This is still simply not credible in 2018. No-one believes Republicans will suddenly become more bi-partisan by putting a Republican on the ticket. The Republican would be labelled a “RINO” and business would proceed as usual.
Yep, especially if said Republican was Kasich, who not only has been successfully branded a RINO by Trump et al, but who has zero pull in DC. (The same goes for the Biden-Romney unity ticket Politico was trying to sell a couple of days ago.Though Romney has marginally more pull in DC than Kasich because he, you know, actually won a nomination.)
It’s also worth asking what the appeal of “bi-partisan” is supposed to be in the current environment, when one party is mired in so many scandals we can’t even keep up in the megathread dedicated to them? People who want change today don’t want a glass half-full of sewage. They want reasonably honest, effective, transparent government. At the moment that means Democrat or independent. Those qualities are, as the marketers say, off-brand for the modern Republican party.
This just isn’t true Palin was poor pick because she was laughably incompetent (or came off that way) and gave away any chance of exploiting Obama’s inexperience as a major critique.
That said, McCain did need to shore up the base and Hillary lost partly because she played this same game of taking your historic constituency for granted. I mean, of course blue collar union types are going to vote for the Democrat, you don’t need to convince them! If “I am the lesser of two evils” didn’t work against Trump, it just generally doesn’t work and I think we can put it to bed. You need passion, you need the base. The safe middle road leads to Romney, McCain, Kerry, Gore, and now Hillary. Maybe that shit worked at some point (when?) but right now it seems like the path to winning the nomination and losing the general.
But those voters she lost weren’t the hard core progressives. She didn’t lose blue collar voters to Trump because she wasn’t progressive enough. Lower turnout among key groups like black men wasn’t because she wasn’t progressive enough.
She’s lost a lot of the first one to bigotry, and she lost the second mainly because she didn’t connect with those voters on any kind of personal level… Both probably because they cared little for the measured, well informed practicality and willingness to do hard work that Hillary offered.
Now, with Hillary, you could actually try to make the case that she lost some of her hard left fringe to the green party in a few key states, but I suspect some sizable portion of that was due to the assumption that Clinton was going to win that the media had planted firmly in everyone’s head.
I suppose that is the case where it might be important to bother worrying about the hard core Fringe of your party… The situation where they assume you will win anyway, even without their vote.
Regarding a split ticket, Electoral-vote.com has a take on why that’s not a good idea. From their Q&A section on Dec 13:
Let’s begin with the last part of the question. It’s certainly not impossible, but it probably is self-defeating in most circumstances. The goal, of course, is to attract votes to your ticket. And in the circumstances you describe, a Republican VP (who would essentially be a token) would not be terribly likely to attract Republican defectors, since most Republicans would undoubtedly prefer a Republican-Republican ticket to a Democrat-Republican ticket. Meanwhile, it might aggravate enough Democrats to cause them to vote third party or to stay home. Of course, this is all somewhat speculative, since the only person who gave serious thought to a split ticket in recent years was Republican John McCain, who wanted to run with Independent/Democrat Joe Lieberman in 2008. He was talked out of it by his GOP advisors, however, and went with the eminent Sarah Palin instead.
I think this describes what would happen for a Dem-Kasich ticket perfectly.
Who said ‘hard core progressives’? Hillary lost some traditional Democrats. McCain lost some traditional Republicans. McCain choosing Leiberman would not have helped him beat Obama in 2008, and a putative Democratic nominee choosing Kasich will not have their chances improved in 2020. This is the perpetual pundit’s myth of the appeal of the centrist compromise candidate, achieved by averaging the two people on the ticket.
Late to the conversation, but I thought it would be worthwhile to point out that in a closely-divided Senate, the VP does in fact have a vote, and an important one at that.
A Democrat worrying about whether their President’s pick for the SCOTUS will be confirmed really wouldn’t want to have to worry about the VP voting against it.
She lost support among those groups because she took them for granted. “Who are you going to vote for, the racist billionaire running a platform of tax cuts for the wealthy?” Some of them said, “yes, we are voting for the racist” and others said, “yes, we are voting for the tax cuts” and others said, “you are both horrible, what’s the point of voting?”
