John Kerry leads George Bush among LV’s in OH +2 and NJ +8, but lags behind George Bush in MO -6, NV -7 and VA -4, according to a new series of polls by SurveyUSA, conducted 10/16-18.
Thanks for signing up!
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
tds-wwc-roundtable
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
October 22: “Red Dog” Democrats Shouldn’t Expect Big Policy Concessions
While mulling some recent material from The Bulwark, I thought I’d explain something to the converted “Never Trumpers” the outlet represents, and did so at New York:
For a while now I’ve had a guilty-pleasure reading habit: The Bulwark, that semi-official outlet of Never Trumpers who view themselves as having definitively broken with the GOP thanks to their former party’s thralldom to Donald J. Trump. I share its contributors’ belief that they (the tribe usefully described by Miller as Red Dog Democrats) represent not just a self-promoting claque of elite scribblers but a real if marginal faction of the Democratic Party, having burned a lot of bridges on their way out of the GOP. Their views appear to parallel those of a significant number of suburban Republicans and independents who voted Democratic in 2018 and 2020. And given the very close balance between voters of the two parties, as reflected most recently in 2020, Democrats really can’t afford to contemptuously reject any potential adherents, however alien or even repugnant they might find their backgrounds.
So it’s understandable when Bulwark co-founder Charlie Sykes expresses frustration that Democrats refuse to consider their pleas for policy concessions on grounds of holding old grudges:
“The spending. The wokeness. The repeal of the Hyde Amendment. I could go on …
“These are difficult times for folks on the center-right, who’ve tried to join Democrats in a loose alliance to protect the Republic from Trumpism …
“Litmus tests are applied: it’s not enough to be pro-democracy, NTers are also expected to embrace the elements of the progressive agenda — from free community college, to abortion, rent moratoriums, police funding, transgenderism, CRT, social spending, and the candidacy of Greta Thunberg for sainthood.”
Sykes fears it’s all very personal, and warns, “If you cancel moderates/conservatives for their past sins, you don’t have a coalition.”
Here’s the thing, though: It’s not really about the Red Dogs. Yes, I’m sure it’s been tough for them to watch Democrats largely come together around a legislative program that’s significantly more progressive than the one advanced by the Obama administration. But Democrats have been coalescing around the basics of the Build Back Better agenda for some time now. That the famously moderate Joe Biden now embraces it is a sign of how the party has slowly evolved, not some sort of betrayal or surrender to the left. And anyone who paid close attention to the 2020 presidential primaries should have understood that there is less distance between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders than between Joe Biden and the Joe Biden of the 1990s.
Part of what has happened is simply a resolution of internal conflicts among Democrats that left them defensive and at times incoherent. A classic example is one that Sykes mentioned: abortion policy. For years, Democrats claimed to value reproductive rights even as they accepted significant limitations on them: e.g., the Hyde Amendment, which made abortion services, unlike any other medical services, ineligible for any sort of federal support. That amendment, along with acceptance of some largely symbolic restrictions on rare late-term abortions, and the whole “safe, legal, and rare” messaging introduced by Bill Clinton, represented concessions to a significant bloc of Democratic voters and Democratic pols who did not recognize reproductive rights at all.
That has changed over time. Anti-abortion Democratic politicians are a rare and shrinking breed, and there are now significantly fewer anti-abortion Democratic voters than there are pro-choice Republicans. Most Democrats, including Joe Biden, have made the leap into a more coherent and unified position. They aren’t going to turn back the clock to satisfy ex-Republicans, but they aren’t insisting on a “litmus test” just to annoy or exclude them, either. The same could be said for other policy tenets once beloved by a significant number of Democrats — from fiscal hawkishness to armed interventionism to an openness to “entitlement reform” — that remain attractive to the newest proto-Democrats. As for the idea that Democrats are some sort of rigid ideological cult: Come on, seriously? Look at what’s going on with the attempted enactment of the Build Back Better reconciliation bill. If this is an intolerant and exclusive political party, I’d hate to see a loosey-goosey one try to function. It may just be that the issues Red Dogs fret about may lie outside the still relatively loose bounds of party unity.
This doesn’t mean Red Dogs should despair, but it may mean another painful reevaluation of priorities, recognizing that most have already had to sacrifice a lot of old allegiances and even the habitual language used to make sense of the political world. In many respects, the Never Trumpers resemble their spiritual (and in some cases biological) predecessors, the neo-conservatives. These were people who broke with the Democratic Party out of a conviction that Democratic views on national security made continued party loyalty impossible. But most of them retained many views that horrified their new Republican allies until they accepted the inevitable role of a factional minority and grew to accommodate or even share the policy positions and ideological language of the GOP, which was increasingly dominated by conservatives with their own ideological-consistency demands.
Most Red Dogs have no illusions about the party they’ve left and understand their constituencies are too small to form a third force or demand concessions from a position of strength. Most, I suppose, will get used to the strange and sometimes lurid landscape of the Donkey Party. Others will embrace the posture of the gadfly, the people of no party or coalition. But it’s really not personal. It’s just politics.
