Like most California political junkies, I’m already looking forward to a vibrant 2024 Senate race. I wrote up the latest development at New York:
In the conservative imagination, California is sort of an evil empire of leftism. It’s where white people have been relegated to a minority for decades; where tree-hugging hippies still frolic; where Hollywood and Big Tech work 24/7 to undermine sturdy American-folk virtues; where rampaging unions and arrogant bureaucrats make it too expensive for regular people to live.
But in truth California’s dominant Democratic Party has as many mild-mannered moderates as it does fiery progressives. One of them, Dianne Feinstein, has held a Senate seat for over 30 years. As the 89-year-old political icon moves toward an almost certain retirement in 2024 (though she now says she won’t announce her intention until next year), another ideological moderate has just announced a bid to succeed her. Los Angeles congressman Adam Schiff, though, has an asset most centrist Democrats (those not named Clinton or Biden, anyway) can’t claim: the rabid hatred of Donald Trump–loving Republicans, giving him the sort of partisan street cred even the most rigorous progressives might envy.
It’s why Schiff begins his 2024 Senate race with something of a strategic advantage. The first-announced candidate in the contest, Congresswoman Katie Porter (also from greater L.A.), is a progressive favorite and more or less Elizabeth Warren’s protégé as a vocal enemy of corporate malfeasance. Another of Schiff’s House colleagues, Oakland-based Barbara Lee, has told people she plans a Senate run as well; Lee is a lefty icon dating back to her lonely vote against the initial War on Terror authorization following September 11. And waiting in the wings is still another member of California’s House delegation, Silicon Valley–based Ro Khanna, who is closely associated with Bernie Sanders and his two presidential campaigns.
Obviously, in a Senate race featuring multiple progressives, the national-security-minded Schiff (who voted for the Iraq war authorization and the Patriot Act early in his House career) might have a distinct “lane,” particularly if he draws an endorsement from Feinstein. (Schiff is already suggesting his campaign has her “blessing.”) But he may poach some progressive votes as well by emphasizing the enemies he’s made. Indeed, his campaign’s first video is mostly a cavalcade of conservatives (especially Donald J. Trump) attacking him.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Schiff is announcing his Senate bid immediately following his expulsion from the House Intelligence Committee by Speaker Kevin McCarthy for his alleged misconduct in investigating Russia’s links with Trump and his campaign (and in making the case for Trump’s impeachment). Schiff was also a steady prosecutorial presence on the January 6 committee that McCarthy and most Republicans boycotted).
Complicating the contest immeasurably is California’s Top Two primary election system. Schiff and his Democratic rivals will not be battling for a party primary win but for a spot in the 2024 general election, given to the top two primary finishers regardless of party affiliation. The Golden State’s Republican Party is so weak that it might not be able to find a candidate able to make the top two in a Senate primary; two Democrats competed in two recent competitive Senate general elections in California (in 2016, when Kamala Harris defeated Loretta Sanchez, and in 2018, when Feinstein trounced Kevin DeLeon). If that’s the case, though, it’s unclear which Democrat might have the edge in attracting Republicans. Porter’s campaign is circulating a poll showing she’d beat Schiff in a hypothetical general election because Republicans really hate Schiff despite his more moderate voting record.
For all the uncertainties about the 2024 Senate field, it is clear that the two announced Democratic candidates will wage a close battle in one arena: campaign dollars. Both Schiff and Porter are legendary fundraisers, though Porter had to dip deeply into her stash of resources to fend off a tougher-than-expected Republican challenge last November. Big remaining questions are whether Lee can finance a viable race in this insanely expensive state with its many media markets, and whether Khanna, with his national Sanders connections and local Silicon Valley donor base, enters the contest. There are racial, gender, and geographical variables too: Until Harris became vice-president, California had long been represented by two Democratic woman from the Bay Area. With Los Angeles–based Alex Padilla now occupying Harris’s old seat, 2024 could produce a big power shift to the south and two male senators.
In any event, nobody is waiting around for Feinstein to make her retirement official before angling for her seat, which means a Senate race that won’t affect the partisan balance of the chamber at all (barring some wild Republican upset) will soak up a lot of attention and money for a long time. At this early point, Schiff’s positioning as the moderate that Republicans fear and despise looks sure to keep him in the spotlight.
Why are Bush’s numbers still high among Republicans? I have two thoughts:
1) After the “Washington 5” were indicted for the Watergate break-ins, Nixon’s approval ratings were still at 60 percent among everyone (I’m not sure what it was among Republicans, but you can bet that it was very high). It wasn’t until it became painfully obvious that the break-in was a straight-line directly connected to Nixon that his numbers began to plummet. Similarly, I think Democrats see a straight-line connecting Bush to the corruption and incompetence of his administration in everything from the war with Iraq, to our struggling economy, to environmental degradation (or at the very least hold him responsible). Centrist Republicans have a clear disconnect.
Why? Well, thought number 2) the right-wing media juggernaut gives them cover. They need not ever confront the realities of their president or what he has done – and neither does the president. Hannity and Limbaugh are more than capable of mounting a straw man defense against the most egregious Bush missteps and malfeasance. Additionally, the Republicans have so vilified Democrats that a core majority of Republicans would rather deal with Satan than that French looking John Kerry who lies about the severity of his combat-wounds …
In “Independent Voters and the Bush Presidency” (June 5, 2004) the question of turnout/participation in November is briefly mentioned:
“Alas for Bush, this may turn out to be the election where everyone shows up. And, if that’s the case, it’ll be the Republican base that gets swamped, not the other way around.”
