Despite the recent return of Democratic optimism associated with the Harris-Walz ticket, there are a few stubborn fears that keep partisans awake at night. Here’s a review of four of them that I wrote at New York:
Democrats are in a vastly better state of mind today than they were a couple of months ago, when Joe Biden was their presidential candidate and his advocates were spending half their time trying to convince voters they were wrong about the economy and the other half reminding people about how bad life was under President Trump. While it’s possible this would have worked in the end when swing voters and disgruntled Democrats alike took a long look at Trump 2.0, confidence in Biden’s success in November was low.
Now that the Biden-Harris ticket has morphed into Harris-Walz, there’s all sorts of evidence from polls, donor accounts, and the ranks of volunteers that Democrats can indeed win the 2024 election. But at the same time, as Barack Obama and others warned during the Democratic National Convention, the idea that Kamala Harris can simply float on a wave of joy and memes to victory is misguided. She did not get much, if any, polling bounce from a successful convention, and there are abundant signs the Harris-Trump contest is settling into a genuine nail-biter.
While the September 10 debate and other campaign events could change the trajectory of the race, it’s more likely to remain a toss-up to the bitter end. And many fear, for various reasons, that in this scenario, Trump is likelier to prevail. Here’s a look at which of these concerns are legitimate, and which we can chalk up to superstition and the long tradition of Democratic defeatism.
One reason a lot of Democrats favor abolition of the Electoral College is their belief that the system inherently favors a GOP that has a lock on overrepresented rural states. That certainly seemed to be the case in the two 21st-century elections in which Republicans won the presidency while losing the national popular vote (George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016). And in 2020, Joe Biden won the popular vote by a robust 4.5 percent but barely scraped by in the Electoral College (a shift of just 44,000 votes in three states could have produced a tie in electoral votes).
However, any bias in the Electoral College is the product not of some national tilt, but of a landscape in which the very closest states are more Republican or Democratic than the country as a whole. In 2000, 2016, and 2020, that helped Republicans, but as recently as 2012 there was a distinct Electoral College bias favoring Democrats.
To make a very long story short, there will probably again be an Electoral College bias favoring Trump; one bit of evidence is that Harris is leading in the national polling averages, but is in a dead heat in the seven battleground states that will decide the election. However, it’s entirely unclear how large it will be. In any event, it helps explain why Democrats won’t feel the least bit comfortable with anything less than a solid national polling advantage for Harris going into the home stretch, and why staring at state polls may be a good idea.
For reasons that remain a subject of great controversy, pollsters underestimated Donald Trump’s support in both 2016 and in 2020. But the two elections should not be conflated. In 2016, national polls actually came reasonably close to reflecting Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote advantage over Trump (in the final RealClearPolitics polling averages, Clinton led by 3.2 percent; she actually won by 2.1 percent). But far less abundant 2016 state polling missed Trump’s wafer-thin upset wins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, largely due to an under-sampling of white non-college-educated voters. The legend of massive 2016 polling error is probably based on how many highly confident forecasts of a Clinton win were published, which is a different animal altogether.
There’s no question, however, that both national and state polling were off in 2020, which is why the narrow Biden win surprised so many people. Two very different explanations for the 2020 polling error have been batted around: One is that the COVID pandemic skewed polling significantly, with Democrats more likely to be self-isolated at home and responding to pollsters; the other is that the supposed anti-Trump bias of 2020 polls simply intensified. The fact that polls in the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections were quite accurate is consistent with either interpretation.
So we really don’t know if polling error is a given in 2024, or which candidate will do better than expected. A FiveThirtyEight analysis of polling error since 1998 shows a very small overestimation of the Democratic vote across 12 election cycles. It might be prudent, then, to expect that Trump might exceed his polling numbers by a bit, but not necessarily by a lot.
A lot of election forecasts (or model-based projections) incorporate, to varying degrees, what are known as “fundamentals,” i.e., objective factors that are highly correlated historically with particular outcomes. There are models circulating in political-science circles that project presidential-election results based mostly or even entirely on macroeconomic indicators like GDP or unemployment rates. Others take into account presidential approval ratings, the positive or negative implications of incumbency, or historical patterns.
While forecasts vary in how to combine “fundamentals” with polling data, most include them to some extent, and for the most part in 2024 these factors have favored Trump. Obviously the substitution of Harris for Biden has called into question some of these dynamics — particularly those based on Biden’s status as an unpopular incumbent at a time of great unhappiness with the economy — but they still affect perceptions of how late-deciding voters will “break” in November.
A final source of wracked Democratic nerves is the very real possibility — even a likelihood — that if defeated, Trump will again reject and seek to overturn the results. Indeed, some MAGA folk seem determined to interfere with vote-counting on and beyond Election Night in a manner that may make it difficult to know who won in the first place. Having a plan B that extends into an election overtime is a unique advantage for Trump; for all his endless talk about Democrats “rigging” and “stealing” elections, you don’t hear Harris or her supporters talking about refusing to acknowledge state-certified results (or indeed, large batches of ballots) as illegitimate. It’s yet another reason Democrats won’t be satisfied with anything other than a very big Harris lead in national and battleground-state polls as November 5 grows nigh.
