At The Plum Line Greg Sargent interviews Elisabeth Pearson, the executive director of the Democratic Governors Association, on the topic of Democratic prospects for winning governors races over the next four years. Pearson says, “The big years are 2017 and 2018, when we have 38 races. Nine out of 10 of the largest states are up in that cycle. There will be at least 20 or more open seats. We see the greatest ability to change governorships when there are open seats. There’s a huge amount of potential, particularly in open-seat states that Obama won twice: Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Maine, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, Iowa. There are 12 states in the 2018 cycle that have Republican governors that Obama won. That’s huge for us. That’s why we see a four year cycle…Eighteen of those 35 states are states that we are targeting as important for potential pickup. Let’s say we had fair maps in those 18 states. By our calculations, that would mean about 44 Congressional seats that would move from Republican to Democratic.”
Vice President Biden goes into candid detail about the real reasons for and myths about his decision not to run for President in 2016, and leaves readers with enhanced respect for his character and decency, as well as his life of distinguished public service. Few politicians are more deserving of the high compliment, ‘first-class human being.’
In his National Journal article, “Biden Exit Opens Door For Powerful Clinton Coalition,” Ronald Brownstein writes, “Vice President Joe Biden’s decision not to enter the Democratic presidential race clears the pathway for Hillary Clinton to assemble an imposing demographic coalition in the nomination contest. It also vastly intensifies the pressure on Sen. Bernie Sanders, her chief remaining rival, to make inroads with voters of color…the vice president had the potential to divide two of the constituencies she is relying upon: ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans, and blue-collar white voters. Biden’s choice not to run improves Clinton’s chance of consolidating most of those voters–and could make the math for Sanders much more difficult than if those two constituencies were fragmenting in a race with three major candidates…Just as Biden’s departure increases the pressure on Sanders to court nonwhite voters, it also heightens the need for Clinton to mobilize the diverse constituencies that loom as her firewall in what now has more clearly become a two-person race.”
Capping Clinton’s happy week, Bloomberg Politics Mark Halperin makes the case that “The Most Likely Next President is Hillary Clinton.”
For an exceptionally-impressive analysis of a state legislative election, read Geoffrey Skelley’s Crystal Ball post Vying for Virginia: The 2015 General Assembly Elections: All eyes are on the race for the Virginia Senate, which notes: “In the Senate, Republicans currently hold a 21-19 advantage. However, the lieutenant governor is Ralph Northam (D), who is in a position to break ties in Democrats’ favor. Thus, a net gain of one seat for Democrats would enable them to take back the upper chamber, though they would still need 21 votes sans Northam to pass budgetary legislation (the presiding officer can’t vote on such measures).” It may come down to a suburban Richmond senate district, according to Skelley. “The SD-10 race is a total toss-up, and it may keep everyone up late on Election Night. If Democrats win, they may well regain control of the Senate; if Republicans win, they are almost certain to retain the upper chamber.”
Governor O’Malley challenges Democrats to “find our backbone” on gun control.
There is some good news for Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well. It’s just a snapshot, but Zaid Jilani’s “Poll: More Democrats Now Favor Socialism Than Capitalism” at Alternate reports on an October YouGov poll, which indicates that 49 percent of surveyed Democrats say they have a “favorable opinion of socialism,” while 37 percent said they have a “favorable opinion of capitalism.” This is a significant uptick from May in views toward socialism, when YouGov asked the same question and got a 43/43 tie for socialism/capitalism.
Anything can happen in politics, given the right circumstances. Still, I have trouble putting the words “Trump and “electability” together. But apparently 70 percent of Republican voters don’t have that problem, according to a new Associated Press-GFK poll.
Polls, schmolls. “Betting Markets Call Marco Rubio Front-Runner in G.O.P.,” reports Justin Wolfers at The Upshot. Conservative columnist Russ Douthat also sees increasing an likelihood that Rubio wins the GOP nod, despite polling data suggesting the contrary.
