Critical Elections: An Exchange

In December 2017, about a year into Donald Trump’s presidency, high-school student Nicole Plummer came to me with some questions about critical elections and the 2016 election that brought Trump to power.  Our exchange highlights the role of retrospection in determining whether an election has been critical.  A critical election leaves the party system changed by reconfiguring party ideology in a lasting way.

Here, without further preamble, is my exchange with Miss Plummer.


Q: Can certain tell-tale signs be observed in the time leading up to a critical election?

A:  Typically, critical elections occur when the nation faces an underlying problem that the existing parties can’t admit to or solve.  The problem is big enough to influence all society and the nation’s future. In a critical election, the problem is not only admitted, but an approach to it is offered that the majority of people assent to in an enduring way.

Critical elections happen when people are bored with prevailing political ideas or ambivalent about what candidates are offering. So I imagine that if you looked back at periods before a critical election, you might find lackluster voter turnout, a rise in the percentage of unaffiliated voters, and perhaps also new splinter groups (which are trying to find the right formula for mobilizing the electorate in a new way).

During the campaign leading up to a critical election, one might observe the following: 1) appeals to previously neglected blocs of the electorate; 2) campaign planks (i.e.talking points or principles) that are truly new or innovative; 3) iconoclastic individuals, whether candidates or, in rare instances, their managers, espousing a new vision of society; 4) signs that the political ideas being promoted are being wholeheartedly adopted not just by a cadre of leaders but by a wider swath of society.

Remember that the concept of a critical election is something observers have made up to help differentiate among elections and distinguish their results. Many election cycles feature some of the characteristics above, but it ends up being a matter of degree.  For example, the Tea Party succeeded in bringing a new cadre of conservative opposition leaders into national politics during Obama’s presidency, but this faction failed to broaden its appeal to the extent needed to become a dominant party. Likewise, Bernie Sanders is iconoclastic and has articulated several goals new to mainstream politics, but so far he hasn’t converted all Democracy to his way of thought.

Q: Why are critical elections important for a functioning democratic society?

A:  Critical elections refresh the identification that should exist between leaders and the people. When a leader (or group of leaders) capable of mobilizing the political structure around new and more relevant ideas comes along, the populace benefits.  That’s because the dominant party will then mirror, and do all it can to meet, the American people’s needs and desires. What bothers many people about today’s Republican party is that its actions don’t correspond very well to the needs and concerns of the populace (who don’t want to see their insurance premiums go up or their health coverage disappear, for instance). Similarly, many Americans don’t care about the protection of union workers that is a hackneyed Democratic theme.

Q: Was one of the six critical elections that you identified more influential than the others?

A:  The election of 1860 prompted states to secede, triggered the Civil War, and put slavery on the path to extinction (which directly affected millions of enslaved people), so I would say that election had the most profound effect on America, both subsequently and on those who were alive at the time.

Q:  Are Democrats and Republicans here to stay? Will these two parties just keep evolving their policies or will they eventually give way to new groups based on changing ideologies in the U.S.?

A:  I don’t know. Ironically, it’s hard to say which of these parties is more messed up. The Republicans are in a state of inner crisis despite holding almost all the power. The Democrats have ideological unity but are  indifferent to the fact that millions of Americans find their message unpalatable.

The two major parties are not just vehicles for ideas; they are also bureaucracies that do not want to be extinguished.  In the 2016 election, both Trump and Sanders decided it was more to their advantage to work from within these structures rather than go out and find enough likeminded people to start an effective third party. To start a new party, one would have to assemble and coordinate a group of like-minded peers working to organize similar parties in a number of states.  Will Trump’s climb to the top of the Republican party actually change it into a more salient party, though?  It’s hard to say.

Q:  If you had to pick one almost critical election from U.S. history, what would it be? (i.e. an election that was monumental but didn’t quite meet the criteria)

A:  Barack Obama had the opportunity to change the Democratic party into something new in 2008 but failed to do so because his ties to the party establishment were too slight. He became president at too early an age–if he had stayed in the Senate longer, he would have ended up being a much more effective party leader.

Obama was a centrist looking to find a way beyond big New Deal-type governance.  His major achievement, creating universal access to health care, was significant in that it sought to benefit every American, not just those in need.  His presidency eschewed identity politics.  His second inauguration envisioned a nation that was republican, enlightened, and fully inclusive.

Q:  Do you believe that critical elections need to coincide with social, economic, or political upheaval?

A:  No, they bring change to the society afterward.  Critical elections often follow periods of staleness, stagnation, or cultural drift.

