The commonplace Versailles meme is that the Democrats lost because they're too far left. But the reality is that the Democrats are just plain politically incompetent. Of course one can argue that they're not incompetent, that this is what they're supposed to do, and at one level, that's a very defensible position. Except that it also makes no sense at other levels. Better to say that they are incompetent, and that this incompetence serves powerful elite interests (which are also profoundly, psychopathically self-destructive). But one thing they are not is "too far left."
Take, in particular, the excellent post-election analysis from John Sides at The Monkey Cage a couple of weeks ago, "Do Democrats Understand Political Independents?" The answer, of course, is "Are you kidding?" Most importantly: This is not just a post-election analysis of the results, but of how the Democrats are misinterpreting the results.
First off, Sides contextualizes this whole problem in terms of the recurrent media habit of creating mythical new archetypal swing voters every election cycle:
It seems like every time a party is defeated in an election, it blames that defeat on some group whose loyalties it once had but lost. Party strategists then talk endlessly about how to get this group "back." Remember "values voters"? Does anyone think that the Democratic Party's success in 2006-2008 came about because they successfully appealed to "values voters"? You'd think that after a few of these wild goose chases, people would start to learn.
But no. The lesson of the 2010 election is, apparently, that the Democrats must get independents back. And this will necessitate some kind of bipartisanship or centrism or something, because independents have become more conservative. See, for example, Bill Galston.
Of course, sometime back Chris pointed out that it's not just groups in the political middle (or right, in the case of so-called "values voters") who swing. Virtually every demographic group swings from election to election, and sometimes those who no one talks about swing the most. A swing from 75-25 to 65-35 is every bit as big as a swing from 55-45 to 45-55. What's more, swings in participation rate also count tremendously, as the drop-off in young voters this past election serve to remind us.
But what's most remarkable about these lost voter narratives is the purely anecdotal, if not downright mythical nature of these voting groups. Soccer moms? These are just catchy stereotypes that serve the needs of a lazy, intentionally superficial press corps. They are about as real as Iraqi WMDs. And this time is no different:
This diagnosis fails to separate independents who lean towards a party from the true independents. This is always necessary, as I previously pointed out:
For one, many claims about the opinions of independents never separate leaners from pure independents. If there is a 15% drop in Obama approval among the entire mass of apparent "independents," this could mean that there is a drop among independents who lean Republican, independents who lean Democratic, and/or pure independents. Why does this matter? Because the political consequences are different. If Obama loses 15 points among independents who lean Republican, he is losing voters who are unlikely to vote for him in 2012 anyway. But if he loses 15 points among independents who lean Democratic, then he has more serious problems.
In 2010, the story is about Republican-leaning independents. Ruy Teixeira:
...Republican-leaning independents, just like ordinary Republicans, have become more conservative (also by 7 points) and...Republican-leaning independents are now a larger part of the independent pool (now 40 percent of independents compared to 30 percent in 2006). As political scientists have noted over and over again independents who lean toward the Republican party act very similar to Republican partisans (and Democratic leaning independents act like Democratic partisans), so this is a hugely important fact in understanding the changing political behavior of independents.
Among the rest of the independent pool, there has either been no change in the number of conservatives (among non-leaning or pure independents) or a slight decrease (among Democratic leaning independents). So the increase in "conservatism" among independents is completely accounted for by the increased conservatism of Republican-leaning independents and the increased weight of Republican-leaning independents among independents as a whole.
It’s only been a week, and I am already sickened unto death of the re-positioning tango over how to re-position ourselves to win the next election. Of course, maybe one of the reasons I am sick of it is that it happens after every losing election. The biggest reason I am sick of it, though, is that none of it really matters at all to the voters Democrats lost in this election and need to win back. The swing voters we lost in this election, as I wrote about here, are the economically stressed working and middle class- the ones whose mortgages are underwater or in danger of getting there, the ones whose family members are losing jobs or having hours being cut back, the ones who haven’t gotten a raise in 2 or 3 years, the ones whose pensions and savings are worth a lot less than they were 3 years ago. And you know what: they couldn’t care less how Obama or other Democrats are positioned. What they do care about are having good jobs come back to their communities, and having their homes’ value start to edge up again.