Month: October 2015
From “The Benghazi true believers conduct their witch hunt” by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen:
Washington has seen witch hunts before — the McCarthy period comes to mind — but never one where the target was a real woman. As with witches, the Hillary Clinton concocted by the Republicans on the House Select Committee on Benghazi does not exist. She is a harridan so evil that she would allow an American installation in Libya to be overrun by terrorists, permit the American ambassador and three others to be killed, cover up the crime with a smokescreen of duplicitous press releases, confine the incriminating truth to a private e-mail server, confide only in a shadowy aide with the code name Sidney Blumenthal and somehow in all this funnel huge amounts of money, possibly billions in Saudi riyals, Chinese renminbi and God only knows how much in bitcoins and Las Vegas casino chips, to a foundation that is doing astounding work in Haiti and Rwanda while, of course, doing something nefarious that will come out only in time. Only Hillary Clinton is capable of such monstrous activity. The Witch!
For Benghazi-obsessed Clinton-haters, she is more like a comic book villain designed for jr. high school C-students, than a reflection of reality. The astounding thing, notes Cohen, is that this is not merely political meme-mongering to them; they actually believe it. As Cohen says,
It occurred to me as I watched the hearing that some Republican members of this gong show of a committee actually believed what they were saying. This was a depressing and frightening realization. I thought all along that the hearings were just about politics — you know, an effort to damage Clinton if and when she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
…As the hearings droned on, it occurred to me that the Republicans on the committee actually believed in what they were doing. The questions were so stupid, either already answered or contradicted by the evidence — the evidence! damn the evidence — that what we were observing was sort of a religious ritual. Here was a display of belief. Here in the most sinful city of all was a display of faith. They believed. They believed in the evil of Hillary Clinton.
…This was madness on display. This was a glimpse into the mentality of an America that is unhinged by the prospect of a Clinton presidency, which is seen as a continuation of an Obama presidency which, when you think about it, is all rooted in the evil of Roosevelt and how he expanded the federal government. This is a piece of America that ties up Congress, that won’t raise the debt ceiling — the hell with our credit rating — and that could, with only a change of costume, take roles in the musical “Hamilton,” playing the gents who wanted to keep the government small and, by the way, ineffective. Chairman Trey Gowdy — he looks the part. Maybe he can sing.
There is a palpable element of sexism in their demonization of Clinton. You can see the fear and ugly contempt in some of the faces of the Benghazi hearings inquisitors. They simply can’t handle the notion of a strong woman who stands up to them. She must be the embodiment of raw evil. Ditto for the Black president. The infantile ‘Freedom Caucus’ Republicans don’t demonize their white adversaries with equal vehemence — they get a pass on silly memes about their country of origin and faith, if not their patriotism.
What is remarkable is how well Clinton holds up under all this idiocy. After 11 hours of inane ‘gotcha’ questions and snide comments from some of the more witless House Republicans, Clinton likely emerged even stronger to smart voters who are paying attention. She is not only more battle-tested than any of the presidential contenders of either party; the Republicans don’t seem to realize that they are actually improving her political persona, as she learns how to handle their kamikaze attacks with increasing grace, dignity and humor.
Whether Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and presidency or not, she is becoming a better candidate every day. The Democratic party certainly needs more women candidates to win a stable majority, and Clinton’s impressive example may prove instructive for down-ballot women Democrats, as well as for the party’s future presidential candidates.
From the Select Committee on Benghazi Minority Site:
Instead of taking concrete steps to enhance the safety and security of our diplomatic corps overseas, the Select Committee on Benghazi continues to squander millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president.
$4,816,375 and counting as of 8:50 a.m. 9/23/15 – SPENT BY THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI TO DATE*
(*Based on actual expenditures publicly reported here and then forecasted using the most recent month’s average daily expenditures.)
This calculation does not include the costs of: the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven Congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad.
The Select Committee on Benghazi has been investigating for 533 Days, which is longer than the investigations of Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, Iran-Contra and Hurricane Katrina.
The Benghazi Research Center estimates that costs to the taxpayer could exceed $20 million when all is completed.
Think also of all the expenses incurred by the media in covering this nothingburger — time and money that should have been used to illuminate real issues and policies for the benefit of Americans.
There are still plenty of people, from moneybags donors to political scientists, along with some Democrats, who are convinced Jeb Bush will ultimately win the Republican presidential nomination. Maybe Bush himself is supremely confident despite his dubious poll ratings and the beatings he seems to take everytime he tries to engage Donald Trump.
