Ezra Klein is Looking for Change in the Wrong Places
We need to be focused on the system, not fantasies about messages and organization.
For some number of weeks (months?) Ezra Klein has been seemingly obsessed with the question of how to recalibrate the Democratic Party so that it can recapture rural states and districts across the country. This is not an illogical nor unworthy notion on its face. After all, to govern, you need to control Congress, and at a minimum, the Senate is institutionally skewed towards more rural voters. Without even getting into the House and Electoral College, there is a lot of power in the general argument.
For example, as I noted in a previous post, he hosted political scientist Suzanne Mettler to talk about her book about the urban/rural divide. This episode focuses, among other things, on the argument that the Democratic Party needs to put more effort into local organizing. The next episode, How Can Democrats Win Back the Working Class? centered on Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. That discussion was more focused on messaging, but was not a radically different conversation than was had with Mettler.
Let me say up top that I am not opposed, and even support as a general principle, the basic notions of better local organization by the Democratic Party and attempts by the party to better tell its story.
I just remain highly skeptical of the overall efficacy of those efforts, and I therefore question their likely success. I am often accused of engaging in near fantasy (if not pure hallucination!) when I talk about political reform as the needed remedy, but let me state that I think a lot of what Klein (and a whole lot of other people) are arguing for here is just as fantastical because, as reasonable as better organization and messaging sounds, it is not going to produce the desired outcomes.
If districts are heavily skewed to one party, no amount of organization can overcome that fact. And if the VRA is overturned in such a way as to allow unbridled gerrymandering for House and state legislative districts, no amount of quality candidates with awesome messages will lead to better competition and representation. And even if the Democrats can organize their way to success, the basic institutional parameters still favor Republicans.
The Senate is skewed towards rural states.
This means the Electoral College and the process to elect the president are skewed towards rural states.
The combination of the Senate and the EC means that the selection and confirmation of the federal judiciary is skewed towards rural states.
The spatial distribution of voters makes gerrymandering easier for Republicans than Democrats. This affects not just the House, but state House and Senate seats.
Maybe I am getting cantankerous, or maybe it is a sign of how deep the problems are in my mind, but I am to the point of just wanting to say: anyone who really wants to fix this situation needs to be focused on structural reform, as hard as that may be to accomplish, and to stress that just because something sounds reasonable doesn’t make it actually a better strategy to pursue.
And let me be clear: “fix the situation” to me is not about the Democrats winning; it is about creating small “d” democratic outcomes in which we have competitive, representative, and responsive elections.
Doing things like focusing on messaging or even local organization sounds practical. They sound doable. Reform sounds like a wish for unicorns. But take a state like Alabama, where the Democratic Party is a husk. It stands to reason, in the abstract, that voters want choices. So why couldn’t a reborn set of moderate Democrats not be able to compete for power at the local level? They just need money, organization, and a better message, right? But the reality is that the battle is uphill. Who is going to fund this uphill battle? Who is going to put in the time, effort, and energy to run? And if the vast majority of voters in the districts in question deeply identify as Republican, who is going to change their mind?
To be clear: a state like Alabama should see electoral results that are majority Republican. But like all red states, there are plenty of Democrats who live here. But as I noted for a piece for the Pulaski Institution a few years ago, the maps are drawn to over-represent the Republicans.
If we look at the state legislature, we see a similar story. The legislature elected in 2018 had the following partisan breakdowns. The State Senate was 27 Republicans and eight Democrats or 77.14% to 22.86%. The State House of Representatives was 77 Republicans and 28 Democrats (73.33% to 26.67%).
On the competitiveness front, 53 of the 105 members of the Alabama House ran unopposed and the average margin of victory for the remaining 52 was 37.13%. Only four races (Districts 3, 65, 85, and 47) had margins in the single digits. In the State Senate, 18 of 35 seats were unopposed and the average margin of victory in the remaining 17 districts was 30.92% with only two districts (the 2nd and the 6th) with margins in the single digits.
Again, we see here that while the state is heavily Republican, the way the lines are drawn emphasizes that advantage disproportionately (and results in general election contests that are not competitive).
