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.
I am a Virginia Tech Hokie, and also a proud Democrat. While I lived in Blacksburg, I worked with any of the local elected Democrats. Sad to say, not all of them at the time felt a need to support better gun laws. In fact, one boasted of their endorsements from the NRA.
While I do not want anyone politicizing the tragedy my school and my fellow Hokies have suffered, there are certainly efforts that can be done, much as Gov. Kaine(D) did when he issues the executive order preventing mental patients from obtaining weapons. Every state should have similar laws on the books. It is not much, but if we cannot do even that, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Ut Prosim
At Americans for Gun Safety (the forerunner of Third Way), we conducted a lot of in-depth research on guns. We wanted to understand how an issue like closing the gun show loophole, which polled 88-9% in SOUTH DAKOTA (!!!!), was universally thought to be bad for politicians.
Here were our conclusions: A lot of voters supported gun safety laws but were unconvinced that they would make a difference in reducing crime.
Many voters felt that when politicians talked about gun safety, they were talking about someone else’s concerns – not their own.
And last, Democrats had real baggage on the gun issue. People thought Democrats were hostile to gun owners and didn’t respect the values that gun owners held.
We counseled Democrats to solve these problems by both pairing the right to own a gun with the responsibility to pass laws that kept them out of the wrong hands. We told Democrats to wrap gun safety proposals around local values (“I’m bringing West Virginia gun values to Washington.”). And finally, we told them to win the crime argument and enlist local chiefs and sheriffs in the fight.
Gun safety isn’t bad politics when it is handled correctly. When it is handled poorly, politicians run from the issue like a stampede. We then see the results in the lives that are lost around the nation.
Jim Kessler.
I doubt that the number of “GUN TOTIN’ MANIACS” out there actually have enough voting power to stop real legislation on gun control. The NRA does. The Emphasis needs to move onto and into the NRA and its’ influence on the US Congress.
Many of us are well aware of this situation, but I believe that millions still see the NRA as that farmer friendly group of good ole boys that hold gun classes for young hunters, not the lobbyists for Remington Firearms and Colt Mfg. Start putting the truth out there on TV and across the internet… Gun Control starts with NRA CONTROL!!!
I think Bruce Reed makes a good point. Most people who want to maintain their right to have guns are not thinking a “criminal” should have the same right.
For some time Democrats have not taken advantage of this dichotomy.
However, I do wonder if there is a need to institute harsher penalties for illegal possession of guns along with tougher gun laws.
Just making it tougher to get a gun may not deter some criminals who will just buy them off the street.
Plus, some voters will perceive of laws making it tougher to get guns less than useful if not supported by measures to really make criminals pay for possessing and using guns.
David