But I have to say, Team Bush’s current situation just has to be discouraging, particularly when you consider what might have been, as I discussed today at the Washington Monthly:
A new Quinnipiac poll of Iowa shows Bush still scratching around the second tier of candidates at 5%, below even the doomed Rand Paul, and with an underwater approval ratio of 43/51. Worse yet, a new Bloomberg Politics/St. Anselm’s poll of New Hampshire shows that a month-long positive ad blitz by Murphy’s Right to Rise Super-PAC has done absolutely nothing to improve Jeb’s horse-race standing or his approval ratios.
Think about how this must feel to Jeb Bush himself. He’s been spending time in Iowa since 1980, when he campaigned there for Poppy. Yet the more Iowans see of him, the less they seem to like him, which is not a recipe for a late surge, is it?
More broadly, consider the arc of Jebbie’s political career. Had he not in his first gubernatorial run unaccountably stumbled against the He-Coon, Lawton Chiles, in the great Republican year of 1994, he would have almost certainly been the dynastic presidential candidate in 2000 with massive Establishment and Conservative Movement backing (indeed, he was universally considered the one True Conservative in the whole clan back then). As governor of Florida, he probably would not have needed a coup d’etat from the U.S. Supreme Court to carry the state and the election. He could have been the one to “keep us safe” after 9/11. As the most serious of the Bush brothers, he quite possibly would not have required Dick Cheney as a caretaker and foreign policy chief, and perhaps would not have rushed into an Iraq War so precipitously. With his experience governing a perennial hurricane target, Jeb almost certainly would not have mishandled Katrina so grievously. But any way you look at it, he’d probably by now be enjoying the warm embrace of a post-presidential career instead of enduring the insults of surly Tea Partiers on the campaign trail and looking up wistfully at the poll standings of people like Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
The Carson thing has got to be especially galling to Jeb. Here’s a guy who not only has never run for office, but is suspending his campaign to go on a book tour. Yet the same poll that shows a majority of Iowa Republicans disapproving of Jeb Bush gives Carson an almost unimaginable 84/10 ratio.
Maybe Bush has nerves of steel or Murphy has hired a hypnotist to accompany him everywhere and buzz away any consciousness of discouraging words. But if I were him I’d be tempted to blow the whole thing off and go make money until it’s time for assisted living. As it stands, Jeb must wonder if Lawton Chiles is laughing at him from the Great Beyond.
There are still plenty of people, from moneybags donors to political scientists, along with some Democrats, who are convinced Jeb Bush will ultimately win the Republican presidential nomination. Maybe Bush himself is supremely confident despite his dubious poll ratings and the beatings he seems to take everytime he tries to engage Donald Trump.
But I have to say, Team Bush’s current situation just has to be discouraging, particularly when you consider what might have been, as I discussed today at the Washington Monthly:
A new Quinnipiac poll of Iowa shows Bush still scratching around the second tier of candidates at 5%, below even the doomed Rand Paul, and with an underwater approval ratio of 43/51. Worse yet, a new Bloomberg Politics/St. Anselm’s poll of New Hampshire shows that a month-long positive ad blitz by Murphy’s Right to Rise Super-PAC has done absolutely nothing to improve Jeb’s horse-race standing or his approval ratios.
Think about how this must feel to Jeb Bush himself. He’s been spending time in Iowa since 1980, when he campaigned there for Poppy. Yet the more Iowans see of him, the less they seem to like him, which is not a recipe for a late surge, is it?
More broadly, consider the arc of Jebbie’s political career. Had he not in his first gubernatorial run unaccountably stumbled against the He-Coon, Lawton Chiles, in the great Republican year of 1994, he would have almost certainly been the dynastic presidential candidate in 2000 with massive Establishment and Conservative Movement backing (indeed, he was universally considered the one True Conservative in the whole clan back then). As governor of Florida, he probably would not have needed a coup d’etat from the U.S. Supreme Court to carry the state and the election. He could have been the one to “keep us safe” after 9/11. As the most serious of the Bush brothers, he quite possibly would not have required Dick Cheney as a caretaker and foreign policy chief, and perhaps would not have rushed into an Iraq War so precipitously. With his experience governing a perennial hurricane target, Jeb almost certainly would not have mishandled Katrina so grievously. But any way you look at it, he’d probably by now be enjoying the warm embrace of a post-presidential career instead of enduring the insults of surly Tea Partiers on the campaign trail and looking up wistfully at the poll standings of people like Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
The Carson thing has got to be especially galling to Jeb. Here’s a guy who not only has never run for office, but is suspending his campaign to go on a book tour. Yet the same poll that shows a majority of Iowa Republicans disapproving of Jeb Bush gives Carson an almost unimaginable 84/10 ratio.
