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.
Maybe the trouble is that people like me just aren’t really democrats anymore.
I always felt the war was wrong and took a lot of grief from my neighbors in a very conservative neighborhood for opposing it. (Those same neighbors now agree with me). I cringed as I saw democratic congressional members abdicate their responsibilities and rubber stamp the President’s insanity.
I believe in plurality. The IRS doesn’t care if I believe in God. They don’t care if I’m straight or gay. They don’t care if I’m black, white, hispanic or other. They want my money so that our government can provide the services we have said we collectively want and need.
I don’t think my tax dollars should be spent on a lot of things – but I don’t try to hold other people hostage with my views. Texas shows us clearly that abstinence only does NOT work well as policy- yet tax dollars continue to pour in for this. Programs that include information on and access to birth control DO work better statistically — yet, because the christian right doesn’t want to accept that mary is having sex – even more of my tax dollars are wasted.
Who is not afraid to speak for me on this? One of the department of education secretary’s first acts was canning an episode of a pbs show (whose mission is to portray DIFFERENCES among people and places) for having the audacity to show lesbians in vermont. What on earth kind of country is this becoming? No Child Left Behind is so grossly underfunded that children aren’t being educated yet the secretary focuses on this. And let’s remember that some of us don’t want our children exposed only to wonder bread.
The Democratic party has lost it’s rich language and diversity. It hides under the covers and has become the party of apologists and poll jumpers. I know where I stand. I DON’T know where the party stands anymore.
I’m not afraid to say I believe access to affordable healthcare should be a basic human right in this country.
I’m not afraid to say, “BAD DEAL” on the President’s crazy Social Security scheme. My mother lost almost everything when the market crashed – HELLO, people may be savvy investors when young but when their health fails, they AREN’T and then their children are left in horrible positions. So WHY don’t I hear this from the party?
I’m sick of the party’s self obsession w/itself. We’re getting killed out here and if the democratic party can’t off the therapist’s couch and take a stand, there won’t be a party left because people like me will leave and create a political voice that speaks for us. And if some want to call that suicide, I’d be interested to see what they’re calling right now.
1. Its not just Iowa, standing alone, that is the problem. It is Iowa, combined with the front loading of the primary process that allows a candidate to coast to the nomination (as both Gore and Kerry did) merely on the strength of Iowa and NH.
A process that worked, by contrast, is that of 1992: Iowa and NH had some winnowing effect, but a candidate who lost Iowa and NH could still win the nomination in the South.
So to get an electable candidate, the Democrats need to somehow create a process that gives the South a decisive voice. Ending the “Iowa first” policy is one way to do it but not the only way. If the Democrats can space out their primary process to reduce the influence of the first few states, that works just as well.
2. The notion that John Kerry is a “centrist” shows how utterly out of control the Democrats’ left wing is. Kerry was not a flamethrower- but he did have a solidly liberal record. To draw an analogy to the Republicans: he may not be a Tom DeLay, but he is certainly no different from a Bill Frist- someone who robotically votes the party line, even if he does not go beyond the party line. Between 1999 and 002, Kerry’s ADA rating (adaction.org) ranged between 85% and 95%.
And because Kerry (a) is from Massachusetts (unfortunately a handicap) and (b) has a 20 year voting record, he is perceived as more liberal than a Southern governor with identical issue positions would be.
3. The notion that anyone to the right of Kerry is comparable to a Democratic version of Charles Mathias is also rubbish. Joe Lieberman, the alleged conservative in the Presidential field, has had an ADA rating over 75% for each of the past five years.
4. Finally, the notion that the Democrats just need to “be Democrats again” overlooks certain historical realities.
Since 1968, the Democrats have only elected two presidents – both Southern governors who managed to be perceived as moderates.
When the Democrats nominated northern liberals, they lost again and again. Lost with Humphrey. Lost with McGovern. Lost with Dukakis. Lost with Mondale. Lost with Kerry. What part of this don’t you understand?
The problem with the recent Democratic candidates (and indeed, with the party in general) is not that they are too liberal or not moderate enough, it is that they are simply Republican-lite (or Bush-lite, if you prefer). In the 2000 debates, Gore agreed with Bush on nearyly every issue. In the 2004 debates, Kerry’s nuanced points on the most important issues (national security and Iraq) were so subtle that only the pundits could decipher the differences.
Democrats have to stop worrying about offending some “on-the-fence” voters and trust that by offering an obvious alternative, they will gain many more swing voters than they will lose. The fact is, the only way for the Democrats to get back in the ball game is to take off the Elephant coat and start being Democrats again.
