We’re back to this crap again. Sorry, but how many presidencies do we have to go through to discover that this is simply a unicorn in American politics. Both parties are guilty of this in the grand crusade to build the permanent political majority or the durable majority. I’m pretty sure the Obama folks thought his coalition would be durable. Trump smashed it in 2016. George W. Bush’s group thought a national security umbrella could create a durable majority post-9/11. That was eviscerated in the 2006 midterms. As so many have noted, like Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende, there are many ways to skin the electoral cat. Before George Will left the Republican Party over Trump, he aptly noted that public opinion is shiftable sand, therefore, there are no permanent victories in American politics. Why should we think it’s any different regarding voters?
The best part is that we all know how Biden got into the White House. If we remove all the 2020 funny business that happened, you could see how his marginal improvement among white working-class voters in the Rust Belt probably is what carried him over in some key states. We’re a system where geographic diversity is rewarded in national elections, and white working-class voters are a key group. And therein, lies the problem: Democrats hate these people. They’re viewed as no better than Nazis in some circles within urban and coastal America. These uneducated bumpkins deserve economic destitution. In the minds of liberal America, their deaths are a sign of progress. Why do you think the Left is so gung-ho about the Green New Deal and other initiatives aimed at gutting coal and natural gas? It will destroy these rural white working-class communities.
Well, E.J. Dionne, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, is back with an op-ed hoping that Biden can create a durable majority:
The GOP isn’t growing its base. It’s main strategy is shrinking the electorate. This gives Biden & Dems a shot at a durable majority—if they make inroads among non-college voters.
— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) May 3, 2021
My column: Stranded on Trump Island, the GOP lets Biden play the long game. https://t.co/mxw8L8TYZI
It’s hard to imagine that any Republican will win more of the White, non-college-educated vote than Trump did, so some parts of that electorate are up for grabs. Democrats do not need to carry this group; a shift of five or 10 points among these voters would put the GOP on its heels.
This is the upshot of a new report by Aliza Astrow, a political analyst for the centrist Democratic group Third Way. The report is both a warning and a promise. As long as Democrats stay weak among non-college-educated voters, she argues, they will have trouble holding, let alone strengthening, their control over the House and Senate. And they will continue to face agonizing fights to win the electoral college, even with large leads in the national popular vote. But modest shifts toward the Democrats among voters without a college degree would change the game.
Third Way-ers and the Democratic Party’s left often feud, so it’s worth emphasizing that Astrow’s analysis is not rooted in ideology.
Recommended
Oh, you bet these two wings feud. There is nothing more cancerous to the American electorate than the white, college-educated liberals who have infected the Democratic Party. Dionne touches on this a bit, but this is the real internal issue that the Left will have to face, and it could torch the whole circus. Most American voters are not liberal. Nonwhite voters do not describe themselves as liberal as well. White liberals are hardcore in almost every issue, and since they give disproportionate amounts of money to the Democratic Party—their calls are being returned and they’re controlling more of the messaging on the agenda. That has led to nonwhite voters fleeing the Democratic Party. We saw this with Hispanics especially in 2020.
David Shor is a 2012 Obama campaign veteran, pollster, data scientist, and senior fellow for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Yeah, he’s no conservative, but he offered some insight into the Democratic Party’s issues post-2020 in New York Magazine. He noted that because white progressives are so ideological in everything—they’re going to wreck the ship eventually. Nonwhites do not share their views on a host of issues, especially racial resentment. Yes, ‘defund the police’ cause a lot of black and Hispanic voters to back Republicans in 2020. Shor added that white liberals also tend to put feelings before facts. Hispanic voters are not as progressive on immigration. For years, a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens barely registers above 50 percent on this issue, though white liberals are pushing as if ALL Hispanic voters are on that bandwagon. The narrative is not supported by the data. In short, white liberals seek to have elections based on ideology and a liberal vs. conservative dichotomy. Shor warns if that's the playbook, Democrats stand to lose a ton of votes:
...as Democrats have traded non-college-educated voters for college-educated ones, white liberals’ share of voice and clout in the Democratic Party has gone up. And since white voters are sorting on ideology more than nonwhite voters, we’ve ended up in a situation where white liberals are more left wing than Black and Hispanic Democrats on pretty much every issue: taxes, health care, policing, and even on racial issues or various measures of “racial resentment.” So as white liberals increasingly define the party’s image and messaging, that’s going to turn off nonwhite conservative Democrats and push them against us.
[…]
…if you look at the concrete questions, white liberals are to the left of Hispanic Democrats, but also of Black Democrats, on defunding the police and those ideological questions about the source of racial inequity.
Regardless, even if a majority of nonwhite people agreed with liberals on all of these issues, the fundamental problem is that Democrats have been relying on the support of roughly 90 percent of Black voters and 70 percent of Hispanic voters. So if Democrats elevate issues or theories that a large minority of nonwhite voters reject, it’s going to be hard to keep those margins. Because these issues are strongly correlated with ideology. And Black conservatives and Hispanic conservatives don’t actually buy into a lot of these intellectual theories of racism. They often have a very different conception of how to help the Black or Hispanic community than liberals do. And I don’t think we can buy our way out of this trade-off. Most voters are not liberals. If we polarize the electorate on ideology — or if nationally prominent Democrats raise the salience of issues that polarize the electorate on ideology — we’re going to lose a lot of votes.
This seems important. "Defund the police" may really have hurt Democrats' standing with nonwhite voters.https://t.co/kxmqvDXO3V pic.twitter.com/tdCAjq3STk
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) March 3, 2021
David Wasserman of Cook Political Report also threw cold water on this op-ed, noting that Trump lost the popular vote, had high disapprovals (though I never trusted that poll), and was still able to come within around 43,000 votes of winning a second term. Expanding the electorate didn’t exactly help Democrats in 2020; it wasn’t a slam-dunk. In all, Wasserman noted, as some others already have, that demography is not destiny and maybe it’s horrendously overrated.
After Trump came within 42,915 votes of winning reelection despite really high disapproval and losing the popular vote by 7 million+, I think we should all be pretty cautious about the notion either party is on the verge of a "durable majority." https://t.co/ldmGRbYnIC
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 4, 2021
There's also not a lot of evidence the vast expansion of the electorate in '20 helped Dems or that "shrinking the electorate" necessarily helps Rs.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 4, 2021
Trump did well w/ less politically engaged voters in a lot of states, and made serious gains w/ Hispanic and Asian voters vs. '16.
Interesting fact: the state that had the biggest percentage turnout increase vs. '16, Hawaii, also saw the biggest pro-Trump margin shift vs. '16.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 4, 2021
In general, 2020 was a pretty poor election for the theory that demographics will ultimately "doom" the GOP.
Again, Trump’s base will still be a problem for Democrats. As Shor noted, Trump voters are efficiently spread out all over the country. Again, circling back to geographic diversity, which Democrats don’t have. Shor sat down with Bill Maher in March, where the HBO host and comedian noted that it’s really the Left leading the division charge, not Trump Republicans.
There’s a lot not to like about the current Democratic Party’s agenda, being pro-crime being the least of it.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member