Maybe Bush has nerves of steel or Murphy has hired a hypnotist to accompany him everywhere and buzz away any consciousness of discouraging words. But if I were him I’d be tempted to blow the whole thing off and go make money until it’s time for assisted living. As it stands, Jeb must wonder if Lawton Chiles is laughing at him from the Great Beyond.
The following article by Jennifer Granholm, former Governor of Michigan, Senior Adviser, Correct The Record and Senior Research Fellow, UC Berkeley’s Energy and Climate Institute is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Surprise! If you’ve been paying federal taxes for the past few years, then you’ve been funding a Republican hit job against Hillary Clinton. The House Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigations have bilked — in total — around $4.7 million in taxpayer dollars for their relentless, shameless, fact-free pursuit of damaging the Clinton campaign. When the Republicans take aim at “waste, fraud and abuse” they should set their sights on their own Benghazi Committee, shoot it, and put it out of our misery.
Today, Hillary Clinton will finally testify before the committee and its right-wing chair, Trey Gowdy. Still don’t believe that the committee is nothing more than a partisan smear campaign? Try these top ten facts on for size.
10. Ten is the number of congressional committees that have participated in Benghazi investigations over the years–contributing to 9 of the 11 different published reports on those tragic events. None of the investigations have found any evidence of wrongdoing by the administration.
9. Nine is the number of months since Chairman Trey Gowdy’s partisan committee has held its last public hearing. Gowdy has preferred to shroud his investigations in secrecy–so he and his staff can selectively leak information to the press and gin up damaging stories.
8. Eight is the number of current or former close Clinton confidants interviewed by Gowdy’s committee–as opposed to only 4 interviews with representatives from the Department of Defense. I wonder why Gowdy thinks Hillary Clinton’s personal assistant knows more about the incidents at Benghazi than DoD?
7. Seven is for seventy thousand–roughly the number of documents that the State Department has handed over to the Benghazi Committee for review. Remember that the cost to taxpayers isn’t just what the Committee itself spends–it’s what other agencies have to spend to meet their absurd, partisan demands. Estimates suggest the State Department has had to spend upwards of $14 million responding to congressional investigations into Benghazi.
6. Six is for the six thousand dollars in donations that Trey Gowdy just had to return to organizations linked to a shadowy anti-Hillary Clinton PAC – whose treasurer used to serve as the treasurer for Gowdy’s own political committee. What a coincidence!
5. Five is for the number of permanent House committees (including the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs!) that have spent less taxpayer money in 2015 than Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi Committee.
4. Four is for the four years that Hillary Clinton served this country as Secretary of State–a tenure of accomplishment that has been praised by Democratic and Republican officials alike. Four is also for the four seconds it took after Hillary Clinton announced her presidential campaign for the Republican National Committee to begin to try to take her down.
3. Three is the number of Benghazi Select Committee press releases between March 4th and October 8th that don’t specifically mention Hillary Clinton. Twenty-six press releases DO mention these things. Remember when Trey Gowdy told us his committee wasn’t focused on Hillary?
2. Two is for the two Republicans in the House of Representatives – Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Representative Richard Hanna — who admitted that the Benghazi Committee was set up intentionally to bring down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers.
1. One is for the one man who is behind this whole witch hunt–Trey Gowdy– funded and supported by the Koch Brothers. Over the course of his shameful, multi-year smear campaign, Gowdy has gone from a mere two-term Congressman from South Carolina to a right-wing darling. He’s been discussed as a future Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, Supreme Court Justice, Vice President, even President of the United States. Ain’t politics grand?
Prepare yourself for a nauseating display of shameless grandstanding by the GOP’s most hypocritical Hillary-Haters, otherwise known as the Benghazi hearings, which begin today. At The Week Paul Waldman explains why the whole project may backfire in a big way on the Republicans. “In hearings like this one, the members of Congress often think that the fantastically clever line of questioning they’ve prepared is really going to trap the witness and reveal her for what she is; it’ll be like Perry Mason breaking a witness down until she shouts, “Yes, I did kill him, and I’d do it again!” But that’s not how it usually turns out. More often, the witness looks like the one in command, someone being pelted with unfair and hostile questions from a bunch of partisan clowns who barely know what they’re talking about…A respectful and informative hearing that does no damage to Clinton will be a terrible disappointment,” notes Waldman. And an expensive one as well.
