“Poll respondents reported less enthusiasm about voting than usual, and turnout indeed ended up being down significantly from 1998.”
And to underscore this with a bit of Shor Thought: an ugly campaign that drives down turnout actually helps Biden, because education polarization has sorted all the high civic engagement voters to the left, and that effect is even stronger with Trump.
There is a subtle point that almost slips unnoticed in this article. Davis won reelection because he was able to destroy a stronger Republican primary candidate. This brings up two concerns.
1) this sort of manipulation is patently bad for our country and should be more openly denounced. It is morally bankrupt to screw over a better candidate because you are afraid to lose.
2) the Republicans need to do a better job of fighting against this. It is only effective because republicans let it work. They need to find some way to revamp their primary system (or grow a backbone) to not let this strategy work so well.
I find the critique in #1 inane*, because it treats the voters as children. Politics ain’t beanbag and candidates and parties should be able to contest it. Aside from access to funds, there’s no practical difference between Simon attacking Riordan and Davis doing it
* I make the exception for the stuff done in 2022, because there were a bunch of undemocratic nut jobs, so the strategy working and then backfiring had huge negative consequences. But if Simon was governor, the effects would have been minimal in California
No that argument is crap. If you are intentionally trying to game the system to stop a candidate who would otherwise beat from winning by manipulating the rules, that is cheating plain and simple.
Talking to voters is now cheating? What "rules" were manipulated?
"Meddling" in primaries doesn't involve lying. It involves providing relevant information to voters. "Donald Trump has endorsed John Gibbs and prefers him to Peter Meijer" is not only true, it's a message that GOP primary voters found persuasive.
I certainly wish this was not true of GOP primary voters, but they are not my responsibility, nor are they the Democrats.
This is a variation on the "well it's not illegal so there's nothing wrong with it" argument.
Yes democrats CAN do it. There is no law against it. But it is immoral and hypocritical for a party that prattles about the "good of the country" and "saving democracy" every chance it can.
If you'd said it was wrong and hypocritical, I would've agreed with you. (Though the blame for nominating kooks belongs 100% to the Republican primary voters).
But you said it was cheating and manipulating the rules. Words matter.
Regarding #1 the point is that it means the republicans can't nominate the candidate who best represents their views. I don't blame Davis for using the rules to his advantage but it's a structural problem that needs fixing. IMO the underlying problem is the whole idea of state run primaries. If a party wants to ask the public it can, but it should be up to the party to decide how much to weight their choice and who they let vote in the primary.
The argument that the voters aren't so simple is wrong for a few reasons.
1) Usually, funds aren't really able to shift outcomes much because the politicians who get the donations are the popular ones who have voter support. The problem here is that because Davis is the united democratic canidate he can throw his general campaign money at the Republican primary while the R canidates don't have much money yet since the donors aren't yet sure who to support.
2) If they aren't that easily manipulated then it wouldn't make sense to use this strategy at all but it's often effective when people hold their nose and do it. If all that's happening is voters updating in a rational way than why didn't Davis just wait and use the same attack ads in the general election?
3) Primary voters are different than general election voters. This is the big issue now where Dems in 2020 pushed R primary voters to choose canidates they preferred who would be too extreme for general.
Much likelier explanation is the “you’re explaining you’re losing phenomenon”. Almost anything that highlights policing and crime as issues is likely to benefit GOP due to their reputation as the “tough on crime”/“pro cop” party. We can debate here about who is the actual “defund police” party given each party’s actual spending priorities. But I’m pretty certain that subtlety isn’t reaching swing voters.
The more important upshot of more spending on police? Decent chance it has helped with real significant drop in crime across the country in 2023. If trend continues into 2024, that is what will help Biden as it will make sure crime is much less of high salience issue in the election.
Josh, correctly, uses Gray Davis as an example of how to win with dismal polling numbers. However, Davis is also an example of a politician whose support was a mile wide but an inch deep. No one was really committed to him and when the recall came - his backers fled en masse and he lost office. A cautionary tale for how politicians need some sort of emotional-level connection with voters.
Given the focus on Biden’s age, are there examples of people losing because they’re over the hill? I can’t think of too many. Happens occasionally in primaries, but I’m looking for a general election where someone lost base on age and how that issue played out in the campaign.
What Biden needs above all is an inspiring slogan like "No on recall, Yes on Bustamante."
“Poll respondents reported less enthusiasm about voting than usual, and turnout indeed ended up being down significantly from 1998.”
