If the US presidential election were held today–Look at what the Young Spectator will do

  The US presidential election remains inconclusively close.  But it still favors Donald Trump.

However, as political scientist E.E. Schattschneider  once declared, look at role of the audience or the undecided voter when it comes to political fights or elections. In this election, it may come down to the youth voters who decide the election and who are notoriously difficult to poll. 

As has been the case for well over a year, the 2024 presidential election has come down to six swing states where 150,000 to 200,000 voters will decide the electoral college outcome.  The electorate is polarized and there are few voters to persuade or move.  Polls suggest a close race. As of September 30, Harris is leading in three of the swing states. Trump is leading in three of the swing states. But the margins of their leads ranges from one-tenth of a point for Harris in Pennsylvania to a two point lead for Trump in Arizona.  Most of the polls being done have margins of error ranging from two to four points, while  indicating approximately two percent of the voters described as likely to cast a ballot  who are undecided. 

What we know is that polls indicate a that Trump is favored in terms of his handling of the economy and immigration, both of which are listed as important, if not the most important, issues in 2024.  His supporters have been loyal and enthusiastic for him from the start, and there is no question they will show up to vote for him. 

Additionally, among those few voters who list themselves as undecided, generally 60% vote against the incumbent.  That is, if they vote. In 2024 Harris is viewed as the incumbent.  A majority of Americans also do not like the direction the country is headed. Put all this together, these numbers and trends favor Donald Trump. 

Conversely, Harris has many things operating in her favor.  She has largely, but not completely, overcome the enthusiasm gap that stymied Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. She has an incredible amount of money and a cash advantage over Donald Trump to be able to  get out the vote, advertising, and other electoral matters. She has the abortion issue on her side, which is tremendously important to many college educated suburban women, as well as many other voters, Harris has picked up increasing support among Latinos and African Americans.  All of this suggests movement in the right direction for her, and some polls suggest that she would squeak out a narrow electoral college victory.

But the real challenge in this election is with younger voters, those under the age of 30.  They are much less likely to vote than those over the age of 30.  While Joe Biden's was in the race, they were unenthusiastic to vote for him. With Taylor Swift's endorsement of Vice President Harris, we've seen some evidence of increased voter registration among younger voters.  Most evidence suggests that celebrity endorsements have at best marginal impact on voters but Taylor Swift could very well be different in terms of her impact.  Additionally, this could be an election where reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, and perhaps other matters of concern to voters under the age of 30 might drive them yet again to the ballot in ways pollster do not see.

But it is difficult for pollsters to capture this group of voters in polling.  Survey research wants to determine who a likely voter is. If you have not voted before or just turned 18, for example, polling you or assessing you as a likely voter is problematic and it is possible that the polls are not capturing these younger voters. They are the audience or the bystanders in a political fight.

EE Schattschneider once stated that what the audience or what the bystander does, determines the outcome of political fights, in this case, an election.  What we don't know is whether these younger voters will go from being audience or bystanders who are currently not reflected in the polls to participants and voters in the 2024 election in the critical swing states that will decide the outcome.

Go Ahead Harris and Pick a Female VP! Unconventional Wisdom and the 2024 US Presidential Election

 

Politics is often about conventional wisdom. Yes, such wisdom is not alway

s correct and in fact often wrong. Going into the 2024 US presidential election there are three bits of conventional wisdom being circulated.

           One Kamala Harris must pick a white Caucasian male from a swing state as her vice president.

            Two, Harris cannot select a female as vice president.

            Three, the odds are still against her, according to the polls, and that Donald Trump is still favored to win the presidency.

            Politicians, pundits, and polls often are the basis for how journalists think about campaigns and elections.  They form the orthodoxy or received wisdom for a campaign cycle.  But received or conventional wisdom often is incorrect.

            Years ago I published an article which challenged two bits of conventional wisdom in politics. One was the belief that there was a bump from the location of a national political convention in a specific state. The second was that the selection of a vice president from a particular state would enhance the ability or competitiveness of that state for the party that selected that favorite son or daughter. I examined the data back to WWII and found that in fact, conventions provided no bump for the party in that state, or for that candidate. Additionally, there was no evidence that selection of a vice presidential candidate from a particular state would enhance the ability to win that state.

            Despite the overwhelming empirical evidence, these two beliefs persist. Thus the reason why the Republicans chose Wisconsin in 2024 for the location of their convention.  Perhaps maybe that is why the Democrats picked Chicago for their convention because of its proximity to the Wisconsin media market.

            How does all this apply to 2024 and the three bits of conventional wisdom noted above?