I could write similar tales about most states. The only reason the House delegation looks anything like the state’s partisan makeup is that the VRA requires districts that give Blacks a legitimate chance to elect representatives. If SCOTUS strikes that provision, Alabama will almost certainly have 7 Republican Representatives, despite the fact that the state has ~35%-40% Democratic voters (depending on what you measure).
It is one thing to say, in the abstract, that there is a field of play upon which a better competitor needs to be placed, but if the districts (House and other local districts) are all drawn in a way that heavily favors a specific party, who is going to want to finance these hypothetical campaigns? Who is going to want to put up with the work needed to run?
If the districts are already heavily skewed to Republicans, and if most voters in those districts see themselves as Republicans, how hard will winning be? Pretty hard, and that will disincentivize those with money to invest and those who might otherwise want to run.
I think that Klein, who I think is smart and reasonable, is falling for the same trap that a lot of analysts of American politics fall for, which is that they make the wrong assumptions about how voters make choices and substantially downplay the way structure really dictates outcomes (there is a blind spot there that assumes the US Constitutional order should work). By the way, I am not saying that Klein utterly ignores these things, but I think that, like most Americans, even many with PhDs in political science, the allure of the notion that the American political project is a good and functional piece of machinery at its core drives the assumption that recalibration is the solution, as opposed to a substantive reworking of the machine.
I think the core problem with the approach Klein uses is the assumption that voters make choices based on policy. It is certainly the way Klein would like to think that politics works (and, to be honest, as would I). If that is true, then the goal of politicians is to show the voters who will give them the things that they want, and how they will do so. This was also what the “popularists” were arguing not that long ago.
But we know that a lot of voters, indeed most, choose based on team.
Klein notes this in the podcast with Abbott, highlighting that the Biden administration was arguably to most pro-worker from a policy point of view. And yet, that was not reflected in the 2024 electoral results, where Trump did well with working-class voters.
Indeed, Abbott himself noted how the party structures affect the kinds of choices we have and how a lot of voters behave.
There are a couple of things. One is the nature of our two-party system. If you’re really pissed off with the party you’ve been voting for for a long time, I guess you could vote for Jill Stein or whatever — the Libertarians. But the vast majority of people are just going to go to the other side. And if they were in a parliamentary system or a multiparty system, maybe they would go somewhere else. But in this case a protest vote against the Democrats is a vote for Republicans. I think that’s a part of the story.
It is, in fact, a huge part of the story.
Most voters vote solely based on their team, but if they are going to switch, it is to cast a vote as a referendum on the current party. If they are unhappy, they vote for the opposite party. I still think that the main driver for 2024 was a combo of frustration over inflation and COVID. Any attempt to fit messaging failures is largely a mistake.
Everywhere I turn, intellectually, on this general topic, I run into some key facts. I see what the basic incentive structures are within our system. I see the key role that presidentialism plays in our party system. And I see that the only ultimate way out of all of this is to cultivate reforms that lead to more representativeness, more responsiveness, and more competitiveness.
I have a lot of thoughts that require a lot of posts to sort out.
Let me start with the following general observations.
What are the incentives for candidates as a general matter? Winning elections above all else.
What are the main goals for US parties as a general matter? Winning congressional majorities, but especially winning the White House. (This dictates where energy and resources go.)
What is the main goal for voters? Having their team win (or to send a signal over short-term pain).
What is the main goal for a democracy scholar? Representation of and responsiveness to voters by the system.
In simple terms, the only hope we have, in my view, is to convince Democrats that their goals, winning power, and the goals of pro-democracy types, are overlapping. I would go back to my 2020 post on this general subject: Reforms: the Possible, the Improbable, and the Unpossible for some examples, although more could be said.
The reality is that the Democrats are structurally disadvantaged by our system. This is most obvious in the Senate and, therefore, the Electoral College, but even in the House, the nature of the gerrymandering wars demonstrates that Republicans likewise have an advantage. All of these factors, among others, should help marry up the incentives for Democratic politicians with the pro-democracy goals of scholars.
This is a more efficacious and potentially more fruitful route than pinning our national hopes on organization and messaging.
To wit, Ezra Klein seems to want: finding a way for Democrats to win in rural areas/states (broadly defined). He assumes that the right kinds of candidates, with the right kinds of messages, doing the right kinds of organizing can reshape the party.