A WaPo/ABC News poll conducted 10/15-18 indicates that 53 percent of respondents believe that Republicans are “mainly trying to damage Clinton politically” in the Benghazi hearings. Only 35 percent agreed that they are “raising legitimate concerns.”
It appears at this juncture that Rep. Paul Ryan’s ploy forcing the GOP’s “Freedom Caucus” to grovel in response to his demands is working rather well. But I wonder if the speakership is really what he wanted — the pitch seemed crafted to elicit a “hell no” response from the yahoos. With benefit of hindsight, it seems pretty clever, enhancing his stature either way. David Hawkings explores the implications for Ryan’s political future at Roll Call, noting that Ryan will be 50 years of age in 2020 and his kids will be teenagers.
Kind of sad to see an end to Vice President Biden’s presidential aspirations. He has long been one of the party’s more capable leaders. He might make an exceptionally-good Secretary of State, a post he once declined in favor of the vice presidency.
Ed Kilgore’s post at right and below on third party prospects in 2016 includes a perceptive take on Sen. Jim Webb’s candidacy and future. Many feel Webb provides a needed voice in the Democratic Party, which seems reasonable. But I don’t recall ever seeing a more stiff and guarded presidential candidate on TV.
You have to dig down to the eight paragraph of this misleadingly-titled CNN.com article to find that “Other polls have shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans support expanding background checks to private sales and sales at gun shows, where people can buy guns without undergoing a background check.”
Mark Niquette’s Bloomberg Politics post, “Democrats Seek to Stem Republican Tide in Off-Year Races” provides an update on what is at stake this year, noting, “Governorships will be decided in Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky, where there’s a contest to replace term-limited Democrat Steve Beshear. There are legislative races in four states, one of which will determine Senate control in Virginia, a presidential swing state where the parties have battled over issues including Medicaid expansion. Mayoral contests will be decided in 417 municipalities including Indianapolis, where Democrats want to replace one of only three Republican chief executives among the 15 most populous cities.”
Journalistsresource.org presents some interesting data in “Factors affecting minority-voter turnout: Research,” and also notes that “A 2015 study published in the American Journal of Political Science looks at how preregistration, or the registration of youth before they reach voting age, influences voter turnout. A 2015 study from the University of South Carolina suggests that the Democratic Party and civil-rights organizations can play an important role in mobilizing black voters if they strengthen their organizational features.”
At The Upshot Josh Barro explains why Bernie Sanders is really more of a capitalist reformist than Democratic socialist: “After all, Mr. Sanders does not want to nationalize the steel mills or the auto companies or even the banks. Like Mrs. Clinton, he believes in a mixed economy, where capitalist institutions are mediated through taxes and regulation. He just wants more taxes and more regulation than Mrs. Clinton does. He certainly seems like a regular Democrat, only more so.”
When Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic presidential contest while indicating he was considering an independent run for the White House, most observers–and Webb himself–seem to think the path to relevance would proceed from an appeal to “centrists” who wanted more moderation than the two parties were offering. At TPM Cafe I disputed that premise at some length:
Webb is ignoring the abundant evidence that a majority of self-identified “independents” are functionally either Democrats or Republicans, with another chunk of “independents” not much bothering to participate in elections. But still, is there any possible traction for an indie candidate in 2016, whether it’s Webb or campaign finance reform crusader Larry Lessig or (despite his pledge to the contrary) Donald Trump?
Perhaps. But if it exists the indie electoral gold is not sitting there in the middle of the road where earnest centrists tend to sit until they are run over by fast-moving ideologues. It’s among voters who are actively alienated from both parties not because the Democratic and Republican parties are “extreme” but because they tend to exclude points of view deemed incompatible by the parties — but not by these voters.In an important National Journal article earlier this month, John Judis described these voters as “Middle American Radicals,” a surprisingly hardy cohort of non-college educated middle-class white voters who have been at the center of a variety of insurgencies against the two-party orthodoxy, from George Wallace’s campaigns to Ross Perot’s, Pat Buchanan’s, and — yes — Donald Trump’s. They are increasingly found in the ranks of Republican voters, but they have never internalized the economic views of GOP elites, particularly liberal immigration laws, multilateral trade agreements and “entitlement reforms” affecting Social Security and Medicare. And they are instinctive “wrong track” voters, particularly in difficult economic times, who have little use for politicians or the governmental institutions they run.
