Midterm Motivation Part I
and the need for less pragmatism
Somewhere between Election Day in presidential years and the Spring thereafter two things happen. Idealists in the party controlling the White House become lackadaisical and and the pragmatists start negotiating midterm victories.
The lackadaisicalness is fed by an expectation that the President can do more than the Constitution allows and that the democratic process is static. The Senate filibuster has stymied enough economic and social progress over the past half century to counter that kind of political naivete, and it does not take a policy wonk to imagine what a Democratic-controlled Congress could have done for Presidents Clinton and Obama beyond their first two years in office.
The political pragmatism that fuels election handicapping is akin to a Sharps v Joes Vegas bookmaking metric. In sports, the Sharp bettors, i.e professionals, look for value in beating the point spread. The Average Joe bettors look for upset opportunities.
Pragmatists within the DGA, DSCC, DCCC, and DLCC1 tend to focus on value and less on organizational opportunties. The DNC would do well to turn all four into Organizing for America (the political offspring of Obama for America) conduits.
Why?
It’s about who does not vote in midterms not about those who reliably show up at the polls with religious regularity. On average about a third of people who do vote in presidential elections do not show up at the polls during midterms. Take a look.
In all likelihood about 106 million or so people will vote. The Democrats should worry as that estimated number favors the Republicans.
Even though nearly three-fourths (74.6%) of the people who voted Democratic in presidential years show up at the polls during midterm elections, the percentage drops to 63.3% when a Democrat occupies the White House and it is a serious problem..
For Republicans, 69.5% of those voting for GOP presidential candidates have shown up at midterm elections since 1980. When a Democrat is in the Oval Office, that percentage climbs to 78.8%. And those numbers have been an electoral boon for more than 40 years.
The reason for these odious statistics is that the Democrats play a Prevent Defense and the Four Minute offense when in power, when the Blitz defense and Play Option offense are the better choice.
In baseball parlance, skip the sabermetrics and go with steals and sacrifrices if you want to win. Bill James wins the regular season, but the World Series is won at home plate not with runners in scoring position.
The Democrats need about 65-70 million voters and the kind of messaging that sent Democrats to the polls in droves in 1982, 1986, 2006, and 2018.
Tomorrow: Part II A Realist approach to winning midterms.
Democratic Governors Association, Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, respectively are the Democratic Party campaign organs for gubernatorial, Senate, House, and state legislature races