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.
During the first month after the election, we were all seemingly in agreement that despite having lost, we’d managed to stay united as a party, and avoid the traditional Democratic circular firing squad. Times were gonna be rocky ahead, but we were going to face the enemy as one.
Then Beinart had to aim his guns at Moore and MoveOn, and Al From had to go on the attack against everyone who wasn’t as conservative as him without actually being a Republican.
These guys are a cancer on our party; they’ve got to go. I’m willing to debate ideas with whoever. But when the GOP puts Coburn and DeMint in the U.S. Senate, and worships at the feet of Limbaugh, Norquist, and Pat Robertson, anyone of *either* party has got a lot of damned gall to say our problem is that we tolerate extremists. Compared to the wingnuts I’ve just mentioned, Michael Moore is a freakin’ moderate. And, FWIW, he’s an honest-to-God patriot. If they try to kick him out of the party, I go too. Fercryinoutloud, we didn’t even kick GodZella out when he decided to campaign for Bush.
From: Gone. Beinart: Gone. (His ideas are actually good. But the penalty for starting a circular firing squad should be that you’re the first one shot. Then the rest of us all get to live.) Zell: gone. DLC: Gone. Being a conservative Dem is fine; being a traitor to the party isn’t.
You are very eloquent Aaron….but you are wrong. The Democratic Party MUST go back to its roots. If they don’t they will remain in the wilderness. I for one will not put my efforts into another election that dosen’t embrace a National Healtcare System again, (and again and again until we get it for ALL the American people), withdrawl from Iraq, investment in other energies, stem cell research (government sponsored), Choice and common sense.
If the DLC ignore Howard Dean for DNC Chair, millions will look for another leader in another party. Then the Democratic Party will be finished.
Beluumregio, you have profoundly misread Marshall. As the Dems adjust to the defeat and gather the reins to battle on, there will be much talk of restructuring the army.
But I don’t see any major commentator, certainly not Marshall, Black, etc. who will tolerate the sins of the Rupublican administration, much less endorse them. If you think Marshall supports Bush’s prosecution of Iraq, I’d suggest nothing else shows how badly you’ve misunderstood him.
I disagree with Jason Bradfield. There should be no purge and there will not be one. We cannot become Deaniacs until we have more PR infrastructure. Mr Rove has already made it clear that a sharp distinction between the parties is desirable. Since Republicans control the national imagination through their coordinated communications and public relations campaigns and have strong brand identity we would loose. We should (and must) do the hard thing by addressing the conservative issues in a liberal manner (as Marshall prescribes) and invest the public discourse with issues (and strategies) that put Republicans in a corner (which Marshall does not prescribe). The DLC is helpful but it should not be the Democratic brain trust.
I used to be a conservative Republican activist and I used to think the DLC was great because they forced the debate into a conservative frame of reference.
Now that I am a liberal I shocked that any Democrats, even centrists, take the DLC seriously. They are not centrists, they are conervatives. Every single one of their ideas puts the political debate on turf conservatives can win on.
The purge that is needed in the Democratic party is a purge of conservatives, just as the GOP successfully purged its Rockefeller Republican moderates.
The more a party can stay on message the better party discipline is. With DLC types running around the American public gets easily confused trying to figure out what Democrats stand for.
The sad truth is that, even if the public is not well enough educated, we don’t get to vote them out and elect new people. We work with the only Americans there are, or we lose elections.
The DLC would have us adjust our party platform to get to where the voters seem to be politically. The progressive alternative is to BE LEADERS and to make an effective case for our vision–such that the voters come around to our view. The Republicans have taken the leadership role, and brought the voting public where they want them to be, while the progressive Democrats have not led; they have instead insulted those voters who were following the GOP, calling them sheep, and focusing on attacking the GOP agenda rather than articulating a better alternative.
