Handicapping The Democratic Field IV

With Kamala Harris dropping out unexpectedly this week, now's a great time to update where I think the Democratic field stands (as well as find a new candidate, as she was my top pick!)

As I see it the race remains kind of typical of past wide open Democratic cycles like 2004, 1992, and 1988. That is the Democrats started out with a large field of perhaps 40 people and it's slowly but surely been winnowed down to 15 as of right now. Oh there's been some bumps along the way, a vanity gazillionaire candidacy here, a "why-are-you-getting-in-now?" there, 10,001 media cycles about "gaffes". But from on a macro level it's more or less that things are proceeding pretty normally for the Democrats (unlike how they did for the Republicans in the 2016 cycle).

With that said I like the idea of differentiating between "officially winnowed" that is when a candidate says they are done (like Harris did this week) and "functionally winnowed" where a candidate can no longer win but are still "running". As an example, Montana governor Steve Bullock was "functionally winnowed" not long after he announced because he went nowhere in terms of polling, fundraising, or endorsements. Meanwhile Cory Booker was functionally winnowed at some point over the last few months by my reckoning as he failed to breakthrough to voters and thus appears to be on his way to not qualifying for the December debate, arguably his last chance to make his case to a large audience. 

Accordingly I will follow my model of ranking the candidates by tiers and then go through the remaining candidates who I'd consider "functionally winnowed" and what's going on with them.

Tier 1A:
Joe Biden: Folks he remains the frontrunner. Despite never ending "gaffes", despite a progressive press that often mocks him as a buffoon, despite being almost as old as Bernie, despite all the predictions that he couldn't win (see here, here, here, and here) he remains the front runner. That is to say he remains a comfortably 10 or more points ahead of his closes rival Bernie Sanders in Real Clear Politics (RCP) poll tracker and continues to lead comfortably in endorsements, two metrics that historically get increasingly predictive as we get closer to Iowa. Moreover his multi-racial coalition of older, more working class supporters don't seem to care about the "gaffes" or the negative coverage he gets. This doesn't mean he's going to win, a lot could still happen, but he's in the lead. A good comparison in terms of Democratic nomination politics might be Walter Mondale in the 1984 cycle, but in a slightly weaker position. But then again Mondale won the nomination.

Tier 1B:
Elizabeth Warren: November was a bad month for Warren, she's fallen over 12 points in RCP's national tracker and her endorsements have slowed to a crawl (she got just two House Reps in 538's tracker was in November). But even so that puts her in third place nationally in the polls and second place in endorsements which are real strengths. And she has a vast army of progressive donors and activists backing her up. In other works she's taken some steps back recently but I still see her as someone who could possibly put together a big tend coalition and win in the end.

Tier 2A:
Pete Buttigieg: Pete's had a great run of polling as of late shooting up to 11 percent nationally in RCP's tracker. That's a real accomplishment, but the reason I'd leave him out of the top tier is that he remains incredibly weak in two key sectors. For one he seems to have little to no support among non-white voters in general and black voters in particular. The reality in today's Democratic Party is you simply can not be the nominee without significant support from black voters, the last one able to do it was Dukakis in 1988, and a lots changed since then. Secondly he's just really weak with Democratic Party actors. In 538's endorsement tracker he's at 25 points compared to Biden's 161. Both of these are major hurdles to overcome and I remain skeptical he can do it in the remaining two months before Iowa. But again  lot can still change.

Tier 2B:
Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar: I remain quite bearish on Bernie's chances. I suppose anything is possible but nothing I've seen since I last wrote about this in July has fundamentally changed my view of him as a factional candidate running in a party that values coalition building and big-tentism. He has caught up to Amy Klobuchar in endorsements, but he also had a heart attack, which I guess is rude to point out but always struck me as a big deal. Again anything is possible, but I personally just don't see it, especially since he remains at 16 or so percent nationally despite running nonstop for five years and having higher than 90 percent name recognition. Klobuchar is kind of the opposite in that she is way behind everyone else in national polling, but has shown and uptick in Iowa and is poised to possibly surge. Will this happen? Well the door is closing for her, and the December debate might be her last chance, but Iowa is a strange place and something could still happen.

Tier 3:
Michael Bloomberg: I really doubt Michael Bloomberg will be the nominee. He's spent part of his career as a Republican. He's given to Republicans as recently as 2016. His track record in New York City is admirable to many, but not so much among key Democratic constituencies. He's also not contesting the early states. Having said that he has more money than God and apparently wants to spend it all on television advertising. Can he win? Again Trump shows anything is possible, but I doubt it. 

And that's kind of it, everyone else strikes me as being "functionally winnowed", I run through what's going on bullet point style:

• Michael Bennet: I guess he really hates being in the Senate and so wants to be doing this for a while longer, but I don't see him winning (if he ever was a plausible nominee).
• Cory Booker: A once promising candidate, it just didn't work out for him as he's never broken out. Apparently he's going to stick around and give speeches about "what it all means" but yeah he's done, especially since he has his day job to get back to.
• Julian Castro: Like Booker he's toast but also wants to stick around and highlight various issues and causes and such. Good for him, but it's over and that he only has a platform because he's still running and that can't last forever.
• John Delaney: To paraphrase David Karol: "He's a wealthy retiree, this is his hobby now." I have no idea when he'll formally drop out, but he's finished.
• Tulsi Gabbard: I have no idea what's going on here. Maybe auditioning for a sweet gig as a talking head on Fox News bashing Democrats all day? Maybe she'll have to settle for Russia Today? Who knows, who cares.
•  Deval Patrick: Maybe there's a new type of winnowing here? Let's called it the unwinnowed, that is someone who runs in the "invisible primary", gets winnowed, then comes back from the dead like a zombie for more! Interesting sub-field of candidates to study I guess, but yeah he's not going to win.
•  Tom Steyer: Basically John Delaney, but with much, much more money.
•  Marrianne Williamson: Selling books.
•  Andrew Yang: Yang is only famous and only has a platform because of running, so probably won't be leaving anytime soon, but he's also not going to win.