            Since Harris became the likely Democratic Party nominee for president the focus has turned to who her vice presidential pick will be. Conventional wisdom is suggesting it has to be a person from a swing state and that it has to be a white Caucasian male. The  conventional wisdom is that a popular figure from that state will enhance the Democrats’ ability to win that state. The idea of being a white Caucasian male is to balance out the demographics of Kamla Harris.

            While the governors of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, or Michigan might all be amply qualified to be president, as well as Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona, there's no indication that merely placing them on the ticket enhances the competitive competitiveness of those states.

            Think about it. According to many statistics, barely 40% of Americans can name the sitting vice-president. There is overwhelming political science research indicating that with one notable exception, vice presidents have little or no impact on presidential elections, and that people do not make their voting decisions for president based upon the vice presidential choice. The one notable exception 2008 when Sarah Palin was John McCain's vice presidential pick.  There is evidence that her lack of qualifications, at least according to the American public, potentially cost McCain one or two percentage points in the polls. But he was going to lose anyhow. So perhaps it really didn't matter in the end.

            If vice presidents do not matter, the demographics of the vice presidential candidate equally do not matter. This gets to the second argument that says that Harris cannot pick a female to be her vice president.

            On the one hand, if vice presidential picks don't matter, then perhaps it doesn't matter if the selection  is male or female, pick the best qualified candidate. But on the other hand in 2024 the 2024 election will decided across five or six swing states, with the choice being made by 150,000 to 200,000 voters. It is possible that who the vice-presidential candidate is might matter. And here despite conventional wisdom, it might make a lot of sense for Harris to pick a female vice presidential candidate.

            The single most important voter in American politics, are college educated suburban women. With that, it is also black women who are equally important in terms of voters. Democrats must mobilize both if they are expected to win the presidency. Harris appears to have Africa African American women and women in general. Why not consider placing a female on the ticket as vice president to even further mobilize female voters across the country. Women already are the majority of voters in the United States and there is gender gap favoring Democrats.  More heavily mobilizing the female vote makes an incredible amount of sense in many ways for Democrats much in the same way that Trump (and his selection of JD Vane as his running mate) was not about balancing out a ticket but in trying to  juice up the Trumpistas even more.

            Finally, politicians, pundits, and pollsters  are arguing that as of now, Harris is perhaps in no better situation to win the presidency  than Joe Biden was.

            That may be true as of July 22, or July 24, 2024.  But remember, polls are not predictors. They are snapshots in time and over time political  fortunes change.  Many of the famous prediction machines such as Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight often get it wrong. Back in 2016 on election day, FiveThirtyEight gave Hillary Clinton about an 80% chance of winning the election.

            Polls inform conventional wisdom. They may be accurate at a point in time. They do not always capture shifts in trajectory or shifts in campaigns. Harris's taking over from Biden resets the American presidential race. It gives her an opportunity to redefine the race to capture voters who did not like Biden but equally did not like Trump and it gives her the capacity to energize the base in ways that Biden did not.

            To challenge conventional wisdom. I would argue that Harris is much freer in whom she could select for her vice presidential pick. It doesn't necessarily have to be from a swing state. It doesn't necessarily have to be a white Caucasian male. Given the polarization in America, given the dislike for Donald Trump, and given how apparently she has already brought excitement  among many to her candidacy, conventional wisdom may be wrong in terms of her prospects this year.  Go ahead Harris—pick a female VP if you want.

 

Biden, Harris, and the Manufactured Crisis of the Corporate Media

 

Joe Biden's exit and Kamala Harris's replacement as a Democratic nominee for president changes and confuses the corporate media script in its coverage of the 2024 election.  Nothing better captures that than the coverage within the 24 hours after Biden's announcement that he was leaving the race and endorsing Kamala Harris.

            The first imperative of corporate media is to run stories to make money and maintain audiences. This includes public radio and public television. One can say that the mantra for the corporate media is “all the news fits the script,” or “ all the news that sells we tell.”  The task of the corporate media is to create news or confusion where it does not exist.  For the corporate media, because they have a narrative or script for how to do reporting, if something does not fit into that narrative or script, the reporters are confused themselves, and their confusion becomes the story.  Bad or lazy reporting is appealing to existing narratives, simply  assuming the story is one thing when it reality it had changed.

            For the last several months, the corporate media story about the 2024 presidential race was predictable. It was how Biden and Trump were going through the primaries, rolling up the delegates and  how the election would be a rematch between the two of them. The corporate media had a story and reporters simply copied that script.

