You know, when you observe something for a long time, whether professionally, or out of perverse personal pleasure, after a while you start to get a kind of a deel for the object of your attention, a normal flow that tends to occur.
In presidential political campaigns, there is normally an almost formal dance, a kind of slow waltz to the affair. Polling tends to show what the most important issues are to the voters, who are what this whole exercise is really purported to be about, and then candidates start declaring that they have the best solutions to these issues, and then start jetting around the country, eating a lot of local delicacies, and expelling toxic amounts of greenhouse gas emissions explaining how they’ll fi everything for all of us rubes. But what if the driving force for the electorate isn’t an issue at all?
Right from the get-go,in poll after poll of Democratic and independent voters, the overriding factor in choosing a candidate for them was electablity. Namely, they’ll nominate anybody who can kick Trump’s scruffy ass out of our big white house. Electability i not an issue, it’s a concept. Voters have even said that they would support a candidate with whom they had moderate to major differences on particular issues, just so long as they knock Trumpty Dumpty off of the damn wall. That’s why Joe Biden led almost every single poll, even before he formally announced, people knew Biden, his experience, and his personality, and decided that he was the best shot to take down His Lowness.
Recently, Iowa polls have shown a little movement, a modest decline for Biden, but significant up swings for Warren and Buttigieg, along with a modest decline for Sanders. Remember two things about these polls. First, they are not an accurate arbiter of Biden’s popularity nationwide, mainly because Biden is cleaning up with African American voters, and those voters only make up 3% of the population of Iowa. And second, Iowa is a caucus state. If a candidate chosen does not make the cut, their supporters move over to another remaining candidate. And right now, Biden and warren are tied as second choice candidates.
But here’s the slightly different prism through which I’m looking at these polling results. Electability is still far and away the major selling point for voters when assessing these candidates, and Biden is still their favorite. But when candidates like Warren and Buttigieg start to climb the polls, that means that not only do voters like their messages and proposals, it also means that they think the candidate can beat Trump! warren’s “plans for everything” may give voters nocturnal emissions, but if they don’t think that she can beat Trump, they don’t do her a bit of good, since defeating Trump is the ultimate objective.
This is terrible news for Biden. Because, electaility is all he has to offer. His age is against him, especially with younger, more activist voters, as are his past and current positions on several key issues. People are willing to forgive those things for now, but if candidates like Warren or Buttigieg become seen as viable contenders against Trump, Biden will be hard pressed to woo them back into the fold again.
And this is even worse news for Bernie Sanders, for two reasons. First of all, Warren and Buttigieg seem to be eating into his popularity at a much higher rate than Biden’s. That’s concerning if you’re a front runner, but if you’re already in second place, it’s a recipe for disaster. And numero dos, at least in Iowa, Sanders isn’t even a majority of the voters second choice! If Biden and Warren continue to split the lions share of second choice votes, and the polling is accurate, then if Sanders doesn’t win it all, the best he can hope for is third place. This would be a stinging blow to a candidate that was within the margin of error with Biden not all that long ago, when Biden entered the race.
Y’all can do whatever you like of course. but with the odd dynamic of having a race where issues are not the top concern, electabilty is, I’m going to look at future polls, especially nationally, in both ways. First, how popular are the individual candidates. Amd second, when a candidate moves up or down, what does that say about peoples perception as to their electability? Until another issues overtakes it, I’m going to look at it as the deciding factor, and the polls reflect it.
Sanders is still running like it’s 2016 – he hasn’t learned anything from that campaign, like how women and minorities matter.
He also hasn’t stopped slagging the “Democratic establishment” and reopening the wound of 2016, continuing to blabber about being cheated. I could’t believe it when he started talking about the super delegates in Iowa a few months ago and how they won it for Hillary before a single vote was cast. He won that battle with the DNC by falsely demonizing them, and the DNC lost a ton of recurring donations from angry Hillary supporters, sick of this nonsense and believing that the DNC was cowering to Bernie.
I know…And now he has the additional problem of a bunch of OTHER candidates pitching his same ideas, but with other policies and personalities voters find more attractive…
“Electability” isn’t just a concept it’s an abstract concept constructed out of air. Joe Biden has an IMAGE of “electability” because he looks like what most presidents and presidential candidates, and what most politicians, have ALWAYS looked like: distinguished, gray-haired older white men. But, since nobody I ever encounter is really excited about Biden, I think his “electability” is questionable.