-->--> In other words the Democrats are still dealing with a lot of candidates but expect a lot to continue to drop out between now and Iowa, or just stop being relevant.

Impeachment Reloaded

Back in the spring I wrote a longish post about where I stood on the whole issue of if the House should impeach Trump. I made a number of arguments about why I thought proceeding with impeachment then based on "Russiagate" stuff would have few upsides and many potential downsides. As I put it then, " I'm fairly confident of this: impeaching Trump without hope of conviction by the Senate and removal from office is a bad idea basically all around."

So how do I think this piece holds up now that we are seeing Trump ask foreign governments to go after his political rivals? Well at the risk of appearing to want to have my cake and eat it too I'd argue that my position made sense then, but things seem to really have changed over the last two weeks. In other words while I still think my skepticism of impeachment back then made sense, it's hard for me to not see it as necessary or even inevitable now.

I won't go over all my old points, but I do think things really have changed. The thing to remember here is impeachment is a political not legal process. That is to say rather than being about questions of law, whether it will make sense or work is really based on if the politics of it will work. And it seems to me that the politics of impeachment are now working.

To begin with, it appears that we are seeing real movement on the popularity of impeachment with 538's new cool tracker showing the public moving for a fairly substantial 10 plus point opposition to impeachment, to a new slight plurality of support after the Ukraine bombshell hit. To be fair this is hardly a giant shift, but it is real and shows that Ukraine revelations seemed to have really changed the game. 

Likewise we've seen a major shift in how many GOP party actors are responding to this new crisis  (and Trump's subsequent King Charles I style behavior) compared to their response to previous Trump created crises. Back when the Mueller Report came out, most GOP party actors took to defending Trump and toting the White's House's line that it was a witch hunt, or a "nothing burger" etc.

But recently we are seeing something quite different with two Republican governors expressing support for impeachment proceedings. Likewise we've seen a number of statements from prominent senators that, while aren't the same a backing impeachment, are a far cry from past support for the Trump Administration. And other Senators just refuse to say anything.  

This is a pretty big deal. Oftentimes we like to think of political opposition or support for something as being binary, where you're either for or against it. But in politics support is largely a variable with a whole spectrum of support or opposition to a given action or position. Think of a campaign endorsement, if someone agrees to endorse your campaign it could mean a number of different thing from just saying "Okay you can put my name on your website" on one end of the spectrum to "I can wait to start campaigning for you and helping you fundraise!" on the other end.

The same sort of dynamic is going on with Republicans and impeachment. One one end of the spectrum Republican politicians can just go with "Fake news!" or trot out the White House's latest talking points, while on the other end they could call for Trump to resign. Just saying nothing, that is refusing to defend the president in public, thus is actually not good at all for Trump and somewhere in the middle.

Finally, I'd argue that a major different between Ukraine stuff and Russia stuff (we really need to find better terminology for these things) is that for better or for worse the American public are big believers in the philosophy of "look forward, not back." And that reality is a big part about why the reactions to Russia appear quite different the recent reactions to Ukraine. The Russia stuff was largy about Trump's misconduct in the past and tied up in people's complex feelings about the 2016 elections.

But the Ukraine scandal is quite different as it's about current and ongoing misconduct by the president, not past events. Likewise it's fundamentally about the future election of 2020, and if Trump will use his position as POTUS to try to unduly influence the elction via his powers of office and the nation's foreign policy, rather than about relitigating 2016. 

Oh yeah that and the story of Trump and Russia is a pretty epic saga, while Ukrainegate is based on simple, uncontested facts. The American public is not big on dense, complicated stories.

At this point I'm not going to make a prediction about if Trump will be impeached and if so if he'll be removed from office. But that outcomes now seems at least possible, which means the Democrats' political calculus should change quite a bit from where it was back in the spring. In other words, since this a political process the fact that the politics of it now seem to work means the Democrats moving forward makes a lot of sense.

What Liberal Billionaires Want

Recently ThinkProgress, a long running news site published by the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress was shut down.

The news caused quite the stir on the more liberal portions of the internet. It was a staple of progressive online politics over the years and it's one of those more obscure websites that you might not have heard of but cast a pretty long shadow. The Daily Beast summed up it's impact as:

At its peak, there were few more important pieces of unapologetically progressive, online real estate than ThinkProgress. The site combined original reporting with an attack-dog mentality to target Republican lawmakers and conservative ideas. A testament to its success is found in the list of prominent alumni currently working in politics and journalism. That list includes Faiz Shakir, who now serves as Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign manager; Amanda Terkel, the D.C. bureau chief of the Huffington Post; Nico Pitney, the political director at NowThis; Alex Seitz-Wald, a top campaign reporter for NBC News; Ali Gharib, a senior news editor at The Intercept; and Matt Yglesias, one of the founding members of Vox. 

If you follow online progressive writing that's a pretty impressive roster.

Personally I'm not very interested in the ins and outs of why this happened. Suffice to say after years of putting money into an ideologically oriented liberals news venture liberal megadonors in CAP's orbit decided to put it elsewhere, thus causing the site to be shut down. And the most notable of these has to be Tom Steyer who's decided to quit CAP's board and plow his money into his vanity presidential campaign.

It's fair to say that conservative mega donors take a very different approach. Over the decades they've spent huge sums of money to bankroll long term ideological projects on everything from a push to shrink the welfare state to rolling back the regulatory state to advocating for reductions in immigration.

This also applies to online news sites where there's a host of newer sites backed by real conservative money (you can find online if you want, I'm not going to bother to link).

Online there was a lot of heated discussion over this news. With all sorts of progressive and "Left" folks claiming it showed a serious missallocation of resources. The words "stupid" and "corrupt" got thrown around a lot as well.

I suppose it's possible that this is just stupidity, but I think it could be just another good example of how the two parties are actually more asymmetrical than we are often led to believe.

