that a favorable matchup in the governor’s race — Democratic attorney general Josh Stein is facing Republican lieutenant governor Mark Robinson, who has referred to homosexuality as ‘filth’ and compared abortion to slavery — could help Biden carry a state that Trump narrowly won twice. Democrats are also trying to break a Republican supermajority in the legislature, where they are contesting nearly all 170 districts. ‘The bottom of the ticket is absolutely driving engagement and will for all levels of the ballot,’ Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me.”
In other states, high-profile ballot measures, particularly those aimed at restoring the abortion rights denied by conservative courts and Republican lawmakers, may generate bottoms-up enthusiasm benefiting Biden and embattled Democratic Senate candidates as well:
“In key states across the country, Democrats and their allies are planting ballot initiatives both to protect reproductive rights where they are under threat and to turn out voters in presidential and congressional battlegrounds. They’ve already placed an abortion measure on the ballot in Florida, where the state supreme court upheld one of the nation’s most restrictive bans on the procedure, and they plan to in Arizona, whose highest court recently ruled that the state could enforce an abortion ban first enacted during the Civil War. Democrats are also collecting signatures for abortion-rights measures in Montana, home to a marquee Senate race, and in Nevada, a presidential swing state that has a competitive Senate matchup this year.”
Berman notes that the reverse-coattails strategy is unproven. Voters, for example, who attracted to the polls by abortion ballot measures don’t always follow the partisan implications of their votes when it comes to candidate preferences. Red-hot down-ballot races are probably more reliable in attracting voters who can be expected to follow the party line to the top of the ticket. A positive precedent can be found in Georgia’s coordinated effort of 2020, when a powerful campaign infrastructure built by Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock clearly helped maximize Biden’s vote; the 46th president won the state by less than 12,000. Perhaps a strong Senate candidate like Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey could help Biden survive as well. As for the possible effect of ballot measures, it was once generally accepted that in 2004 a GOP strategy of encouraging anti-same-sex-marriage ballot measures helped boost conservative turnout in battleground states like Ohio, enabling George W. Bush’s narrow victory (though there are analysts who argue against that hypothesis). One reason it may work better today is the increasing prevalence of straight-ticket voting and the heavy emphasis of Democratic campaigns up and down the ballot on the kind of support for abortion rights that should help them take advantage of ballot-measure-generated turnout.
We won’t get a good idea of how either reverse-coattails strategy is working until late in the 2024 campaign when it becomes possible to measure new voter registrations, screen registered voters for their likelihood to participate in the election, and assess states where down-ballot contests are turning into a Democratic blowout. Team Biden would be wise to do everything in its power to lift the president’s popularity and build a favorability advantage over Trump that can reduce the number of “double haters” likely to stay home or vote for a change in the party management of Washington.
> Bush and Cheney are increasingly desperate. So their
> rhetoric will be increasingly shrill and over-the-top.
> They have painted themselves in a corner with their
> scare campaign.
I think the Kerry camp needs to be careful in the final debate. They’re saying the subject (domestic issues) should favor the Dems, but a *lot* of observers are saying “Shrub” actually fared better in debate#2 than when he had to defend his failed Iraq strategy.
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My fear is “Shrub” and the GOP will try to exploit the usual cultural wedge issues in the final debate, and Kerry will give some vague Dukakis-esque responses. Maybe they will accuse the Democrats of banning the bible and requiring men to marry other men… It’s what they do when their Iraq policy is in shambles, there are fewer jobs than four years ago and the federal government is drowning in red ink thanks to the tax cuts.
MARCU$
Mimikatz, you wrote:
I think that Bush really damaged himself with undecided women in the second debate. His demeanor in the first half was the sort of swaggering, cocksure braggart that most women detest. He was rude to many of the questioners, particularly the older man who asked about drug reimportation and the last woman, who asked about his mistakes. Women tend to be more attuned to social niceties. Third, the abortion question. Of course rabid pro-life women would go for Bush. But his refusal to understand any nuances to that issue, and his favoring the fetus at the expense of the mother’s health or even her life, had to make many women cringe. Expect to see Kerry rise a few points in the next polls because of this.
Posted by Mimikatz at October 9, 2004 05:22 PM
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I absolutely agree.
All the talking heads need to pull their HEADS out of their collective ass and look around. The ONLY voters who matter are those in the middle who are undecided or persuadeable. If oozing faux machismo would have won them, they wouldn’t be persuadeable now.
Many woman respond very negatively to men to exhibit the behaviors of Bush, mainly because most have been bullied by some similiar sounding male all too often. They know it instantly as the boyfriend or husband who was always going to have things his way, and wanted to shout down opposition. Or the boss, or the co-worker, or the husband of a friend.
Bush had to have lost all women who were anywhere near the fence.
I am predicting that Kerry will gain the lead from the second debate and not lose it again.
We should begin to see evidence of it tomorrow or Tuesday.