But I keep asking myself: why would Republican voters want Republican Lite when they can have the real thing? Also, voters understand, and Klein acknowledges this, that it isn’t just about the message of the candidate; it is who the candidate will caucus with in Congress. People know that if they vote for a moderate Democrat or an Independent that that can affect who the leadership is in a given chamber and whether the legislation they want will pass or not (or even get a vote).
Remember: even if Democrats, as a whole, can create some faction that can compete in redder districts and states, the system still skews towards rural power (the Senate, the EC, and aspects of the House). There is only so much organizing and messaging that can be done.
He notes in the podcast how, in Nebraska, independent Senate candidate Don Osborne outperformed Harris in that state. He ran a more centrist campaign, including running ads about how he would work with Trump on specific topics.
That’s cool and all, but he still lost.
The Republican incumbent Deb Fischer won 53.2% to 46.5%. Yes, that is better than Harris losing 59.6% to 39.1% to Trump, but I am hard-pressed to say that Osborne’s candidacy signals some template for the Democrats to follow. To listen to the podcast, there were times I felt like Osborne had won (knowing that it was not the case). Losing is still losing, even if the margin is lower. Why would voters in Nebraska, who clearly identify as Republicans in larger numbers than they do as Democrats, suddenly be swayed in massive numbers to change their minds because of better organization and messaging
The main problem with a Senate seat from Nebraska isn’t that it inadequately represents Nebraska. The problem is within the Senate itself and how it distorts national sentiment. And I would that the distortion is not because of some magic to be ascribed to representing states and not people. States are made of people. The parties are nationalized. While yes, there are issues that are of more importance to the people of Nebraska than the people of Florida, there is no reason why the people of Nebraska should have more representation than the people of Florida.
The core problem is structural.
The whole Republican Lite strategy also assumes that more voters are persuadable than is likely to case.
Our parties are deeply nationalized. The brand, therefore, shapes every single election down to the most local of levels (save in nonpartisan ones).
A typical voter received their party affiliation from their family and often has it reinforced by their community. They then figure out what they stand for.
This means that if a district or state is heavily R, even if there are some small number of people who might be interested in, say, a pro-life Democrat, there almost certainly aren’t enough of them to change the outcomes.
Take the Osborn example. Let’s assume Klein’s hypothesis is correct: there are a number of Nebraskans looking to vote against a Republican, and Osborne’s independent candidacy, wherein he claims support for Trump on a number of issues, is appealing to them. So, the R wins by almost 7 points instead of 20 is less embarrassing for the loser, I guess. But does it really matter?
All of this is to say that nationalized parties with deeply ingrained partisan identities in the population, married up with institutional structures that favor one of the two parties, means that organizing and messaging are likely to have little efficacy. This will become especially true if SCOTUS overturns the Voting Rights Act in a way that allows unbridled gerrymandering.
Sure, at some point, maybe there is some kind of evolution in American politics to create a more representative and competitive environment, but the reality is that the Democrats’ best pathway, and the country’s best hope for real democracy, is the pursuit of democratic reform.
Stop looking back decades and wondering why we can’t just go back to the way things were. A combination of partisan resorting, population patterns, and the structure of the US Constitution means that reform is simply needed if one wants competitive and representative elections.
Of course, this would require a Democratic Party that would be willing to propose and fight for reform, and we clearly don’t have such a thing. Maybe some presidential candidate emerges for 2028 who understands the predicament, but I am not holding my breath.
And that notion leads to another observation about American party politics that will be a post for tomorrow.
This was all pointed out in the Mettler conversation:
And I’m quite sure Klein understands it intellectually. But he doesn’t seem to grasp it at the visceral level.
@James Joyner: It is noted, yes. The post is already sufficiently long that I just didn’t mention it, but I probably should have. But the way I recall that part of the conversation going was that the response needed to be that the Democrats just need to work harder and smarter.
It made me think of a possible essay to analogize telling a small university with directions in its name that if it just worked harder and organized better, it could one day beat all the SEC schools and win a national title.
In other words, I think Klein understands what I am saying, but to the point of the title, he is looking for solutions in the wrong places.
Politics is the art of the possible. Can we effect structural changes? No. Can we change our message and methods? Yes. Is that unlikely to work? Yes. But is it at least not unpossible? Yes. Is there an alternative? No. So we do what we can.