            At some point the sub story began to focus upon Biden's mental capacities, but this was not until his disastrous debate with Trump in June.  Prior to that there is evidence that the corporate media knew of some of these mental problems, but chose not to cover but once that debate occurred, their narrative shifted. It became about his mental capacities and about efforts to oust him.

            With that what would happen if he's ousted, who would be his likely replacement? That story came to a head on July 21 when Joe Biden announced that he was abandoning his presidential race, freeing up his delegates and endorsing Kamala Harris. This up ended the corporate media script for coverage of the presidential race. As one listened to the news that day, the stories were about chaos, that now we  had chaos or the Democratic Party was  in chaos in terms of what would happen.

            Within less than an hour of Biden saying he was stepping down, reporters were frantic and asking, why hasn't Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama endorsed Harris? Will there be an open convention? Will Harris have enough votes or support to win the nomination? Will there be there be challengers? The reporters seem genuinely perplexed. However, the reality was that the reporter-proclaimed crisis was a manufactured crisis that resolved itself quite quickly.

            If there was chaos at all, it ended Sunday afternoon on July 21 when Biden said he was leaving the race. The  real chaos had been what would had been occurring for several weeks prior. Additionally, many of the questions that were posed by confused reporters who did not know how to make sense out of the new narrative, were quickly resolved.

            Nancy Pelosi soon endorsed Kamala Harris within 24 hours. Harris, according to AP, had enough delegates to win the Convention on the first round.  Possible challengers to Harris quickly endorsed her, and Harris set a one day record in terms of fundraising.  By the end of Monday, July 22 almost all the perplexities and problems that the corporate media reporters were raising had been resolved.

 

Vice–President Harris Should Invoke the 25th Amendment to Relieve Biden of his Presidential Duties

Biden had a terrible debate.  Everyone knows that except for him.  Polls suggest collapsing support for Biden among voters in the critical swing states but also in places such as New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia.  There is panic and pressure among donors for him to halt his presidential race, release his delegates, and let someone else run.  So far Biden has resisted these calls.

            But assume this happens. Assume Biden is unfit to continue his presidential candidacy.  Forcing him off the presidential ticket implicates another question–is he fit to continue as president and should Vice-President Harris and the cabinet invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment and relieve him of his presidential duties?

            So far the focus of Biden’s debate performance has been on whether he should continue his presidential campaign.  Stories are increasing noting how is aides have witnessed  Biden’s decline in the last few months.  There are serious questions about his capacity to run, win, and serve a second term.  But if the conclusion is that he is mentally unfit to serve a second term, that forces the question whether he should even continue serving as president.

            Biden has to make the choice to discontinue his presidential run. One need not wait for Biden to make a choice to relieve him of his presidential duties.  According to Section Four of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment:

 

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

 

The people closest to Biden in his administration know best the president’s mental acuity.  They know whether he is fit to serve.  The Twenty-Fifth Amendment was put into place exactly to address the problem we see now where a sitting president may be so mentally incapacitated that he does not know he is incapacitated.

            Were this scenario to occur,  Harris would assume the duties of the presidency. Foremost, this decision would protect the US from a president who may not longer be fit to serve.  Second, the choice to do this may serve as a backdoor way of removing Biden as a presidential candidate. It would place enormous pressure on Biden to end his presidential debate and on the national delegates to reconsider another candidate.

            Of course, some may think this would be a conflict of interest for Harris to do this—given that she would become acting president and presumptively the Democrats' presidential candidate. In response, the check on Harris is the rest of  Biden’s cabinet.  Second, there is no guarantee that  at the Democratic National Convention Harris would be named the  nominee.

            Overall, the debate on Biden’s fitness as a candidate also raises questions about his fitness to continue to serve as president.  His decision to end his campaign would force  this latter question.  But independent of that choice, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment addresses a potentially more immediate problem that might also  indirectly  address the former.

Kamala Harris and the 2020 Presidential Election

 

Question:  

The US Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden has selected California Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential candidate.  Were you surprised?

Schultz: Actually no, this was not a surprise.  If in January 2020 you had asked me what the Democratic Party ticket was going to be I would have told you it was going to be Biden and Harris.  Despite some early poor debate performances and his bad showing in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, Biden always represented the compromise candidate whom most Democrats could support.  This is a race where Democrats are motivated to vote against Donald Trump and they needed a consensus candidate who could bring together support from various constituencies that hold together the party.

Senator Harris is a similar vice-presidential pick. She is not the liberal such as Stacey Abrams or Elizabeth Warren that the progressive swing of the party wanted.  But she is a candidate that most can live with, or, when faced with the prospect of Trump winning again in 2020, they will support.  At least that is the hope for the Democrats.