I think that Bush really damaged himself with undecided women in the second debate. His demeanor in the first half was the sort of swaggering, cocksure braggart that most women detest. He was rude to many of the questioners, particularly the older man who asked about drug reimportation and the last woman, who asked about his mistakes. Women tend to be more attuned to social niceties. Third, the abortion question. Of course rabid pro-life women would go for Bush. But his refusal to understand any nuances to that issue, and his favoring the fetus at the expense of the mother’s health or even her life, had to make many women cringe. Expect to see Kerry rise a few points in the next polls because of this.
RE: Angry Man
Between the blatant lies and the anger Bush’s public persona is morphing from “Someone you would like to have a beer with”* to Richard Nixon.
*I am only quoting the spin, I always thought that line was a load of nonsense
Two points.
1. Bush and Cheney are increasingly desperate. So their rhetoric will be increasingly shrill and over-the-top. They have painted themselves in a corner with their scare campaign.
2. In each debate there was an initial effort in the media to prop up Bush and Cheney’s performances. They quickly abandoned the effort in the first debate in the face of Bush’s obvious stumbling. With Cheney/Edwards and last night the effort is more resilient, but has weakened after time as the consensus pointed out reality. They are the incumbents defending a sorry record. They are defensive and angry. They insist they are right and their defense consists of outright lies or distortions or browbeating. All Kerry has to do is sound reasonable and truthful.
Expect them to now go back to the August formula – attack Kerry with lies and slander. But now people have seen and heard Kerry. That swiftboatliar won’t hunt.
It is disappointing that with such a strong performance by Kerry (better than the first debate, although the improvement in Bush was enormous), the polls wouldn’t show Kerry with a stronger win. The press will insist that it was a draw.
Kerry FINALLY introduced the point that the whole ‘wishy-washy’ (but he was talking about flipflops) issue was a mere spin. He needs to explain that more clearly.
The questions were also really favorable to Kerry. I really admired Kerry’s frankness with his “it’s not a matter of if but when” response to the question about another 9-11, but he should also have been more specific about the history (unsure when the 1993 attack and the following attack in E Africa he alluded to was? — chalk that up to tiredness). In my own mind, Kerry’s substantive forthrightness in answering that question contrasts with Bush’s “And he put a trial lawyer on the ticket” line. The irony of the latter is that trial lawyers are often resented as people who profit by demagogically appealing to juries in an emotional manipulative way — just like Bush was doing in his approach.
KERRY HAS GOT TO STOP USING THE WORD “PLAN” SO OFTEN. He needs to sharpen his attacks on Bush’s policies on health care as for the corporate interests.. He could have left Bush looking like an ogre in response to the environment question. He should take the opportunity as he lays into Bush in the last debate on either tax policy for the wealthy and/or pro-corporate health care policy to give a good NICE AND ACCURATELY HARSH picture of Bush the worst kind of stereotypical big business Republican and go into at least three or four specific environmental policies. Kyoto ISN’T winning him any points with the mainstream, although I support it. How he has made backroom deals with corporations that even the Republicans wouldn’t pass thru Congress and then name SEVERAL NEW ones: mercury policy should be specifically described, as well as one or two other horror stories like that.
On jobs, Bush keeps citing the 1.9 million figure. That is his BEST(and only) year of job growth, after massive declines, and it’s worse than the AVERAGE year of 8 years of Clinton. That punches Bush down at his main point on that issue.
It doesn’t even keep up with the growth of the potential job market.
He was a little confusing at the key point on how he had been consistent on the Patriot Act — the issue of being a flipflopper and explaining how he isn’t is probably more important than the issues of the Patriot Act as far as winning the elections. Kerry focuses on the issues — Bush on winning the election. But still, Kerry had a slightly better demeanor than Bush and was MUCH stronger on the substance. He answered the questions and devastated Bush’s arguments. The polls should (have) reflected that — though perhaps the talking heads (with the conservatives insisting it was a big win for Bush and the liberals taking a balanced approach of a narrow win for Kerry) have an impact.
Lookin’ good for K/E, but I’m still waiting for an Oct surprise(s). Read the Atlantic Monthly essay on Karl Rove if you don’t understand my anxieties.
Bush gave tired excuses for poor performances. He did not appear to have a real grasp of either Foreign Policy or Domestic issues.
Paul C. is right. Bush came off like a raving lunatic for the first 45 minutes. However, I thought Bush got the better of JK on the domestic issues, where his folksy, simple-minded stuff came across more succinctly than Kerry’s thoughtful, but long-winded responses.
Most people aren’t smart enough to follow along with complex lines of political reasoning, so I hope Kerry can sort of sharpen his domestic stuff before next Wed.
Thanks for the news on independents.
Bush did much better this time than last, but I still think that the main dynamic of the debates is to demolish the straw man that the Republicans have constructed. Kerry comes across as reasonable and presidential. Which he is. That completely undermines the Republican attacks. In contrast, there’s not a lot that Bush can do to undermine the Democratic attacks.
I am sure that Kerry beat Bush by 10 to 1 among people who only watched the first half hour of the debate. What did his people tell him –“George, if you say it loud enough, people will believe you.” My favorite line was Jeff Greenfield “Mr. Bush, two words — ‘anger management.’
way to go, kerry.
why won’t the main stream media report these internals?