Relying too much on what voters *say* about their motives and priorities can be a problem, especially for those who want to, as you put it, "prepare the party for the future." The Harris-Walz ticket was seriously handicapped by Biden's waffling and a very late start, and no way am I discounting sexism and racism as major factors -- "inflation" and "the economy" sound loftier in an interview, right? How many of those polled identify the impact of the Citizens United decision as a factor -- the no-holds-barred campaign spending?
Trump actually has shaken up the economy, interestingly. If tariffs and deportations were good instead of bad, he'd probably be doing well for the reasons you say.
Unfortunately I don't think there's much the Democrats can do, except for the abundance stuff, to make things much better economically. Price controls and Warren/Khan style antitrust would just kill the golden goose. Like you say, it needs to be something that actually improves living standards.
There is a deeper link to this and thermostatic equilibrium - individuals may have varying reasons for their behavior, but the whole is driven more by population-wide factors. One can make an analogy to Brownian motion among individual particles which looks random at the most granular layer, but tilt the pool one way or the other and you get a reliable flow due to fluid dynamics. The “Strategist Fallacy” is similar to the Elephant Rider fallacy - the drivers is not in control. The “Strategist Fallacy is even more pernicious - if we could only reason with the individual water molecules! Lots of billable hours in that solution.
This is what makes McConnell’s cynical SCOTUS moves in 2016 and 2020 so devious - SCOTUS is the only branch currently structurally insulated from public opinion. As such conservative policy can be wrapped in the auspices of law and routinely delivered in both Democratic and Republican administrations. But this is too clever by a half.
The point of conflict between oscillating in the fluid dynamics of public opinion and the legislating from the safe perch of the Supreme Court is that fluid dynamics only works if people actually have some control over government. The truest realization of judicial supremacy is that people will figure out that elections don’t matter anymore. And the thing elections are suppose to enable - peaceful transfer of power - the very premise of self-governance - will no longer work as intended by the founders.
Paul Krugman just did a piece on entrenched inflation. He used conditions in the late ‘70s/early 80s an example. In 1980 inflation was brutal. Everyone was painfully aware of it. Ronald Reagan ran away with the election. All of that fits into what you’ve described above. In December 1984, a month after the election, my wife and I settled on our first house at an interest rate north of 12%. Reagan had just won his second term by an even bigger margin. Now - things were suddenly getting better. Jobs were becoming easier to get (tho it took me nearly 14 months to find one after grad school), but inflation was NOT what we would think of as low.
You’ve sort-of given a thought (prediction) for ‘28. But looking at ‘32 - what if entrenched inflation is still around as it was in the first half of the 80s? How would an incumbent president fair in your charts the way Reagan did?
Elliott, your analyses this year, IMHO, have always been right on the mark.
A couple of other measures come to mind that the Democrats might propose and run effectively in both 2026 & 2028. In fact, public opinion literally specifies the issues that the public will pay attention to when a candidate promises to make big changes that can help them.
The beauty of these measures IMHO is that many of these promises could actually be fulfilled in a 4-year period if D's got a trifecta & abolished the filibuster:
(1) Require AI developers to pay the full cost of electricity and water their data centers require (& other resources they use). (As economists say, internalize costs that AI is currently externalizing in ways that voters hate.)
(2) Prevent abuses of social media [highlight CSAM] that their billionaire owners promote to increase their wealth - by regulating social media and AI as public utilities, if anyone asks how.
(3) Increase the minimum income tax on corporations (include capturing all income attributed to other countries where the corporations do business - but that's a detail not to campaign on.)
(4) Restore Eisenhower/JFK income tax rates on annual income in excess of $750,000 (say 70%, which research {Zucman?} establishes does not decrease work effort.)
(5) Highlight a commitment to impose a wealth tax on assets that exceed $100,000,000.
(6) Address the child care crisis by providing an income tax refundable credit - as part of, but in addition to, re-enacting the child tax credit.
(7). Increase the federal minimum wage to $30/hour - introduced incrementally over, say, 10 years.