Q:  Why do you think reforming our parties is so difficult at this moment in political history?

A:  Historically, politicians did not have the “tools” of social science (polling, marketing techniques, etc.) so their sense of what would work with the electorate had to be more instinctive. They took up positions that were shaped by their direct knowledge of and intuition about the people.  Also, once in office, they were more confident in using the powers delegated to them, without needing to consult their constituents on every little thing. Trump and Sanders were both remarkable during the campaign, in that each had a few fervently held beliefs that they truly believed in, and that they held to despite what anyone else (e.g., the media) thought. They each were taking a risk that Hillary Clinton was incapable of taking. If you want to be a leader, you’ve got to lead, not just obey your constituents, your paid consultants, your political friends.

Q:  What is your opinion on how politics and campaigns are currently run? Was it better back in the “good-old-days” or has campaigning simply evolved with society to meet the needs and interests of the general populace? Is this evolution good or bad?

A:  The people have the power to effect change. When their will is aroused, change does occur. (Look at the drastic change that’s followed from the 2016 election.)  American politics swings back and forth like a pendulum. Critical elections occur when effective leaders channel the popular will into effective results.  When the right kinds of leaders come up, the reigning ideology changes in a “good way” and the political system becomes endowed with a positive (if also scary) new dynamism.

As recent partisan conflict testifies, the falling away of an old ideology and the birth of a new, widely supported one can take an excruciatingly long period of time.  In Lincoln’s time, escalating sectional tensions ate into the regnant parties for more than a decade before the iconoclastic anti-slavery party he was part of broke through.  Initially a “fringe movement” that recast its message to broaden its mainstream appeal, the Republican party scored an electoral victory that put Lincoln in power.

Q:  Does the 2016 election have the potential to become the 7th critical election? Is it too soon to tell?

A:  In a critical election, the character of the entire party changes in a lasting way.  Will Trump’s ideas really gain traction with establishment Republicans?  I have a feeling that many on Capitol Hill loathe the president and are just waiting him out.*  Some of Trump’s ideas—his concern about the quality of life for displaced and forgotten American workers and his understanding of how this issue is associated with immigration, domestic security, and the specter of our country’s hegemony giving way to that of China—define potent fears that other US leaders should countenance and address in a more palatable but still firm way.  We urgently need a slate of federal goals the whole nation can embrace—otherwise, society will keep deteriorating, and social goods we all prize will be lost.

* Liz Cheney’s ouster from her leadership role in the House yesterday confirms that 2016 was “critical” in that Donald Trump shattered the bland traditionalism of the Republican party, replacing it with a cult of personality.  Those who remain in the party in 2021 overwhelmingly support Trump and his dangerous lies.  His vicious character and indifference to the Constitution have driven away millions, weakening the party and forcing many of its former leaders out.  Where will this disaffected part of the polity go?  Will the coming year will see the birth of a constructive centrist party, perhaps under the leadership of the redoubtable Mitt Romney?

RELATED
Yes, It’s Scary, But Is It a Critical Election?
On Critical Elections


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Day 4: Extrapolating from 2016: Why I Expect A Biden Win

The only presidential poll that counts is the one Americans vote in.  That being the case, are there ways (other than opinion polling) to evaluate whether Biden will win?  In the run-up to Election Day, I’m thinking of the odds of his victory in terms of all that has happened since 2016, when Donald Trump scored an electoral-college victory despite Hillary Clinton’s greater popularity. About 137 million people participated in that election.  How will roughly the same electorate behave in the matchup between Trump and Biden?

Of the 65 million people who voted for Clinton, few are going to switch over to Trump this time.  Clinton voters remain firmly opposed to Trump–to people who identify as liberals or Democrats, he is completely anathema.  Knowing that they constitute a numerical majority, they are highly motivated to defeat him this time.  Clinton voters want to see someone of their kind in the White House.

In the past four years, I have never met or heard of a Clinton voter believes Trump is a good guy.  So I can’t imagine there will be many defections from that solid Democratic column.  At a minimum, Biden can count on capturing at least as many popular votes as Clinton.

In addition, he will enjoy the support of many Americans who did not turn out for Clinton in 2016.  Many male voters will turn out for Biden who either went for Trump or refrained from voting in 2016.  Some voters perceived Clinton to have character issues; others harbored intense animus toward her, dating from her husband Bill’s presidency.  For some, Clinton’s sex was itself disqualifying.  Biden is not a better candidate or person than Hillary, but he is male.  He lacks the tangential but still consequential negatives that turned off some of the Democratic voting base.

