Because they are scared to elevate a more talented candidate over the "presumed successor," even though voters don't believe in such a concept. That's at least one cause. Also, they are stuck on policy and candidate resume. Things that general election voters have paid little attention to in my life time. The current president isn't as s…
Because they are scared to elevate a more talented candidate over the "presumed successor," even though voters don't believe in such a concept. That's at least one cause. Also, they are stuck on policy and candidate resume. Things that general election voters have paid little attention to in my life time. The current president isn't as skilled as he was in 2020, and wasn't ever nearly as skilled as Clinton was. The key to the Whitehouse is talent.
Furthermore, the Democrats don't understand politics. It's astounding how amateurish they can be about this stuff. Take for example the platform of the current president during his 2020 campaign, and it looks like the new candidate will have essentially the same platform. This platform is further left than his ideal for a candidate that needs to appeal to swing state voters. Why they feel the need to cater to a base that is almost certainly going to vote for them anyways, or that they won't lose insignificant enough numbers to worry about, is beyond me. In 1996, Bill Clinton took positions that were very appealing to the median voter. You just don't see this here. And they still haven't learned that lesson. No way does Joe Biden beat anybody in 2020 besides Donald Trump. It is the dislike and the fatigue from Trump's term that gave the Democrats the White House. But they of course attributed to their candidate and their platform. I can assure you it had almost nothing to do with those thin
You would find very little difference regardless of who dems ran. (Probably the difference between the “worst” candidate and “best” is probably no more than 4 points…so Obama 2008)
No. Obama won pop vote in 2008 52.9 to 45.7%. Biden was 4.5% over trump. Sure partisanship makes a 1972 or 1984 landslide highly unlikely if not impossible, and lends an electoral college advantage to the GOP, but does not explain why Trump's ass has not been handed to him.
So no Clinton over dole numbers (and Ross perot was fairly popular for a 3rd party candidate btw). But no way the Democrat should be behind Trump. Now they may not once the race settles. But you won't be outside the margin of error. Which is quite possible with a generational talent. The Democrats promoted the presumed successor with the sorry fatalism they're known for.
They also trust opinion polling to get them elected in ways that ought to be considered dubious. It's not what voters say but what they do. For example, if they say climate change is a huge concern, you cant then talk about banning fossil fuel consumption etc. not in the Midwest where people still prefer American cars for crying out loud.
Kevin this isn’t true. Biden got 51% not 46%. Where are you getting that number?
First let’s stipulate a few things:
1. Obama ran in the best year ever (a financial crisis 2 months before the election after 8 years of war under the opposition party…Clinton would have crushed too but probably not as well as Obama).
2. Obama was a generational politician. Biden is not.
3. The media environment was drastically different in 2008 than 2020 or 2024 (social media was barely anything in 2008. I know I was an early investor in twitter).
First Biden got 51% of the vote in 2020 and Obama got 53% in 2008. A 2 point margin. Let’s get our facts straight here.
You are comparing Clinton’s reelection to Biden unseating an incumbent. Very very different. You would need to compare Clinton 1992 to Biden 2020 not his reelection bid in 1996.
I’m not sure if you noticed but look at almost every single election around the world. They are ALL getting crushed. Literally all of them. Doesn’t matter if they are left, center left, center, right, ultra right or even semi-authoritarian (Israel, Hungary, India, and turkey). It doesn’t matter if they are old or young or male or female. Incumbents and incumbent parties are just losing everywhere.
It’s easy to say “there has to be someone out there that everyone likes” but there is no evidence in our politics that this is true. Literally every president starts out at the highest favorability rate the day they take the oath. Then it falls until it’s at its lowest level when they leave office (true for Obama too).
I agree, Barack Obama would be on his 4th term by now if not for that darn 22nd Amendment.
But, there is no Barack Obama out there, and no, neither Whitmer or Shapiro are Obama. Maybe Whitmer would be running a point or two better right now. Maybe.
No way. Obama would not be on his 4th term. Not possible in our politics. He probably wins in 2016 but not 2020. Polarization has been skyrocketing during and since Obama.
I love whitmer. She is far too left for the presidential stage.
Shapiro is a big talent. Way way better than Harris. natural sounding and relatable. Moderate. From a must win swing state. He's the best talent since Obama. And is comparably gifted. Clinton and Obama were not highly touted talents who gradually worked their way up. That is a bunch of nonsense. Think big to win.
