Democrats Have Reason To Feel "Special"
Why a state assembly election this week in Wisconsin, won by a Republican, is good news for Democrats. Also, Democrats are winning college towns and Meatball Ron is at it again.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
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Democratic Momentum?
For MSNBC, I wrote about this week’s special election in Wisconsin and the consistent trend of Democrats over-performing in special elections this year.
If political reporters want to give their audience a sense of what the electorate is thinking, they should point to this week’s special election in Wisconsin’s 24th Assembly District, where Republican Paul Melotik defeated Democrat Bob Tatterson. That might sound like good news for the GOP, but Melotik won by only 7 points in a district that Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2020. Tatterson even outperformed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who lost the district by 13 points on his way to re-election in 2022.
Democratic strength in special elections has become a consistent trend this year. According to the folks at Daily Kos Elections, who have put together a handy spreadsheet of special election results so far in 2023, Democrats are running 7 points ahead of 2020 presidential results and 11 points better than 2016. In 15 out of 21 special elections held this year, Democrats have outperformed Biden’s 2020 numbers. These numbers do not even take into account the results of a May Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, in which the Democratic candidate running on an unambiguously abortion-rights platform trounced her Republican opponent by 11 points in the same state that Biden won by less than a point.
As I note in the piece, special elections are an excellent predictor of future election results. Quite simply, a party consistently over-performing in special elections is likely to do well in the next general election. We saw this phenomenon play out in 2018 and 2022, and 2024 is following the same trendline.
When you combine this data with President Biden’s strong fundraising haul, the improving US economy, and Donald Trump’s chronic unpopularity (and his likelihood of winning the 2024 Republican nomination), things like reasonably good for Biden heading into his bid for reelection.
That does not mean Biden is going to win. I’m not making a prediction one way or the other but rather pointing out that things are lining up well for him and his fellow Democrats.
The Democrat’s Egghead Contingent
This is a fascinating piece about growing Democratic strength in college towns and how this is creating a near-impenetrable political firewall.
In state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties like Dane (Madison, Wisconsin) are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins. They’ve already played a pivotal role in turning several red states blue — and they could play an equally decisive role in key swing states next year.
One of those states is Michigan. Twenty years ago, the University of Michigan’s Washtenaw County gave Democrat Al Gore what seemed to be a massive victory — a 60-36 percent win over Republican George W. Bush, marked by a margin of victory of roughly 34,000 votes. Yet that was peanuts compared to what happened in 2020. Biden won Washtenaw by close to 50 percentage points, with a winning margin of about 101,000 votes. If Washtenaw had produced the same vote margin four years earlier, Hillary Clinton would have won Michigan, a state that played a prominent role in putting Donald Trump in the White House.
Name the flagship university — Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, among others — and the story tends to be the same. If the surrounding county was a reliable source of Democratic votes in the past, it’s a landslide county now. There are exceptions to the rule, particularly in the states with the most conservative voting habits. But even in reliably red places like South Carolina, Montana and Texas, you’ll find at least one college-oriented county producing ever larger Democratic margins.
This switch from red to blue is part of what I consider the most important political story of the last eight years — the abandonment of the Republican Party by white, suburban college-educated voters. These are precisely the types of voters who live in and migrate to college towns. After Donald Trump’s victory in 2016, college-educated voters began moving decisively toward the Democratic Party. That trend began in 2018, continued in 2020 and 2022, and there’s little indication that it will stop anytime soon. While women voters were the vanguard of this shift, it hasn’t been restricted to them — male suburban voters have also moved toward the Democrats. But women are the critical constituency here, and last year’s Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, has only widened the gender gap.
One of the reasons this is so problematic for Republicans is that college-educated Americans consistently vote in both presidential and midterm elections. As a friend pointed out, if Democrats can rely on these voters turning out and casting a ballot for them, it means they can devote greater party resources to mobilizing occasional voters. That’s a huge, underappreciated advantage, particularly in close elections. Making matters worse for Republicans is that Democratic success in college towns is also a by-product of the party’s dominance among young people. How people vote when they are younger — and which party they identify with — is another strong predictor of future voting patterns.
Indeed, this graph should scare the shit out of Republicans:
So it’s not just that Republicans are losing college towns — they’re losing the types of voters essential to winning national elections. Republicans will continue to dominate in most of the South, Far West, and the Plains States, but their margin for error in blue and purple state America is getting incredibly narrow — and if the trends continue with young voters, it will only get worse. When you’re a national party that has lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, you need to figure out ways to expand your voting base. The opposite is happening for Republicans.
Pudd’nhead Ron
So how is the Ron DeSantis reboot going?
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is considering legal action against Bud Light’s parent company over its woke marketing campaign. The 2024 Republican presidential-primary contender said in a letter to state legal officials Thursday and an appearance on Fox News Channel that AB InBev’s Dylan Mulvaney campaign may have “breached legal duties owed to its shareholders” by aligning the brand with “radical social ideologies.”
Let me be clear: Ron DeSantis is bad at presidential politics. But his obsession with Terminally Online issues, which no one outside the conservative fever swamp cares about, is not entirely his fault. Ridiculous outrages, like Bud Light using a trans influencer as a spokesperson, are what animate GOP activists and get attention in conservative media. So there is a certain political logic in DeSantis once again going the culture war route. The problem is: we get it, Ron. You’re the scourge of the “woke left.” Mazel Tov. Now is the time for him to pivot to talking about issues of interest to non-mouth-breathing dimwits. But one gets the sense that DeSantis simply can’t do it. This is who he is: a charmless prick who loves pissing off liberals, ginning up fake outrages … and is highly unlikely to end up as the 2024 Republican nominee.
What’s Going On
Great piece by my friend Jonathan Zasloff on how Clarence Thomas might have inadvertently created a new type of affirmative action.
Good riddance to Dan Snyder.
Donald Trump could face a racketeering charge in Georgia.
Texas’s six-week abortion ban has led to a significant increase in infant deaths #thepartyoflife
Musical Interlude
I read that as "Good ridden DEE Snyder" and I had to check to see if the Twisted Sister frontman had passed.
Phew.