Biden will also likely do better with supporters of Bernie Sanders than Clinton could.  Sanders voters shunned Clinton in 2016.  This time around, they are somewhat more likely to vote for Biden because of the urgency of defeating Trump, because of Sanders’s urging, and because it’s evident that the progressive agenda is gaining ground within the Democratic Party.   Young voters are mobilizing themselves to save the world.  They are more likely to cast a vote this time around than to sit it out.  And for those who mind Biden’s age and moderation, Kamala Harris represents a conditional promise that the White House will be occupied by a fairly progressive woman of color should Biden die.

Finally, Biden will get the vote of every Trump “resistor.”  Notably, black Americans hate Trump for turning a blind eye to racism and police brutality, threatening military action against protestors (whom he branded as terrorists), and encouraging white supremacy.  Tens of thousands of blacks who didn’t care about the last election and/or don’t particularly care for Biden will nonetheless turn out for him.  It appears they are already vote at higher rates and with more enthusiasm than they did in 2016.

So that is it for Biden’s positive voting base.  Now, when we look at Trump’s support what do we see?

Trump’s margin of victory in 2016 was narrow–very narrow.  The percentage of Americans who approve of him has remained below 50 percent for throughout his presidency.  This verdict on Trump has remained remarkably stable:  Trump was marginally more popular when he was inaugurated than he’s ever since.  Today, he has the good opinion of only 43 percent, and those fans are not necessarily distributed advantageously across the country.  As president, Trump has done nothing to “make friends” or broaden his appeal.  On the contrary, he has gone out of his way to alienate many Americans, specifically by treating everyone who opposes him as an enemy.  Now, the majority who dislike Trump have a chance to act.  This majority comprises not just Democrats but infrequent and independent voters who are likely to go for Biden this time around.

Meanwhile, cadres of Republican voters and officials have repudiated Trump in favor of Biden.  The open defection of elder statesmen, leading scientists and intellectuals, distinguished civil servants, military brass, and former Republican officials (including a number of former governors) is one of the more extraordinary aspects of the 2020 race.  It is a sign of the Republican party’s general decrepitude.

For, while Trump has dishonored the Republican party, the Republican-controlled Senate has shocked and disappointed Americans of all stripes in failing to check Trump or to stand up for the Constitution or the rule of law.  Senate Republicans have instead executed the president’s evil will, siding with him and enabling him to prevail in ways that are contrary to our values and the national interest.  So Trump will suffer because the entire Republican brand is poisoned.  Voting Republican has become synonymous with being provincial, hateful, and anti-modern.

In addition, Trump’s full-bore attacks on the press and journalists (many of them women); reports of his nasty remarks about fallen soldiers and those who have served in the military; his lack of concern for the poor, the ill, and elderly; and his obvious inability to deal with smart women have cost him many votes and sent many once-loyal Republicans to the other side.  His explicit attacks on Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and discriminatory approach to COVID relief, which has prompted him to withhold vitally needed aid from Democratic-leaning parts of the polity, are insults and injuries fresh in voters’s minds as they go to the polls.

In the end, how many Americans will decide that their best interest lies in allowing Trump to continue to lead the US?  What will they get out of his being in charge for another four years?  The social and cultural landscape of the US is withering away, along with its vibrant economy, because Trump has no definite economic or social vision.  His lack of executive ability and essentially corrupt mentality have been especially evident since the coronavirus epidemic hit.  Biden is more open, more compassionate and fair.  He can lead a suffering nation; Trump can’t.

Early voting augurs a historically high turnout for this election.  The high volume makes it more likely that Biden will sufficiently improve on Clinton’s margins to prevail in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona, where Trump won largely as a result of apathy.  The spread of COVID-19 in rural and red portions of the US will likely dampen enthusiasm and turnout for Trump among Republicans, who are said to prefer voting in person on Election Day.

The 2020 election is a critical one.  I believe that most Americans are good, that most accept and want to live by a time-tested political creed of fairness and toleration.  I believe that most want the US to be governed by the rule of law.  Sadly, millions of Americans support Trump because they do not care about these values enough to embrace social changes they bring.  I believe that Americans want to step into the future, that they want to become a fully multiracial and forward-looking country.

It’s hard to know what will happen if voters elect Biden, but if the US doesn’t move forward it’s going to go down.