Until 2008, Democrats spent an inordinate amount of time and energy pursuing a regularly declining percentage of downscale white voters in their native habitats, especially the South, the border states, and the Midwestern “Rust Belt.” The emergence of an Obama coalition built on young and minority voters has more recently made historically low percentages of white non-college educated voters tolerable. But this year it’s Republicans who should be worried about this vote, with Trump galvanizing opposition to immigration reform, entitlement reform, and — very soon — the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and even embodying a kind of militaristic non-interventionism that seems appealing to “wrong track” voters as well. Take a look at Ron Brownstein’s recent article on Trump’s strong position with non-college-educated Republican voters in almost every state where polls have been taken and you’ll see how well his act has played.
The bottom line is that of all the major demographic categories, non-college-educated white voters are probably the least attached to the two parties. That’s not true of all of them, of course: union members among them are often stubbornly loyal to Democrats, while conservative evangelicals are strongly bonded to the GOP. But Middle American Radicals are, as they have often been in the past, a prime target for anyone fantasizing about a third party.
If so, is there any candidate who could theoretically mobilize them, other than Trump?
Probably not. On paper, Jim Webb might fit the bill. He so embodies the Scots-Irish Appalachian segment of this demographic that he quite literally wrote the book about them. He has a strong military record and an equally strong record of opposing stupid wars. And he’s shown loyalty to the white working class in ways that accentuate the demographic’s issues with the contemporary Democratic Party, from hostility to affirmative action to a refusal to demonize the Confederate flag.
But aside from Webb’s conventionally liberal overall record, there’s a big problem with him going indie with a white working class base: the one time he ran for office, in Virginia in 2006, he won with the same urban-suburban coalition secured by big-city civil rights lawyer Tim Kaine a year earlier. That’s not to say the Scots-Irish Appalachian voters in Southwest Virginia Webb seemed to yearn to represent were completely invulnerable to Democratic appeals: Northern Virginia tech exec Mark Warner won that region solidly in his 2001 gubernatorial base, mainly via a sophisticated economic argument based on the idea that technology might help the stricken region full of dying traditional industries leapfrog more successful neighbors. But for whatever reason, Jim Webb could not win them over.
Still, Republicans have more to lose than Democrats to the happy feet of downscale white voters in 2016, whether or not an independent candidate is in the field. Mitt Romney won 61% of this demographic in 2012 and still lost. A July ABC/Washington Post survey showed a Trump independent candidacy holding Jeb Bush to 34% among white non-college educated voters. Anything remotely like that would doom Republicans to defeat. And beyond that, Democrats worried that Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (or for that matter, Joe Biden) can’t duplicate the 44th president’s performance among the Obama coalition may be looking towards white working class voters newly hostile to conventional GOP economic policies with new interest as well.
I’d say if Jeb Bush vanquishes Donald Trump after a nasty primary season, the possibility of white working class defections in November could become a real and dangerous possibility for the GOP.
When Jim Webb dropped out of the Democratic presidential contest while indicating he was considering an independent run for the White House, most observers–and Webb himself–seem to think the path to relevance would proceed from an appeal to “centrists” who wanted more moderation than the two parties were offering. At TPM Cafe I disputed that premise at some length:
Webb is ignoring the abundant evidence that a majority of self-identified “independents” are functionally either Democrats or Republicans, with another chunk of “independents” not much bothering to participate in elections. But still, is there any possible traction for an indie candidate in 2016, whether it’s Webb or campaign finance reform crusader Larry Lessig or (despite his pledge to the contrary) Donald Trump?
Perhaps. But if it exists the indie electoral gold is not sitting there in the middle of the road where earnest centrists tend to sit until they are run over by fast-moving ideologues. It’s among voters who are actively alienated from both parties not because the Democratic and Republican parties are “extreme” but because they tend to exclude points of view deemed incompatible by the parties — but not by these voters.In an important National Journal article earlier this month, John Judis described these voters as “Middle American Radicals,” a surprisingly hardy cohort of non-college educated middle-class white voters who have been at the center of a variety of insurgencies against the two-party orthodoxy, from George Wallace’s campaigns to Ross Perot’s, Pat Buchanan’s, and — yes — Donald Trump’s. They are increasingly found in the ranks of Republican voters, but they have never internalized the economic views of GOP elites, particularly liberal immigration laws, multilateral trade agreements and “entitlement reforms” affecting Social Security and Medicare. And they are instinctive “wrong track” voters, particularly in difficult economic times, who have little use for politicians or the governmental institutions they run.
