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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18873 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 nefarious stratagems the Democratic Party engaged in this election was to intentionally boost and generously fund far-right Republican candidates over their more moderate opponents in the Republican primaries. This potentially risky gambit was intended to allow Democratic candidates to coast to an easy victory by knocking out the moderate Republican option from the general election. This strategy was not just an after-thought, as the Dems put in a ton of resources into the effort. In Maryland for example, the Dems spent $1.2 million on Dan Cox's campaign, more than twice the money the candidate raised at that point. I thought then and still think this is dishonorable and contemptible behavior, but from a pure power play perspective, I concede it was a sound tactical decision. All six Republican candidates (3 governors, 1 senator, 2 house) targeted by this play lost the general election, five of them by double-digit margins.

It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to? Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all. What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?

It's important to emphasize that the Dems didn't force Republicans to do anything. All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them. Given how much of a resounding success this was for the Dems, I anticipate we'll see it again in the future.

I agree that we'll see it again, but strongly disagree that 'all they did' was dangle. Active interference with the internal workings of the opposition party isn't a bad idea in a functioning democracy because it 'forces' the opposition to do anything- it's because the purpose of such an intervention is to prevent the opposition from doing anything by keeping them out of power. The distinction is like claiming an induced convulsion doesn't prevent your muscles from working, and so isn't the same effect as induced paralysis. Steering crowds towards known allergens in a buffet and then deliberately making the alternatives look worse doesn't change a dynamic of food tampering just because someone could have chosen a different item. The actions taken were intended for an effect, and the moral onus of the effect lies with the person who instigated the action with the intent to cause that effect.

The fact that it works is not new. The reasons why it shouldn't be done are not new either. Even 'minimal' active interference in the internal workings of the opposition is a bad idea because it's the precedent/catalyst for more and other forms of active interference, the consistent success of which builds upon itself turns an opposition party into a state-managed (as opposed to state-run) opposition.

This is generally understood in other contexts to be a pretty banal means for authoritarians to degrade and defang democratic opposition parties.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to?

The answer to the first is yes. You can immunize yourself to foreign influences by ruthlessly purging people associated with the influence vectors and, as possible, actively targetting the sources of influence until they can not or will not attempt further influence efforts along those lines. Since it is quite profitable for them to do so, targetting will be need to be highly coercive, and involve some mix of targeted violence, intimidation, and other forms of retaliation against not only the organizers, but their associates and friends and allies, until such people are isolated even within their own alliance networks and unable to execute and no one will want to be seen as emulating them. Such a campaign will need to sustained, actively circumvent efforts of the state dominated by the opposing party to prevent it, and generate popular momentum to continue targetting these people who happen to be fellow citizens of the country.

The answer to the second is that obviously many people, and not just those positively inclined towards the ruling party, would rather the opposition party not do that.

I'm so confused by this comment. What did the democrats do beyond presenting options to the primary voters who then voted for those options? Those voters weren't prevented from voting for whoever they like, they simply liked the nutbags. Hell, Trump is a free actor. He could have endorsed moderates, and chose not to. Who was prevented from doing anything? There's a lot of darkly hinting at sinister actions but not much evidence.

I don't even think Dems needed to lie about their intentions or beliefs. They put up ads like "Cox is too consistently conservative for Maryland", which they really believed (and the recent election suggests they were correct to believe that). There's nothing wrong with advertising your beliefs.

I joked with my wife that Mastriano was the Yes-Chad candidate, or the This-But-Unironically campaign. Most "attack ads" against Mastriano were just him responding to a question like "Should abortion be legal?" with an answer like "No, absolutely not, no exceptions."

Just another reason why primaries are a bit of a mess. Strong party elites who can clear the field of detritus straightforwardly improve their party's chance of winning, but what little control the GOP once had over the process has evaporated post 2016.

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.

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"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

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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.

I think we've already seen some efforts to do this on the right, "I like Bernie, at least he has some balls!" Target candidates like Fetterman and Bernie, AOC if she tries to run for higher office, and label them as spiritually in the right place even if you disagree with their policies.

"I'd rather fight with a socialist with courage who wants to help working class American people but doesn't know how, than deal with slimy corporate-woke lizard people who don't care at all."

What's cool is, you can run that messaging through existing red tribe outlets, and democrats will still fall for it! Fettermans entire career is just chasing the vibe of being appealing to working class white people. Democrats already have this prophecy that if they could only get the white working class back they'd be unbearable!

But that's the lesson from Fetterman, and Trump if you buy that Clinton goaded him into it. You gotta put up a good campaign with a good candidate after.

Shapiro beat Mastriano black and blue because Shapiro was a great candidate (ticket him for white house buzz by 2028). Fetterman still pulled it out because oz.

Democrats already have this prophecy that if they could only get the white working class back they'd be unbearable!

Aye, they would indeed

All they did was dangle the candidate's Republican bona fides with "oh no it sure would be terrible if this person that loves Trump and still thinks the election was stolen ends up being the nominee oh no" and voters agreed with them.

I think it's worse than that, for some of them. The Cox ad at least had a frame of his Jan6-specific tweet, but it's notable even the Mastriano ad framed it as "audited the election" rather than anything more direct or serious. In other cases, the buys were targeted at the moderate Republican without mentioning the nutjobs.