A Democratic Alternative:
(1) Expand the private sector part of the retirement system by raising the maximums on 401Ks and IRAs, anb by going national with the Galveston plan (investment in conservative bank funds);
(2) Cut SS outflow by jumping the retirement age to 70 in the year 2025, shaving the top-level payment, and means testing all payments on a sliding scale;
(3) Replace the payroll tax with a flat tax on personal income from all sources with no ceiling; take the corporate share out of net profits not labor overhead.
The political result: (1) will appeal the free marketeers without getting a govt-run program in the stock market; (2) will be hard sell but will give Dems an image of decisive toughness; and (3) is simple tax justice.
This piece just firms up my opinion that Bush’s privatization scheme is dead in the water. This is my reasoning: One, he has had to use a huge amount of capital on Iraq as of late. Little is left to push this behemoth through Congress. Two, to finance the privatization Congress will have to raise the debt ceiling. The fiscal conservatives will not go for this and I think the public will outcry when they see the cost. Three, to quell conservatives (and maybe because the time is right) the issue of entitlements needs to be addressed. Certainly, this is a euphamism for cuts in social security and medicare and no one will like this.
I think the Demos can score much needed political capital in opposing the privatization plan. But as this piece aptly states, a cogent arguement with feasible alternatives needs to be crafted rather than the a “sky is falling” reactionary response.
Hey Ruy, how about some polling as to how the public feels about the increased public debt under the Bush administration, I haven’t heard anything about that in a while?
“If Social Security isn’t broken, the overall US retirement and pension system is and the public knows this. ”
Maybe part of the answer to your question is to define the problem. In what way is the retirement and pension system broken?
There was no compelling reason for the tax cuts, nor were they popular in opinion surveys, but they did them anyways. They’re very determined – but unless there is an equally determined opposition, they will get their way.
Democratic plan: First assure people’s basic retirement needs by keeping a system that invests in the most stable investment available, government bonds. Second, simplify the tax rules to encourage private savings and investments for retirement. Third, demand a Social Security Flat tax – tax all income.
Political plan: All out attack patterned after the Republican’s health care ambush. Attack the presidents motives, his rationality, and his math. Enforce party discipline. Make this the one issue that if you cross you’re out of the party.
Yes, there will be losses. But wouldn’t it have been better for the party to have kicked Zell Miller out?
We Need A Wage Policy
I think the central, domestic organizing principle of the Democratic Party should be to promote wage growth among the American workers. Real wages for median income workers have stagnated since the beginning of “Reganomics” almost 25 years ago, something I expect has never occurred before over such a long period of time. Just as Republicans chant “cut taxes, cut taxes” we should repeat “increase wages, increase wages.”
The math signifying the advantages to the middle class of wage growth over tax cuts is convincing. Take someone making $35,000 a year. For simplicity, let’s say he or she pays about $10,000 in taxes per year. A 10% tax cut equals a one time $1000 increase in such individual’s take home pay. But policies that generate a yearly real income growth rate of 3% mean that this individual will get at least a $1000 raise every year and the amount of raise will increase as his or her income increases. Moreover, while tax cuts are “paid for” by either cuts in programs that help the middle class or add to the defecit, which increases interest middle class individuals have to pay, extra wages do not have this negative budgetary effect.
So, how to raise wages? The best way that I can think of is through a tax incentive. For example, my understanding is that currently a business deducts one dollar of its income for every dollar it pays to its workers as a business expense. Why not give an “enhanced” write off for wage payments that represent growth above the rate of inflation, let’s say 1.5 dollars for every dollar paid to a worker as a “real” wage increase. Other ideas are more traditional. We need to constantly attempt to raise the minimum wage. Additionally, we need to advocate trade agreements that push up wages in foreign countries, a policy that helps by lessening the undercutting of our wages and by giving foreigner workers more money to buy our products.
While there may be some disagreement on specific policy proposals, I think wage growth should be the Democrats signature issue.
We need to decisively win the Social Security debate and then move on to bigger and better battles having demonstrated unequivocably that the Bush Administration was simply lying through its teeth on this issue. The general public is uneasily aware that it was lied to in the runup to Iraq, but is emotionally tied up with the message of patriotism in wartime/support the troops, they signed up and many feel that have to stay the course. But nobody enlisted in the War on Social Security. The Administration is publicly pushing growth numbers for 2005 (3.5%) that if plugged into the conventional model for Social Security (the Intermediate Cost alternative) totally fill the gap. The current model which produces the 2042 shortfall date is based on an economic model which predicted 2.7% growth for 2004 and 1.8% for 2005. Instead we are looking at 4.0% and 3.5%. Hello?
We just have to follow the numbers to create a crushing victory here.
2004 Social Security Trustees Report: Economic Assumptions under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/V_economic.html#wp159107) &
2004 Report: Trust Fund Ratios under the Three Alternatives (http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/II_project.html#wp106217)
And along the way establish the narrative: “They are lying to you. Again.”