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Every Election Day, I think about this passage from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.”
For a long while before the appointed time has come, the election becomes the important and, so to speak, the all-engrossing topic of discussion. Factional ardor is redoubled, and all the artificial passions which the imagination can create in a happy and peaceful land are agitated and brought to light. . . As the election draws near, the activity of intrigue and the agitation of the populace increase; the citizens are divided into hostile camps, each of which assumes the names of its favorite candidate; the whole nation glows with feverish excitement; the election is the daily theme of the press, the subject of every private conversation, the end of every thought and every action, the sole interest of the present. It is true that as soon as the choice is determined, this ardor is dispelled, calm returns, and the river, which had nearly broken its banks, sinks to its usual level; but who can refrain from astonishment that such a storm should have arisen.
Tocqueville was writing about the 1832 presidential election in which Andrew Jackson easily won reelection over Henry Clay. It wasn’t a close race, and in 1832, America was not really a democracy. Women couldn’t vote, and Black people lived in bondage in half the country. Still, democratic elections were not the norm in the 1830s, and it is remarkable how the intensity and passion of elections in modern America look quite similar to what took place nearly 200 years ago.
Both Teams Played Hard
You won’t get any predictions from me today (I learned my lesson after 2016). I’ll stick instead to this legendary press conference performance from former Detroit Piston Rasheed Wallace.
The closest I’ll get to forecasting is this piece I wrote for MSNBC on why I’m not sold on Dr. Oz or Tim Ryan winning their Senate races.
Two of the most high profile Senate races in the county this election cycle are taking place in the neighboring states of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Even though Democrat Tim Ryan has run a spirited race against the GOP candidate J.D. Vance, and Republican Mehmet Oz has come back from a double-digit polling deficit to Democrat John Fetterman, I’m bearish on both candidate’s chances of winning. The reason has less to do with them than it does their ticket mates.
In Ohio, Democrat Nan Whaley is trailing incumbent Gov. Mike DeWine by as much as 20 percentage points in recent polls. In Pennsylvania, Republican Doug Mastriano has run one of the worst campaigns this cycle and is also trailing his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro by double digits, according to some polls. For Ryan and Oz to win, they would need to outrun Whaley and Mastriano by double digit margins. That is possible, but it’s highly unlikely.
Past precedent gives a slightly bigger boost to Ryan’s hopes. In 2018, DeWine won his first term by 3.7 percentage points, while Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won re-election by 6.8 percentage points — that’s a gap of 10.5 points. The problem for Ryan is that DeWine is likely to win by a far larger margin this time, and while J.D. Vance is a notably weak candidate, Ryan does not have the same statewide reputation as an incumbent like Brown.
In Pennsylvania, things might be even tougher for Oz even though the polls suggest a toss-up. Pennsylvania is generally considered to be a swing state, but recent electoral outcomes suggest that it’s, for the most part, a blue-leaning state. Only one Republican candidate has gotten more than 51% of the vote in any election since 2004. For Republicans to win, the stars need to be aligned in their favor. Oz, however, has two major hurdles — Mastriano and his unfavorability numbers. In the most recent Marist poll of the race, Oz’s favorabiities are 35/52 (in contrast Fetterman is at 45/43). Those numbers are consistent with other recent polling. For Oz to win, he would need to outpoll Mastriano by double digits and also weather the headwind of favorability numbers that are 19 points worse than his opponent.
In addition, there is significantly less ticket-splitting in American politics these days. In 2020, only one Senate candidate won in a state that the presidential candidate of the other party won (Susan Collins in Maine). This is a by-product of the nation’s increasingly intense political polarization.
Because of the weakness of various candidates this cycle we are likely to see far more ticket-splitting than usual. In Arizona, Georgia and Nevada there is a reasonable chance that candidates of different parties win gubernatorial and Senate races. But for it happen in Ohio and Pennsylvania, Oz and Ryan would need to vastly overperform their ticketmates and that feels like a major stretch.
The odd thing is, while I think both Oz and Ryan probably lose, I kind of like Ryan’s chances better because it seems inconceivable to me that a candidate with unfavorabilities as high as Oz’s could outrun his ticket mate by double digits. But clearly, anything is possible.
I’ll have a lot of thoughts on the results and what I think Democrats could have done differently (and whether it would have mattered). But that’s more of a tomorrow issue. Actually, tomorrow is probably overly-optimistic since it’ll likely be days before many of the key races are called.
I’ll be live blogging all day and all night — and likely tomorrow, too — at MSNBC. The link is here, and you can follow all of the site’s political writers as we try to make sense of what’s happening on Election Day. I’ll do my best to send a round-up of my thoughts/analysis over the next few days.