RELATED:
“Trump Confronts His Fifty-Percent Problem.” (Politico)

Day 41: Ignore The Polls

Remember all those presidential polls in 2016 showing Hillary winning or enjoying a slight but reassuring lead?  Remember the sickening shock of Election Night when, instead, Trump won?  Remember how afterward pollsters and news organizations declared “Mea culpa,” because their polls had failed to register crucial facts about what the candidates and the electorate were thinking and doing?  Hillary trusted the polls.  As a consequence, she became complacent and ran a poor ground game in states that she took for granted and lost.

Since then, the best polling sites have supposedly upped their game (and hedged their bets) by using more sophisticated and nuanced models.  Nonetheless, relying on polls remains dangerous because they are based on information that is always a little bit old.  It’s a little bit thin.  It’s always a bit scattered. It tends to be crude.   Meanwhile, the 2020 race will hinge on up-to-the-minute efforts by the nominees and their parties in specific localities.  This is how Trump won last time: by building on microlevel advantages in several key states, and leveraging those advantages into state-level wins.

Now Trump and his backers are at it again.  In Wisconsin, Republicans are mounting a concerted door-t0-door campaign to get out the vote, where, later this month, the state supreme court will hear arguments on whether to purge some 180,ooo voters from registration rolls.  Trump backers have pleaded with judges to limit ballot collection boxes and disqualify mail-in ballots lacking a secrecy envelope in Pennsylvania.  Finally, in the crucial matter of voter registration, the New York Times is reporting that in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, “overall registration is up by 6 points through August compared to the 2016 cycle, but net Democratic registrations are down by 38 percent. That’s about 150,000 fewer additional Democrats than were added in 2016.”  Surprising numbers of whites without college degrees are registering, a demographic that went heavily for Mr Trump in 2016.  Such are the unobtrusive developments that will make all the difference in this election–developments that even the best polling, which focuses mainly on opinion, cannot capture.  The fate of the US will hinge on last-minute, local actions occurring in real time.

So, if you care about the future of the United States, please ignore the polls.  Act on your fears and redouble your efforts to get out the vote for Joe.

RELATED:
Thomas B. Edsall, “Five Things Biden and His Allies Should Be Worried About” (NYT)
Barton Gellman, “The Election That Could Break America,” (The Atlantic)

Image: from this source.

A Stress Test for the Constitution

Soon after the election, a friend envisioned Trump’s presidency as “a stress test for the Constitution and all of its institutions.”  This is proving to be the case, for reasons that are both collective and peculiar to Trump and his administration.

Collectively, his presidency has halted, and aspires to reverse, the direction American government took under President Obama, a direction decried in some quarters but one charted in careful accordance with the law.  The Affordable Care Act, which some Republicans so revile, was nonetheless “ratified” after a protracted but open struggle by both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court.

In other areas, President Obama’s use of executive power, though politically unwise, was legally defensible.  His approach to reducing carbon emissions, so hated and feared in some quarters, took shape only after a long period of public comment and after his legal team was certain the new guidelines could withstand a Constitutional challenge.  President Obama exercised discretion in whether and how to enforce immigration laws, but, as Richard Lugar, a former US Senator from Indiana, has observed, every president has done the same, since all have lacked the means to see that the laws on the books were fully enforced.  Lugar, a moderate who was one of Capitol Hill’s most influential Republicans before a member of his own party “primaried” him from the right, driving him from office, wrote in the New York Times that, given the howls of outrage over Obama’s immigration policies, one would never guess that his administration had “vastly exceeded the deportations under President George W. Bush,” just as Bush’s had vastly exceeded those of President Clinton.

President Obama sought to move the nation and the Democratic Party in a new direction, but he was not a party leader, and he did not wait for a bipartisan consensus that he knew was never coming to emerge.  In his second term, he focused increasingly on what he could do without Congress–but to the extent that his victories lacked Congress’s active assent they were unsustainable.  They were simply too far ahead of the collective political will.  In the meantime, Obama’s dogged pursuit of his own grand vision hid the senescence of the Democratic Party.

As the first person of color to occupy the presidency, Barack Obama symbolized the America we are fitfully becoming–a nation that is truly inclusive and color-blind.  As a symbol and agent of that change, he aroused a lot of resentment and fear, emotions that candidate Trump and some other Republicans inflamed to their benefit in the campaign.

The stunning political triumph of a charismatic outsider, the shattered GOP’s success at hanging on to power, and the dangerous eclipse of the Democratic party: these are the three huge interrelated events whose consequences are shaking the political community, from the nation’s most powerful institutions to its polarized citizenry, united only in its demand for responsible governance.

Image: “Save yourself”
@2017 Susan Barsy