How to take a bird's eye view of the Democratic contest
Yes, I'll still do this kind of thing. Political science. However, I'm going to handle this a little differently. I have no intention of getting into the details of this week's "debate," and yes, I'll use sarcastic scare-quotes around the word, "debate," because I don't think it really qualified by any objective definition of the word.
Where should your attention be? Not debates, obviously. (Sort of. I'll address them.)
Polls? We are approaching the point at which you need to pay attention to the polls. At the national level, Biden still has a lead, and we are not yet at the point at which the state-by-state polls mean anything. In a month or two, you can start looking at Iowa and New Hampshire, but nothing else, because numbers elsewhere will shift if things shake out differently in IA/NH. Of course, I have to pick on The Party Decides. As far as endorsements go, Biden should have run away with this thing, but his lead in endorsements is pretty narrow... over Kamala Harris, and she's basically out of the game.
Where does that put things? Predictively, our basic problem is that we use the past to forecast the future, but there aren't any past contests that look like what we now see. That means anyone telling you that they have any confidence how this comes out is not to be trusted. There just isn't any history here, and so there is little basis for social science. 2016 put the final nail in the coffin of The Party Decides, and the notion that party elites control the process by signaling their preferences through endorsements. Money? It has always been an over-emphasized component. Once you get enough for visibility, it stops mattering. Diminishing returns. Ideological positioning? Most of the candidates are fighting over narrow distinctions. The VP thing? We've got a wrench thrown in the works by a four-year gap. Add in an insane number of candidates, which complicates everything, and there's no model, and no history.
At PredictIt, the money favors Warren over Biden, despite the national polls because the gamblers are discounting the polls and endorsements. After that, Sanders only slightly edges out Yang, then Harris, who is second to Biden in 538's endorsement tracker, and... do you see my point?
Political science has never really been any good at presidential nomination contests. There are too many possible dynamics that can occur, and this one... this one is particularly idiosyncratic. No history, no political science-based forecast.
And always remember Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment. Whatever models we develop, and whatever power they have for explaining underlying trends, we need to allow for the possibility of unpredictable shocks at the level of any one individual event. Suppose I think that Biden's polling lead and endorsement lead both hold. He's... old. He could have the worst senior moment in presidential election history. He could pull a Chevy Chase-as-Gerald Ford, trip and fall, break his hip and land in the hospital. He could lose bowel/bladder control on the stage, or something like that! Suppose I go with the gamblers, and think that Biden's lead is illusory, and just based on name recognition. Someone could dig up some paperwork showing that Warren actually did get that professorship based, in part, on claims of Native American ancestry because the university wanted to tout diversity numbers. I can't say for certain that nothing like this will happen, and whatever craziness I can concoct, reality has already concocted crazier in recent American history.
So, what will happen? Nobody has a solid enough lead that it can't change on a dime. That's the bird's eye view.
Here's what we can see, from a higher vantage point. The leftward march of the Democratic Party. And here, I bring back a set of discussions that happened right around and after the 2016 election both on and off The Unmutual. They had to do with what I called the "Burn It Down" theory of American politics. It went something like this. Ra's Al Ghul from the Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins had the right idea. When a place gets sufficiently corrupt, it just needs to be torn down so that you can start anew. Ra's had a plan to destroy Gotham because it was a hellhole. Something new and better needed to take its place. The "burn it down," theory of 2016, espoused by some lefties, was that Trump would be so horrendous as to be akin to the Great Depression, and just as the Great Depression gave rise to the New Deal, Trump would give rise to a new left.
Well, the Democratic Party is moving far left. But here's the thing. There's... no depression. There isn't even a recession. There's talk about the possibility of a recession, but it ain't here. There are plenty of things wrong, but in economic terms, there's... no recession. There is a disjoint for Trump because he has such a low approval rating given the state of the economy because of who he is and what he does, but economically... the country is still fine. And while political science has little of value to say about presidential primaries, we have models that work just fine for general elections. And they say that without a recession, the incumbent tends to win. With the complication being that we haven't seen a president this unpopular with an economy like this.
So here's the problem for the "burn it down" theory. Ain't no fire! Things wrong? Certainly! It is always worth paying attention to Bright Line Watch, in particular, if you care about the state of democracy in America, but the fire necessary for the "burn it down" theory just isn't igniting.
Yet, the leftward march of the Democratic Party based on the presumed flaminess of the country is proceeding apace. Implications? First, ceteris paribus, centrism is an electoral advantage. In 1932, you can run away from the middle as a Democrat and still win because... seriously. However, in a close election, you need every advantage you can get. Mostly, presidential elections turn on the economy, though. If the economy keeps going strong, the internal policy fights in the Democratic Party are all sturm und drang. If the economy starts to dip, they are undercutting their own chances by running from the center at a pace more available to someone in O'Rourke's age range than someone in Biden's age range.