As political scientists David Hopkins and Matt Grossman point out in their book Asymmetrical Politics, one way to think about the two parties is that the Republicans tend to be more of a ideologically driven movement while the Democrats tend to be more of a coalition that comes together in order to win elections.

From that position long term ideological media projects would seem particularly hard for Democratically aligned groups like CAP to keep going. After all, coalitions change over time and it makes sense that projects like a more liberal minded news website could become less important over the years, especially because a lot of online news and commentary sites are like that these days.

More over lots of liberal gazillionaires seem to like more shot term measurable projects, like the bus lanes recently put in by Minneapolis funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies. These bus lanes might not change the game in the long term about how the public thinks about transportation and climate change, but the are creating real measurable improvements that also serve as a proof of concept on how to improve existing infrastructure for a more transit friendly future.

Add in the fact that the more progressive policies these sorts of sites would advocate for almost by definition are going to include those that could hurt the material interests liberal billionaires (like saying we should tax billionaires more), and the long term connection between these sorts of megadonors and efforts like ThinkProgress becomes even more tenuous.  

That's not to say that there's no value in long term investment in training young progressive journalists or other ideological oriented projects. Tom Steyer spending his money on keeping ThinkProgress going is surely much more useful for liberals than blowing it on early state ads so he can get into the debates.  But there appear to real problems to the idea of trying to replicate The National Review but for liberals online, and looking for a different model than "Tom Steyer should bankroll us forever" probably makes sense.

Handicaping the Democratic Field III

Well the first round the Democratic debates just happened last week and so I thought it would be a good time to check in on where things stand at this point in the 2020 election cycle.

Obviously there hasn't been a lot of dramatic upheaval over the weekend, but still I think there have been enough changes to justify an update. Especially since we probably won't see a whole lot of changes until the next round of debates at the end of July.

One non-candidate trend that I thought was important to acknowledge was just how popular these debates were with over 18 million people watching the second one on TV or online (the first debate had about 15 million viewers). It's hard to tell what sort of effects this popularity might have on either the nomination or the general election in 2020, but this overwhelming level of engagement by Democrats seems like a notable part of the 2020 election cycle.

The conventional wisdom appears to be that Biden had a pretty lousy night and a number of other candidate, especially Kamala Harris, did much better. Rather than parse those takes, I'd rather focus on developments since then with a focus on where party actors seem to be lining up. With that in mind I'll use the tier system I've used before to try and rank where I think things stand.

Tier 1:
Joe Biden: While I'll agree he had a pretty bad night and his poll numbers have gone down a bit, folks he's still the front runner. Looking at the RCP poll aggregator he remains about 12 points above Bernie, his nearest rival and 13.5 above Harris and Warren his next closet challengers. To be sure that's a pretty big hit from where he was just a few weeks ago, but he's still very much in the lead. But while poll respondents are fickle, party actors tend to stick with their picks, and Biden remains in the lead with party actors picking up two major endorsements since the debate with Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms backing him. This puts him at 102 points in 538's endorsement tracker compared to his closet rival Kamala Harris at 75, a small but very real lead. Moreover Biden's endorsement remain the most diverse of the whole field both in terms of types of supporters and also geography. He's in a weaker position than he was at the start of June but he remains the front runner, at least for now.

Tier 2A: 
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris: Harris and Warren remain in the best position to beat Biden. Harris' widely praised debate performance has helped her shoot up since then to basically tie Warren at around 13.5% in RCP's poll aggregator. Meanwhile a wave a positive news coverage has helped Warren go up in the polls as well since the beginning of June. If there is a major difference between the two at this point I'd say that Harris is much stronger in endorsements. Over June she picked up six more House Members, only one of which was from California showing a broader geographical base of support that she's sported in the past. With Warren one thing that strikes me as a real weak point is how despite the weeks of glowing coverage in the media and a well received debate performance she hasn't added a single new endorsement to 538's tracker since mid-May. Seriously, why can't Warren get other Democrats to support her?

Tier 2B: 
Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker: These are the two candidates who strike mes as being most likely to be able to make the jump to Warren and Harris's level, but each has some pretty major weaknesses. Booker remains stuck in the doldrums in polling at around 3% despite a well received debate performance. However Booker does have an impressive list of supporters from New Jersey giving him an important base and I suppose he could spiral up sometime in future just like Harris recently did, so don't write him off. Mayor Pete has a different set of problems, his polling numbers have come down some and he hasn't been able to line up much party support but he's still doing better than Booker in the polls and raised an impressive $24 million this quarter which could easily keep him viable through Iowa. His big problem right now is something close to a total lack of support from non-white people. See this recent Quinnipiac University poll that has him at 0% among black voters. There's just no way he can win if he can't fix this, but the good news is he has time to try.

Tier 2C:
Bernie Sanders: This may seem weird since I'm moving the number two guy in the polls down but I really think Bernie is in trouble. Over at CNN Harry Enten does a good job of laying out some of the grim news in recent polling for Bernie (despite almost universal name recognition he's going down and especially weak in Iowa these days, a state he almost won four years ago). But I think the problems are even bigger for him than that. The fact of the matter is he's running a "factional candidacy" where he basically has this chunk of the party dead set behind him and he's trying to take over the whole party with it George McGovern style. The problem is Democrats seem to still want someone who can build a big tent coalition style campaign and that really leave him SOL. While I suppose he could still try to reboot his campaign, his debate performance, which was basically just him giving his 2016 stump speech over and over again in response to every question, just makes me really doubtful of this.

Tier 3A:
Julian Castro, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar: This is basically the group of people I think have the best chance of being able to make the jump into the second tier. Each has their own problems and none is doing particular well in polls but they seem like plausible contenders if they get some lucky breaks so they have that going from them. Klobuchar and Castro have the very real problem of needing better polling to qualify for the September debate, but Castro was able to parlay a strong debate performance into fundraising and Klobuchar has a strong base of Minnesota endorsements. Beto is in a bit of a different boat as he already had a major surge in press coverage and polling only to see it fade away, but lighting can always strike twice.

