Immersion, Not Conversion

Dr. Rachel Bitecofer issued her "Post-Democratic Primary Update to the Bitecofer Model" for predicting the 2020 presidential race, and she forecasts 289 electoral college votes for the Democratic candidate this November. It takes 270 to win.

Bitecofer, aside from telling Democrats what they want to hear in these dark Trump times, always offers details and insights worth munching on in our social isolation. Like this:

If Trump had political capital to spend heading into this [Coronavirus] crisis, that would be one thing. But after the Russia investigation was followed in short order by the Ukraine scandal, Trump’s political capital tank is already on empty, with few Americans outside of Republicans capable of trusting him. Trump will be heading into the fall with the dubious distinction of being the most embattled, controversial, and scandal-plagued president to seek reelection in the history of the republic — and that was before this virus emerged to create a massive public health disaster and destroy his strongest claim for reelection: the economy.

Bitecofer is also the strongest voice out there against the old Democratic Party belief that significant numbers of "moderate" Republicans can be converted to vote Democratic. That's a subset of an assumption that some 15% of the electorate swings between the parties, a mistaken impression that Bitecofer calls "the Chuck Todd Theory of American Politics." I've written about that previously.

So Bitecofer looks skeptically at Montana Governor Steve Bullock's Senate race against incumbent Republican Senator Steve Daines. Bullock was heavily recruited to run, after his presidential aspirations petered out, but Bitecofer doesn't predict a Bullock victory, mainly because she assumes Bullock will campaign on the tattered Chuck Todd Theory -- trying to convert soft Republicans to vote for him:

Bullock will need to demonstrate dominance among independents in polling out of Big Sky Country to truly be competitive there under a high-turnout scenario, as will his ticket-mate, Joe Biden. But more importantly, they’ll need every single Democrat and left-leaning independent in the state to show up and vote. Which is a problem, because although a great many Democrats and left-leaning independents will be inspired to vote in 2020 due to Trump fear, I assume the Bullock campaign’s resources will largely be spent on conversion. And I’m just not sure it’ll work against Steve Daines, a center-right, traditional, conservative. Regular followers will know that I’m generally bearish about conversion (although sometimes it works, most recently in the Kentucky governor’s race against controversial Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, who along with a reputation for Trump-like divisiveness also curtailed the state’s Obamacare Medicaid expansion program). Conversion in the polarized era is hard, and it is difficult to find evidence of it in polling data from the past decade.

I highlight Bitecofer's skepticism about "conversion" because I find too many Democratic candidates in North Carolina still inclined to the old Chuck Todd Theory, rather than to the post-Trump necessity of energizing new and infrequent voters to get up off the couch and take back their government.

Rachel Bitecofer Makes Me Nervous

Rachel Bitecofer is a 42-year-old political scientist who teaches -- and writes extensively, disruptively -- at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. She is rather unique among her prognosticating brethren for coming within one US House seat of nailing the Blue Wave of 2018. She predicted a Democratic gain of 42 seats. The Democrats took 41. She got it right, according to David Freedlander (Politico.com), "even as other forecasters went wobbly in the race’s final days. Not only that, but she put out her forecast back in July, and then stuck by it while polling shifted throughout the summer and fall." While all the other analysts were saying, "Oh the Democrats are going to screw this up. They are overreaching. They are going to get 23 seats if they're lucky" -- Bitecofer was the too optimistic one who was right.

Reading her analysis both jazzes me and scares the God-blessed living shit out of me. Because what Bitecofer predicts for 2020 in red Trump counties -- and I'm surrounded by blood-red western North Carolina Trump counties -- is that the Trump vote will likely increase over 2016. There aren't enough "soft Republicans" to make a difference for Democratic candidates, and right-leaning independent (Unaffiliated) voters will be leaning harder right, as their hatred of Democrats congeals like lard. The Republican coalition -- mostly non-college whites, with a smattering of religious-minded voters, financiers, and people in business, largely in rural and exurban counties -- is now -- following impeachment -- not only mad as hell but they're scared, too, of what could come next after a rejection of Trump. 

