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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   19150 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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One of the great ironies of US politics is that the Republican party has always always been far more democratic in its operation than the Democrats, with the GOP having relatively little say it's constituent parties' operations compared to the power that the Democratic National Committee wields over it's state and municipal-level subcommittees.

I'm not sure there was that much difference between them before 2016. The DNC is by no means a kingmaker either, and the experience with Sanders' campaigns has only served to weaken it further. Of course, both parties are astoundingly weak compared to peer countries'.

As someone who's actually gotten to peak behind the curtain I'm going to have to disagree.

Ok, make your argument. Pre 2016, the story was "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Or as Will Rogers put it "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat." Republican presidential candidates from Reagan to Romney were most frequently the second place finisher in the last primary (Reagan, Romney, McCain); out of the rest you have a sitting VP (Bush I), a former VP nominee (Dole), and the son of a former president (Bush II).

Democrats meanwhile, would pick an absolute zinger every now and then. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. They nominated Obama on the strength of one good speech from 2004.

2016 was a big flip. Since then we've had two straight "fall in line" Dems, and, well Trump on the Republican side. You can point to some antecedents, notably Eric Cantor getting primaried and Boehner being run out of town. But I have trouble seeing much pre-2016 evidence that the Republicans were more anarchic than the Democrats. Even in Congress, the Republicans more consistently understand the assignment. It's tough to picture the Democrats holding the line like Mitch's senate in 2016 to nab a SCOTUS seat under pressure. Hence the meme that when Republicans have a president and 50 senators they start wars and cut taxes and pass the Patriot act; when Democrats control both houses and the presidency they start talking about needing a bulletproof supermajority to get anything done.

Ok, make your argument.

Unlike the Democrats ultimate control of the control purse-stings resides at the state committee level. One of the major reasons you don't often see primary challenges against incumbents on the democrats' side is that the DNC exercises much stricter control over candidate endorsements and will threaten to pull funding and staff from the state before things get that far. The GOP's organization isn't "anarchic" so much as decentralized with state and regional organizations operating largely independently of each other.

Until Trump, Republicans had been consistently voting for the prior runner-up in presidential nominations. IIRC Romney, McCain, Dubya, Dole, HW, Reagan and Nixon were all nominated after being in second-place in the prior primary.

I think you're overstating it or not recalling correctly. I don't think that Dole ran against HW in 88, and certainly not in 92; Dubya did not run in 96; Nixon did not run against Goldwater in 64, but he was a prior VP and was the nominee in 60. Like I said in my comment: Reagan, McCain, and Romney cleanly fit that narrative. The rest have their establishment credentials in various ways. The last R nominee who was a lightning bolt from the blue like Trump is probably Goldwater in 64. Otherwise, every R nominee between 60 and 16 was on at least their second Presidential campaign by the time they got the nominee, with the exception of Dubya who had the exact same name (just missing his Herbert) as a prior Republican president. Another meme is that Republicans didn't win the Whitehouse without Nixon or a George Bush on the ticket between Hoover and Trump.

Comparing it to Dems across that same time JFK, McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Obama, Kerry, were all nominated on their first runs. Gore, Mondale, Humphrey go the other way. I'm not sure how to classify LBJ, for reasons I hope are obvious to anyone participating in this level of analysis. So 2016 and 2020, with the Dems nominating old war horses with multiple campaigns under their belt against a Republican bolt-from-the-blue are rare specimens; where in that time 1960, 1972, 1976, 1988, 1992, 2004, 2008, 2012, all ran the other way.

Dole got second place to Bush in 88, winning 5 states and getting 20% of the primary vote.

Buchannon (2nd place in 96) was completing the destruction of the reform party.

HW was 2nd in 80, Reagan was 2nd in 76. You covered McCain and Romney, 5 out of 6 ain't bad.

I didn't realize Dole ran in '88! Good call.

"I know what is behind my curtain, so I know what is not behind your curtain."

Don't know for myself first hand, but have talked to enough people who would know to get a decent idea. In addition to the above my grandad was a state legislator.

On what point? That 2016 was a significant inflection point or that centralised control under the dems were not also weak (but perhaps stronger than today). Your linked post largely agrees on the importance of 2016 (even if painting it as the apotheosis of an ongoing trend) and doesn't address symmetries or lack thereof.

On what point?

First, that this is a recent development (IE from 2016 on). Second, that the DNC is "by no means a kingmaker".

I agree that it didn't come out of the blue on 2016, though I'd consider the view that it is largely a reaction to 2012 to be an agreement that it is actually quite recent.

For all the hay made of The Party Decides that became fodder for Getting It Wrong come 2016, to actually drop the conspiratorial lens on all the DNC leaks paints a picture of an astoundingly ineffectual institution.

I don't think it's a reaction to 2012 though because the relative decentralization of the GOP dates back to at least Coolidge in the 1920s

apologies for misreading your reddit post then

After Carter both parties added super delegates, but they're about 15% of the Democratic convention and only 7% of the Republican's. Also, more recently they're more tethered to the state vote.

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