Tier 3B:
Jay Inslee, Steve Bullock: In another cycle either of these could have been plausible contenders but they don't seem to be going anywhere. Then again both are successful governors and have at least some party support in terms of endorsements so I suppose they have a chance to try to get things going over the summer, but they remain pretty far behind Tier 3A.

Tier 3C:
Kristen Gillibrand, Michael Bennet: This is basically the tier for 3B people with even bigger problems. With Bennet it's a total lack of endorsements or polling support despite a well received debate performance among some journalists. I don't know what's gone wrong for Gillibrand but her incredible weaknesses in polling and endorsements after months of going full bore makes her seem pretty likely to drop out soon if things don't change.

Tier 4:
Delaney, Gabbard, Moulton, Ryan, Swalwell, de Blasio, Hickenlooper: This basically the tier of Representatives going nowhere, a mayor of New York City going nowhere, and a former popular governor who's campaign is falling apart while also going nowhere. They are really unlikely to win at this point, but I suppose anything is possible in the Age of Trump, (after all Castro was able to escape Tier 4 with a good debate performance by my reckoning!)

Tier 5: 
Everyone else: This is everyone else, they are running for some reason.

(Special case: Stacey Abrams: If she did run I'd guess I'd put her in Tier 4 at this point. If she was considering running for president her decision to sit things out until the fall was a major blunder with the race having moved on and resources being captured by other campaigns all summer long. I also doubt she could qualify for any debates at this point, a lesson Steve Bullock learned after he decided to take a wait and see approach. Finally, I suspect her decision to frame her choice in terms of what's best for her rather than the country or voters wouldn't serve her well if she did run. Sure didn't work for Beto.) 

I'll check back in after the second round of debates!

Handicapping the Democratic Field II

I wanted to write an update to my predictions back in the fall about where the 2020 Democratic hopefuls stand and since we are about a month out before the first round of debates, now seems like a great time, so let's do it.

First off I think there were some major developments over the last nine months that have really changed things quite a bit. To begin with we've had a lot of "winnowing" over the last nine months. By winnowed here I mean candidates who basically started doing the things one does when running for president but for whatever reason(s) decided to quit in one way or another, even if they never got around to formally announcing.

Seth Masket has made a great online tracker of people who were "winnowed" and it's quit a few. By Seth's count there are already 16 of these (I'd count some of the people he has still on there as having been winnowed or never run as well) and while the Democrats are still stuck with a ridiculously large field (I think the official count is like 23 at this point) it could be a lot larger with a lot of big name governors, senators, and former cabinet officials in the mix. But they aren't because well, #winnowingworks, as we like to say on Twitter.

Moreover this process of winnowing is good evidence that the presidential nominations process is working as it is suppose to (in theory). That is a huge number of people start doing the things you need to do to be president and that number is winnowed down over the course of the campaign to more manageable number (say 10) by the time the Iowa caucuses roll around. This number is then wacked down further going into New Hampshire, and well, you get the drift.

A major problem for the Republicans in the 2016 cycle, and a key reason Trump was able to ultimately win, is this winnowing process didn't seem work, or kicked in too late. Candidates like John Kasich stayed in way after it was clear they could no longer mathematically win enough delegates to win and thus further split the anti-Trump vote. While the Republican party actors seemed to have failed to rally around one viable "not Trump" alternative. Indeed everyone from Marco Rubio to Mitt Romney seemed to play that role for a time.

So the good news for the Democrats is that the winnowing process seems to be working. But there's one big caveat here. Nobody has dropped out since mid-April meaning the pace of winnowing could have slowed down which could be a problem with a field this size. However, I think the smart money is on the debates winnowing quite a few candidates out between now and the fall, either by candidates failing to break out and calling it quits, or the new formal DNC rules shutting them out. 

The second big change is that Joe Biden decided to take the plunge. Which is a great segue into where I think the field stands at this point. Going off a Nate Silver's piece from about a month ago I'll go with "tiers" rather than rank everyone.

Tier 1:
Joe Biden: Folks he's the front runner. He consistently leads by a modest plurality in the polls so far which at this point are starting to get predictive about who will win the nomination. Likewise he 's easily ahead in the endorsement hunt with 94 points in Nate Silver's tracker compared to 57 for Booker and Harris, his closest rivals in that metric. More to the point Biden's support is much more diverse, in terms of types of politicians, regions, and yes race than most of his adversaries. Moreover while we don't have much information on his fundraising so far, what we have is pretty great for him. To be sure, he has a bunch of weaknesses as well, and I'm not really interested in going through them, but at this point it's fair to say he's the frontrunner, although hardly a dominate one. If I had to bet Biden vs the field at this point I'd bet the field, but he's still in the top tier by himself.

Tier 2A:
Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren: These are the candidates that seem closest behind Biden in a broad range of factors. They have decent polling, a large following, have raised lots of money so far, and have racked up a number of major endorsements. Between them I see Harris as being in the better position both in terms of polling and endorsements, but I could easily see Warren blowing up in the debates or any number of other things between now and Iowa.

Tier 2B:
Peter Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders. I know this sounds crazy, but once you adjust for Mayor Pete's relatively low name recognition and Bernie's relatively high name recognition arguably their polling is more similar than you'd think. the reason I would put these two in a lower subgroup than Harris and Warren is they both have pretty major weaknesses as party coalition builders which makes them below the A tier. Both obviously have difficulty winning over non-white voters and party actors, and Bernie's "factional" style candidacy is a pretty major problem. Likewise Mayor Pete's lack of conventional qualifications, even "inexperienced" Barack Obama was in the Senate for four years, makes me more skeptical of his chances. It might be an asset in the GOP to be political newbie, but it doesn't seem to help with the Democrats.

Tier 3A: 
Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker: We have now fallen into the "field" portion of the rankings were there's a bunch of people who could in theory win, but for whatever reason don't seem to be quite in the tier above them. Klobuchar and Booker both have impressive resumes, acceptable fundraising, and a slew of home state endorsements giving them an important base. But for whatever reason this hasn't translated into polling. To break out they are going to need something: a viral campaign moment, a big debate victory, or underdog performance in Iowa. If that happens they have they could start a upward spiral of positive coverage causing a spike in the polls producing more positive coverage etc. But right now it's just not there.