A Different Political Path?
Catherine Rampell at the Washington Post has a column today that argues Democrats should take a long hard look in the mirror at the mistakes they’ve made over the past two years.
If Democrats do some soul-searching, as a growing chorus of loyal allies is urging, they might come upon another reason for their weakness this cycle.
For nearly two years, Democratic leadership has often pushed aside politically inconvenient developments rather than facing them head-on. They have often told themselves stories they want to believe instead of stories that are true — and that might motivate them to change their messaging or policy direction.
She makes a similar argument on inflation to one by Josh Barro, which I critiqued last week. Democrats should have taken inflation more seriously, or so the argument goes.
I'm a big fan of Catherine's writing, but I don't find her argument convincing. First, we should wait and see the results before jumping to conclusions, but there's a lot of Pundit Fallacy at work here. It's unclear that "taking inflation seriously" would have made much difference politically.
America has really unwieldy and unmanageable political parties. For Democrats, things are often more unwieldy because the party is more heterogenous than the GOP. Democrats are also the party of doing things — and there is enormous pressure from congressional Democrats to accomplish the policy priorities the party ran on in 2018 and 2020. Could President Biden have pursued a different course that kept inflation in check while also pacifying congressional Democrats and rank-and-file party members? Maybe, but I'm very skeptical.
Managing intra-party politics is probably the most difficult job of a president, and it rarely produces optimal political outcomes. Rampell takes particular aim at student loan forgiveness by pointing out that the issue has been featured more prominently in Republican ads than Democratic ones (in lay terms, it is more of an albatross around the necks of Democrats than a boon to their campaigns). But Rampell is ignoring the fact that a) Biden ran on student loan forgiveness and b) it was a significant concern for a host of liberal advocacy groups, and c) he was under enormous pressure to act on the issue.
The other problem with Rampel's argument is that it's an unknowable counterfactual. Just because a different policy choice would be more politically palatable doesn't mean it would have happened. Democrats made the mistake (and it is perhaps unavoidable) of thinking that they could somehow reverse midterm history. Honestly, I think the best thing for Democrats to do is recognize they're likely going to get crushed in the first midterm after winning the House -- NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO — and throw all political caution to the wind. Of course, that won't happen because "America has really unwieldy and unmanageable political parties." But the perennial electoral response to Democrats doing stuff (even if it's stuff that people like and even if it's half of a loaf of stuff) is that Republicans benefit politically. It's like death and taxes. So maybe the better political course is to lean into a likely midterm disaster. And you never know; maybe sticking to your guns is the better political move.
Now For Something Completely Different
I’m in an odd reflective mood today (waiting for election returns seems to have that effect on me). So I’m going full Larry King mode (which is an old joke that some of you might get).
New Twitter owner Elon Musk is threatening advertisers, tweeting misinformation, and urging his Twitter followers to vote Republican in today’s midterm elections. So here’s a thought: maybe he should shut the fuck up for a while?
I just discovered Ben Burrell’s podcast, in which he reviews every single Bob Dylan album. He even did a whole season on “Blonde and Blonde.” If you’re even a semi-Dylan fan, you will love it!
I finished watching Netflix’s “The Watcher,” and it’s legitimately the stupidest great show I’ve ever seen. It’s completely ludicrous, and yet, somehow, I loved it.
Jon Ralston thinks Nevada Democrats hold their Senate seat and lose the Governor’s Mansion.
Narcissists project their inadequacies on others. It’s like death and taxes with them:
I was rooting for my hometown Phillies to win the World Series, but I’m happy for Dusty Baker. He deserved to finally win a title.
Speaking of Philadelphia … I love this.
This is phenomenal (especially number 58 playing the role of the last pin to fall).
Musical Interlude
My only 2 cents on the Democrats in relation to your argument is that there isn't much Biden could do about core inflation in the short run anyway. Well, that's not 100% true: Biden could have ended the tariffs on Chinese goods (that could have taken a dent out of inflation), but then Biden would be in trouble with China hawks griping about how he's not taking the threat seriously. Biden also did something about the worst part of inflation: high gas prices. Biden chose to visit Saudi Arabia to shore up that relationship, and make large releases from the petroleum reserve. I suspect the former failed (it was a worthwhile gamble) and the latter probably dented inflation.
Biden has made two big mistakes in my mind:
1. He forgave student loans. This was a bad idea on the merits and politically. It made him look wasteful when inflation raged
2. He didn't do more to emphasize crime. He could have attempted to strike a deal on crime, and did nothing letting sleeping dogs lie.
Perhaps it wouldn't have mattered, but that's my view.