(8) Point out that Social Security and Medicare benefits will have to be cut in less than 10 years [or more accurate #], thus congress will have to raise taxes on the billionaires. AND Increase benefits, at least 5-10%, if increased taxes on the wealthy can be projected to cover the increased benefits. [Increased benefits may be too dangerous to campaign on, since tax revenue proje toons are somewhat fraught.
(9) Promise accountability for ICE, pedophiles and other wrongdoers in the Epstein class - focus on compensation of the real victims, contrast to Trump $1.8 billion dollar slush fund paid from your tax dollars. (Can't promise criminal prosecution - convictions are very unlikely to be an achievable outcome.)
(10) Reform the corrupt Supreme Court by removing corrupt judges who promised under oath to follow precedent and then trampled roughshod over precedents like Roe v Wade. (Cosider adding 50 straight straight decisions for corporate interests (see Senator Whitehouse)).
Might add specific anti- corruption measures, if one or two can be stated and enforced simply. Don't promise more housing - can't jump start the building, and any attempt to push subsidies out quickly is going to be fraught with fraudsters.
I have read in several reports that this autopsy was bogus because it left out middle eastern policy as a factor. That is probably true, to be honest you also have to admit is left out his disastrous border policy and the crazy transgender stuff.
It is increasingly clear that a single axis model of the electorate (conservative to liberal) is so inadequate as to be misleading. What about a 3-axis model: cultural/moral (libertarian to traditionalist) to capture voters' feelings about social issues; governmental (oligarchy to democracy) to discern feelings about the emergence of the imperial presidency; and services (no HEW programs or progressive taxes to maximal HEW programs and progressive taxes) to reflect the feelings about the roles of government in social support and wealth transfer. A smart pollster might well find better ways of categorization and a smart graphic artist could construct a 3-dimensional plot. Why? To get a more nuanced analysis of the electorate's feelings than the strategists' brains can; to sharpen messaging about the economy whether it is good or bad; to discern the shape of the proposed New Course Forward by determining the "center" of the electorate in ways more accurate and adequate than those advocated on the common one axis model (e.g., "move to the left or to the right" to win the next election).
The discontent with the DNC is huge. No one at the DNC is actually listening to we the people. Until the old, entrenched big egos are out, and people who pay attention to real voters are in place, nothing for the party will change. The echo chamber that the autopsy arrived in will keep the blame game alive and nothing will change. Often, research arrives at the conclusions the funder wants to maintain the status quo. Not all research is meant to get to the truth in the private or public sector.
The primaries held at the state level may hold some beneficial information, but, I don’t know a single person who still attends the local Dem. caucus. If we could eliminate the electoral college, we might surprise ourselves with politicians who actually get policies voters want in place. The filtration happening between the local and national level is immense.
An autopsy is not ordinarily warranted for a 1.5 point loss, but it's warranted for 2024 because the opponent was Trump. Given Trump's extraordinary monstrousness, monstrousness which was readily apparent to anyone who didn't actively want to avoid seeing it, an establishment non-Trump party should, in any civilized society, have won a landslide victory over him regardless of economic conditions. The fact that voters' discontent with inflation, etc caused half or even close to half of them to support the fascist monster *should* therefore be autopsied, because in the long term to save liberal democracy we need some combination of cultural and institutional change to ensure that they don't make similarly horrific choices faced with similar circumstances.
The one massive factor that is ignored here is the billionaire (oligarch) propaganda that drives the unpopularity of Dem incumbents. When the oligarchs control almost all media - mainstream & social - it's no surprise that a moderately progressive admin like Biden's gets slammed with bad vibes. It's true that the oligarchs are better at creating discontent, anger, resentment and fear than anything positive, such that even their favorite autocrat gets pretty unpopular fast. But for progressives, the need to cut off the oligarch hydra's heads once and for all is overwhelming.
I can appreciate how campaign staffers feel after reading this compelling discussion of structural factors in presidential elections. They all want to find ways that actually win elections and not feel like we are driven by outside forces.