Tier 3B: 
Beto O'Rouke: In a slightly different boat than Klobuchar or Booker in that he already had his movement in the sun and the press moved on to a new shinny object (Mayor Pete!). The good news for him though is it could always happen again so he'd not finished yet. But he's not doing very well these days either.

Tier 3C: 
Hickenlooper, Inslee, Bennet, Bullock, Gillibrand: These are folks who in another cycle might have been a formidable candidate but they are either getting drown out in the noise, or are just not good at this, or something else is going wrong. Anything could happen so I could see any one spiraling up with a breakout moment, but they have less of a base to build on than the A or B tiers so it will be pretty hard. Gillibrand might be a special case in that powerful party actors may be working hard against her behind the scenes due to her role in Al Franken's downfall, but it's not clear.

Tier 4A: 
Castro, Delaney, Gabbard, Moulton, Ryan, Swalwell: This is the "Reps other than Beto" category and all of these folks seem like long shots, because they are. Indeed the last person to make the jump from the House to the White House directly was Garfield. Anyway I guess anything is possible, but don't count on it.

Tier 4B: 
Bill de Blasio. For various reasons being Mayor of New York City is a dead end job. Just ask Bloomberg, Rudy, Ed Koch, John Lindsey, or LaGuardia for that matter. So I really, really doubt Bill will win. But in the age of Trump anything is possible I guess.

Tier 5: 
Everyone else: This is everyone else, they are running for some reason.

(Special case: Stacey Abrams: If she did run I'd guess I'd put her in 3C. She would be the only candidate from the south and could in theory rally a lot of black voters (especially women) to her banner which would be a sizable block. That's not nothing, but then again it is getting pretty late in the process which means gathering the resources you need to win is harder and harder by the day. Moreover I suspect her decision to frame her choice in terms of what's best for her rather than the country or voters wouldn't serve her well if she did run. Sure didn't work for Beto.) 

We'll see were we stand at the after the first round of debates!






 

The Post About Impeachment

With the final release of the Mueller Report a whole lot of Very Online folks have started to demand that the Democrats respond to it by impeaching Trump. And the impeach Trump movement, once the providence of egotistical gazillionaires that think they know how to do politics better than Nancy Pelosi, has gotten real legs with none other than Elizabeth Warren coming out for it.

Personally I'm going to take a few days to try and process the whole Mueller Report before I try to figure out what it all means, but I'm fairly confident of this: impeaching Trump without hope of conviction by the Senate and removal from office is a bad idea basically all around.

To begin with, what exactly, is impeachment followed by failure in the Senate suppose to accomplish other than being an event of symbolic politics? Like I get why it will be good theater and all, but other than that I'm with Scott Lemiuex, "What would it accomplish? What end would it serve?"

I've read many Twitter threads and hot takes about this today and as far as I can tell nobody really knows, other than vague ideas about "doing the right thing". Which might make it worth it, if it wasn't for the major downsides and opportunity costs associated with a doomed impeachment drive (more on that is a bit).

Other pro-impeachment people claim that impeachment is something of a "use it or lose" thing were if the House doesn't move to do it right now (on Good Friday? Really?) they won't be able to in the future. This of course is just made up nonsense, there's nothing in the Constitution that says that just because impeachment isn't persued in April means it couldn't be picked up in September.

While others draw on Captain Picard and say "The line must be drawn!" otherwise it could never be drawn in the future. Setting aside the fact that Lilly is right in that scene and Picard is being deeply unreasonable by leading his crew on a doomed suicide mission (not that that's at all relevant!), this argument strikes me as being fairly nonsensical. What is the important difference between a "line" between the House impeaching Trump and those articles going on to fail to get a majority (let along the 2/3 super majority required for removal) in the Senate, which at this point is what almost certainly will happen and not impeaching? None that I can see, other than well, the political symbolism involved.

Another argument pro-impeachment folks like to bring up is the idea that impeachment focused hearings will get "everything on the record" or something like that. Again this is a weird argument, the House already has the power to hold hearing, issues subpoenas, and hear testimony on all sorts of Trump scandals, including those related to "Russiagate" or whatever we are calling it, and all the other large number of scandals swirling around the Trump Administration. All making it about impeachment would do is narrow the focus of those hearings to Russia and obstruction issues while relegating other major scandals to the sidelines.

The big thing here to me though is that while their clearly isn't much upside to an impeachment push that is doomed in the Senate, there are some pretty major potential downsides. Let's list them:

• Impeachment is really unpopular at this time. The polling we have is pretty uniform that most voters are opposed to impeachment, indeed it's actually less popular than Trump is which is saying something. Moreover people who voted in the midterms are opposed to impeachment by a large margin too.
• People don't care about Russia. While Russiagate (again we need better terminology for this scandal) is obviously a Yuge deal, it's just not that important to most voters. Out of 12 issues Gallup surveyed voters about before the 2018 Midterms "Investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 U.S. election" came in dead last, indeed it was the only issue to fail to get a majority of respondents to call it extremely or very important.
• There's a real "bait and switch" danger for Democrats here. The biggest issue for the Democrats in the 2018 Midterms was health care, deciding to just focus on impeachment just four months after being thrown in could be a major problem in 2020. Would you, as say a newly elected House member from a well to do suburban district that just swung blue (which is the type of district that got Democrats their House majority) want to go to the voters and say "I know you wanted me to deal with health care and education, and I promised to do that, but look, the political symbolism of impeachment is more important!" I sure wouldn't. Might you be seen as just another lying politician full of it? Is that the best strategy to win in your first reelection campaign?
• Negative partisanship. Negative partisanship, the documented phenomena of voting for a party not because you like their ideas or plans but because you really, really dislike the other side is part of why Trump was able to win with the narrowest of possible margins. Basically he got a lot of people who didn't like him to none the less "take the Trump plunge" because they disliked Hillary Clinton even more. In other words if just a small chunk of his 2016 coalition defects he's kind of toast and a lot of these voters are probably "getable" by appealing to issues other than "What do you think about the life and times of Hillary Clinton." Making impeachment the main issue of 2020, which it will become, will arguably drive those voters back into the arms of Trump via the same negative partisan reaction that got him elected.
• Opportunity costs are real. If you read accounts of the Nixon or Clinton impeachment sagas, one thing that becomes apparent is that once started they became something like political black holes sucking in everything and everyone in Washington. All other political concerns and most media coverage gets replaced by "all impeachment all the time" and little gets done with even government agencies become somewhat paralyzed as bureaucrats try to figure out if there's going to be a whole new administration to deal with. Divided government and a weak and embattled administration seeking reelection means the 116th Congress won't do a lot, but that hardly means nothing will get done. To pick one recent example at random (okay not at random as I worked on this) Congress and Trump recently made the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, this is a good thing as the fund has been something a partisan bargain chip recently despite being popular and dolling about $18.5 billion for conservation programs over it's 50 year history. This sort of bipartisan deal making is just the sort of thing Impeachmentgeddon makes really hard and while letting LWCF (as the kids call it) die might be worth it in exchange for saving the Republic, I don't think it's worth it if all I get in return is political symbolism.
• The Future. American society obviously has a lot of problems. And the Democrats have, I think, some reasonable solutions to these problems while the Republicans largely have white identity politics, never ending culture war focused on owning the libs, and a Trump personality cult. This is largely why I want to see the Democrats back in power. But one of the big problems facing Democrats is how should they prioritize their issues? Should they focus on climate change? Redistricting reform? Making DC and PR states? Another health care law? A universal basic income? A jobs guarantee? A infrastructure plan? "Getting big money out of politics"? Getting rid of the Electoral College? Universal paid family leave? High speed rail lines? A "Green New Deal"? Reparations? Child care subsidies? Student loan reform? A bigger Supreme Court? Regulating big tech? Anti-trust enforcement? Immigration reform? Abolishing ICE? Ending oil pipe lines? Breaking up big banks? Taxing the rich? Zoning reform? Early childhood education? That's just a partial list of policies I've seen Democratic contenders for the presidency talk about, and while smug progressives might want to answer "yes" to this question the reality of life, and our political system, is that trade offs and paradoxes are everywhere. Obama's decision to prioritize health care reform in 2009 instead of cap and trade was a big deal, while his focus on "good government reforms" in terms of vetting and staffing his administration made it much harder for him to get judges confirmed and people to take important jobs in the agencies. My worry is that "impeachment fever" makes the hard work of picking priorities for a future administration that much harder during this presidential nominations cycle, which in turn will make enacting a successful agenda the next time the Democrats get into power in the future that much harder as well. You see this with the Republicans where they simply failed to do the political and policy spadework during the Obama years needed to develop their own governing agenda. Which predictably lead to legislative fiasco and political disaster during the 115th Congress. This is not a good model to emulate.
• The Fourth Estate. Many of the same people who constantly complain about how terrible the media's coverage of Trump is are also the ones shouting online for impeachment. I find little reason to think the press is going to change their current style and method of covering Trump overnight because of article of impeachment being debated and instead see a lot more "'Views differ about partisan witch hunt' and 'Democrats, the only party with any causal impact on American politics, fail to remove Trump because they’re failures' coverage" instead, to use Lemieux's words. Robert Farley was a bit more blunt. Anyway I really don't get why a progressive person would invite this sort of thing. 

Meanwhile there are many other courses of action that come short of demanding impeachment now now now. For example, the Democrats in the House could just decide to investigate lots of stuff while leaving it an open question, they can always change their minds later or if new information emerges. Or they can decide to just "study the impeachment issue" in a series of hearing for now. Personally I'd pitch my own idea I remembered from my APUSH class when we were reading about the Secession Crisis. Slavery of course divided the North and united the South, but the political transformation of the question of "what do we do about slavery" to one about secession instead divided the South and united the North. So instead of making the political battle one that divides the Democrats and unites the Republicans, that is impeachment, change it up and purpose formal Censure of Trump by Congress, something that could easily unite the Democrats and divide the Republicans.

It would be historic and highly symbolic (only Andrew Jackson has been Censured) and sounds like a better plan than the current progressive idea of: do an unpopular thing that damages our ability to solve short or long term problems solely for the point of political symbolism. Or as Lemieux put it: "The only considerations of impeaching Trump with no hope of removal are political, and there’s every reason to think that the downside far exceeds the upside."
  

Beto Defended

So if you're like most of the American electorate these days you're probably either worried or outraged or glad-you-got-em-done about your taxes, happy to see spring finally arrive, or thinking about sports these days. But if you're one of us politically obsessed weirdos you're probably talking about the latest phenomenon to rock the Democrats' already ridiculously crowded field for 2020.

No, not Joe Biden. Beto O'Rouke! You know that guy who posed like Reagan in blue jeans? Yeah that guy.

To his detractors he's something of an up-jumped, "centrist", vapid, loser of a man, drench in "white male privilege" and perhaps a representation of everything that's wrong with politics these days.

To his fans he's...not those things. 

Anyway, he's who everyone is talking about these days (barring the Oprah run various media types dream of) but I think some people who are less that fans are missing his appeal, even if they get his weaknesses as a candidate and a potential president quite right.

This came apparent to me recently when listening to and episode of a fun podcast out there by two political scientists named Larry Becker and Tyler Hughes out of California State Univeristy, Northridge called The Filibluster. In their latest edition Becker and Hughes were talking about the "three white dudes" Biden, Bernie and Beto running for president and what it all means. I'll save the Bernie and Biden writing for another day, and while I agree with many of their points I did think they missed some important stuff about Beto's appeal. Especially when it comes to important party actors in the "invisible primary" party of the 2020 cycle we are in.