That’s why the new memo from Third Way doesn’t do much for me. It doesn’t make me angry, either, although I know it is supposed to: you know, get the debate between liberals and moderates engaged and all that. What it does do is go to my friends at Third way’s favorite stalking horse, the fact that self-identified liberals only make up 20% of the electorate. You know what? Just so Third Way folks don’t feel like they have to keep beating this dead horse, I will be glad to stipulate that point in this and all future arguments: self-described liberals are a small minority of the electorate, and you can’t win elections with only their votes. See, we agree. And who ever said progressives couldn’t get along with moderates?
I was going to call this post Revolt of the Screwed, but decided that I didn't want to get readers who were looking for porn sites. However, that is a good summary of what happened in the election: the middle class voters most hurt by this terrible recession turned against the Democrats with a vengeance. They were looking for someone to blame for their economic woes. The good news is that their first pick was Wall Street. The bad news for Democrats is that they associated Obama with Wall Street. The two most important and dramatic statistics coming out of the exit polling were (1) the 40% of voters who felt worse off economically in the last couple of years went Republican by 29% after going for Obama in 2008 by 42%; and (2) the 35% of voters who said Wall Street was more to blame than anyone else for the bad economy broke 56-42 for the Republicans. That first number is the biggest swing by far in any demographic group I have ever seen after looking at exit poll numbers for the past 25 years. I have seen swings in the 30s before, maybe even into the low 40s in some small segment of the electorate once or twice, but I have never seen anything close to a 71% swing before.
I wrote early in 2009 that voters were going to be in a very bad mood in November of 2010, and that this would be a blame election, where economically stressed swing voters would be wanting to take their misery out on someone. I was certainly right about that, but here's the ironic thing: I suggested that since I thought it was unlikely we could get them to blame the economy on Bush since we were in charge now, that our best hope was to get them to blame it on Wall Street. They did, that 35% who laid the blame on Wall Street's door were primarily the middle class swing voter bloc in this election, but they associated us Democrats and Obama with Wall Street more than Republicans. The TARP bailout and Obama and Geithner's vigorous defense of it, the kid glove treatment of the big banks at the hands of Geithner, the AIG and big bank bonuses that closely followed, the failure to prosecute or break up the Too Big To Fail banks: it all came together in those angry middle class voters' minds as Obama being associated with the same Wall Street actors people were blaming for their economic problems. The fact that once the financial reform bill that had some important wins for the middle class was passed, Democrats barely ever talked about it again didn't help.
So now that this election from hell is over, the question is how do Obama and the Democrats come back in 2012. There's a lot of talk about moving to the center, but what does that even mean? When Washingtonians talk about the center, they tend to mean cutting Social Security and doing trade deals, but what do the economically stressed swing voters who turned against Democrats mean by the center? Well, these voters have very strong feelings about certain issues, and they don't tend to track with what pundits in DC talk about much. Check out these numbers from a Stan Greenberg poll done for the Campaign for America's Future. Stan did a careful analysis of which voters were the key swing voters, and what he found is striking:
Swing voters supported a message about challenging China on trade, ending subsidies to corporations that send jobs overseas, and stopping NAFTA-like trade deals over a message about increasing exports, passing more trade agreements, and getting government out of the way by 59-28
Swing voters supported a message about ending tax cuts for those making over $250,0000 a year, adding a bank tax to curb speculative trading, cutting wasteful military spending and ending subsidies to oil companies over a message about cutting 100 billion dollars from domestic programs, raising the Social Security retirement age, and turning Medicare into a voucher program by 51-37
Swing voters supported a statement about politicians keeping their hands off Social Security and Medicare over a statement about raising the retirement age by 62-36
89% of swing voters supported a statement about full disclosure of campaign donations and limiting the power of lobbyists
90% of swing voters supported a statement about cracking down on outsourcing and creating jobs by fixing schools, sewers, and roads in disrepair
Even when framed in direct opposition to a statement about stopping increasing government spending and tax increases, swing voters said they were more worried that we will fail to make the investments we need to create jobs and strengthen the economy by 54-44
The voters who were the swing voters in this electorate, the ones who supported Republicans this time but generally supported Obama and Democrats the last time, are the economically hurting middle class- the ones most worried about their jobs, most stressed about their mortgages being underwater or close to it, and most squeezed by stagnant wages. They blame Wall Street for the financial crisis, they strongly dislike outsourcing and "NAFTA-like" trade deals, they favor higher taxes on the wealthy and speculative trading, they don't want Social Security or Medicare benefits cut or the retirement age raised, they think infrastructure jobs ought to be created by the government, and they hate corporate special interest lobbying and money. These voters are the populists who Lee Atwater focused on in 1988, and the middle class populists we ought to be focused on now. The reason they are swing voters is that they think both parties- and yes, government itself- have let them down. They don't like partisan bickering because they want politicians to focus on their needs instead of trying to keep their own jobs, but they have no patience for bi-partisan deals that once again screw them on these economic issues.