With a red wall building for this November, if there's not enough left-leaning and otherwise previously disinterested voting-age population who will commit to vote in sufficient numbers to overtop that red wall, there's little hope for Democratic campaigns in districts rated "Safe Republican" (and that label applies to most of western North Carolina). What is a political "wave," anyway, but the working of "negative partisanship," an instinctive human reaction to extreme departures from the norm. Bitecofer relies on "negative partisanship" to explain the Democratic wave of 2018. She sees "negative partisanship" as an almost genetic American inheritance -- a pushing back against whoever's in power. In 2018, it became a wave of revulsion to a plain awful human being -- his cruelties, his double-dealing, his willful and destructive ignorance.

Negative partisanship is not exclusive to Democrats. In 2010, it was the Tea Party wave of revulsion against the government spending of a black man. The Tea Party wave became the Trump surprise of 2016. "...Modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place." 

Turnout explains everything. Turnout of new people entering and exiting the electorate rather than people switching sides. What drives that kind of turnout in major "change" elections? "Negative partisanship." Shorter definition: Mass expression of instinctive human emotion rejecting an ideology or a personage.

The Chuck Todd Theory of American Politics

"About 55 percent of eligible voters are likely to go to the polls, and the winner is determined by the 15 percent or so of 'swing voters' who flit between the parties. So a general election campaign amounts to a long effort to pull those voters in to your side."

Bitercofer laughs at that. The swing voter -- at least in appreciable numbers -- is largely a myth. “The idea that there is this informed, engaged American population that is watching these political events and watching their elected leaders and assessing their behavior and making a judgment -- it's just not true.”

As she sees it, it isn’t quite right to refer to a Democratic or Republican “base.” Rather, there are Democratic and Republican coalitions. “In the polarized era, the outcome isn’t really about the candidates. What matters is what percentage of the electorate is Republican and Republican leaners, and what percentage is Democratic and Democratic leaners, and how they get activated,” she said.

Isn't really about the candidates. Bitecofer has said that any one of the Tier 1 or Tier 2 Democratic candidates can -- and will -- win against Trump, but more recently on Twitter she's hedged a bit on both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, calling them the riskiest options for Democrats. Alarmingly, Sanders failed to turn out his promise of record numbers of new voters in the Iowa caucuses this week, and Biden represents too much the status quo. “If you want to win the election, you have to be able to frame your candidacy in a way that reminds voters that Trump is an abnormality that must be excised,” Bitecofer said.

I realize that Bitecofer has critics.

Bitecofer hasn’t exactly been clairvoyant: Her original Senate prediction was off in 2018. She didn’t anticipate the surge in GOP turnout that would match the surge in Democratic turnout in places where the demographics still favored Republicans. She thought Democrats would win Florida, and maybe even Texas, and that the Georgia governor’s race was winnable. What she didn’t count on at the time was that negative partisanship can work both ways, even when there is one party in power, and that no one knows how to fire up the fear factor in his coalition quite like Donald Trump. He did just that, and Blue Dog Democrats in Missouri and Indiana and South Dakota were done for.

But still, the results bore out her theory: For Democrats to win, they need to fire up Democratic-minded voters. The Blue Dogs who tried to narrow the difference between themselves and Trump did worse, overall, than the Stacey Abramses and Beto O’Rourkes, whose progressive ideas and inspirational campaigns drove turnout in their own parties and brought them to the cusp of victory.

The Democratic coalition -- people of color, college-educated whites, and people in metropolitan areas -- has got to grow in 2020, and appreciable growth in rural jurisdictions is sometimes just plain impossible.

Finding a new voting cohort -- including college students, for example -- the "step-up" voters, the previously disengaged, the young, especially the educated -- is far easier in urban areas. I don't like feeling apprehensive about that, never mind my little blue dot of Watauga County.

Can a Democrat Win NC House District 96?

North Carolina House District 96 is weirdly carved out of northwestern Catawba County. Includes most of Hickory, St. Stephens, Conover, Long View, and Mountain View, plus the densely populated but more rural neighborhoods along Lee Cline Rd. and Spring Rd. in northernmost Catawba. According to numbers guy Michael Bitzer, Trump carried the district in 2016 with 63.79%. (Trump carried most other western North Carolina counties by 70% or more, except for a couple of exceptions -- Watauga and Jackson, I'm looking at you -- so a Trump majority of 64% looks almost like moderation.)