Until 2008, Democrats spent an inordinate amount of time and energy pursuing a regularly declining percentage of downscale white voters in their native habitats, especially the South, the border states, and the Midwestern “Rust Belt.” The emergence of an Obama coalition built on young and minority voters has more recently made historically low percentages of white non-college educated voters tolerable. But this year it’s Republicans who should be worried about this vote, with Trump galvanizing opposition to immigration reform, entitlement reform, and — very soon — the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and even embodying a kind of militaristic non-interventionism that seems appealing to “wrong track” voters as well. Take a look at Ron Brownstein’s recent article on Trump’s strong position with non-college-educated Republican voters in almost every state where polls have been taken and you’ll see how well his act has played.
The bottom line is that of all the major demographic categories, non-college-educated white voters are probably the least attached to the two parties. That’s not true of all of them, of course: union members among them are often stubbornly loyal to Democrats, while conservative evangelicals are strongly bonded to the GOP. But Middle American Radicals are, as they have often been in the past, a prime target for anyone fantasizing about a third party.
If so, is there any candidate who could theoretically mobilize them, other than Trump?
Probably not. On paper, Jim Webb might fit the bill. He so embodies the Scots-Irish Appalachian segment of this demographic that he quite literally wrote the book about them. He has a strong military record and an equally strong record of opposing stupid wars. And he’s shown loyalty to the white working class in ways that accentuate the demographic’s issues with the contemporary Democratic Party, from hostility to affirmative action to a refusal to demonize the Confederate flag.
But aside from Webb’s conventionally liberal overall record, there’s a big problem with him going indie with a white working class base: the one time he ran for office, in Virginia in 2006, he won with the same urban-suburban coalition secured by big-city civil rights lawyer Tim Kaine a year earlier. That’s not to say the Scots-Irish Appalachian voters in Southwest Virginia Webb seemed to yearn to represent were completely invulnerable to Democratic appeals: Northern Virginia tech exec Mark Warner won that region solidly in his 2001 gubernatorial base, mainly via a sophisticated economic argument based on the idea that technology might help the stricken region full of dying traditional industries leapfrog more successful neighbors. But for whatever reason, Jim Webb could not win them over.
Still, Republicans have more to lose than Democrats to the happy feet of downscale white voters in 2016, whether or not an independent candidate is in the field. Mitt Romney won 61% of this demographic in 2012 and still lost. A July ABC/Washington Post survey showed a Trump independent candidacy holding Jeb Bush to 34% among white non-college educated voters. Anything remotely like that would doom Republicans to defeat. And beyond that, Democrats worried that Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (or for that matter, Joe Biden) can’t duplicate the 44th president’s performance among the Obama coalition may be looking towards white working class voters newly hostile to conventional GOP economic policies with new interest as well.
I’d say if Jeb Bush vanquishes Donald Trump after a nasty primary season, the possibility of white working class defections in November could become a real and dangerous possibility for the GOP.
There are many reasons to respond with a “not much” answer to the question in the title of this post. The Nation’s John Nichols acknowledges some of them in his article “Justin Trudeau Just Showed American Democrats How to Win the Next Election“:
It is certainly true that Canada’s political process is distinguished by traditions, structural characteristics, and nuances of party history and personality that make the country’s elections very different from those in the United States. Despite the increasingly “presidential” character of Canadian campaigns, voters choose parties rather than presidential candidates (and party leaders sometimes lose in their own constituencies and end up not just out of the running but out of Parliament). Canadians have more political options than Americans: Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP run provincial governments; the Greens and the Bloc Québécois sit in parliament. Canada has shorter campaigns that are dramatically less expensive. Canada has a different media system, with stronger commitments to public broadcasting, serious debate, analysis, and dialogue. And, of course, while Canadian Liberals were campaigning to turn out a Conservative prime minister, American Democrats will be campaigning to carry on from a Democratic president while at the same time ending Republican control of Congress.
