The Democrats' "Twitter Primary" Is Badly Hurting The Eventual Winner of the Real Primary
The Democrats are very unlikely to beat Trump running on a platform that in any way resembles the way most of their Presidential candidates have been running. A campaign landscape that a few months ago was dominated by chatter of "white privilege" and "toxic masculinity", along with a more specific obsession about whether wearing a blackface Halloween costume in the 1980s disqualifies someone from public service for the rest of their life, was damaging enough in terms of connecting to the center-left mail carriers and pipefitters in swing states who will decide the outcome of the next election. But it's managed to get worse in the last couple of months as the candidates have taken broadly unpopular positions on incredibly polarizing issues, such as slavery reparations, illegal immigration enforcement, and more recently, allowing imprisoned terrorists to vote in American elections (!!!). The immigration issue is the most politically dangerous because it's Trump's signature issue which he'll be talking about constantly, because there's an emergency going on at the border at this very moment which the Democrats seem to be entirely unserious and ambivalent about, and because the kinds of blue-collar voters in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that Democrats need to win back to get to 270 electoral votes in November 2020 are going to be incredibly hostile to the prioritization of immigrants over people who already live here.
So what's going on? Why are the Democrats positioning themselves so far left of the electorate that they're knowingly putting in peril their chances to beat Trump, given all that's at stake? We got some insight into that with a study released this week showing that Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and more liberal than the population at large, with the disparity being even wider among self-identified Democrats on Twitter versus Democrats not on Twitter. In other words, if you're a Presidential candidate in a large field looking to solicit campaign donations, you follow Jesse James' lead and go to where the money is....and in this case, the money is in the hands of the "woke" left constantly raging on Twitter about polarizing social justice matters. The students and the professors of the university gender studies courses have now become the most powerful voting bloc of the Democratic Party, bringing their classroom language into the national conversation, and possessing a social media platform capable of instantly destroying anyone who doesn't toe their line.
Given that there are now nearly two dozen candidates running for the Democratic nomination, a perfect storm of leftward drift has been necessitated. In order to make headlines, the candidates need to take ever-bolder positions and make ever-more provocative statements to be heard. And when one candidate takes a position that's popular only with fringe elements of the cultural left, the others feel compelled to concur, hoping to avoid the wrath of the Twitter mob. It's a vicious cycle and we can all be certain that the Trump campaign is making a list and checking it twice of all of these Democratic candidate position points to use against them in the general election. Coupling that with Trump's recent positive outcome from the Mueller report, approval ratings not that much lower than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's at this point in their first terms, and the recent economic report showing a solid 3.2% growth rate in the first quarter of 2019 that will benefit the incumbent, and the Democrats are really playing with fire in a way that's gonna be hard to put out.
Unfortunately, as the field gets more and more crowded, it seems less rather than more likely that this circular firing squad (Obama's term!) will lay down its arms. The size of the field ensures that the winner of the early primaries could prevail with less than 15% of the vote, bankrupting the other campaigns before the race becomes truly nationalized, so the urgency of drawing attention to one's candidacy could not be larger.
The Democratic establishment seems most nervous about Bernie Sanders being the last man standing in the primary clown car. He remains a very high-stakes gamble but I also think he'd potentially be a stronger candidate than most of the other candidates in the field because his message on inequality viscerally resonates with a lot of Midwestern voters, including 2016 Trump voters. I think he'd be far better positioned to win Wisconsin and Michigan than Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke, with their obsessions with social justice politics and identitarianism that will have no audience at all in Midwestern factory towns. With that said, I don't blame the Democratic establishment in the least for being nervous about Sanders as he'd scare off a lot of upscale suburbanites uneasy about his muscular taxing and spending proposals, and his endorsement last week of allowing current inmates (including terrorists) voting rights is radical to the point of possible disqualification among most mainstream voters. How do you sell yourself as a future Commander in Chief if you're advocating for giving imprisoned terrorist murderers the right to vote?