While a different sort of ratfucking, I'd also add Michigan's primary certification system. The emphasis on more moderate Republicans (and success against the most moderate Republicans) is a really convenient accident, and the partisan nature of the review did not make it look better.

If so, can the GOP do anything to immunize itself from this effort? Should it even try to?

The more general class -- unelectable nutjobs sweeping the primary, sometimes with outside support -- has been a long-term problem, nearly old enough to vote today. So I think so. The question's what solutions are both possible, and not worse than the problem.

  • You can reduce access to the primary system to start with, cutting off nutty outsiders before they even get started. This can be subtle (eg, increasingly steep signature requirements) or less so (require goofy amounts of paperwork while having party volunteers available for favored candidates) to the overt (kneecaps). Outside of the ethical questions for how compatible with democracy this technically is, though, this has the more immediate issue of ossifying the political party, often in pretty bad ways.

  • You can have a big war chest that you dole out specifically to counter something like this. Which is hard, both in the "keeping a war chest" side, and in the "countering something like this" one -- note that the Dan Cox bump came in the last two weeks, not a terribly easy time frame to identify and counter this stuff, especially to the tune of 1 million USD, and especially if you don't know where it might happen.

  • You can have a trusted third party that's able to tell people to "bite the bullet", even if they aren't usually spelling it out. Past primary activity is pretty hard to point toward, but the NRA's continued support of Harry Reid despite his opponents being better on guns is one of the more visible versions (if cross-party) of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach, in that they got a huge amount of very quiet victories from him, and then got very publicly stabbed in a way that drastically undermined trust. Of course, even outside of the specific Dem-lead destruction of the NRA, we're running kinda low on trusted third parties, here.

  • You can have a powerful untrusted third party swoop in. Which... has its own benefits and downsides.

Also, two can play at this game but is this strategy something the GOP can successfully levy? Dems have no shortage of total crazies (as Libs of TikTok can demonstrate) after all.

I don't think this is a sword that cuts both ways. A lot of this process works because when Shapiro does this, Reason writes it up, and no one in Pennsylvania cares until after the primary and then both Shapiro and conventional media blast him with both barrels. Shapiro didn't have a meaningful primary challenger, but if we imagine that the nuttiest stereotype and Republicans tried to draw them into the main election by pointing out gun control and criminal justice reform policies, the next day the New York Times and every local news station would have stories about it. That is, the "trusted third party" is baked-in for Democratic candidates in a way that doesn't exist and probably can't exist for Republicans.

At a deeper level, I don't think the Red Tribe or the GOP has a good enough understanding of what the Dem total crazy is, and more (maybe not wrong!) fear that misidentification or bad luck will end up in that crazy becoming the new party dogma. Partly that's because the average GOP strategist is... not good, bluntly. Same for their near-strategists: I'm still not a fan of TracingWoodgrain's trick against LibsOfTikTok, but part of the reason for that is that Libs was already jumping onto Kitty Litter fakes or random unobjectionable stuff at length. But there are also just age, tech awareness, and infrastructural limits.

What would that look like and what are some candidates that come to mind?

I'm really hesitant to give examples out loud, because even if they wouldn't work, they're by definition the sort of weapons you shouldn't be talking about, in the same way that it's really bad that the aftermath of the Shiri's Scissor story had a bunch of people trying to identify the worst Scissors possible by manual search of the space.

I mean, the trusted third parties for Republicans are senior, popular republican politicians with a record of winning elections.

The trouble is that the absolutely dominant example this cycle was Trump, who doesn't have a great record of picking candidates because he is a nutjob with a love of psychophants.

Notably the GOP in states with plausible Trump alternative sources of energy largely avoided this problem- in Texas this was often Rick Perry's endorsement(and sometimes Ted Cruz, a native right-wing activist, or other elected officials), and in Florida it was Ron Desantis. The two dumbest GOP nominees in winnable races were both Trump picks, for example(seriously, Dr Oz and Herschel Walker?).

psychophants

Whether this was intentional or not, I love it.

Herschel Walker also had the rather important John Heisman endorsement aside from his Trump one.

That is, the "trusted third party" is baked-in for Democratic candidates in a way that doesn't exist and probably can't exist for Republicans.

What do you mean by this? That Democrats are seen as the trusted default?

If so why is this the case, wouldn't it depend on your class/upbringing?

What do you mean by this? That Democrats are seen as the trusted default?

Sorry, mean "third party" in the sense of 'not the candidate or their opponents', rather than in the sense of 'a different political party'. More that CNN/NBC can act to prove something to Democratic primary voters in a way that Fox News (or any other group) does not for Republican primary voters.

This is a relative matter and somewhat prone to limitations of evaluation as an outsider, but I think the extent media efforts against Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard turned into common knowledge for the majority of Democrats, even non-Trump Republican hanger-ons largely didn't get an equivalent, and where Trump was opposed it was often to his benefit.

I think they meant that they could count on mainstream media to boost the normies and ring alarm bells about plants, in a way that they can't or won't for Republican primaries.

The Youngkin nomination provides the path forward here. The Partisan primary is a worthless, broken system for choosing the candidates of a political party. It promotes selecting extremist candidates who underperform in general elections and isn't even particularly democratic.

Party conventions with majoritarian nomination requirements are what I want. The whole move away from powerful conventions was a stupid, mid-century feel-good move in the first place and it has been busily sabotaging our ability to govern ourselves ever since.

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