The only way President Obama and other Democrats will win in 2012 is by focusing on improving the economic lives of these stressed out voters, and by doing it now. That means first and foremost dealing with the foreclosure crisis and underwater mortgages, and having DOJ actually start prosecuting these bankers who have so clearly violated the law. It means re-orienting government contracts to ones that really will buy American goods and pay a decent wage doing it. It means aggressively using executive orders to spur new manufacturing jobs. And it means eagerly picking some fights with Republicans over these middle class issues.
The election numbers could not be clearer: the voters we need to focus on are the folks who feel the weight of this damaged economy on every muscle of their tired shoulders. And those are the people our policies ought to be focused anyway, so it is a twofer: it's the right thing to do and the best way to win the election.
It's tempting to look at the recent gay marriage defeats in Maine and California, and say at least we're on the "right side of history." The opposition is running on borrowed time, as young people increasingly support marriage equality. But the trend is not moving fast enough, and it's clear that gay marriage supporters have been losing the "swing vote" in every election. Same-sex couples have largely won the battle for civil unions, but there's something about "marriage" that makes moderates uneasy - and it's time that we speak directly to their concerns. Third Way, a Washington DC based think tank, conducted a poll of 600 Maine voters right after Question One passed in November - which holds important conclusions we should build upon. As we look at repealing Prop 8 in California, going straight to those voters so we can win and finally move on to other battles is key. None of us want to wait until the old generation dies out, and nor should we have to.
It never ceases to amaze me how much politicians bend over backward to appeal to moderate swing voters, while simultaneously attempting to appeal to third-party swing votes through insults and lies. Case in point, take the latest missive from New York Representative Peter King to conservatives considering voting for right-wing third party candidate Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 special election:
In a statement, King made the case that voting for Hoffman will only help Democrat Bill Owens win.
"Dede is the only Republican candidate in this race, and the only candidate with a proven record that Republicans can trust in Washington," King said. "A vote for either of her opponents is a vote for Nancy Pelosi and her far-left, radical agenda."
Statements like these, whether they are made by Republicans or by Democrats, are loathsome pieces of political arrogance.
It is a lie. Voting for a conservative third party is simply not the same thing as voting for a Democrat, just as voting for progressive third party is not the same as voting for a Republican. Rather, voting for a third party has the same effect on the overall outcome as not voting (except in the unlikely event that a third-party actually has a realistic chance to win, in which case voting for a third party would be exactly like voting for a third party).
No matter what happens, voting for a third party is never the same thing as voting for the opposing major party candidate, since a vote like that actually adds one to the column of the opposing major party. But I guess Democrats and Republicans alike think that people considering voting for third-parties are too stupid to grasp this fairly obvious fact, and so they just lie to those voters instead.
People considering voting for third-parties are swing voters, too. I simply don't understand why swing voters who regularly flip between Democrats and Republicans receive fawning attention from politicians, while swing voters who regularly flip between third parties and major parties are overtly insulted by those same politicians. It's true that voters who oscillate between third parties and one major party are only half as valuable as swing voters who oscillate between the two major parties, but they are still swing voters none the less.
Neither the liberal nor the conservative vote is static, and changes in those voters can cause candidates to win or lose elections. Fully one-quarter of the electorate thinks that either Democrats are too conservative or Republicans are too liberal, beliefs that can often cause them to stay home or vote third party. As such, politicians might actually try to win those voters over, instead of insulting them by grouping them in with their ideological antipodes.
Its arrogant. The implication whenever politicians send out missives like these is that the votes of ideological die-hards are the permanent, lifelong property of one political party or the other no matter what that political party does in office. Its flagrant, anti-democratic arrogance from elected officials who are effectively telling their constituents to STFU and do as they are told. Which is, of course, the opposite of democracy.
I haven't voted for a third party is quite some time, and have no plans to do so anytime soon. However, it is still disturbing to me that swing voters who oscillate between one major party and third-parties are treated with such insulting, arrogant, and downright false missives from many elected officials. Whenever I see language like this, I hope that a strong third-party vote ends up costing the major party issuing the language the election in question.