What does Harris bring to the ticket?

Schultz: Senator Harris is a good and obvious choice for many reasons.  On a personal level, Joe Biden said that his deceased son and Harris had worked together and therefore there was a personal connection.  That is important, at least to Biden who craves the interpersonal aspect of politics and trying to get along with others.

But more pragmatically, Harris may represent the future of the Democratic Party.  One, she is only in 50s, compared to Biden who would be 78 years old when he takes office if he wins this November.  Harris’s relative youth sets her up to perhaps run for president in 2024 or beyond.  Two, she is only the third female to be a vice-presidential candidate for a major party in America, and she is also the first mixed race (African-American and Indian).  Women and people of color are core constituencies with the Democratic Party and therefore she is a good choice for Biden to reach out to these groups.  Also, the future of the US is one that will be more multi-racial and therefore she is the face of the next America.

Are there good political reasons for selecting Kamala Harris?

Schultz: Yes.  One, is already has a proven track record as a successful politician, having served as a country prosecutor, California Attorney General, and now a US Senator.  She has demonstrated her ability to campaign and receive votes.  Two, she comes from a safe state. By that, California is a solidly Democratic Party state.  Should she become vice-president and have to resign her senate seat, there should be no difficulty in the Democrats holding it.  With other possible vice–presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren, it would have been less certain for the Democrats to hold the seat.  With the partisan or political control of the US an issue in 2020, this is an issue.

Three, Harris is a good debater, a known quantity to mainstream Democrats, and should prove to be a good campaigner for Biden.   Finally, as already noted, being female and a person of color she will help excite many voters to supporting Biden.

Develop this last point.  How will she excite voters or be an asset?

Schultz:  The Democratic Party in the US is really composed of three or four groups.  There are the urban liberals, young voters less than 30, educated women, and suburban voters.   Democrats need to mobilize all four of these groups to win.  Obama did that well in 2008 and 2012, Hillary Clinton failed to do that in 2016.  She lost not because there was a surge of Republican voters for Trump, but more because females, people of color, and young people did not vote.  

More specifically, for years I have argued that the single most important voters in the US are educated suburban women–or what used to be called soccer moms.  A quarter of a century ago they voted for Republicans but moved away from that party for a variety of reasons including reproductive rights, guns, education, and health care.  These voters are more likely to vote for Democrats but not always.  In 2016 many of these suburban women stayed home and Trump won.  In 2018 these women voted and put Democrats back in control of the US House.

Harris is an appealing candidate to educated suburban female voters.  She is professional, educated, successful, and while she is progressive, comes across as more centrist and moderate.  Many women see themselves in Harris.

But do Vice-presidential candidates actually matter?

Schultz: There is conventional wisdom that vice-presidential candidates matter and can move states.  Journalists and politicians swear by this belief.  However, my research and those by other political scientists larger dispute this.  Statistically it is hard to find support for this.  At best, maybe a vice-presidential candidate might affect 1-2% of the vote.

Think about it–most people cannot name who the vice-president is.  People vote for president, not the vice-president.  Although there is some evidence that Sarah Palin in 2008 hurt John McCain with the general election or voter even though she was helpful to him in getting the Republican Party support for his candidacy.

Harris could be the exception to the rule.  She might excite enough voters to make a difference.  But perhaps a better a way to ask is whether Harris will make a difference in the race to win the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.  Remember, as we saw in 2016, winning the popular vote is not enough, one must win the electoral vote and get 270 of these votes to become the president.

The presidential race is really as I have argued about holding your base and then winning the crucial swing states that will decide the election.  Thus the question is will Harris make a difference in the swing states?

Question: What are the states to look at?

Schultz: The presidential race is down to about seven states: Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  These states have a total of 111 electoral votes and they will decide who becomes president.  The question is whether Harris makes a difference in these states.

Harris might possibly make states such as North Carolina and Georgia more competitive, but really the seven states noted above really are the core to the 2020 election.