But what drives turnout? What sorts of issues and poll numbers make people more rather than less likely to vote?
Won’t Kerry have to emphasize economic populism in order to fire up his base? And isn’t his reported reluctance to speak in those terms cost him in November in terms of turnout? This, of course, was the Dukakis experience.
If the author avoids the “Likely Voter” screen, does this mean that he is agnostic at this point about the shape of turnout come November?
doofus,
one thing that has changed is that touch screens with no paper trail have replaced verifiable levers and ballots. What is being done to ensure that voting will be verified and ballot access will be equal for minorities and poor counties?
some important groups working for voting fairness
see
verifiedvoting.org
fairvote.org
naacp.org
aclu.org
To the poster who wondered why it isn’t obvious to a lot of people that Bush is a complete moron and totally unqualified to be President , let alone anything else I give you this: Many people think about life and the world they live in in simplistic terms. Their minds are incapable of thinking anything because that requires a thought process. Allthroughout Right-Wing history their thought process is it’s the Communists fault, its the fault of liberals, its the fault of big government etc. Being a citizen in a democracy REQUIRES that people pay attention. Many people do not WANT to think therefore “ALL POLITICIANS ARE CROOKS” is easier than thinking about the real differences between the two major political parties. That’s why liberals have problems, most of their issues are not easily boiled down to simplistic phrases like everything will be fine if we just get the government off our backs, etc.
Or it may indicate that (3) if you have enough Gallup numbers to look at, you are bound to find some striking but meaningless chance correlations that hold over several elections.
The correlation is interesting, and it could indicate something like a causal relation. But “incumbent job approval among independents in May of an election year with an incumbent running for reelection” does have the air of those surreallistically overspecified stats that baseball announcers like to report: balls thrown against left-handed hitters in the bottom of the eighth, etc.
That’s a very interesting analysis, PhillyGuy. Also very encouraging. I’m wondering, though, if there might be a new independent variable this year in the extent to which Bush/Cheney is spending its massive war chest on overwhelmingly negative ads. An analysis by the Washington Post a week or two ago showed that, while about 25% of the Kerry campaign’s ads so far have been negative, an amazing 75% of Bush/Cheney’s have been. And they are running these ads in the key battleground states where they can do the most harm. (This doesn’t even take into account the Rove-inspired dirty tricks and election fraud that also will undoubtedly be run “below the radar,” a la South Carolina and Florida in 2000.) Bush/Cheney spokesmen have said, off the record, that their objective is to define Kerry and create enough doubts among undecided voters that — come November — they’ll hesitate to pull the lever for Kerry. My point here is simply that the independent-voter paradigm this year may not follow history, because never has so much money been spent to tear down smear an opposing presidential candidate, rather than build up the spending candidate. Let’s hope that this is not the case.
The most intriguing and beautiful aspect of Gallup’s data is the extent to which the incumbent’s May approval rating among independent voters so closely reflects his eventual popular vote in November:
Year, Incumbent, May Independent Approval, Popular Vote
1996, Clinton, 47, 49.23
1992, Bush, 34, 37.45
1984, Reagan, 58, 58.77
1980, Carter, 36, 41.01
1976, Ford, 51, 48.02
1972, Nixon, 63, 60.67
The average differential between the May approval rate among independents and the popular vote share in November is only 2.8%. In other words, if recent electoral history is any indicator, Bush can count on a popular vote share of between 37.2 and 42.8 percent.
Interestingly, the person who did best in the popular vote compared to his May rating among independents was Jimmy Carter, who’s vote total was 5.01% better than his May rating. Even if Bush were to do as well as Carter, he’d still only end up with 45.01% of the vote. Let us pray…
I think the similarity between May independent approval rating and November popular vote tells us two things: 1) attitudes toward the incumbent have largely hardened by May of his election year; and 2) independent voters truly are the critical key to a presidential election since Republicans and Democrats tend to be loyal to their candidate–if independents dislike you, you’re in big trouble. Bush is in big trouble.
2 points:
1) But, among the 55 percent who strongly disapprove of his performance, 41 percent strongly disapprove.
Um. Shouldn’t it read: …among the 55 percent who disapprove of his performance, 41 percent strongly disapprove
2) Re: Republican streadfastness. Let me paraphrase Robert Jordan here: “As a deer will freeze when it sees a boulder rushing down a mountainside…” I think that’s why. Deer in the headlights.
How precisely could the Republicans “paper over” the fact that the very people they need most to win, hate their guts?
What *I’m* confused by is how nearly 90% of Republicans could possibly continue to support this president and his administration. I suspect that they are simply not paying any attention, and won’t until later in the campaign.
Of course, I include “watches nothing but Fox News” as functionally equivalent to “not paying attention”.
The good thing about this is that at about the same time they really start paying attention, so will the vast majority of Democrats and Independents. And there’s a lot more Democrats and Independents than there are Republicans.
And it’s darn nice of us to point out their weaknesses while they still have time to paper them over, isn’t it?