Democrat Kim Bost ran for the NCH96 seat in 2018. She got 39.26% of the vote. The Republican incumbent Jay Adams took 60.74%. Meaning that Kim Bost did better on the ballot than Hillary Clinton did against Trump in '16. Kim Bost is running again. She celebrated her 2020 Kickoff on January 14, attracting good attention and support. Where there's only a ten-point gap (did I just say only?) in a Western North Carolina district, there's hope. There's at least room for improvement. (Bitzer rates the district "Safe Republican.")

This district has a poverty level of 14.1%, slightly lower than the state's 16.1%. It's been a fading industrial sector with a blue-collar workforce under economic pressure. Median household income, $50,758. Only 26% of the population holds a four-year college degree, though the Apple data center in Catawba and the Google data center in neighboring Caldwell, along with high-tech manufacturers like Corning Optical and CommScope, may be drawing new residents with higher educational attainment. At first blush, this district offers a Bernie Sanders kind of demographic, though Bernie only pulled 44% of the vote in all of Catawba County against Hillary in the March 2016 Democratic primary. He might do considerably better on a General Election ballot (and we might actually get the chance to see that).

Kim Bost is an attractive candidate, but so far I can't tell that she's upping her game from 2018. She hasn't updated her website -- it still says "vote for me on November 6." The policy positions are solid and well written but safe. Considering the numbers above, why not go full "progressive populist" in House District 96, and find those citizens who haven't been voting and who need a little rabble-rousing incentive to register? Going for broke because the numbers are against you isn't every candidate's cup of tea. Bost can hope for a strongly progressive Democrat at the top of the ticket -- or for the old working-class affection to ignite for Joe Biden, if that's still a thing come November. I'm persuaded by the analysis of Rachel Bitecofer that Democratic winning margins since 2016 have depended on energizing a sector that hasn't been regularly voting -- not on winning mythical "moderate" Republicans. Democrats will not win Republican vote in sufficient numbers in a district like NCH96. Democrats have to find and register new, previously disengaged voters and build a fire under the slackers with what Bitecofer calls "negative partisanship."

The crowd for @BernieSanders in Cedar Rapids last night

Bost is active on both Twitter and Facebook, though less active on Twitter where she could drive a message ("North Carolina is broken, and I can tell you who broke it! His name is Jay Adams"). I appreciate videos but not ones with poor sound quality. I think Bost has a following of dedicated volunteers who'll do door-knocking and phonebanking, but she needs exceptional data management that can identify and target persuadable marginal voters and turfs with concentrations of the unregistered.

The Man Who Broke North Carolina -- Incumbent Jay Adams

Republican incumbent Jay Adams is a 73-year-old Boomer and real estate broker (specializing in commercial real estate) who's held this House seat since the elections of 2014. In Civitas rankings, he's 13th most conservative in the House, going along with the tax-the-middle-class-but-not-the-rich agenda of the Republican majority in Raleigh -- shift the tax burden while squeezing education and denying health insurance to the most vulnerable. He chairs no committees. He's a soldier who marches to Speaker Tim Moore's drum, and he looks plenty prosperous for the effort.

More Evidence of Antipathy for Trump in the Suburbs

Yes, the Virginia suburbs around Washington DeeCee, Richmond, and Norfolk swept Democrats into the state legislature last Tuesday. And the suburbs around Louisville, Lexington, and south of Cincinnati helped elect a Democratic governor of Kentucky. "In part because of antipathy toward President Trump."

But there were other clear signals from suburbia in another state where only local candidates were on the ballot -- Pennsylvania. In the suburban counties around Philadelphia, Democratic candidates defeated the last Republicans on the five-seat Delaware County Council. Democrats took control of the board of commissioners in Bucks County for the first time since the 1980s, and they took the majority in Chester County.

Election analyst and pollster Rachel Bitecofer is preaching that the turn in suburban America against the party of Trump is not Republicans changing their votes to Democrats. No, it's independent voters and -- more significantly -- new voters coming out against Trumpism at all levels of elective office -- voters who've been disengaged, sporadic in their turn-out, or simply unregistered to vote. The election of Donald Trump has awakened them. They're there for the winning over if Democratic candidates can give them the living contrast to the Party of Trump.