Why on earth do Democrats continually talk about the need to nominate “centrist” democrats, which in the current political climate can only mean DINOs (Democrats In Name Only). If Joe Lieberman or some other conservative war hawk were nominated neither I nor millions of other democrats would bother to vote. What’s the point in trying to elect Bush-lite? If people support the Republican position on issues then they vote Republican. They don’t want an imitation “me-too” Democrat who doesn’t know where he stands.
Bush gets millions of votes from people who don’t even agree with his positions on issues – because they believe he’s solid and firm and they know where he stands, and that he’ll follow through on what he believes. This election proved that being strong and wrong is better than being perceived as wishy-washy and right.
You never see the Republicans rolling over and becoming liberals when they lost elections! We need to have the moral courage to stand up and say “this is what we believe and we’re not changing” to provide a real alternative to the slash and burn politics of the right. Otherwise the Democratic party might as well change its name to the Whigs.
“Finally, Howard Dean’s collapse in Iowa in 2004 was due in no small part to widespread concern among Democratic caucus-goers that Dean’s strident anti-Bush and anti-war rhetoric would make him unelectable in November.”
Funny thing about that, Ruy… It would be nice to see some figures on just how large the “no small part” was for this effect. You’d have to admit we were also told ad infinitum that it was really because of all the orange-boarded Dean outsiders who flooded the state, and after all, who’s to tell Iowans what to think? Point is, has anyone conclusively determined why Iowans rejected Dean in favor of Kerry?
Joe Lieberman is a centrist?
Anyone reading Iowa should discard the 2004 election. The Iraq War and 9/11 made this an unusual election. The judgment of the Iowa caucuses, and Democrats generally, was that the party could not nominate an anti-war candidate, that doing so would be construed as anti-patriotism (see Bush v. Dukakis) and weakness (see Nixon v. McGovern).
In this the Iowa Democrats were almost certainly correct. An anti-war nominee would not only have had to run against Hyper-Patriot Republican propaganda and the steady War Drums from the corporate press/media, but also the deeply embedded belief of the overwhelming majority of Americans in the “rightness” and effectiveness of American military power.
A large majority of Americans, without consideration of any facts at all, will support any use of military forces and call it patriotism. Anyone who opposes or even questions the use of military forces is immediately branded as unpatriotic.
This is not uniquely American, but it is an American problem because of America has a awesome military power and there are no outside restraints on its use. The invasion of Iraq, like the Viet Nam War, has almost no support outside the States, but there is really nothing anyone outside the States can do to restrain the use of American military forces.
Oh good grief. John Kerry not a ‘centrist’? He was nominated *because* he was a centrist, and his military record was thought to give him security cred.
Though I hope the Dems find more electoral success than they’ve had recently, I have to agree with Eugene Debs (who, granted, was not known for his elector success) that “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.”
I was willing to give Beinart more benefit of doubt after his initial post-election blatherings, but this is approaching the silly. First, as Ruy documents, his argument has the disadvantage of being false. But, second, it appears Beinart truly believes there’s some prospect of a Joe Lieberman ever getting the Dem presidential nomination — which is akin to a Republican in 1977 hoping for Charles Matthias in 1980. The party is no longer McGovernite, but it’s never going to be Sam Nunn, either (if it ever went that direction, the Green Party would overnight become a real factor in electoral politics).
Beinart ought to note a few things. First, Clinton’s success was not (as some at the New Republic like to believe) a matter of dissing the left wing, but of making all wings of the party feel part of the coalition. The sort of candidate Beinart craves would have a VERY difficult time doing that. Second, Kerry — who, by his lights, was a marginal hopeful — came within a hair of being president. Just as voters by 1976 were showing far more propensity to vote conservative than they had been just a decade earlier, so voters now are far more disposed to a “Massachusetts liberal” than they had been ten years back. Democrats have been GAINING with voters, not losing (even ’04’s bare tick backward came more from incumbency than ideology). Finally, the GOP faces major challenges in the four years ahead, with the war and the economy seemingly headed relentlessly toward nasty outcomes. A Democratic party that was barely defeated in 2004 looks to be sitting pretty to reap that whirlwind. Starting stupid intra-party fights (something even the DLC for once seems shy about) is counter-productive, and likely irrelevant.
Could Kerry have won Iowa had he (and Edwards) voted for the “$87 billion”? It would seem that they believed they couldn’t. The nature of the caucuses forced a symbolic vote that (in Rove’s words) was a gift that kept on giving to the Bush campaign. The type of committed activists that are likely to participate in the caucus system are also the ones least likely to put aside ideology even when it forces suicidal actions.
Republican control of the White House and Congress will allow the timing of votes to their advantage anyway. Why pepetuate a system that makes that easier?.