Why Doomerism is still Shorpilled
I’ve seen a lot of optimism on the feed about the future of US politics since Democrats won the Georgia runoffs. While that was indeed a very important win, it only moved my level optimism about the future of US politics from “absolutely dire” to “maybe we have a chance if we can bully Joe Manchin into sacrificing his career for the future of the party”. So, to avoid having to explain the same points over and over again on Twitter, I thought I’d make a master document of why the Shorpilled position is to be a Doomer.
Republicans won most StateHouse battles — and that means another decade of awful maps
After much hype about a potential Democratic flip, Texas still has a Republican StateHouse. So does Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, and — in a flip — New Hampshire. Democrats control just 18 state legislatures, versus 30 for Republicans. This means another 10 years of horrible maps for Democrats. In fact, an analysis by Sean Trende shows that redistricting will probably do enough to wipe out Democrats’ narrow house majority on its own.
The educational realignment means Democrats have to win big to actually win
If the Republican party stays Trumpy, it’s likely that educational polarization will continue to be strong, with Democrats easily winning white voters with a Bachelor’s degree, and Republicans dominating among white voters without a Bachelor’s degree. If that’s the case, the electoral college and senate will continue to be hugely biased against Democrats, and Democrats will need national enviornments in the D+3 to D+4 range to eek out narrow electoral college victories. That’s tough in an era in which elections tend to be very close.
The Decline in Ticket Splitting is a Disaster for Democrats in the Senate
The correlation between Presidential elections and Senate elections in the same state has gone from very minimal to gargantuan over the past 30 years. In theory, this should equally benefit each party: Republicans can’t win New Jersey, Democrats can’t win Nebraska, etc. But in reality, this hurts Democrats on net, because the median state is 4 points to the right of the nation as a whole. Given the structure of the Senate, in which only 1/3rd of seats are up for election in a given cycle, this means the average national enviornment over the course of 3 consecutive cycles needs to be around D+4 in order for Dems to narrowly win the Senate. That’s very difficult given the cyclical nature of politics.
Midterms are usually a disaster for the party in the White House
If 2022 is a neutral national enviornment, Democrats will likely lose the Senate and the House. And in a midterm, the national enviornment usually tilts away from the party in the White House. The Twitter counter-argument to this appears to be “but muh post-pandemic economy”, to which I point out that the economy was good in plenty of past midterms as well, including 2018.
Demographic change is vastly overrated
During the first hour or so of election night, when the first results were trickling in from Indiana and Kentucky, CNN commentators passed the time by talking about one of their favorite topics, demographic change. They shared anecdotes about how today’s pre-schools are super diverse and the suburbs are becoming much more diverse than they used to be, and how that has big implications on the future of US politics.
But while demographic change is real, people vastly overrate the speed at which it translates into meaningful changes in electoral outcomes, and underrate how easy it is for Republicans to cancel it out.
For a perfect example of this, one need to look no further than the state of Ohio. Here’s how the demographics of Ohio changed from 2010 to 2019:
White: 81.1 -> 78.4
Black: 12.2 ->13.1
Hispanic: 3.1 -> 4.0
Asian: 1.7 -> 2.5
That’s a decent bit of demographic change. I’m sure that resulted in Ohio swinging to the left over the course of the last few cycles, right? Well, no. Because this demographic change, while meaningful, was wiped out and then some by the GOP fairing far, far better with white voters without a college degree, which still make up a majority of the state’s electorate, as they do in almost half of all states. As a result, Ohio went from Obama +3 in 2012 to Trump +8 in 2020.
“Okay, Bread Fixer, but that’s a Rust Belt state,” you might say, “the place where demographic change is really gonna pay off is in the Sun Belt”. Okay, then, let’s take a look at Florida:
White: 57.9->53.2
Black: 16.0->16.9
Hispanic: 22.5->26.4
Asian: 2.4->3.0
Demographic change was much greater in Florida, and yet, Obama won Florida twice, and Trump won it twice.
Florida demostrates the second way that Republicans can counter demographic change. In 2020, Trump did worse with white voters than in 2016 (almost entirely because of college-educated white voters), but he increased his margin in Florida, largely because of making up ground with Latino voters. CNN shut-up about demographic change once early results came in from Florida, where Biden flipped majority-white Duval County (Jacksonville), but underperformed Hillary in the majority-Hispanic counties of Miami-Dade and Osceola (Kissimmee), crushing Democratic hopes of a quick election night.
In the House, Republicans flipped several majority-Hispanic seats: FL-26, FL-27, NM-2, and CA-21. They also flipped CA-39, where a majority of the population is either Hispanic or Asian. Analysis of precinct-level results show that Trump’s gains with Hispanic and Asian voters were widespread, from big cities like New York and Chicago to the Rio Grande Valley.
What Democrats can do about it
Demographic change isn’t going to save Democrats, or at least, not fast enough. But Democrats have the ability to save themselves. They can nuke the filibuster, and pass a bunch of legislation that makes it easier for Democrats to win elections. It’s that simple. Add 7 new states. Pass redistricting reform. Limit the ability of states to engage in voter supression tactics, like voter roll purges. If they don’t do it during this congress, they might not get another shot.
Addendum: Blue-State ballot measures show the median democrat is way to the right of Twitter
This is somewhat orthogonal to the rest of the post, but I think it’s been underdiscussed how terrible ballot measures were, and what it says about just how progressive the Democratic electorate is (or isn’t).
In California, Prop 15, which would have raised commerical property taxes on large businesses while leaving small businesses and homeowners untouched, failed. Twitter absolutely loved Prop 15. I didn’t see a single poster express opposition to it. One account changed their name to “Prop 15 stan account” for 6 months. It failed, in California, a Biden +29 state. Meanwhile, Prop 22, which allows the likes of Uber and Lyft to refuse to provide health insurance to their drivers, passed easily.
Meanwhile in Illinois, a Biden +17 state, voters soundly rejected a measure that would’ve increased income taxes on households making more than 250k, while slightly lowering income taxes on everyone else. I repeat, this is a Biden +17 state. I wasn’t suprised this measure underperformed Biden in the “culturally liberal, fiscally conservative” suburbs, but it also underperformed Biden downstate, where Trump won big in almost every county. This is in spite of the fact that Senator Dick Durbin overperformed Biden in most of those counties:
This was not the first cycle in which solidly blue states rejected progressive ballot measures. Washington State, which supported Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly in the 2016 primary, rejected a carbon tax ballot measure 59–41 during the 2016 general election. In 2018 another carbon tax measure failed 56–44.
Ballot measures weren’t all awful: Florida approved a $15 minimum wage. This proves the popularity of the policy and shows the Democrats should pusue it at a national level (which they are). And Arizona managed to pass an income tax that was similar to the one that failed in Illinois.
But there’s one thing I think we can say for certain from recent ballot measures: the median Democrat is not Medlock-pilled. They do not like to tax themselves, and they’re even skeptical of taxing other people if they believe it could be a “slippery slope” to their own taxes getting raised in the future. This does not bode well for the prospect of implementing anything resembling social democracy in the United States.