So, as you watch the twists and turns of the Democratic reality show, remember a few things. First, none of these proposals will ever become policy. Second, the further left they are, the more likely they are to hurt the nominee in the general election. Third, if the economy doesn't turn around, this is all a sideshow anyway. Fourth, why should I try making predictions about the race?
Where should your attention be? Not debates, obviously. (Sort of. I'll address them.)
Polls? We are approaching the point at which you need to pay attention to the polls. At the national level, Biden still has a lead, and we are not yet at the point at which the state-by-state polls mean anything. In a month or two, you can start looking at Iowa and New Hampshire, but nothing else, because numbers elsewhere will shift if things shake out differently in IA/NH. Of course, I have to pick on The Party Decides. As far as endorsements go, Biden should have run away with this thing, but his lead in endorsements is pretty narrow... over Kamala Harris, and she's basically out of the game.
Where does that put things? Predictively, our basic problem is that we use the past to forecast the future, but there aren't any past contests that look like what we now see. That means anyone telling you that they have any confidence how this comes out is not to be trusted. There just isn't any history here, and so there is little basis for social science. 2016 put the final nail in the coffin of The Party Decides, and the notion that party elites control the process by signaling their preferences through endorsements. Money? It has always been an over-emphasized component. Once you get enough for visibility, it stops mattering. Diminishing returns. Ideological positioning? Most of the candidates are fighting over narrow distinctions. The VP thing? We've got a wrench thrown in the works by a four-year gap. Add in an insane number of candidates, which complicates everything, and there's no model, and no history.
At PredictIt, the money favors Warren over Biden, despite the national polls because the gamblers are discounting the polls and endorsements. After that, Sanders only slightly edges out Yang, then Harris, who is second to Biden in 538's endorsement tracker, and... do you see my point?
Political science has never really been any good at presidential nomination contests. There are too many possible dynamics that can occur, and this one... this one is particularly idiosyncratic. No history, no political science-based forecast.
And always remember Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment. Whatever models we develop, and whatever power they have for explaining underlying trends, we need to allow for the possibility of unpredictable shocks at the level of any one individual event. Suppose I think that Biden's polling lead and endorsement lead both hold. He's... old. He could have the worst senior moment in presidential election history. He could pull a Chevy Chase-as-Gerald Ford, trip and fall, break his hip and land in the hospital. He could lose bowel/bladder control on the stage, or something like that! Suppose I go with the gamblers, and think that Biden's lead is illusory, and just based on name recognition. Someone could dig up some paperwork showing that Warren actually did get that professorship based, in part, on claims of Native American ancestry because the university wanted to tout diversity numbers. I can't say for certain that nothing like this will happen, and whatever craziness I can concoct, reality has already concocted crazier in recent American history.
So, what will happen? Nobody has a solid enough lead that it can't change on a dime. That's the bird's eye view.
Here's what we can see, from a higher vantage point. The leftward march of the Democratic Party. And here, I bring back a set of discussions that happened right around and after the 2016 election both on and off The Unmutual. They had to do with what I called the "Burn It Down" theory of American politics. It went something like this. Ra's Al Ghul from the Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins had the right idea. When a place gets sufficiently corrupt, it just needs to be torn down so that you can start anew. Ra's had a plan to destroy Gotham because it was a hellhole. Something new and better needed to take its place. The "burn it down," theory of 2016, espoused by some lefties, was that Trump would be so horrendous as to be akin to the Great Depression, and just as the Great Depression gave rise to the New Deal, Trump would give rise to a new left.
Well, the Democratic Party is moving far left. But here's the thing. There's... no depression. There isn't even a recession. There's talk about the possibility of a recession, but it ain't here. There are plenty of things wrong, but in economic terms, there's... no recession. There is a disjoint for Trump because he has such a low approval rating given the state of the economy because of who he is and what he does, but economically... the country is still fine. And while political science has little of value to say about presidential primaries, we have models that work just fine for general elections. And they say that without a recession, the incumbent tends to win. With the complication being that we haven't seen a president this unpopular with an economy like this.
So here's the problem for the "burn it down" theory. Ain't no fire! Things wrong? Certainly! It is always worth paying attention to Bright Line Watch, in particular, if you care about the state of democracy in America, but the fire necessary for the "burn it down" theory just isn't igniting.
Yet, the leftward march of the Democratic Party based on the presumed flaminess of the country is proceeding apace. Implications? First, ceteris paribus, centrism is an electoral advantage. In 1932, you can run away from the middle as a Democrat and still win because... seriously. However, in a close election, you need every advantage you can get. Mostly, presidential elections turn on the economy, though. If the economy keeps going strong, the internal policy fights in the Democratic Party are all sturm und drang. If the economy starts to dip, they are undercutting their own chances by running from the center at a pace more available to someone in O'Rourke's age range than someone in Biden's age range.
So, as you watch the twists and turns of the Democratic reality show, remember a few things. First, none of these proposals will ever become policy. Second, the further left they are, the more likely they are to hurt the nominee in the general election. Third, if the economy doesn't turn around, this is all a sideshow anyway. Fourth, why should I try making predictions about the race?
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