This has bugged me all week, so I decided to write a diary. Note that I am going to talk about progressives, the “establishment,” and Bernie Sanders – none of the discussion is going to be a criticism of anyone of any ideology. It’s just analysis of what I think was a flawed idea presented in an interview on MSNBC. I would appreciate if everyone could avoid pie fight comments.
On the 8/14 episode of All in With Chris Hayes, guest host Ali Velshi waylays Senator Sanders with a Nate Silver tweet, which said:
“In races where insurgent, progressive Democrats are running against party-backed nominees...the establishment Democrat is winning 89% of the time.”
Silver links to this 538 article.
Sen Sanders gets a bit distracted by the question, which Velshi brings up three times, insinuating that this means that progressives are having a tough campaign season.
It’s understandable that Sanders gets flustered...how was he supposed to know what the tweet was referring to? (Instead he says he finds it to be a troublesome tweet, thus my amazing diary photo, lol). But here, with the magic of the internet, we can discuss the data in more detail, and I think there are serious problems with how Velshi was interpreting it.
What the data actually said
The 538 article is discussing the ‘win rate’ of various groups on the left that endorse — the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” list, Justice Democrats, PCCC, Indivisible, Our Revolution, etc.
Indeed, the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” endorsements have won 37 of 39 races, or 95%. And when a Red to Blue Dem is running against an opponent endorsed by the other groups, the DCCC’s candidate wins 89% of the time.
But this data is not useful in the way that Velshi used it for several reasons.
Why it doesn’t really speak to the strength of the progressive movement
1. It’s comparing apples to oranges. The DCCC is endorsing candidates based on who they believe can run the strongest campaign. Ideological groups, on the other hand, endorse based on...well...ideology (duh, lol). The DCCC’s list is a group of hand-selected candidates from various ideological stances who are deemed the strongest contenders. Therefore, they always had a better shot at winning.
2. These aren’t mutually exclusive groups. Many of the DCCC candidates are also on Sen. Sanders’s endorsement lists. And the progressives that appear on both lists have largely won their primaries. So it’s disingenuous to use this data to say that progressives are having a hard time compared to establishment candidates...what’s more true is that establishment doesn’t mean moderate, and a lot of establishment candidates are progressives, and that an establishment progressive has a better shot than one without DCCC backing.
3. Progressive groups can back long shots...the DCCC can’t, at least not on this particular list. Justice Dems are endorsing Sanjay Patel in FL-08 – he’s a great candidate. The DCCC will endorse Patel, but he’s not on the Red to Blue list because the district is deeply Republican and a long shot. The DCCC’s list are the races we are most likely to flip, so of course those candidates will win in bigger numbers. This speaks to how we run a national campaign — the DCCC does the lifting on the best targets, then other groups pick up the slack in other districts because no one group can focus on 240+ races all at once.
4. The DCCC and groups like Justice Dems don’t butt heads that often. Silver’s 89% figure refers to a very small subset of races where you have these organizations at odds with one another. When that happens, sure, the DCCC candidates tend to win...for all of the reasons listed. But because this is such a small subset of the races, it’s not legitimate to suggest that the figure says anything about the strength of the progressive movement as a whole.
5. Consider the districts in play. The 2010-2016 elections were brutal on House Dems. But the seats lost were disproportionately moderate. The centrists in these districts are who lost, while the further left Representatives were safe. So most of the districts we’re seeking to flip are from this list. In a set of districts that are disproportionately moderate to lean R, we wouldn’t expect progressives to do as well as they would if the set was a list of lean to strong D districts.
5. Other factors are playing a more dominant role. The primaries are a strong indicator that the left is looking at other factors with more weight than straight ideology. It is extraordinarily evident that a woman candidate enjoys a significant advantage (for once) regardless of her specific policy positions. This is also true for minority and LGBT candidates to a lesser extent. The left seems dedicated to electing a younger, more diverse caucus. (Good for us!) So if a Justice Dem like Brent Welder loses to (also progressive) Sharice Davids, it doesn’t seem logical to suggest this was because of voter opposition to his ideology. It is extremely likely that voters were simply energized by the opportunity to send a minority woman to Congress.
Bottom Lines
Velshi wanted to use a valid data point to suggest things the data point wasn’t designed to suggest. BAD USE OF POLLING. (538 joke.)
The DCCC and other political organizations are working in tandem, but in different ways, to expand the coalition. The desire to defeat Trumpism and the desire to elect a diverse caucus are playing a more prominent role in who wins primaries right now than ideology. The election is too complex to use a few primaries to suggest that progressives are doing any better or worse than they have in the past, or that public perception has changed.
What is also true is that the progressive movement (or any ideological bloc in the party) is about issues more than candidates. And whether a candidate wins or loses in a primary doesn't always say much about where the party is going about specific policy ideas. Every single Justice Dem could win, or every single one could lose, and that wouldn’t change that more Democrats want to see Medicare for All. The progressive movement is a movement of ideas, not of individuals.
I like Ali Velshi okay, but in this case he was playing into the old trope that there is a rift on the left, and that progressives are losing some sort of war for dominance. I think the point is a total fallacy – the primaries have been a reasoned, mature debate about how we want to govern, and progressives have done just fine in making themselves heard and winning a lot of the arguments.
And that’s my response to this data, which was thrown at Sen. Sanders in order to derail him — no, it’s not bad news for progressives. They’re doing just fine.