Our job as progressives is to give the voters an attractive vision of why what we want to do is best for them. If we do that effectively, then they will vote for us. If we’re not willing to do it, then the DLC is right and the only remaining way to win is to offer the people what they believe they want now, at the expense of our beliefs to the contrary.
I’m one of those rare believers in both the Beinart thesis (Democrats lost this election on national security grounds, and need to make Arab democracy the centerpiece of their foreign policy) and that the DLC is almost wholly irrelevant on domestic issues.
With a few notable exceptions, the DLC red state strategy has been a certifiable failure. Five out of six decent corporatist DLCish red state senate candidates went down in flames last month, and in at least two of those cases to complete lunatics. The only red states this strategy works in have large Democratic bases, and large quantities of white, professional, moderate, suburban swing voters (as in Colorado and New Hampshire.) This doesn’t describe most red states today.
Democrats need to recover their losses with the white working class if they want to have any hope of becoming a majority party again in the next thirty years, and economic populism is their best shot at that end. Combined with a program of democracy promotion abroad and you have not only a winning formula for the next generation, but you have again the party of FDR and Truman.
When I think of the DLC, I think of the smarmy, smug Evan Bayh who is a prominent member.
I think about how as a Democrat in the state of Indiana, one needs to go about being elected it’s US Senator. My best guess would be to position yourself just to the right of Joe Lieberman, and just close enough to Zell Miller without being laughed out of the party.
There is a reason why during our annual summer confrontation with hate groups here in the Chicago area, we had to bus them in from Indiana.
I disagree with the last poster Joe, as he is under the wrong assumption that the Democratic Party has been actively turning away or purging those of ‘faith and conscience’, which is exactly what the Republicans have been doing to gays and pro-choice members.
We are dealing with an American electorate where still today, 44% percent think that a ‘stable democracy’ is possible in Iraq.
There is nothing wrong with our message or our messengers. The problem is the truth does not translate well into the language of fear, intolerance and hate.
“The DLC is full of smart people who have many good and useful ideas about the road forward for Democrats.”
Perhaps they could work for Democratic institutions then? There’s more than a few on the rise, and they actually believe Dems should be… Dems.
Seriously though, I think MoveOn’s response was, while blunt, accurate. The DLC came up because they were successful at raising money via large corporate donations. Dean, MoveOn, TrueMajority, and Kerry in their wake showed that we can reach financial parity with the right with “trickle up” fundraising, and none of those efforts involved foresaking Democratic values to curry favor with big business. How thrilling was it, amongst the grief on Nov. 3rd, to see and hear all the responses of “Okay, I’m ready to keep fighting, where do I send the check and when do the ’06 campaigns get under way?”
I wouldn’t worry about all the truly smart and skilled people at the DLC. There is an upsurge of Democratic institutions afoot, there will be plenty of room for the good ones to get in and contribute, and hopefully working for those institutions won’t entail wincing when the bosses decide to berate the grassroots in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
Worse things could happen than to have From and Reed fade into obscurity.
John Kerry lost to George Bush because the latter was successful in scaring the hell out of the American people and the former was not convincing enough that he could protect them as well as the guy who proved he couldn’t on 9/11.
Go figure.
The Dems don’t need to move to the center. Kerry did and he outscored Bush among independents and still lost. We turned out more voters for the Democratic party than any previous winner from either party ever got and still lost.
The Democratic party simply needs to open itself to people of conscience and faith while still voicing a progressive theme on economics, health care etc. and forget gun control, abortion rights and other social issues that Repubs use to bolster their base through identity politics.
Bush won because Rove grew the Republican base. The Dems will win when they field a candidate who grows their base and caters to it.
hmmm…
I’m not sure that the DLC and Clinton didn’t lead the Democrats down the garden path to near-oblivion. Clinton is a political genius, but with the republican party lurching off to the ideological gamma quadrant, the Democrats need to keep their distance from them, now more than ever.
The Republican party is simply crazy now, but the Democrats don’t win because they are still playing Clinton’s games.