You should listen to the podcast to get their whole arguments, but I think it's fair to summarize Hughes' view of Beto's appeal as being "He's a young white bro, and that's how people see him, and that's what it's comes down to, he's this cool exurb bro...he's just charismatic and young and a male and a white dude."

I don't think these these points are necessarily wrong, Beto does seem to have a big appeal with a certain type of younger liberal white man ("identity politics" strikes again!) and those might be the sorts of people who do have some extra cash to contribute to his epic first 24 hour haul.

But while I get Hughes' frustration around Betomania, at the same time I think there's a reasonable argument for Beto as the Democratic nominee: simply put he may be one of the more electable candidate out there.

"Electability" in presidential politics is a very tricky subject. As Seth Masket pointed out recently much of the writing about electability is basically just praising white men for how they are very white and also men (and if I can date myself: questions about if you'd want to have a beer with them). Likewise I think most people, including me as an Obama-fanboy back in 2008, first pick their candidate, and then come up with reasons why they are the most "electable" to justify this pick to everyone else (often including themselves).

But to the degree we can measure how good a given candidate is at winning the presidency I'd argue that how they did in a statewide election relative to a "generic" person of their party is a good metric, regardless of if they won or loss. For example, Nate Silver's number crunching shows that Beto probably outperformed a generic Democrat significantly in 2016 even if he lost in a very conservative state. The same way there's good evidence in Warren under performs in her elections, even if she easily wins in a very liberal state.

Moreover I think O'Rourke has demonstrated an ability to solve a key problem for the Democrats. One of the reasons, among many others, Trump was able to win razor thin majorities in key Great Lakes States in 2016 was low turn out from otherwise very Democratic voting young people, and high levels of "defection" in the two party vote to third parties. We can argue about why this happened, I have my own theories, but it clearly was a problem. Just as it was for the Democrats in terms of the drop off in young people voting in 2010 and 2014. In Wisconsin in 2016 over 6% of voters cast ballots for third parties and write-ins, in 2012 it was just a little over 1%. Trump won by a little over 20,000 votes. (all numbers from Wikipedia).

In other words Beto, for all his flaws, has a prove ability to turn young people out to the polls. This is no small thing in an age of increasingly age related political polarization. So it should be no surprise Democratic political actors are excited about Beto, he might be able to fix a fairly major problem for them.

As a liberal and a party hack for the Democrats, Beto is hardly my first choice. Indeed I find his political style a bit much. Becker might wince at Beto's jumping up on countertops, but I kind of roll my eyes at his lack of experience and vagueness about policy. Being president is a hard job, and it takes a lot more than energy and charisma to do it well in my opinion.

But at the same time I get that most voters kind of hate politics, especially now, and often find it gross and awful, and want someone who "is different" and can "change Washington." Trump after all, used this to great effect last time around. Just as Obama did back in 2008.

So while I won't be supporting him anytime soon, I thing Becker and Hughes are wrong to dismiss Beto as simply an empty suit or product of cultural factors they dislike. From a Democratic Party actor standpoint there is a reasonable argument for him.

In what might be a close election, his vagueness and can-do optimism might just win the Electoral College.

(A terrible system they discuss in great detail in that same podcast). 

Trump Two Years In

Well I missed the official two year anniversary of Trump being sworn in as the 45th President of the United States, but I'd still like to get in my two cents on where we stand when it comes to President Game Show Host two years in.

Looking back on my post about this from last year, I was struck by how much of it remains spot on, but with another year's worth of examples to point out. For example, back then I wrote that, "...one year in what I see is a weak president, exhausted by the job, and becoming reactive to events, even if he does this by screaming on Twitter." Seems about right to me.

Likewise, a year ago I linked to an op-ed by political scientist Matt Glassman about Trump's weakness in office where he argued:

Trump has had a disastrous first year. His professional reputation is awful. Major figures from his own party routinely criticize his impulsive rhetoric and chaotic management, belittle his intelligence, mock his political ideas, and bemoan his lack of policy knowledge. The White House issues talking points, and high-ranking Republicans simply ignore them. Multiple Republican-led congressional committees are investigating his administration on topics ranging from ethics violations to foreign electoral collusion.

Similarly, the president’s public prestige, measured by approval ratings, is among the worst in the polling age. He entered office with record-low approval, 45 percent, and it has steadily declined into the 30s. No other president has had an approval lower than 49 percent in December of his first year; the average is 63 percent. Such numbers sap Trump’s power to leverage popularity into persuasion. They also depress party loyalists concerned about 2018 and embolden potential primary challengers for 2020.

After a year of the spreading Mueller probe, Trump's surrender over the shutdown, the Tennessee Valley Authority telling him to shove it, and a host of other example this trend has only accelerated. Indeed Matt has continued to write follow up Twitter threads about this over the last year.

So what if anything has changed? The obvious answer is the 2018 elections that led to the Democrats taking back the House and a host of successes in the Great Lakes States (well other than Ohio) that gave Trump his razor thin margin of victory in the Electoral College. This puts most of Trump's legislative agenda on hold. He can of course still do things like nominate judges to be confirmed by the Senate, one of the few successes of his administration so far, but the dreams of repealing the ACA or whatever are very much gone.

Which of course is why, as I write this, he his acting like a profoundly weak president and trying to get his "wall" build by declaring a phony emergency. In other words, a weak and flailing president has decided on a dangerous and poorly thought out course of action to get what he wants. As I put it a year ago when outlining Matt's rather grim conclusions:

Glassman pointed out these dangers in the end of his piece this way, "A president unable to effectively govern the bureaucracy or lead American foreign policy poses a distinctly nonpartisan problem for the nation." In other words Trump might try to do even stupider stuff than he's tried so far to compensate for his weakness.

At the same time the Democrats taking the House has opened a vast avenue of investigation and oversight of the Trump Administration that the Republicans under Paul Ryan had refused to pursue. Now however the flood gates are open. To cite just one example from today, Representative Jerrold Nadler has just now vowed to open an investigation into Trump's declared emergency. Meanwhile more Trump World figures are ending up caught in the Mueller Probe's net, all sorts of other avenues of potential presidential wrong doing are being found, and profound questions about Russia remain.  