I'm not saying you're wrong but just to be clear I'm not talking about just the most recent news cycle or even just Harris/Biden or for that matter even just the presidency.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the Democrats. They do have both Georgia and 1.5 of Arizona's senate seats, plus the GA governorship, for example.
Still seems like an underperformance when the other side is MAGA.
Democrats have won basically all special elections since 2020. They have taken a lot of governorship and state legislatures since 2020. Compare 2012 to today. You would be surprised.
They did replenish the talent and now have a deep bench. But they refuse to use it, or maybe they can't because they boxed themselves in with the identity politics stuff. Which should have been clear was a total failure and no longer useful after the 2016 election. Yes, the nation really will elect a racist satanic piece of garbage like Trump if they dislike the Democratic candidate.
Counterpoint: have they won as much as you would expect with the opposition party being effectively controlled by Trump during that time period? Nope. I mean sure they have improved. But there's still a lot of amateur hour stuff.
That doesn't work as an explanation at all. There are a bunch of voters in several states that can be persuaded to vote for a candidate from either party. Sure, gains are limited by opportunities which are affected by partisanship. But it's not just partisanship. Especially not the presidential elections, which were won by not-hilary and then by not-trump.
Kevin, apologies, I didn’t mean there isn’t a very very small amount of people that aren’t pure partisans. I’m saying that polarization has made it impossible to have anything close to blowouts in national elections. Look at the difference between obama’s vote share in 2008 in probably the best environment imaginable and Biden’s win in 2020. It’s marginal and polarization has only gotten worse (also the media environment has fractured even more…100m cable subs in 2007 compared to 70m now).
I am not saying that there aren’t non-partisan voters, they are just vanishingly small. That’s all.
You could run satan versus Jesus and it would be a 53-47 election (honestly 55-45 probably).
Remember how decimated the Democratic party was in 2012? (state legislatures) They were in awfully bad shape then. Since 2020, they have made a pretty good comeback largely due to the extremeness of Trump supported candidates.
Yes this is a good point. They realized they neglected state and local stuff. They restocked their bench in recent mid term cycles. It took an overly long time though. I don't understand how they've let the their electoral appeal die on the vine for so many years. Though that's what's happening in the GOP right now, I think..
Because they are scared to elevate a more talented candidate over the "presumed successor," even though voters don't believe in such a concept. That's at least one cause. Also, they are stuck on policy and candidate resume. Things that general election voters have paid little attention to in my life time. The current president isn't as skilled as he was in 2020, and wasn't ever nearly as skilled as Clinton was. The key to the Whitehouse is talent.
Furthermore, the Democrats don't understand politics. It's astounding how amateurish they can be about this stuff. Take for example the platform of the current president during his 2020 campaign, and it looks like the new candidate will have essentially the same platform. This platform is further left than his ideal for a candidate that needs to appeal to swing state voters. Why they feel the need to cater to a base that is almost certainly going to vote for them anyways, or that they won't lose insignificant enough numbers to worry about, is beyond me. In 1996, Bill Clinton took positions that were very appealing to the median voter. You just don't see this here. And they still haven't learned that lesson. No way does Joe Biden beat anybody in 2020 besides Donald Trump. It is the dislike and the fatigue from Trump's term that gave the Democrats the White House. But they of course attributed to their candidate and their platform. I can assure you it had almost nothing to do with those thin
You would find very little difference regardless of who dems ran. (Probably the difference between the “worst” candidate and “best” is probably no more than 4 points…so Obama 2008)
No. Obama won pop vote in 2008 52.9 to 45.7%. Biden was 4.5% over trump. Sure partisanship makes a 1972 or 1984 landslide highly unlikely if not impossible, and lends an electoral college advantage to the GOP, but does not explain why Trump's ass has not been handed to him.
So no Clinton over dole numbers (and Ross perot was fairly popular for a 3rd party candidate btw). But no way the Democrat should be behind Trump. Now they may not once the race settles. But you won't be outside the margin of error. Which is quite possible with a generational talent. The Democrats promoted the presumed successor with the sorry fatalism they're known for.
They also trust opinion polling to get them elected in ways that ought to be considered dubious. It's not what voters say but what they do. For example, if they say climate change is a huge concern, you cant then talk about banning fossil fuel consumption etc. not in the Midwest where people still prefer American cars for crying out loud.
Kevin this isn’t true. Biden got 51% not 46%. Where are you getting that number?
