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’d like to repeat a question that was raised recently at TPM: Where are the surrogates??
Obama is a cool, reserved kind of guy. We may want him to attack more, but that just isn’t his style. He thinks it’s beneath his dignity to respond to stupid attacks with more stupid attacks, and it is. He’d rather laugh off the stupidity and focus on what matters.
But that doesn’t mean someone else shouldn’t be out there making the case and grabbing the media by the lapels. We’ve already heard Biden doing it, but he can’t do it alone either. What if there were a press conference, today, with, say, Hilary Clinton, Claire McCaskill, Brian Schweitzer, and Mark Warner. What if they said, “We’re asking the media, right now: cut it out. Stop doing McCain’s bidding by chasing every stupid issue he tosses to you. Report on the issues. Report on the candidates – on who they really are, and what they’ve done, not on who they want you to think they are.” Just a simple, clear message – then repeated, as nauseam, in speeches, interviews, whatever, around the country, day after day. That’s how the GOP does it – because it works.
The media won’t report on something unless it’s an event. So you have to create the event. And the best resource for creating events are the dozens of well known, well respected Democrats around the country. Don’t leave Barack out there to respond to all this garbage by himself.
How about turning the “elitist” charge against the Republicans?
I’m thinking of a commercial that pans across the faces of Washington and members of his first cabinet–Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, etc.
The image would suggest that the Founders were an elite insofar as they were unusually talented, knowledgeable, and sophisticated.
Even a SERIES of commercials using iconic moments from American history:
Would Lincoln be a Republican today? No. Would Teddy Roosevelt, the Trust Buster, be one? No. Would Ike? Probably not. Is this the same Republican Party the country used to admire? No. (Not since Nixon.)
Use these images from American history both to appeal to patriotism [remember how many people watched the PBS series on the Civil War] and to show that Democrats value talent and want to advance merit, that Obama & Biden belong to that tradition.
But just how do we do so? Isn’t that a catch 22? Especially when they get to attack us without cautious or remorse? If we compliment her, we are confirming the wisdom of the pick, and her fitness for office, but if we attack her, we are attacking working mothers??
What you are missing is how any real or imagined attacks of Palin by Obama put McCain in the sympathetic role of the protective father. They want us to attack Palin, they will create imaginary attacks even if we don’t, and it will work for them.
The only way to attack Palin is in conjunction with McCain, Palin, Bush & Cheney. We have to elevate her to McCain’s level. We have to stand her up before we can knock her down.
Interesting article on Joe Scarborough that has been kept quiet by the MSM!
http://www.truthalliance.net/Archive/tabid/67/a…
Lest, we forget, there would have been no need for a Surge if Bush & Co. had not taken the U.S. into a Phony & Pretend War on Terrorism while the Real War on Terrorism in Afghanistan where Bin Ladin lived, was ignored! And if we do not Wise up this might happen in the future!
http://www.youtube.com/v/PdJUCU1UH2w
In a cleverly pre-emptive strike, McCain is falsely accusing Obama of wanting to teach children sex education — it was to teach children how to protect themselves from sexual predators — because they knew Newsweek will be soon coming out with an article on Sarah Palin! “Judge Warned Palin About Emotional Child Abuse.”