Messaging and organization won’t work for structural reasons. We can’t effect structural change because we’re in the minority. And I was having such a pleasant morning up til now. Our only realistic hope is that Trump screws over the country bigly. And the root problem is oligarch money. Whoopee.
Howard Dean was right some 20 years ago when he called for a 50 state strategy, i.e., for the Dems to stop merely conceding half the states (the Confederacy, most of the west and southwest) to the GOP and actually put boots on the ground, and if nothing else, to listen to the voters there. But the national media and the consultant class didn’t like Dean, and so the doers and shakers of the DNC tossed him aside. Yes, the structure favors the GOP and, therefore, minority rule. No one will fight harder than the GOP to maintain that advantage. Said advantage wouldn’t be quite so awful for the country if the Republican party had shown itself capable of rooting out charlatans, con artists and mentally disordered plutocrats.
@Michael Reynolds: The Democrats could have effected some substantive structural change in 2021. They chose not to do so, thinking things had gone “back to normal.”
If they are not prepared for the next chance they get, they will blow it as well.
Why is this so hard to convince you all of?
@Charley in Cleveland: I have no problem with a 50 state strategy.
Although I would ask what Dean’s strategy actually produced?
I mean, yes, as I stated, do the organizing, but it isn’t the long-term solution.
Dr. T, I’m pretty much in agreement and I also agree with @Michael Reynolds: that we need to focus on the possible. On structural changes, one that I believe could pass and make a difference is moving to a unified primary for candidate selection, that uses ranked choice voting. Something similar to Alaska. Would it be enough, no, but it would have the effect of moderating candidates and reducing the influence of the extremes.
One thing we know about rural states and citizens, is that they love their subsidies and one thing we know about Dems, is that they love to pass programs that are subsidies that are administered and credited to the R pol. Maybe there is a way to change this dynamic that can benefit Dems?
@Steven L. Taylor:
“I have no problem with a 50 state strategy.
Although I would ask what Dean’s strategy actually produced?”
A Congress following Obama’s election which briefly included a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (and would have for longer had Democrats been able to win the special election after Teddy Kennedy died), which was needed to pass Obamacare.
When the Titanic slowly sank, there was no way to patch up the tear in the hull, nor to pump the water out, nor to conjure up more lifeboats to evacuate everyone onboard.
I’m sure someone noticed they could rearrange the deck chairs. This would not help, it would not save one life, but it was something that could be done. So maybe they went ahead and did it.
@Moosebreath: That had a whole lot more to do with Obama’s large win on 2008.
@Moosebreath: To be clear: I am not saying, I def keep saying the opposite, that I am in favor of better organization.
I will admit to being a bit reactive to the Dean 50-state think because it seems like a lot of people these days are using it as a talisman.
So, yes , let’s do it, but it isn’t enough.
Outside the national stream of dialogue on politics, is the parallel stream of dialogue within our popular culture. You can’t talk about impacting one without a calculus to change the other, because this nation’s core values lie exposed with in the latter, popular culture.
For many decades, liberal values have had a growing and then predominating influence upon our popular culture. That trend has stalled, and begun to reverse in my observation.
Popular culture is where real opinion formation takes place. It’s where masculinity and femininity are defined. It is where role limits are delineated. It is where particular values are made fashionable. Some vulgarities are made welcome, other quashed.
Liberal predominance in setting popular culture trends is no longer a given. This shift is the outcome of concerted strategic effort. We are willing and unwitting consumers of ideas, as we are entertained and distracted. Our popular culture is our “one true mother.”
So as to avoid repeating myself in various ways, I wrote this.
Apologies for my crankiness. To quote Larry David from a few years ago on CYE: “I’m yelling for society!”
@Steven L. Taylor:
Refocusing on structural problems is, itself, a messaging challenge. See: your difficulty convincing all of us here.
“Billionaires are fucking all of us, let’s take ’em down!” vs. “The system is no longer working, let’s have a long, confusing, inside baseball debate over how we’d like to change the system and then, do that!”
We can’t do anything about the rural advantage in Senate and EC in Congress, no one is going to vote themselves out of office. Odds we could convince rural states to do anything that in any way lessens their advantage? Zero. We’d need a constitutional convention. Could we ever hope to hold on to the First Amendment if we held a Concon? No, we’d have Right and Left inserting limiting language. Would the Right ever agree to risk the Second Amendment?
