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.
Yes, we can win if we just stop whining.
We can use magic.
And magical thinking.
Yeah, that’ll work.
I am getting awfully tired of listening to Democrats finding ways to explain why they are going to lose an election before the election is held. We Dems can WIN this election if we can just stop whining.
I didn’t consider my comment to be a whine as much as an analysis of the current political climate.
By criticizing the right, I more than indicated my disdain for them. I am fully aware of how much worse off our country is under the Republicans. It’s only taken about 30 years for their failed economic policies to decimate the middle class, destroy the labor movement, and concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few.
But I don’t think any of this means we should just give the Democrats, including President Obama, a pass. The truth is that, thanks to corporations and Wall Street, the lines between the two parties get blurrier every day. It’s up to the Democratic base to hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire.
If we don’t, it will not matter which party is in control. The lines distinguishing one from the other will have been obliterated.
I understand the frustration, but let’s keep in mind how things would be if the Republicans were still in charge now. Things are absolutely better now than when the Repubs were in charge. Now is not the time to sit on your hands, now is the time to fight harder. Sitting on your hands only gives the Republicans more power. What do you think will happen with your agenda then? GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!! Or quit whining.
President Obama, by seeking bipartisanship as an end, rather than a means, and by staking out a center-right position, has alienated many in his base. This is especially true among progressives, who campaigned hard for the President and who expected more than the few crumbs he has thrown our way.
Also working against Democrats this primary season — and undoubtedly again this November — is the successful campaign the right has launched to marginalize the new commander-in-chief.
Taking their cue from Rush “I hope he fails” Limbaugh, conservatives have thwarted not only modest efforts on the administration’s behalf, but also wholly right-wing measures originating with Republicans (read: health insurance mandates).
By failing to take control of the narrative in the health care reform debate, Obama let not just the right but the crazies in the right define the terms. Thus did we witness the socialization/nazification/communization of reform legislation which reformed almost nothing and, in fact, catered to the corporate interests.
Given a choice between the eccentric (conservative crazies) and the evil (the Muslim, Kenyan terrorist occupying the White House), fringe voters and fencepost sitters are going to choose the whackos. Combine that with a depressed voter turnout among the Democratic base, and the result is a resurgent Republican party, whose bad governing and declining demographics should have spelled its demise, but which instead has risen, like a phoenix from the ashes, to soar once more.
It’s not hard for me to understand. We thought electing Democrats would effect a change, and it has not. A year for “health reform” that benefits the insurance companies that contribute to the crisis, financial reform that does nothing to prevent another crisis — and which is being watered down as we speak, no realistic idea when there will be an end of the wars, no policy to reduce or end dependence on foreign oil. In short: No Change.