Where does Zogby say Bush is leading? I heard Kerry leading in all battleground. Is it a Texas thing? I looked over the site. I read on Kos that early voting favored D. Can someone find some public data?
Here are the new battleground states according to Zogby:
Four New Battleground States
Colorado – Bush 2000
Arizona – Bush 2000
North Carolina – Bush 2000
Virginia – Bush 2000
I find that surprising the positive Bush vote reports given the poll trends. NC? VA? In Play? With R incumbent? This is amazing.
And the real Big Dog is on the case – Bill Clinton in action.
Excellent news to see OH moving in Kerry’s favor. We get Ohio or Florida, and it’s a done deal. I think the seniors in Florida will break for Kerry giving us the edge their as well.
It was so hard to see the country clearly in Bush’s favor months ago, praying that people would wake up and see things for what they were. I believe deep down that most everyone believes that Bush mislead the public while he “rushed to war in Iraq”, but that they did not want to fault a United States President for something so horribly wrong. It was almost like they themselves would have to admit they were wrong and partly to blame. Now, with the debates done, people are making decisions for whatever reason they use to justify, but again, deep down, they are voting against Bush because he has lost their trust and can not be trusted as a Commander in Chief.
Look for a significant shift in the polls after this weekend. I look for one more event to effect this election, hopefully it will be a leak or something that is damaging to Bush and then it’s lights out for the Bush experiment.
Point of curiosity. In Zogby today, those who have already voted are 50-48 Bush leading. Where is the majority of early voting going on? Is this significant? Zogby stated that two things that bear watching are this figure, and the newly registered voters being overwhelmingly for Kerry, but I had just assumed that early voting would tend Democratic.
A.
I’d add to this list that SUSA shows the Bush lead at only 3% in North Carolina. Their poll from two weeks before had Bush up 7%. Maybe this is another option for an upset…
Slate gives a list of 10 states that are the tightest. 4 are Bush 2000 states, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and Nevada. 6 are Gore 2000 states. Wisconsin, Iowa, New Mexico, Maine, Pennsylvania, Minnesota.
They then give 9 for possible upstates. 5 are Bush 2000 states. Colorado, Missouri, West Virginia, Virginia, and Arizona. 4 are Gore 2000 states. New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington.
Of these last 9, all are described as safe or pretty safe to go the same way as 2000, except WV and Virginia. So…Virginia is starting to get some press. That 4% is pretty remarkable. With 13 EV’s, that would be one heckuva a big pickup. Great news.
From the SimonsWorld blog (via Andrewsullivan.com)
Interview with John Zogby, who expressed the following views on the election:
[…]
The Running
* The race is Kerry’s to lose, barring unforeseen events. If he loses, it is only his fault.
* Why? Because Bush’s numbers have not gone above 48%. Three other key polling indicators are all terrible for Bush amongst undecideds:
– Presidential job performance: 35% positive versus 60% negative
– Is the country headed in the right direction? net negative
– Does the President deserve re-election? 15% yes versus 40% no.
These numbers have always been net negative for Bush amongst undecideds. The last 3 Presidents with those numbers were Carter, Ford and Bush snr. None won.
* Another reason: undecideds tend to break for the challenger. Zogby sees them going like in Reagan in 1980, so that the margin is 2% but it is the same in each key state and it is in favour of Kerry, thus the Electoral Vote ends in a decisive victory.
* A higher turnout favours Kerry. 2000 election had 105 million voters. Anything over 107 million this time and Kerry will win.
* The youth vote: always heavily Democrat, this time the youth vote are unusually motivated and may turn out in bigger numbers than expected, tipping the race to Kerry.
* If the focus of the final two weeks is the War on Terror —> Bush wins
If the focus of the final two weeks is Iraq and/or domestic issues —> Kerry wins.
* If the result is like in 2000 there will be masses and months of litigation. Neither side will back down and it will be complete chaos, far worse than 2000.
Nader
* Nader is a spent force and irrelevant to the campaign. He does not take votes from Kerry.
* Voters for Nader would otherwise have not voted at all, so no loss to either side.
I second Greg’s comment. Why doesn’t Virginia get more attention considering the race is as close as other battlegroudn states? I’m biased, of course: I live in Virginia and I’m working to help him win Virginia. But what’s the argument over ignoring Virginia and pursuing Missouri or Colorado?,
RT
I’ve heard this before and in other elections. Evidently the kids are reflecting what they hear at home.
Kids Pick Kerry to Be the Next President (AP)
AP – Kid power! Democrat John Kerry is the winner, and the rest of the country should pay attention because the vote on Nickelodeon’s Web site has correctly chosen the president of the United States in the past four elections.
Yahoo! News | October 20, 2004, 11:01 am
Why isn’t the Virginia number getting more attention? If PA and OH are competitive swing states with similiar spreads, why not VA?
Obviously, given it’s history VA is traditionally more red, but still, I’d love to see the headline “Bush vulnerable in VA”