Klobuchar for President? Her Chances Are Less than Most Minnesotans Think

More than likely, Amy Klobuchar will announce on February 10, she is running for president. As
Minnesota’s most popular elected official, winning her last US Senate campaign with 60% of the popular vote, everyone in the state thinks her presidential prospects are terrific.   But living in the state it will not be popular to say what this, but her prospects of being a successful candidate are against her and contrary to received wisdom in Minnesota, she faces enormous obstacles either as a presidential or vice-presidential candidate.
There are many problems Klobuchar confronts as a presidential candidate, some unique to her, some to coming from Minnesota, some given the direction of the Democratic Party, and in many ways all three of these items are connected.
Consider first Klobuchar first as candidate.  Yes she is well-known in Minnesota but nationally she is still barely a blip in public opinion polls.  A recent Washington Post poll among Democrats gave her only 2 % support.  Other polls at barely 1%.  Outside of Minnesota she remains largely unknown. Part of that problem is that Klobuchar comes from the Midwest–flyover zone for those on the coasts–outside of the major media markets where candidates such as Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren come from.  They simply have higher name recognition given their states.  This geographic isolation of Minnesota has historically been a challenge for Minnesota presidential candidates.
Second, Klobuchar is not a rock star exciting persona, instead a classic more subdued Minnesotan.  The personality that might play well in Minnesota politics does not necessarily play well on the national level.  Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Tim Pawlenty, and Michele Bachmann resonated well in Minnesota but not so well nationally.  Minnesotans like their politicians, but the state’s exceptionalism in politics perhaps means that a different skill set and persona are needed here compared to the national level.
Third, Klobuchar faces a narrative problem.  All candidates need a narrative or message and reason for running.  Hillary Clinton’s problem both in 2008 and 2016 was that she had no narrative beyond she was not Bush (in 2008) or Trump (2016) and it was her turn now.  What is Klobuchar’s narrative?  Simply being against Trump is not enough–all the Democrats running in 2020 will be that.  Klobuchar needs to be more than that, and it is not clear what her narrative is, or it is one that may not play.  By that, most of Klobuchar’s tenure as Senator has been in the minority where she has had little chance to make substantive policy in a polarized partisan environment. Her rel record of accomplishment is thin.
Klobuchar’s major selling point is that she can reach across the aisle and work with Republicans.  It is not clear this is a selling point with a Democratic Party–especially during the primaries–that is moving to the left.
Klobuchar is running as a centrist and that is not where Democrats are now, and rarely has  “Running to the right” been a winning strategy for them at the national level.  Campaigning with the endorsement of George Will does not cut it with liberals.  Clinton in 2016 said her strength was going to be winning over moderate Republicans and winning white southerners (as she did against Sanders in the primaries), and look how well that strategy worked.  The US is even more polarized now and it is less clear that now a Democrat can garner Republican votes.  Orthodoxy in the Democratic Party is now for Medicare for all, free college education, and other big idea economic redistributive ideas.  Is this where Klobuchar is?
Klobuchar’s narrative is her experience–again much like what Clinton ran on in 2008 and 2016. She is a former country attorney and three-term Senator.  But Kamala Harris is a former state legislator, San Francisco prosecutor, California Attorney General, and US Senator; equally if not more impressive credentials, even on the topic of law and order.
Klobuchar also seems to be relying on an Iowa strategy to energize her political campaign.  First, it assumes that because Minnesota is next to Iowa and part of the former’s media market extends into the latter, people in Iowa know her.  Second, since Jimmy Carter in 1976, candidates  look to Iowa for a win to capitulate them into a subsequent victory in New Hampshire and beyond.  There are several problems with this strategy, assuming it has worked and that it will be winning formula in 2020.
Bachmann and Pawlenty thought the Minnesota-Iowa connection would work for them and it did not.  Second, since 1972, there have been 10 Democratic and eight Republican contested caucuses. Only six of the Democratic caucus winners and three of the Republican caucus winners have gone on to win their party’s nomination–only 50% does the Iowa winner go on to capture the party nomination.
But in 2020 things also change in a dramatic way–California and Texas move up their primaries to March 3, and the early voting for the former will start about the same time as the date of the Iowa caucus scheduled for February 3.  Moving up the California and Texas primaries changes the importance of Iowa and the logic of campaigning.  Relatively speaking running in Iowa was cheap by comparison to California and Texas which will take millions of dollars and lots of name recognition.  Kamala Harris for one, will be advantaged by the early California primary and if she does well there and Klobuchar not, Iowa may not matter at all no matter how well the Minnesota senator does.
Finally, what about the theory that Klobuchar’s real aim in running for president is to be I’ve-president?  Contrary to all the folk wisdom (and empirical political science including mine supports this), few if any vice-presidential candidates really matter to tickets or voters.  There is a belief in geographic or other balance with vice-presidents as running mates, ut one has to ask what would Klobuchar add to a presidential ticket?  Will she help a Democrat carry Minnesota?  Will she pick up votes in New York?  Is she a pit bull or attack dog like some Veeps are?  Simply being a nice person whom everyone likes in Minnesota does not make one a strategically good choice for vice-president.
Perhaps Amy Klobuchar will defy the odds and win.  One can wish her well.  But an honest appraisal suggests the odds are against her.