As John Dean might put it, there is a cancer on the presidency, except in this case there might be more than one. 

But things aren't all bad for Trump, probably one of the bigger trends that I've observed over the last year is that while Trump seems increasingly destined for a failed one term presidency, the conservative movement and the institutional Republican Party seem increasingly to be aligning with Trump World. Thus you see conservative media personality and once #NeverTrump movement founder Erick Erickson proudly endorsing Trump for reelection. Indeed, the South Carolina Republican Party is openly discussing just not having a primary to do their part for the Dear Leader's renomination in 2020. 

In other words, while I used to think Trump might get dumped by the GOP if things went really south it appears his grip on the party is only tightening, which is a major change over the last year in my book. Another way of putting this is the conservative movement that remains dominate in the Grand Old Party seems increasingly defined by little more than white identity politics, never ending culture war to "own the libs", and a Trump personality cult.

This is bad for the nation, but I suppose it is good for Trump.

In other words two years in and he's still the same president he appeared to be all along. What does this mean for the 2020 election? Well, I'll save that for another post.

Yes Calling Trump A M-Fer Is (Probably) Dumb

The news is so crazy right now it's hard to keep track of things, however one of the "yet another crazy thing that happened today" really caught my eye and I want to write a blog post about it before it rapidly disappears into the maelstrom of the never-ending-Trumpian-news-cycle.

Basically Representative Rashida Tlaib, who represents Detroit, went on something of a tirade at a progressive fundraiser about impeaching Trump and called him a "motherfucker" (please note I am not disputing the factual nature of this claim.) Everyone on Twitter spent all day talking about it but I think a lot of these takes miss important points.

For fun let's do this Q and A style:

Q: This seems like a really dumb thing to talk about. Okay that wasn't a question...but what's your response?
A: It is really dumb, in a world of shutdowns and trade wars and everything else there are much more important things to talk about. Moreover it's dumb for the media to obsess over and also dumb to pretend that supporters of the president are actually outraged about this (Trump swears all the time.)
Q: So what's the point of this blog post?
A: Because while it is a dumb thing to obsess over, in some ways it was also (probably a) dumb thing for her to say.
Q: This seems pretty unfair on a number of levels, especially around gender. Male politicians swear all the time (see the president or Joe "big fucking deal" Biden), why is it bad for her but not for them?
A: Oh you're right politicians swear all the time, and I don't disagree around unfair gender norms at all, but the problem for Rep. Tlaib is that this sort of thing, while substantively is a nothing-burger, could hurt her "professional reputation" among other House members, not because of what she said about Trump, but what her remarks said about her.
Q: Go on...
A: In the House your professional reputation is a lot of what you have. Think of it as a place where you are always trying to size everyone else up, while being sized up in return. Is this person a straight shooter, or do they play fast and loose with the facts? Is this member actually knowledgeable about a given policy, or just pretending to be? Will this person have my back if my committee tangles with another, or will they hang me out to dry? That sort of thing.
Q: Is this person actually dangerous like Pelosi seems to be, or a push over? That sort of thing?
A: Exactly. In John Barry's classic book about then Speaker Jim Wright and the 100th Congress he has a line he keeps coming back to, "Everything said here matters, even the jokes." Why? Because...
Q: Jokes can be another form of conveying information?
A: Bingo.
Q: Okay this all makes sense, but I don't see why she was wrong to call Trump a "motherfucker."
A: Here's my point, when a new person comes to The Hill they kind of have to decide what sort of career they want, and if they are smart, base their choices around advancing that career. One career path is just being a advocate for your district who does what it takes to "bring home the bacon." Another is to specialize in a specific policy issues (say agriculture or Pell Grants) and work towards advancing it, often by working your way up on a committee. Another is being an "influencer" who works towards a leadership role in the future. Another is just to focus on reelection. And another is being the brash (one might say loud mouth) person who fights with the other side in a high profile way.
Q: Your point?
A: Well notice how what it takes to pursue these career paths all run up against each other. If you have the reputation of someone who just cares about your district or reelection it's harder to make allies for other work. To endear yourself to leadership you're going to raise tons of money, help other members get elected, and take unpopular votes, that's gonna hurt your chances for being known as someone who always gets money for your district's bridges. If you spend all day learning about changes to CREP it's hard to climb the ladder of power, or to develop the reputation of someone who can help you get reelected if you're in a tough race. You can of course try to balance these things to some degree but there are real trade offs.
Q: So you're saying if Rep. Tlaib spends her time calling people motherfuckers and makes major headlines, it's harder to pursue those other roles. I get that, but maybe she doesn't care about that and wants the partisan warrior role?
A: Oh sure maybe she does want that (hence the "probably" in the title), but it seems like she also wants to have influence with leadership in complex rules fights, while also wants to advance a really big policy agenda, and work on a lot of other stuff. The more time she spends trading insults with the president and calling for impeachment the harder it is to do that other stuff, like saying building the professional reputation of a possible future leader, or a policy wonk, or reliable negotiator with the White House for that matter. It's like a miniature version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's comically short coup attempt against potential future speaker Hakeem Jeffries. You can go down that road, but trying to advance a policy agenda or get stuff for your district is quite hard when you've made long term enemies if your own party's leadership. Why should they help you? Everyone knows what a pain in the butt you are.
Q:Okay but you're still not telling my why it's bad for her to do it but okay for someone like Biden to.
A: Well that's the thing, the nature of the job means really different constraints. Being Vice President basically automatically makes you a joke (see here, here, and here) so Biden didn't have much of reputation to lose. It could have been a bigger problem if he was say running for president where he has to be taken more seriously...which of course has always kind of been his political problem, because of the job and stuff like "big deal."
Q: So she's doomed?
A: No, it probably didn't hurt her reputation in the long run (unlike Ocasio-Cortez's ill fated war which very well may have) but it was still (probably) just a dumb thing to do.