Have you heard this particular analysis? I find it interesting; it presents a heck of a head-scratcher. The “theory” side of it sure sounds plausible: large blocks of the middle are already voting anyway, but extreme left/right candidates encumber a “tax” on their electoral efforts because they juice turnout among their opposition more than they do among their own base.
The “practice” side of it is quite different: it’s posited that this theory can account for the results of the 2016 election, because Clinton was the extremist and Trump the moderate.
Wait, what?
Expect that disavowing the electability of the Sanders/Warren block will sell like hot cakes in the aftermath of the drubbing Labour just took in the U.K. And maybe that’s not the wrong conclusion. After all, fellow fanatics of polling news are well aware that Biden looks best positioned in predictably crucial Wisconsin and appears to have the nearest shot of sneaking off with Texas under the curtain of night.
Thus there is an argument to be made from sheer numbers; not one without fallacy, but a starting point nonetheless.
In the Twitter thread I linked above, people were (rightly) quick to scoff at the following thesis: Donald was the moderate, Hillary the extremist. How do you answer that? Here is the tweet with the skeleton key:
The linchpin phrase up there is “sells themself”. Moderation, in the sense we typically think of it (e.g. selecting from public option vs. Medicare for All on a left-right horizontal line) is not really what the game’s all about. Clinton ran on a center-left platform of technocratic solutions discovered via broad debate and applied via democratic merit; the Leslie Knope approach (which, lest you think I’m knocking it, is the kind of stuff I eat up like peanut butter chocolate ice cream).
Trump, by contrast, has ushered in the exact era of white nationalism he promised and has effectively re-wired our federal judiciary to the point where the second Lochner Era has literally begun. By all traditional definitions, it’s an exceedingly obvious objective truth that his was the extremist candidacy and Clinton’s the moderate.
But, as the above tweet points out, it’s about perception of moderation. So… let’s unpack that.
I think this analysis jogged a lot of people’s memories when it first hit. “Oh yeah, didn’t Trump pay lip service to protecting Social Security and Medicare? Hasn’t anti-free-trade always sorta been the (labor) left’s thing?”
Okay, so Trump couched himself in moderate stances on the things people cared most about, and that’s why he was “perceived as a moderate”. Got it.
Well… no.
Are we to believe no Republican contender til Trump thought of (regardless what they really believe) pitching themselves as a moderate? Lest we forget Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” and outreach to Hispanics and desire to work with Democrats on education, or John “Maverick” McCain. Or Mitt Romney’s pivot to the center.
“But Matt!” you recall. “Obama defined that sumbitch Romney early. 2012 was the election of Bain Capital and the 47%. He couldn’t hack it as a moderate because he’d already been painted as a rich snob.”
Ding ding ding! Salesmanship is everything.
We, again (to our own disadvantage) picture moderation as selecting the centrist policy positions on the left-right horizontal span. Romney tried to play that game but it fell flat because he’d already been characterized in a manner that made said pivots, from the perspective of underlying human (not political axis) values, lack credibility.
If we want to apply this lesson to 2020, we have to understand how and why the clearly laughable narrative of “Donald the moderate, Hillary the extremist” was sold to the masses in 2016. It’s the most important question raised in the above Twitter theory, which sadly offers no such advice. I’m not sure I can either.
I’ll tell you this: Hillary Clinton was otherized and it had nothing to do with policy positions. If it can happen to one center-left Dem, it can happen to another.
I know, I know, the right-wing media spent 30 years demonizing her, so it was a fairly easy layup for Trump to make in 2016. Well, I’ve got more news for you. The GOP has already decided that they’re running in 2020 against socialism. In light of the U.K. election, they will surely double down.
So obviously the answer is moderate Democrats, right?
Well… no.
If you think we won’t be hearing about Joe Biden, the most extremist socialist candidate ever, think again. Nominating a moderate Democrat won’t protect us from this coming line of attack. The fact that it isn't true won't prevent it either (hopefully we’ve learned a few lessons about truth in the last four years!).
It’s going to be a theme that Trump and the GOP, with a heavy boost from media framing, will push no matter what. And if all we have to say about it is a patronizing “Clearly they’ve never heard of Eugene Debs”, well, we’ll laugh among ourselves but we won’t win any new friends, that’s for sure.
So salesmanship matters most, conviction matters most, we’re going to be “tainted” as socialist extremists anyway, we may as well just nominate a strong left-wing candidate who can defend their beliefs and run with it.
Well… no.
Because of the polling, sure, to a degree. And because “they lied, I don’t believe that” is a shorter conversation to have with swing voters hesitant about that scary big change they heard about on TV than it is to pitch why the (saner version) of the idea will work for them… since the longer you have to spend talking about (explaining/defending) your positions, the harder you’re losing.
But mostly because 2020 is going to be won and lost by the mercies of which candidate can more successfully otherize their opponent.
When I say “no” to a moderate Dem and “no” again to a leftist, it’s not because I am rejecting the idea of either, but rather rejecting the idea that either one offers a quick answer to the dilemma of 2020. It’s a dilemma that has been vigorously reinforced by this U.K. election: vast propensity to set and control the narrative awaits any right-winger with a snarky personality and a good instinct for salesmanship (which, like it or not, Trump has).
In 2020, there will be no easy answers. Moderate or not, there will be no candidate with an inherent suit of teflon armor against the forces of right-wing media framing and otherization.
That’s my caveat to the (very good) Twitter analysis up above: sure, I can see how the so-called “extreme-left” candidate becomes a liability if they galvanize even more right-wing extremists to turn out.
The problem is, “left-wing extremism” is going to be re-defined as whatever the Democratic nominee is running on… and we already know, from 2016, that the track record of this re-framing is sadly quite effective.
Is Biden’s policy moderation, familiarity to voters, and inherent insulation against charges of coastal elitism the best way to combat the coming re-framing? Or will the Sanders/Warren conviction and passion (which, after all, people do like) channel humanity with the median voter in ways that Trump does not, and supersede the re-framing?
You already know, no doubt, that I have no answer here… but that’s the point. At the end of the day, to win 2020 we need a harmonized coalition of left idealists and centrist Dems, and we need to otherize the bad guys earlier and louder than they can otherize us.
Avoid, therefore, the vision of solving this puzzle by selecting the mathematical centrist on the policy position axis. It’s meaningless self-consolation. It’s a dream of an easy answer when there never was going to be one.
Like with how all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles squares, the best choice of leader to beat the re-framing might well be a policy centrist, but being a policy centrist is not what will make one the best leader. If you think Biden is an automatic solve to the post-U.K. election dilemma, you’re wrong (though he very well might be, in the end). If you think Warren or Sanders are intrinsically doomed to be another Corbyn, you’re wrong (though in the end, they may be).
Because this election, like it or not, will come down to salesmanship.