And to underscore this with a bit of Shor Thought: an ugly campaign that drives down turnout actually helps Biden, because education polarization has sorted all the high civic engagement voters to the left, and that effect is even stronger with Trump.
There is a subtle point that almost slips unnoticed in this article. Davis won reelection because he was able to destroy a stronger Republican primary candidate. This brings up two concerns.
1) this sort of manipulation is patently bad for our country and should be more openly denounced. It is morally bankrupt to screw over a better candidate because you are afraid to lose.
2) the Republicans need to do a better job of fighting against this. It is only effective because republicans let it work. They need to find some way to revamp their primary system (or grow a backbone) to not let this strategy work so well.
I find the critique in #1 inane*, because it treats the voters as children. Politics ain’t beanbag and candidates and parties should be able to contest it. Aside from access to funds, there’s no practical difference between Simon attacking Riordan and Davis doing it
* I make the exception for the stuff done in 2022, because there were a bunch of undemocratic nut jobs, so the strategy working and then backfiring had huge negative consequences. But if Simon was governor, the effects would have been minimal in California
No that argument is crap. If you are intentionally trying to game the system to stop a candidate who would otherwise beat from winning by manipulating the rules, that is cheating plain and simple.
Talking to voters is now cheating? What "rules" were manipulated?
"Meddling" in primaries doesn't involve lying. It involves providing relevant information to voters. "Donald Trump has endorsed John Gibbs and prefers him to Peter Meijer" is not only true, it's a message that GOP primary voters found persuasive.
I certainly wish this was not true of GOP primary voters, but they are not my responsibility, nor are they the Democrats.
This is a variation on the "well it's not illegal so there's nothing wrong with it" argument.
Yes democrats CAN do it. There is no law against it. But it is immoral and hypocritical for a party that prattles about the "good of the country" and "saving democracy" every chance it can.
No, those are different arguments.
If you'd said it was wrong and hypocritical, I would've agreed with you. (Though the blame for nominating kooks belongs 100% to the Republican primary voters).
But you said it was cheating and manipulating the rules. Words matter.
Now you're just ignoring the argument and playing word games. Have a good evening.
Regarding #1 the point is that it means the republicans can't nominate the candidate who best represents their views. I don't blame Davis for using the rules to his advantage but it's a structural problem that needs fixing. IMO the underlying problem is the whole idea of state run primaries. If a party wants to ask the public it can, but it should be up to the party to decide how much to weight their choice and who they let vote in the primary.
The argument that the voters aren't so simple is wrong for a few reasons.
1) Usually, funds aren't really able to shift outcomes much because the politicians who get the donations are the popular ones who have voter support. The problem here is that because Davis is the united democratic canidate he can throw his general campaign money at the Republican primary while the R canidates don't have much money yet since the donors aren't yet sure who to support.
2) If they aren't that easily manipulated then it wouldn't make sense to use this strategy at all but it's often effective when people hold their nose and do it. If all that's happening is voters updating in a rational way than why didn't Davis just wait and use the same attack ads in the general election?
3) Primary voters are different than general election voters. This is the big issue now where Dems in 2020 pushed R primary voters to choose canidates they preferred who would be too extreme for general.
Repeatedly pointing out that you funded the police over the objections of the far left *and* the Republicans couldn't hurt.
I can't believe they aren't doing this already.
"The groups" control the messaging. Too many Warren staffers in the White House and campaign.
Much likelier explanation is the “you’re explaining you’re losing phenomenon”. Almost anything that highlights policing and crime as issues is likely to benefit GOP due to their reputation as the “tough on crime”/“pro cop” party. We can debate here about who is the actual “defund police” party given each party’s actual spending priorities. But I’m pretty certain that subtlety isn’t reaching swing voters.
The more important upshot of more spending on police? Decent chance it has helped with real significant drop in crime across the country in 2023. If trend continues into 2024, that is what will help Biden as it will make sure crime is much less of high salience issue in the election.
Donald Trump could win this election if he could just control himself and keep his mouth shut.
Obviously he will not do this.
Josh, correctly, uses Gray Davis as an example of how to win with dismal polling numbers. However, Davis is also an example of a politician whose support was a mile wide but an inch deep. No one was really committed to him and when the recall came - his backers fled en masse and he lost office. A cautionary tale for how politicians need some sort of emotional-level connection with voters.
Given the focus on Biden’s age, are there examples of people losing because they’re over the hill? I can’t think of too many. Happens occasionally in primaries, but I’m looking for a general election where someone lost base on age and how that issue played out in the campaign.
As soon as likely voter screens are in, Biden will be fine.
Suderman episode when?