I highlight this paragraph by Trip Gabriel, Jonathan Martin, and Alexander Burns in an article this morning focusing on the very noticeable swing among suburban voters:

"For Mr. Trump and other Republican leaders, the ongoing political realignment of the suburbs — which was essential to Democrats flipping Republican-held congressional seats in 2018 and retaking the House — is a disconcerting disadvantage that they have shown little ability to reverse. Democratic officials, in turn, increasingly believe they can press a center-left agenda with little risk of backlash because moderate voters will remain in their grip as long as Mr. Trump is in office and effectively make the G.O.P. a no-go zone for this demographic." [italics added]

"Stand Against Trumpism!" Democrats Should Forget About Fading to "Pabulum Moderate"

The General Elections are now a year away, and it's a time for high anxiety in both camps. I won't characterize what gives both sides the willies. You know who you are. You know what scares you.

I was reading Rachel Bitecofer's analysis* about next Tuesday's election in the state directly to the north of us: "High Stakes in Virginia General Assembly Election will Preview 2020 Presidential." Bitecofer's a numbers gal, and I generally trust people who work with numbers.

*Rachel Bitecofer has become a political prognosticator to rival Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight. Bitecofer is assistant director of the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. In 2018 she predicted a 42-seat "blue wave" in the US House. Dems took 40 seats. No one else came close to her accuracy, including Nate Silver. She regularly offers opinions on Twitter.

Bitecofer saw the 2017 Virginia Blue Wave coming. That localized surge heralded the 2018 Blue Wave in the rest of the country. In Virginia in 2017, Democrats picked up some 15 seats in the state House and a handful in the Senate, putting them within single digits of having control of both chambers. Some Trump-lite Republican incumbents immediately went into a political crouch. A few -- enough as it turned out -- flinched on health care, broke ranks to join Democrats in passing an expansion of Medicaid. Many another suburban Republican temporarily forgot the name Trump and showed some bland interest in gun reform. Then what followed immediately? The Virginia Blue Wave of 2018 flipped three US House seats and absolutely buried Senator Tim Caine's hyper-conservative opponent. Scared out of their wits, Republican candidates running up-hill races this year are suddenly going hard right to keep their troops in line. We'll see Tuesday if that tactic worked.

Bitecofer's great discovery (still undiscovered by too many Democratic candidates): It was not suburban Republicans who made the Blue Wave in 2018. It was "a whole different pool of voters" -- largely independents -- who hadn't been voting, or who only voted inconsistently, who suddenly showed up at the polls: "college-educated women; millennials and Gen Z voters; minority voters; and Independents who 'lean' left or at least don’t 'lean' right." What motivated them? "These voters, whether they know it or not, have been galvanized to the polls via negative partisanship because of the election of Donald J. Trump. Trump has shaken into action a sleeping demographic giant...."

In Virginia and elsewhere.

Bitecofer's lesson which some Democratic candidates refuse to learn: Winning over Republican voters doesn't make a wave. Winning new voters makes the wave. Bitecofer: Where Republicans voted in 2018 in huge numbers, they voted for Republicans. Democrats can't and won't win them. It's new voters that Democrats need, and you don't win new voters in the Age of Trump by going "moderate Democrat." The new voters are enraged by Trump. You harness their rage by showing you're willing to stand and fight Trumpism with progressive ideas. You strongly reassert the traditional American values that Trump has shat upon. (If only Dan McCready had believed the Bitecofer data! If only he had gone full progressive warrior, instead of pabulum moderate.)

Here's the Bitecofer revelation about 2018: "...in many districts, especially where the candidates were focusing on being moderate, the Democratic turnout still underperformed its potential, and still underperformed turnout among Republicans...." The pathetic loss in the NC-9 special election in September could have been reversed if Dan McCready had inspired more enthusiasm among non-traditional voters. That's a warning for Cal Cunningham running for US Senate next year.

Basic algebra: If the election of Trump woke a giant, the impeachment of Trump -- and his acquittal by Republican lickspittles in the Senate -- surely won't put the giant to sleep. Will it?

The substance of things already achieved is less than the evidence of things not yet seen.