Ultimately I think the deciding vote in the 2020 primaries will be the same demographic that won the 2008 primaries for Obama and the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton.....older African American voters. In nearly a dozen Southern states, older blacks make up a plurality or even a majority of the Democratic primary vote, and if the same candidate wins most of these states they'll have a huge delegate advantage that will be hard for another challenger to overtake. Who's in the catbird position right now to win black voters over 50? Without question Joe Biden. He's a familiar entity, has always had a unique appeal to Southerners generally (for a Democrat anyway), and was the right-hand man to the still-popular President Obama. Unless Biden stumbles badly in the months ahead, which is admittedly easy to do when one is the early frontrunner and even easier to do when your name is Joe Biden, he's well-positioned to dominate among older black voters.
Who is Biden's most serious challenger for the older black vote? Probably Kamala Harris, who will make headlines during early primary season for what will likely be strong early vote numbers from her home state of California. If she's seen as insurgent at the time of the South Carolina primary, she might be able to poach some of Biden's African American support, but I'm skeptical. Harris is no Barack Obama in terms of temperament or candidate profile, and her social justice warrior demeanor doesn't seem like a very compelling fit for the busloads of older black Baptists who show up for the Souls to the Polls rallies in African American communities. Furthermore, if Harris doesn't come in at least a strong second in South Carolina, I think her candidacy is finished.
So now that Biden's officially in the race, I'd say he's a narrow frontrunner. How would I feel about a Biden nomination? Not great....but not terrible. Who could have ever imagined that notorious gaffe machine Biden would ever emerge as the "safe choice" in a field of nearly two dozen candidates, especially when he'll be 78 years old by the day of the general election? As always it's a bit of a tightrope walk with the "safe" candidate, who come November 2020 will likely keep the Democratic base and the moderate independents in the fold, but who will always be less than inspiring for younger people and low-propensity voters who the Democrats will desperately need against a united front of Trump support likely to be the majority in about 85% of American counties. But of course given Biden's lengthy background of opening mouth and inserting foot, he's a less safe "safe" choice than somebody like Bob Dole or Mitt Romney (and even those safe choices failed to win).
Still, the early indications suggest Biden is not as likely as most to allow himself to be bullied or radicalized by the Twitter mob, which right now is more important than anything else to keep from being disqualified more than a year before the general election. He's best positioned to avoid having to pander to the Twitter radicals to be noticed or to raise money for his campaign. Defeating Trump in 2020, and avoiding the 7-2 Federalist Society Supreme Court that would follow in a second Trump term, needs to be everybody's top priority. The fact that a man in his late 70s might be the only person who can do that without blowing himself up in the Twitter mob minefield is a terrifying proposition for the Democratic Party's future.
So what's going on? Why are the Democrats positioning themselves so far left of the electorate that they're knowingly putting in peril their chances to beat Trump, given all that's at stake? We got some insight into that with a study released this week showing that Twitter users are younger, wealthier, and more liberal than the population at large, with the disparity being even wider among self-identified Democrats on Twitter versus Democrats not on Twitter. In other words, if you're a Presidential candidate in a large field looking to solicit campaign donations, you follow Jesse James' lead and go to where the money is....and in this case, the money is in the hands of the "woke" left constantly raging on Twitter about polarizing social justice matters. The students and the professors of the university gender studies courses have now become the most powerful voting bloc of the Democratic Party, bringing their classroom language into the national conversation, and possessing a social media platform capable of instantly destroying anyone who doesn't toe their line.
Given that there are now nearly two dozen candidates running for the Democratic nomination, a perfect storm of leftward drift has been necessitated. In order to make headlines, the candidates need to take ever-bolder positions and make ever-more provocative statements to be heard. And when one candidate takes a position that's popular only with fringe elements of the cultural left, the others feel compelled to concur, hoping to avoid the wrath of the Twitter mob. It's a vicious cycle and we can all be certain that the Trump campaign is making a list and checking it twice of all of these Democratic candidate position points to use against them in the general election. Coupling that with Trump's recent positive outcome from the Mueller report, approval ratings not that much lower than Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's at this point in their first terms, and the recent economic report showing a solid 3.2% growth rate in the first quarter of 2019 that will benefit the incumbent, and the Democrats are really playing with fire in a way that's gonna be hard to put out.