First let’s stipulate a few things:
1. Obama ran in the best year ever (a financial crisis 2 months before the election after 8 years of war under the opposition party…Clinton would have crushed too but probably not as well as Obama).
2. Obama was a generational politician. Biden is not.
3. The media environment was drastically different in 2008 than 2020 or 2024 (social media was barely anything in 2008. I know I was an early investor in twitter).
First Biden got 51% of the vote in 2020 and Obama got 53% in 2008. A 2 point margin. Let’s get our facts straight here.
You are comparing Clinton’s reelection to Biden unseating an incumbent. Very very different. You would need to compare Clinton 1992 to Biden 2020 not his reelection bid in 1996.
I’m not sure if you noticed but look at almost every single election around the world. They are ALL getting crushed. Literally all of them. Doesn’t matter if they are left, center left, center, right, ultra right or even semi-authoritarian (Israel, Hungary, India, and turkey). It doesn’t matter if they are old or young or male or female. Incumbents and incumbent parties are just losing everywhere.
It’s easy to say “there has to be someone out there that everyone likes” but there is no evidence in our politics that this is true. Literally every president starts out at the highest favorability rate the day they take the oath. Then it falls until it’s at its lowest level when they leave office (true for Obama too).
I agree, Barack Obama would be on his 4th term by now if not for that darn 22nd Amendment.
But, there is no Barack Obama out there, and no, neither Whitmer or Shapiro are Obama. Maybe Whitmer would be running a point or two better right now. Maybe.
No way. Obama would not be on his 4th term. Not possible in our politics. He probably wins in 2016 but not 2020. Polarization has been skyrocketing during and since Obama.
I love whitmer. She is far too left for the presidential stage.
Shapiro is a big talent. Way way better than Harris. natural sounding and relatable. Moderate. From a must win swing state. He's the best talent since Obama. And is comparably gifted. Clinton and Obama were not highly touted talents who gradually worked their way up. That is a bunch of nonsense. Think big to win.
I'm not saying you're wrong but just to be clear I'm not talking about just the most recent news cycle or even just Harris/Biden or for that matter even just the presidency.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the Democrats. They do have both Georgia and 1.5 of Arizona's senate seats, plus the GA governorship, for example.
Still seems like an underperformance when the other side is MAGA.
I meant AZ governorship!
Democrats have won basically all special elections since 2020. They have taken a lot of governorship and state legislatures since 2020. Compare 2012 to today. You would be surprised.
They did replenish the talent and now have a deep bench. But they refuse to use it, or maybe they can't because they boxed themselves in with the identity politics stuff. Which should have been clear was a total failure and no longer useful after the 2016 election. Yes, the nation really will elect a racist satanic piece of garbage like Trump if they dislike the Democratic candidate.
Counterpoint: have they won as much as you would expect with the opposition party being effectively controlled by Trump during that time period? Nope. I mean sure they have improved. But there's still a lot of amateur hour stuff.
No they haven’t but that’s because voters don’t care much for anything other than partisanship. That’s the issue. It’s nothing to do with candidates
That doesn't work as an explanation at all. There are a bunch of voters in several states that can be persuaded to vote for a candidate from either party. Sure, gains are limited by opportunities which are affected by partisanship. But it's not just partisanship. Especially not the presidential elections, which were won by not-hilary and then by not-trump.
Kevin, apologies, I didn’t mean there isn’t a very very small amount of people that aren’t pure partisans. I’m saying that polarization has made it impossible to have anything close to blowouts in national elections. Look at the difference between obama’s vote share in 2008 in probably the best environment imaginable and Biden’s win in 2020. It’s marginal and polarization has only gotten worse (also the media environment has fractured even more…100m cable subs in 2007 compared to 70m now).
I am not saying that there aren’t non-partisan voters, they are just vanishingly small. That’s all.
You could run satan versus Jesus and it would be a 53-47 election (honestly 55-45 probably).
Remember how decimated the Democratic party was in 2012? (state legislatures) They were in awfully bad shape then. Since 2020, they have made a pretty good comeback largely due to the extremeness of Trump supported candidates.
Yes this is a good point. They realized they neglected state and local stuff. They restocked their bench in recent mid term cycles. It took an overly long time though. I don't understand how they've let the their electoral appeal die on the vine for so many years. Though that's what's happening in the GOP right now, I think..
So much of those losses were the result of passing Obama care. But now it is very popular.
"1.5 of Arizona's senate seats" - good one!
We're gonna level that up come November!!