15 Comments
User's avatar
Barrett Holmes's avatar

Say he's at beneath his exit approval rating by midterms. How does that bode?

Expand full comment
Philip's avatar

Elliott, I noticed that Beutler picked up on your WARP ratings. As far as I can tell, I think he completely got the point of moderation being helpful all else equal, but swamped by other factors. He also assembled a strategy around this that I find really constructive. For example:

- Do NOT attempt to overhaul the party to fit some standard of centrism.

- Select candidates according to politics of the district (so, more emphasis on moderation in R districts)

- Accept a few targeted heterodoxies

- Avoid "procedural" heterodoxies, i.e taking it easy on the Trump regime

You might have already responded to it somewhere, but if not, I was curious what you thought.

https://www.offmessage.net/p/the-bad-math-driving-democratic-infighting

BTW the right candidate for the district thing has always seemed obvious to me, but then I consider the flak Manchin used to get on Twitter and wonder what people are expecting. Also the two-dimensional "fight"/policy paradigm is really salient IMO.

Expand full comment
Cynthia Phillips's avatar

The good news is declining Trump numbers means Republicans are less-likely to prevail in the mid-terms. The bad news is declining Trump numbers means cheating by gerrymandering, physical intimidation by homeland security, and election law gaming is fixing to hit Democrats hard in the mid-terms.

These polls really mean Democrats need to stymie for all of the above. Trump’s lack of popularity while he is in a position of power is not self-executing. It means we need to stop his consolidation of power right now.

Expand full comment
Conor Gallogly's avatar

I realize it’s hard to pass up recruitment of Cooper and Brown. They’ve both won multiple statewide races in difficult states. And I think that Democrats would be better served if their primary candidates for Senate were more like those in Iowa: Josh Turek (46), JD Scholten (45), Jackie Norris (55), Zach Wahls (34), and Nathan Sage (40s, couldn’t find DoB).

Elected Democrats are old and it’ll take a while for the association with Biden’s age to go. So running some regular middle aged candidates seems to be the way even if they haven’t yet proven they can win statewide. Especially in these mildly red states in which no Democrat has won statewide recently.

Expand full comment
Rebecca's avatar

"...Ipsos will use demographic (and other?) data about humans enrolled in its KnowledgePanel to feed into a LLM and extract the text answers the AI 'thinks' are most likely… instead of, you know, just ask people what they think."

Dangerous. Reminds me of Asimov's Multivac computer that figured out election results without anyone having to vote.

Expand full comment
Cayce Jones's avatar

LLM may not be far removed from GIGO.

Expand full comment
celeste k.'s avatar

Ohio is lucky to have Sherrod Brown back. I hope they're smart enough to realize it.

Expand full comment
Paul G's avatar

I’m less thrilled.

Brown will be 73 in November. We need to get younger regardless of ideology.

Expand full comment
celeste k.'s avatar

He is a voice of reason and an honest representative of the people he represented in the past. He is not too old, and very well qualified to do what a representative is elected to do - speak for those who elected him. He did so in the past, and Ohio is fortunate that he is coming back to do it again.

Expand full comment
Marliss Desens's avatar

We need a qualified person who can win. It is not about age--heck, look at the old guy the Republicans elected!--it is about knowledge and quality of ideas and the ability to put experience into action.

Expand full comment
A Pat's avatar

Am I reading this correctly. 70% still approve? WTF. They better snap out of it bc this guy does not have their back. Read! Read! Read! Find out what is really happening young people!

Expand full comment
jwr's avatar

To be clear, this is 70% of young people *who voted for Trump*, not 70% of all young people. ~6 months in and he's lost ~1/3 of his support among this group *of his previous supporters.*

Expand full comment
G. Elliott Morris's avatar

That’s right

Expand full comment
Philip's avatar
1dEdited

Yeah, I knew this was going to throw a lot of people when I read:

> For comparison, he started out at 95% approve with adults ages 18-34

Although it's tiresome to restate the *whole* scope numerous times, once you give the age range it probably saves some grief to be ultra-clear. Also kind of funny that 5% of his young voters disapproved by Jan 20, but it's polling and 5% may not recall why they voted for him. :)

Expand full comment
G. Elliott Morris's avatar

Good point.

Expand full comment