I think there are still important ways to win even with economic headwinds. First, Biden's team could have done a better job keeping his popularity ratings up. Biden seemed to think doing a good job would be rewarded, a common error among Democratic politicians. (People don't vote on facts or policy wins, they vote based on emotional narratives.) Biden needed to acknowledge the danger of voter distress over the economic chaos following Covid and actively blamed Trump and the Republicans much more aggressively than he did. That could have raised the presidential approval rating and possibly even voter sentiment about the future which drives the structural prediction model
The other interesting question is why did some past presidential campaigns do quite a bit better or worse than the structural model predicts? Just looking at the chart, plus being old and remembering elections since 1968, it looks like campaigns can have an effect beyond structural factors. Reagan had great messaging strategy and beat the model. Nixon did worse and of course Ford in 1976 was stuck with Nixon's Watergate scandal.
As a marketing guy, I have long argued that the Democratic party and it's national campaigns do a poor job of messaging and appear resistant to understanding the basics, much less how to build the vital brand building strategy that requires constant, consistent messaging around core values. Republicans have much more effective messaging and attack Democrats daily with coordinated messages. Dems think they will get rewarded by enacting popular policies and doing a big ad blast in two months before the general election every four years. The greatest ad campaign in the world has a hard time against four years of daily attacks.
If the Dems had a competent long-term messaging effort, that wouldn’t win every election but it would win a lot more.
This is most important analysis any politician can read. It's doubtful that many pay much attention to the 'autopsy' report, but the DNC did put out some money for a worthless document. And as for the pundits who make recommendations based on mythical voters, they're not worth reading either. Pundits who imagine NYT or WaPo reporting is going to sway some fraction of the electorate are living in a bubble.
Neither party organization is strong enough to prevent big screwups (Trump, CA gov primary), but looking at where candidates improved the margins, and systemic changes (National Popular Vote) would help. Otherwise, we'll just have to hope for charismatic, effective candidates to emerge.
Relying too much on what voters *say* about their motives and priorities can be a problem, especially for those who want to, as you put it, "prepare the party for the future." The Harris-Walz ticket was seriously handicapped by Biden's waffling and a very late start, and no way am I discounting sexism and racism as major factors -- "inflation" and "the economy" sound loftier in an interview, right? How many of those polled identify the impact of the Citizens United decision as a factor -- the no-holds-barred campaign spending?
Truly excellent, thoughtful analysis that gets to the data and understands the vibe. Share widely
This has a strong ring of truth for sure.
Trump actually has shaken up the economy, interestingly. If tariffs and deportations were good instead of bad, he'd probably be doing well for the reasons you say.
Unfortunately I don't think there's much the Democrats can do, except for the abundance stuff, to make things much better economically. Price controls and Warren/Khan style antitrust would just kill the golden goose. Like you say, it needs to be something that actually improves living standards.
There is a deeper link to this and thermostatic equilibrium - individuals may have varying reasons for their behavior, but the whole is driven more by population-wide factors. One can make an analogy to Brownian motion among individual particles which looks random at the most granular layer, but tilt the pool one way or the other and you get a reliable flow due to fluid dynamics. The “Strategist Fallacy” is similar to the Elephant Rider fallacy - the drivers is not in control. The “Strategist Fallacy is even more pernicious - if we could only reason with the individual water molecules! Lots of billable hours in that solution.
This is what makes McConnell’s cynical SCOTUS moves in 2016 and 2020 so devious - SCOTUS is the only branch currently structurally insulated from public opinion. As such conservative policy can be wrapped in the auspices of law and routinely delivered in both Democratic and Republican administrations. But this is too clever by a half.
The point of conflict between oscillating in the fluid dynamics of public opinion and the legislating from the safe perch of the Supreme Court is that fluid dynamics only works if people actually have some control over government. The truest realization of judicial supremacy is that people will figure out that elections don’t matter anymore. And the thing elections are suppose to enable - peaceful transfer of power - the very premise of self-governance - will no longer work as intended by the founders.
