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.