People who oscillate between the two major parties, between voting and not voting, or between voting for one major party and a third party, are all swing voters. If you want to win elections, you need all of these groups to break your way. As such, I don't see how insulting and being dismissive to any of these groups is a particularly good electoral strategy, or particularly good for democracy. Big donors and the mushy, uninformed middle should not be the only groups of voters to whom elected officials are accountable.
Rasmussen has a useful new poll out that measures a hypothetical trial heat of Obama vs. Bush. The reason it is such a useful poll is that it allows for some insight into the at least 9% of the electorate that prefers Obama to Bush, but also prefers McCain to Obama. Here are the two trial heats:
July 13th, 1000 Likely Voters
Obama: 54%
Bush: 34%
Other / Unsure: 12%
Even though these voters only compose about 9-10% of the electorate, they are also the key voters in this election. Why would someone prefer Obama to Bush, but not prefer Obama to McCain? Here is what we can discern about these voters (more in the extended entry):
In my diary last weekend, "The Democratic Swing & Independent Swing--What The SUSA Polls Can Tell Us", I amplified Chris's point about the magnitude of the Democratic swing being larger than that of the independent swing, by presenting a state-level analysis using the Survey USA polls with different VP candidates generating the ranges used for the "swing" calculations. I did this for all voters, and for Democrats and Independents. In this diary, I want to take a look at how Edwards on the ticket changed things.
The point here is not to make the case for Edwards--I think I've already done that quite convincingly. Whether or not he would reverse himself and accept if called, his presence on the ticket clearly makes a landslide much more possible. So the point of this diary is just to get a little better fix on what his presence accomplishes in regard to the swings Chris was comparing. Because, one way or another, if Democrats can get to the point that the battlefield looks like it would with Edwards on the ticket, then we are defintely on the road to having ourselves another 1932.
From 2004 to 2006, Democrats actually made more gains among self-identified Democrats than they made among self-identified Independents. Now, in 2008, because partisan self-identification has shifted starkly in favor of Democrats, Barack Obama has much more to gain for self-identified Democrats than he has from self-identified Republicans and Independents combined.
For the past four months, according to Rasmussen, the average national partisan self-identification has been Democrats 41.4%, Republicans 31.7%, and Independents / Others at 26.8%. Even when Rounding in favor of Republicans, if the general election electorate identified 41% Democratic, 32% Republican, and 27% Independent, and if Obama held down 90% of Democrats while McCain held down 90% of Republicans, then Obama would only need 37% of Independents to reach 50% +1. To put this in perspective, in 1984 Walter Mondale received 36% of the Independent vote, 1% shy of what Barack Obama would need.
If Democrats make up 41% of the electorate in November, and Independents only make up 27%, then Obama has significantly more potential votes to gain among self-identified Democrats than he has to gain among self-identified Independents. Let's say that Obama's possible range of support among self-identified Democrats is 75% to 90%. This would represent 6.2% of the electorate. By contrast, let's say that Obama's possible range of support among Independents 40% to 60%, representing 5.4% of the electorate. As such, according to these estimates, which probably exaggerate the possible Independent range, Democrats are actually a bigger swing block than Independents.
In this diary, I want to use the recent Survey USA polls testing possible VP nominees for the purpose of taking a closer look at Chris's argument here, particularly the last sentence, saying that Democrats are a larger swing block than indendents. As we'll see on the flip, of the 15 states analyzed, this is clearly true of all but one state....
The top two things I love about being part of OpenLeft.com are (a) the challenging dialogue about issues and strategy, which I (almost) always really enjoy, and that I believe are urgently important discussions for the progressive movement to be having- the back-and-forth about how tough we should be on the Democrats, how we move from just electing Democrats to building truly progressive majorities; I really appreciate how Matt Stoller and others in the OpenLeft.com community really push me to defend my arguments and think things through; and (b) the brilliant analysis from Chris Bowers. I love Chris' thinking, because he has a strong perspective as a progressive, but is also not dogmatic about the way he analyzes numbers and trends.
The latest piece of his that caught my eye was this one on the myth of conservative and Republican swing voters. Chris nails it. I've been working on elections since the 1980 cycle- looking at polling cross tabs, watching focus groups, asking questions in the field over phone and door to door, and analyzing exit polls, post-election polls and actual turnout data. Every cycle, I hear people talk excitedly about Republicans they know who are fed up with their Party and are crossing over, and every cycle, the number of Republicans who actually do it stay in the same range: 2-4%. Spending any time trying to win over Republican voters, or self-described conservatives, is truly a waste of time and resources.