Paul Krugman just did a piece on entrenched inflation. He used conditions in the late ‘70s/early 80s an example. In 1980 inflation was brutal. Everyone was painfully aware of it. Ronald Reagan ran away with the election. All of that fits into what you’ve described above. In December 1984, a month after the election, my wife and I settled on our first house at an interest rate north of 12%. Reagan had just won his second term by an even bigger margin. Now - things were suddenly getting better. Jobs were becoming easier to get (tho it took me nearly 14 months to find one after grad school), but inflation was NOT what we would think of as low.
You’ve sort-of given a thought (prediction) for ‘28. But looking at ‘32 - what if entrenched inflation is still around as it was in the first half of the 80s? How would an incumbent president fair in your charts the way Reagan did?
Elliott, your analyses this year, IMHO, have always been right on the mark.
A couple of other measures come to mind that the Democrats might propose and run effectively in both 2026 & 2028. In fact, public opinion literally specifies the issues that the public will pay attention to when a candidate promises to make big changes that can help them.
The beauty of these measures IMHO is that many of these promises could actually be fulfilled in a 4-year period if D's got a trifecta & abolished the filibuster:
(1) Require AI developers to pay the full cost of electricity and water their data centers require (& other resources they use). (As economists say, internalize costs that AI is currently externalizing in ways that voters hate.)
(2) Prevent abuses of social media [highlight CSAM] that their billionaire owners promote to increase their wealth - by regulating social media and AI as public utilities, if anyone asks how.
(3) Increase the minimum income tax on corporations (include capturing all income attributed to other countries where the corporations do business - but that's a detail not to campaign on.)
(4) Restore Eisenhower/JFK income tax rates on annual income in excess of $750,000 (say 70%, which research {Zucman?} establishes does not decrease work effort.)
(5) Highlight a commitment to impose a wealth tax on assets that exceed $100,000,000.
(6) Address the child care crisis by providing an income tax refundable credit - as part of, but in addition to, re-enacting the child tax credit.
(7). Increase the federal minimum wage to $30/hour - introduced incrementally over, say, 10 years.
(8) Point out that Social Security and Medicare benefits will have to be cut in less than 10 years [or more accurate #], thus congress will have to raise taxes on the billionaires. AND Increase benefits, at least 5-10%, if increased taxes on the wealthy can be projected to cover the increased benefits. [Increased benefits may be too dangerous to campaign on, since tax revenue proje toons are somewhat fraught.
(9) Promise accountability for ICE, pedophiles and other wrongdoers in the Epstein class - focus on compensation of the real victims, contrast to Trump $1.8 billion dollar slush fund paid from your tax dollars. (Can't promise criminal prosecution - convictions are very unlikely to be an achievable outcome.)
(10) Reform the corrupt Supreme Court by removing corrupt judges who promised under oath to follow precedent and then trampled roughshod over precedents like Roe v Wade. (Cosider adding 50 straight straight decisions for corporate interests (see Senator Whitehouse)).
Might add specific anti- corruption measures, if one or two can be stated and enforced simply. Don't promise more housing - can't jump start the building, and any attempt to push subsidies out quickly is going to be fraught with fraudsters.
I have read in several reports that this autopsy was bogus because it left out middle eastern policy as a factor. That is probably true, to be honest you also have to admit is left out his disastrous border policy and the crazy transgender stuff.
It is increasingly clear that a single axis model of the electorate (conservative to liberal) is so inadequate as to be misleading. What about a 3-axis model: cultural/moral (libertarian to traditionalist) to capture voters' feelings about social issues; governmental (oligarchy to democracy) to discern feelings about the emergence of the imperial presidency; and services (no HEW programs or progressive taxes to maximal HEW programs and progressive taxes) to reflect the feelings about the roles of government in social support and wealth transfer. A smart pollster might well find better ways of categorization and a smart graphic artist could construct a 3-dimensional plot. Why? To get a more nuanced analysis of the electorate's feelings than the strategists' brains can; to sharpen messaging about the economy whether it is good or bad; to discern the shape of the proposed New Course Forward by determining the "center" of the electorate in ways more accurate and adequate than those advocated on the common one axis model (e.g., "move to the left or to the right" to win the next election).