Unfortunately, as the field gets more and more crowded, it seems less rather than more likely that this circular firing squad (Obama's term!) will lay down its arms. The size of the field ensures that the winner of the early primaries could prevail with less than 15% of the vote, bankrupting the other campaigns before the race becomes truly nationalized, so the urgency of drawing attention to one's candidacy could not be larger.
The Democratic establishment seems most nervous about Bernie Sanders being the last man standing in the primary clown car. He remains a very high-stakes gamble but I also think he'd potentially be a stronger candidate than most of the other candidates in the field because his message on inequality viscerally resonates with a lot of Midwestern voters, including 2016 Trump voters. I think he'd be far better positioned to win Wisconsin and Michigan than Kamala Harris and Beto O'Rourke, with their obsessions with social justice politics and identitarianism that will have no audience at all in Midwestern factory towns. With that said, I don't blame the Democratic establishment in the least for being nervous about Sanders as he'd scare off a lot of upscale suburbanites uneasy about his muscular taxing and spending proposals, and his endorsement last week of allowing current inmates (including terrorists) voting rights is radical to the point of possible disqualification among most mainstream voters. How do you sell yourself as a future Commander in Chief if you're advocating for giving imprisoned terrorist murderers the right to vote?
Ultimately I think the deciding vote in the 2020 primaries will be the same demographic that won the 2008 primaries for Obama and the 2016 primaries for Hillary Clinton.....older African American voters. In nearly a dozen Southern states, older blacks make up a plurality or even a majority of the Democratic primary vote, and if the same candidate wins most of these states they'll have a huge delegate advantage that will be hard for another challenger to overtake. Who's in the catbird position right now to win black voters over 50? Without question Joe Biden. He's a familiar entity, has always had a unique appeal to Southerners generally (for a Democrat anyway), and was the right-hand man to the still-popular President Obama. Unless Biden stumbles badly in the months ahead, which is admittedly easy to do when one is the early frontrunner and even easier to do when your name is Joe Biden, he's well-positioned to dominate among older black voters.
Who is Biden's most serious challenger for the older black vote? Probably Kamala Harris, who will make headlines during early primary season for what will likely be strong early vote numbers from her home state of California. If she's seen as insurgent at the time of the South Carolina primary, she might be able to poach some of Biden's African American support, but I'm skeptical. Harris is no Barack Obama in terms of temperament or candidate profile, and her social justice warrior demeanor doesn't seem like a very compelling fit for the busloads of older black Baptists who show up for the Souls to the Polls rallies in African American communities. Furthermore, if Harris doesn't come in at least a strong second in South Carolina, I think her candidacy is finished.
So now that Biden's officially in the race, I'd say he's a narrow frontrunner. How would I feel about a Biden nomination? Not great....but not terrible. Who could have ever imagined that notorious gaffe machine Biden would ever emerge as the "safe choice" in a field of nearly two dozen candidates, especially when he'll be 78 years old by the day of the general election? As always it's a bit of a tightrope walk with the "safe" candidate, who come November 2020 will likely keep the Democratic base and the moderate independents in the fold, but who will always be less than inspiring for younger people and low-propensity voters who the Democrats will desperately need against a united front of Trump support likely to be the majority in about 85% of American counties. But of course given Biden's lengthy background of opening mouth and inserting foot, he's a less safe "safe" choice than somebody like Bob Dole or Mitt Romney (and even those safe choices failed to win).
Still, the early indications suggest Biden is not as likely as most to allow himself to be bullied or radicalized by the Twitter mob, which right now is more important than anything else to keep from being disqualified more than a year before the general election. He's best positioned to avoid having to pander to the Twitter radicals to be noticed or to raise money for his campaign. Defeating Trump in 2020, and avoiding the 7-2 Federalist Society Supreme Court that would follow in a second Trump term, needs to be everybody's top priority. The fact that a man in his late 70s might be the only person who can do that without blowing himself up in the Twitter mob minefield is a terrifying proposition for the Democratic Party's future.
posted by Mark at 12:27 PM
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