The question this raises, of course, is who those moderate, independent, Democratic and liberal swing voters are: what makes them tick? Who are they demographically? What issues are the most salient to them? Getting the answers to these questions is the big enchilada in terms of winning elections, and it is important that we not be dogmatic about the answers we get. Thinking back on all of the data for all of these years, I offer this sense of the dynamics with each of these four blocs of swing voters:
In the tradition of an article I published last month, "2006 As A Democratic Base Victory," by looking at exit poll data going back to 1984, in this post I will make two rather simple and similar points about long-term Democratic growth. First, even though they are often targeted by national Democratic committees and campaigns, self-identified conservatives and self-identified Republicans are not a swing vote from which Democrats can expect to gain any more votes than they already have nationwide. Second, even though they are rarely targeted by national Democratic committees and campaigns, self-identified Democrats and self-identified liberals are just as important swing voters for Democrats as are self-identified moderates and self-identified Independents. These may sound like bold statements, but actually they are not particularly difficult to prove.
Holding the loyalty of evangelical Christians has become one of the most surprising problems for the Republican Party.
Support among white evangelicals neared 100% after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the White House used pastors, church membership directories and other tools to mobilize evangelicals for the 2004 election. But Bush's support among these voters dropped to 44% in a June Pew survey, sparking concern in GOP circles that an unmotivated base would cripple the party's efforts to compensate for losses among independent voters.
The Republican base is white non-Catholic Christians with an emphasis on evangelicals as their activist core . It's enticing to think that this white evangelical vote could be shifting, and I know Zack Exley among others believes this is so. There's in fact a nasty little industry of DC insiders peddling the notion that appealing to white evangelicals by throwing away choice is a good strategy. But there's also this.
An analysis of 30 competitive races found that the Democratic Party's voter turnout was strong, due in part to Republican troubles and unusual Democratic unity. But turnout of the hard-core GOP base was just as good.
In other words, right-wing white evangelicals did what they always do, which is vote for Republicans. The only effective strategy I've seen for dealing with the white evangelical base is spending resources convincing them not to vote. This worked in a few races around the country, based on some private data I've seen in 2006, but it also worked in 2000 when Chris Lehane got out opposition research on George W. Bush's DUI a few days before the election. The corruption of the Republican leadership, headlined by figures such as Larry Craig, is setting a nice atmosphere for this set of tactics.
Of course, the conclusion that 'Democratic strategists' draw, which is the conclusion they always draw, is that progressives are irrelevant.
Some Democrats tried the soft-sell strategy in last year's elections. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, who took over a GOP seat in Colorado's 7th Congressional District, highlighted his moderate views on issues important to swing voters. In one direct-mail piece, he cited his daughter's epilepsy as his "personal" reason to back stem-cell research. The independent voters "call the shots," said Perlmutter, who stalks unaffiliated supporters at area supermarkets through his twice-monthly Government at the Grocery sessions.
Democratic analysts say the 2006 election underscored the importance of downplaying partisanship and campaigning to the middle.
This is just annoying. A lot of people, including me, have touted the Colorado infrastructure as successful. What I've seen since 2004 is a bunch of conservative Democrats, most notably but not exclusively the awful Salazar brothers, win office and screw things up. Now Jared Polis, Third Way funder, is running for Congress in a very liberal Colorado district. Anyway, go play to that middle, because apparently "independent voters are shifting their outlook on government, Pew found, putting them more in line with the Democratic Party in their concern about income inequality and belief in a government safety net for the poor."
We're all liberals now, you adorably anonymous Democratic strategists you. Also, can you stop quoting anonymous strategists? How hard is it to find someone to go on the record reciting conventional wisdom? Seriously?
If you assume that swing voters are the key to winning elections, it becomes clear that the millions of words written in the blogosphere are not reaching the right audience. Given that the average swing voter can't identify their congressman, how likely is it that their vote is going to be influenced by the online writings of Josh Marshall, Eric Alterman, or Kevin Drum? To achieve their objective of moving the policies of the United States to the left, the netroots must answer this question: How can the progressive online community use the tools available to best communicate with people who aren't online, who don't pay attention to the news, and who don't care about politics?
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