True, but perhaps there was a way to blunt Trump’s bigot advantage rather than just assume that flank was secure? There’s a lot of traditionally blue votes there that you could now say are “not progressive” but that voted for Bernie over Hillary in the primaries and then voted for Trump or stayed home.
She just wasn’t personable enough. You know, firm handshake, strong voice, confident posture. Something about her didn’t sit right. Warren too.
She lost some votes to being female and gained some others perhaps. I think that campaigning matters, though, even if policy during a campaign is more about show than substance. Substance can be showy when it makes your opponent look foolish, but you have to hit the right issues and you have to hit those issues for all your constituents (who have different needs). Telling everyone that the best way to get what they want is to chill and cut some deals and get a little bit at a time may be sound policy, but it is completely uninspiring. You need to pair it with a vision of what the country would be like if you could get everything you really wanted. Hillary’s approach was, “I hear that you want X, and that’s awesome, I’ll throw that in the hopper and then horse trade with it to get some of the stuff our side wants. Maybe I’ll get X by giving away the thing someone else wants - you never know!”
The Green party votes may have mattered, but they were not sufficient to put her over the top and they were not the only votes she lost from what was assumed to be her base. Moving to the center doesn’t just cost you votes from the extremists. It costs you enthusiasm from the party or from certain groups within the party, and that costs you turnout. Yes, people who think Kasich is too conservative are not going to vote for Trump. But they aren’t guaranteed to vote and you can’t just run anyone-but-Trump and expect them to show up.
I mean, some of these voters were just idiots. Every person I’ve seen that supported Bernie and then voted for Trump was basically a straight up imbecile. They were people who were giving over their votes purely on the motion of sensationalism. They just wanted to be part of a “movement”, without any actual regard to what that movement stood for.
I don’t think you can win over gullible, dumb voters with any actual policy. You win them by shaking shiny objects in front of them. Which is fine, but it’s also somewhat immaterial to this… Or maybe even supports the use of an unorthodox plan like a split ticket, since they would potentially support such a ticket just because it was different.
Yes, that was my point. It didn’t have anything to do with her not being progressive enough. It had to do with her not connecting personally with them. She didn’t inspire anything in those voters.
I think that this kind of thing is infinitely more important when it comes to “motivating the base” than actual policy positions, terrible though that may be.
The people who really care about the policy stuff and are extreme, are going to vote for you no matter what, out of partisanship. You won’t lose those votes by being too moderate.
But you will potentially lose moderate votes by being too extreme.
The most electable option would be someone who is fairly moderate, but very charismatic. Despite him being a secret Muslim communist, this is basically what Obama was. You will get all of your base, while not scaring off any moderates.
You keep saying this, even in response to me pointing out that it’s just coded misogyny?
Inspiring is about vision, not just looking good. Policy positions are secondary, but they are secondary to vision, to a feeling that something great will come from your efforts and vote. A centrist split ticket would have nothing to sell anything except “let’s end the bickering”. I’ve never once seen the people bickering happy to have it ended.
You will, because they will stay home. They won’t be out campaigning, so they won’t bring their neighbors out, they won’t send money to you and possibly won’t send it to other races aligned with you, so the votes that money could have turned out won’t appear. They will prefer you winning to the other guy winning, but that is not the only consideration in play during a campaign.
It’s actually a pretty strong analogy with a franchise sequel courting new players at the expense of hardcore fans - “oh, well, Sim City players will buy the new Sim City because that’s what they do. It’s the Sims fans we need to get on board.” (painful memories, sorry, Rod…)
Obama did not run as a moderate, he governed as one, and McCain was surely more moderate than he was. Where is your evidence for the moderate candidate being the one who wins an election?
McCain was more moderate is certainly a new take.
Though I will say I agree with the premise that appealing to the moderate isn’t an electorally winning strategy lately. Because, by nature, those can often feel tepid and uninspiring. They don’t drive the turn out the same way staking out a strong position either way does.