While I agree the system is – to use the technical term – fucked, we’d be asking people who literally refuse to accept consensual reality to fix what far better men designed. I’m reminded of a job I held briefly: pin jammer in a bowling alley. I had no idea how to fix the machinery, I was given no training, had no aptitude, and the only tool I was provided was a baseball bat. When machines jammed I could hit them. Could I have made better machines? With ignorance and a baseball bat?
@Michael Reynolds:
This is why I am strategically stating that the Dems have to be convinced of their advantage in this arena.
@Michael Reynolds:
Sure.
I get frustrated by messaging arguments, not because I think that messages are unimportant; I get frustrated by messaging arguments that frequently assume that fixing the message is all that is needed. Or, ex post facto reasoning that asserts Message X was why they won/lost when so many other factors matter more.
@Steven L. Taylor: Of course, if they had blown up the filibuster when they had the chance—which I’ve come to think is the right move, despite my instinctive fealty to it—is that they would have zero leverage right now. The shutdown wouldn’t have happened, for example. But the upside of that is that voters would know to hold Republicans accountable for policies they disliked.
I believe it’s a strategic mistake for Democrats to dismiss rural areas so readily. I also believe the real issue is messaging.
When minority leaders from major urban centers are the primary voices shaping the narrative, it often fails to resonate with rural voters. Leaders like Mark Kelly or Angie Craig—who understand and reflect rural sensibilities—would be far more effective in communicating Democratic values in for the nation. Plus rural concerns intersect big city concerns. The key is messaging it that way.
As we’ve discussed before, Democrats didn’t campaign on trans issues in the last election. Yet, due to poor messaging, many voters were left with the impression that they did. This disconnect stems from a failure to message the party’s priorities.
Voters want to hear how a party will improve their everyday lives—jobs, healthcare, education, safety. Instead, when they hear “Democrat,” too many associate it with being “soft on crime,” “anti-gun,” or focused solely on issues like immigration and LGBTQIA+ rights. Ironically, Democratic positions on these issues are often reasonable and widely supported when properly explained. But those positions get drowned out when the party fails to lead the conversation.
Republicans are skilled at throwing out red herrings—and Democrats too often take the bait. It’s time to stop reacting and start leading with messaging that centers the real concerns of everyday Americans.
@James Joyner: See, I think they would be better off just letting all of this be the Reps responsibility, to include daring them to blow up the filibuster.
I think one of problems is lack of clarity as to which party is responsible for what.
Where messaging and organization do matter is civil disobedience. While contemporary Americans really stink at that form of political action (versus, say, our disgruntled European counterparts), it’s going to become increasingly necessary to master it.
Messaging: important for recruitment, communication of strategy and tactics, sustained morale, and stated goals.
Organization: important for mobilization, action, follow-up.
@HelloWorld: To which I would direct you here.
@Steven L. Taylor: Yes, I get that elector maps are a problem but I also think people are more persuadable than you are giving them credit for. Other than electoral maps, what are these “structural” issue you speak of?
@HelloWorld:
.
The best answer I can give is to say a host of things I have been writing about here for roughly twenty years. A simple one is that the House is too small.
Yes, people can change their minds, but most don’t in the way you are describing, and this has gotten worse given our media environment, among other factors.
I would suggest you are highly overestimating the degree to which, say, a 60-40 split in a given state or district can be overcome via persuasion.
I find it unlikely, for example, that Republicans are likely to persuade Massachusetts to flip and become a reliably R state, to pick an example, or to send Rs to the Senate.
And to my basic point, Massachusetts Republicans are underrepresented in the federal government because of how we elect the House.
I would respectfully suggest you don’t fully understand the problem of how districts in state legislative races really dictate outcomes in ways that no amount of messaging and organization is likely to overcome so as to even adequately create real representation of local citizens.
Keep in mind that a major part of my point is not that Dems lose because people don’t like their message. They lose because the structure of the competitive game makes it impossible for them to win. This is also true for Republicans.
As stated: I am focusing on Democrats because they are the more disadvantaged party and have self-interested reasons to seek reform.