The discontent with the DNC is huge. No one at the DNC is actually listening to we the people. Until the old, entrenched big egos are out, and people who pay attention to real voters are in place, nothing for the party will change. The echo chamber that the autopsy arrived in will keep the blame game alive and nothing will change. Often, research arrives at the conclusions the funder wants to maintain the status quo. Not all research is meant to get to the truth in the private or public sector.
The primaries held at the state level may hold some beneficial information, but, I don’t know a single person who still attends the local Dem. caucus. If we could eliminate the electoral college, we might surprise ourselves with politicians who actually get policies voters want in place. The filtration happening between the local and national level is immense.
An autopsy is not ordinarily warranted for a 1.5 point loss, but it's warranted for 2024 because the opponent was Trump. Given Trump's extraordinary monstrousness, monstrousness which was readily apparent to anyone who didn't actively want to avoid seeing it, an establishment non-Trump party should, in any civilized society, have won a landslide victory over him regardless of economic conditions. The fact that voters' discontent with inflation, etc caused half or even close to half of them to support the fascist monster *should* therefore be autopsied, because in the long term to save liberal democracy we need some combination of cultural and institutional change to ensure that they don't make similarly horrific choices faced with similar circumstances.
The one massive factor that is ignored here is the billionaire (oligarch) propaganda that drives the unpopularity of Dem incumbents. When the oligarchs control almost all media - mainstream & social - it's no surprise that a moderately progressive admin like Biden's gets slammed with bad vibes. It's true that the oligarchs are better at creating discontent, anger, resentment and fear than anything positive, such that even their favorite autocrat gets pretty unpopular fast. But for progressives, the need to cut off the oligarch hydra's heads once and for all is overwhelming.
"The word 'inflation' isn’t mentioned in the autopsy a single time . . ."
This is mind-boggling. Like trying to analyze the fall of France in 1940 without ever mentioning the German army.
I can appreciate how campaign staffers feel after reading this compelling discussion of structural factors in presidential elections. They all want to find ways that actually win elections and not feel like we are driven by outside forces.
I think there are still important ways to win even with economic headwinds. First, Biden's team could have done a better job keeping his popularity ratings up. Biden seemed to think doing a good job would be rewarded, a common error among Democratic politicians. (People don't vote on facts or policy wins, they vote based on emotional narratives.) Biden needed to acknowledge the danger of voter distress over the economic chaos following Covid and actively blamed Trump and the Republicans much more aggressively than he did. That could have raised the presidential approval rating and possibly even voter sentiment about the future which drives the structural prediction model
The other interesting question is why did some past presidential campaigns do quite a bit better or worse than the structural model predicts? Just looking at the chart, plus being old and remembering elections since 1968, it looks like campaigns can have an effect beyond structural factors. Reagan had great messaging strategy and beat the model. Nixon did worse and of course Ford in 1976 was stuck with Nixon's Watergate scandal.
As a marketing guy, I have long argued that the Democratic party and it's national campaigns do a poor job of messaging and appear resistant to understanding the basics, much less how to build the vital brand building strategy that requires constant, consistent messaging around core values. Republicans have much more effective messaging and attack Democrats daily with coordinated messages. Dems think they will get rewarded by enacting popular policies and doing a big ad blast in two months before the general election every four years. The greatest ad campaign in the world has a hard time against four years of daily attacks.
If the Dems had a competent long-term messaging effort, that wouldn’t win every election but it would win a lot more.
Did Morris just talk himself into "schmoderation"?
Brilliant!!
This is most important analysis any politician can read. It's doubtful that many pay much attention to the 'autopsy' report, but the DNC did put out some money for a worthless document. And as for the pundits who make recommendations based on mythical voters, they're not worth reading either. Pundits who imagine NYT or WaPo reporting is going to sway some fraction of the electorate are living in a bubble.
Neither party organization is strong enough to prevent big screwups (Trump, CA gov primary), but looking at where candidates improved the margins, and systemic changes (National Popular Vote) would help. Otherwise, we'll just have to hope for charismatic, effective candidates to emerge.