However, anytime there is an upset national election in North America it makes sense for Democrats to search for clues, and Nichols offers a few potentially useful observations, including:
The 43-year-old leader of Canada’s Liberal Party was not supposed to come out of the country’s 2015 election as its prime minister. At the start of the race, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, ally of George W. Bush, role model for Scott Walker, was locked in serious competition with a cautiously left-leaning New Democratic Party. The traditionally centrist Liberals (at their best “vital center,” at their worst blandly managerial), having been very nearly obliterated in the previous election, did not look particularly viable. And party leader Trudeau was frequently dismissed as the good-looking but inexperienced son of a great 20th-century prime minister.
“Seen at the beginning of the campaign as the least ready for the election of the three main party leaders,” observed the Toronto Star at the end of the campaign, “Trudeau managed in 11 weeks to shape a compelling political narrative and provide Canadians with a credible alternative to Harper and the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair.”
As for the “how” of Trudeau’s upset, Nichols writes,
Trudeau surprised almost everyone by running a campaign that veered left on economics–so much so that analysts noted that, on several critical measures, the Liberals outflanked the historically social-democratic NDP…He declared that his priorities would be job creation and policies to benefit the middle class. And he said he would invest in the future, rather than cheating it with austerity cuts.
Trudeau proposed to tax the rich in order to fund programs for everyone else, declaring that “We can do more for the people who need it, by doing less for the people who don’t.” (And, notably, he coupled that concern for people who need economic help with a warm embrace of Canada’s ethnic and racial diversity that was starkly different from the Donald Trump-like messaging about immigrants and religious minorities that Harper employed in the final days of the campaign.)
More vital even than the promise of fair and progressive taxation after so many years of Harper’s of-the-rich, for-the rich, by-the-rich governance, however, was Trudeau’s proposal to invest massively in job-creating infrastructure programs. To fund the investment, Trudeau proposed that Canada could and should accept a reasonable level of deficit spending.
Nichols explains, further, that Trudeau made a critical distinction in his messaging: “the fiscal deficit isn’t the one that concerns Canadians and certainly doesn’t concern economists that much. It is the infrastructure deficit that is so concerning to so many people. That’s what’s slowing down our growth.”
And he didn’t shy away from his party affiliation, noting that “The Liberal party is the only party standing straight, looking Canadians in the eye and saying, ‘We need investment and that is what we are going to do to grow the economy, to balance the books in 2019.'”
Like Obama, Nichols adds, Trudeau had a nifty TV ad that went viral:
“At the end of a campaign where they started in third place,” writes Nichols, “Liberals have achieved an absolute majority in Parliament.” It’s the bold emphasis on infrastructure investment, which includes education and retirement of student debt, that appeals to young voters in particular. That and the highly positive tone of his central message:
“We beat fear with hope. We beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative politics,” Trudeau told the cheering crowd. “In Canada, better is always possible.”
An e-blast from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research sheds further light on the historic dimensions of Trudeau’s victory:
No party in Canada has ever come from third place in seats and public opinion standing to win an election since its founding in 1867. The Liberals did it by putting forward an unabashedly progressive alternative that promised real change from the past Conservative decade. Trudeau’s party is also the only party to win seats in every one of Canada’s ten provinces and three territories, a tremendous accomplishment given the regional tensions that have riven Canadian politics for much of its recent history.
GQRR’s Canadian team accomplished their own historic first this cycle in Canada, providing strategy, consulting and research for Canada’s first major progressive independent expenditure campaign. Engage Canada, targeted 74 Conservatives, overachieved its target, as the Conservatives slipped from 188 seats on recently redistricted electoral boundaries to 99.
Another benefit of Trudeau’s big win to President Obama is described by TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore at The Washington Monthly:
And without question, the ejection of Harper is a boon to the Obama administration, especially on energy and environmental issues where Canada had become problematic in its resistance to climate change action and its advocacy of the Keystone XL pipeline.
And Trudeau has some important American links: among the consultants to the Liberal Party for this election were former Obama political staffers Stephanie Cutter, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Teddy Goff.
All in all, it was a good day for the center-left in Canada and elsewhere.
All of the caveats about the different system and electorates of Canada notwithstanding, Trudeau’s creative messaging is instructive, especially for Democrats, who embrace similar policies that helped produced his upset. “With an embrace of progressive taxation, public investment and a humane approach to economics,” concludes Nichols, “Democrats could in 2016 celebrate President Obama’s accomplishments while holding out the promise that, “In America, better is always possible.”