Which is not an endorsement of that status quo, in fact an indictment of the public and the media, but it is the reality.
I thought i was agreeing with you?
I think they totally will. I think that if you are charismatic, all those things will still happen, because that kind of support is driven by how well they connect with you personally, not about you appealing to their most extreme policy positions.
Obama got immense support, not because of any policy position he had, but because he was a superstar.
Most of that stuff isn’t about what you are saying… It’s about how good you are at saying it. If you can go out there and give inspirational speeches, about how you are going to bring the country together and carve out a bright future? That’s what gets voters… Or, alternatively, you can go the Trump route and tell everyone that the other side is the devil and will destroy America.
Either way, you win the masses with emotion more than sensible policy. I think most of the voters don’t understand policy enough for it to matter.
The folks who actually understand policy enough to have a solid perspective on it, and are on the extreme edge of your party, are going to support you anyway because they will recognize the alternative as far worse than someone who is simply less extreme than they are.
They might say they won’t, during the primaries… But they will.
So then we agree, it’s just that you think a superstar can evoke that emotional response regardless of his policies, and I think the high level policy goals are a key part of the emotional appeal. You have to get people to connect with you by telling them you understand their pain and you care about making their lives better. Sure, maybe Obama or Reagan could have sold people on a wide range of hypothetical platforms just by having the right star power, but that is a rare talent at best and there’s no way to know if it’s even true. They won with the hopes and dreams they did sell - could they have won with different ones?
Look, is it possible that someone with the right charisma could sell America on a vision of post-partisanship, where you didn’t have to give a shit about parties and loyalty and winning and you could just focus on working out the best policies for everyone? I suppose so - Obama used that as a rhetorical device at least. But I think Obama’s appeal worked because he was able to convince people that his goals aligned with something they liked and their voices would be heard. “I’m going to work hard to solve your problems for you” is elitist paternalism (even if Hillary says it), whereas “I’m going to get everyone to work hard and solve our problems together” is much more inspiring. As is, “I’m going to crush your enemies and see them driven before me.”
Personally, I’d rather have a progressive woman as President, but if Beto can bring a strong commitment to climate change solutions and a once-in-a-generation level of inspiration to Democratic politics, then I’m probably not going to worry much about the fine details of his platform. That said, Warren’s pro-social capitalism ideas are also very appealing to me and I really hope she runs too, so they can really be put through the ringer on a national stage.
That’s because she was given impossible standards to live by. Be firm but not too firm, shake hard but not too hard, smile… Women are given impossible standards while the sack of yams didn’t wear clothes that fit right and plays tug of war with his handshakes. If someone didn’t vote for Hillary because she didn’t smile, they’re a bigot and were already covered. It has nothing to do with her ability to connect and everything to do with what bigots expect from women while giving a complete pass to men.
It’s not really about the firm handshake. Obama, Bill Clinton, Reagan, and Trump had one thing in common: they condensed what their supporters were already thinking into short, inspirational tweet-sized messages that convinced their supporters that they were understood. “Shining city on the hill”, “I feel your pain”, etc.
Kerry, Gore, Romney, and Hillary Clinton all lacked this gift. In fact, they sometimes had the opposite effect (“Corporations are people my friend”). And though I know what Hillary Clinton stood for, nothing she said was particularly memorable.
If you look at what I replied to, firm handshake, strong voice, confident posture… those complaints are specifically designed so women cannot achieve them.
You’re making a general statement about something else, but I am responding to a specific list.
I’m talking about criticism of her “ability to connect”. It’s valid criticism, and it’s not an impossible standard for women to achieve. AOC has it in spades, practically every tweet makes supporters swoon. Same was true of Obama. But it’s not true of HRC.
If only she wasn’t so shrill /sarcasm
If I could go back to one alternate timeline, it’d be the one where Hillary didn’t back away from her basket of deplorables but doubled down on it instead. I think she could have found a way to turn that so-called negative into a defining moment of strength and righteousness. Because, holy f*ck, was she ever right.
I absolutely agree. She should have said, “yeah, those guys are deplorable. You don’t want to be like them, do you?”