Honestly, I think, given the right campaign, the right landscape, a favorable matchup with Trump, an effective fight against voter suppression, control of Russian interference and less bias from the media, ANY of our candidates COULD beat trump, with the exception of Bernie Sanders, who has made himself unelectable by running against the Democratic Party (“the establishment”) and the very grassroots Democrats who are essential to winning an election. I cannot conceive of how longtime local Democratic worker bees would be able to go into a Bernie HQ and feel comfortable; they would be treated with condescension and disdain by his staff.
Otherwise, with the right decisions, the right campaign and some luck, anyone MIGHT prevail. But in this climate, I think a woman candidate would be FAR more “electable.”
Thank you…You just [ut it better and more cogently than I ever could have…
He’s talking about “working with Republicans” as if it were the 70s and they were still a reasonably sane party. He’s got nothing to show to people about how that’s going to happen now, when they’re a personality cult.
I don’t have a dog in the hunt, not a Biden guy or anyone else. But I don’t think older grey haired white folks like myself have been the preferred candidates for the last 70 years at least. People have selected younger males. Since 1960 Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Bush II, Obama were all younger than 60 when elected. The only exceptions have been Reagan, bush I and trump. I think there is a vibrancy factor, raygun and bush clearing firewood etc, trump cheating at golf. I suspect the lead candidate will emerge from the younger candidates. but what do I know.
Personally, I still find the very idea that the Democratic Party even permits INDEPENDENT Bernie Sanders to play in the Party’s contest without requiring Sanders to JOIN the Party first to be abominable.
I still believe it was a mistake to let INDEPENDENT Sanders have any say or influence in internal Party matters following the Presidential election but after the man BROKE his 2016 post-convention pledge to run as a Democrat in ALL future races (when he went crawling back to the Senate as an Independent because “the voters elected him as an Independent”) and then ran for re-election last year as an Independent, Sanders should’ve been kicked to the curb by the DNC. If he wants to participate in the Senate Democratic Caucus, that’s fine, but the Party shouldn’t reward his behavior. Sanders shouldn’t even be allowed to participate in any PARTY debates until he actually joins the Party and puts a “D” behind his name formally.
He’s current dropping in polls. He’s got all the support he’s going to get, it appears.
I tend to generally agree with your piece.
One point I’d make is that electability isn’t scientific at all. That is to say, political scientists have never been able to accurately poll, measure or predict electability. In fact, the track record is to predict it almost as poorly as you possibly can with entirely unpredictable results.
If trying to cast a ballot based on electability, for most voters it’s totally subjective. Some ASSUME that maybe Sanders is electable because he has high favorables, and the nation seems ready for a fighter. Some ASSUME Biden is electable because voters look back on the Obama era with nostalgia, and he has a good start in rebuilding the rainbow coalition. Are either of these assumptions actually true? I have no idea…and nobody does. They seem logical, but the history of predicting electability says they could be totally wrong.
So if we make this election about electability, my prediction is that everyone will break into factions on that discussion, and we will never have a way of knowing who’s wrong and who’s right…even after the election is over and we know the results. I don’t think this will necessarily create a rift that causes issues…but I do think everyone will pick their own litmus test for electability and generally ignore everyone else’s methodology.
Added to this, an electability debate is kinda pointless in the long term. If we argue over healthcare, we can come to conclusions and build proposals that will be valuable in future elections. But electability debates are one-time debates that offer no future benefits. I’d argue it was pointless to argue Clinton/Sanders electability even in 2016…but those discussions sure as heck produced no benefits for 2020 or beyond, where our arguments over college plans DID offer some resolutions that I think could be helpful for this cycle’s candidates – those debates offered plans and proposals to build on.
So what’s my overall point? I guess I’m thinking of Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice, in which he asks which will end the world. There is no answer to that question… and in some ways I feel the electability question is the same.
Wait a second…OMG… PARODY POEM TIME. Here we go.
Some say Biden can win the vote,
Some find Sanders nice.
From what I see in polls so rote
I think that Biden could get Trump’s goat.
But if I had to forecast twice,
I think the numbers may suggest
Bernie’s got mad zeitgeist,
And might suffice.
Okay, enough trampling on Robert Frost’s memory and life’s work, ha.
Nope, electabiity is not able to be quantitatively measured, but in all honesty, neither can voting…Programs and agendas get you only so far, but after that, it’s a voters visceral “gut” feeling about the candidates that helps to finalize their decision…