What the media missed about Joe Biden's electability (Ezra Klein, Vox)

[highplainsdem]

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/9/21169367/joe-biden-electability-democratic-primary-bernie-sanders-donald-trump


Long piece, well worth reading in its entirety, as Klein focuses on theories of how the media missed that it would be Biden, not Sanders, who'd get more voters to turn out.

He boils it down to three basic failings of the media:

1) Journalists/pundits are much more concerned about Biden's stutter and gaffes than voters are.

2) The voters behind the high turnout aren't as ideological as political junkies.

Lurking beneath the theory that high turnout would disadvantage Joe Biden is what we might call the “disappointed nonvoter thesis.” Scratch a political junkie and you’ll almost always find the same theory of turnout underpinning their plans: If only a candidate would say what I already think, but louder. This reflects the disappointment that the very engaged have with their leaders: practicing politicians have to appeal to mixed constituencies to win reelection or pass anything in Congress, and so they compromise their beliefs, sand down their edges, trim their ambitions.

-snip-

In general, this strategy disappoints. The most famous “choice, not an echo” candidate, Barry Goldwater, lost in a landslide. And he’s the rule, not the exception. Political scientists have long found that more ideologically extreme candidates face an electoral penalty. There’s some evidence that that penalty is weakening but as Matt Yglesias documents, it’s not disappeared.

3) "2020 is a referendum on Trump, not on the Democratic agenda"

The Democratic debates have, for obvious reasons, featured Democratic candidates arguing with each other. Differentiating from each other means going beyond their shared differences with Trump. At almost every debate, the various candidates say that it’s not enough to simply beat Trump — you need a bigger agenda, a more inspiring vision. “We’re trying to transform this country, not win an election, not just beat Trump,” Sanders told Rachel Maddow.

Biden is the closest thing to a candidate who disagrees. His tag line is that he’ll “beat Trump like a drum.” He routinely gets criticized by liberals for saying things like “history will treat this administration’s time as an aberration,” or “This is not the Republican Party.” His answers trade heavily on nostalgia for the Obama administration, which is to say, for the pre-Trump status quo. It’s basically as close to the Democrats’ 2018 congressional strategy as a presidential campaign can run.

Honestly, this is something journalists and pundits should have figured out earlier, if they didn't often show elitist contempt for the average voter -- and for pragmatic, non-ideological candidates like Biden.

[AlexSFCA]

1. exactly, referendum on trump

and than’a god we are not making it referendum on socialism if Bernie had won the nomination. Our message would be lost.

[hlthe2b]

2. Meaning that most Dems and non-Trumpster R's and Indies have more common sense...

Ideological Purity is a "luxury" and as self-defeating a concept as we could adopt in a BIG TENT party and for those desperate to remove Trump and his destruction.

[beachbumbob]

3. media didn't "miss" anything, they had their agenda the democratic voter is rejecting

[Cha]

7. Yeah, that's how they are. They "miss" it

deliberately.

[onenote]

4. The average person wants someone who will bring a period of calm

As much as many DUers, among others, want a revolution (including many Biden supporting DUers), I think the average person simply is hoping for a return to a sense of normal and calm. They are exhausted from the craziness of the past three years. They want to wake up and not worry about what they're going to read in the newspapers.

They see Joe as giving them that. They don't see it from Bernie.

[NYMinute]

5. Excellent analysis K&R

[Cha]

6. The media misses and misses out on so much deliberately

TY, hpd!

[PatSeg]

8. Pundits often

are too in love with the sounds of their own voices to hear what real voters are saying. They talk because they are paid to, even when they have nothing to say.

[wishstar]

9. Most voters were only paying attention to Joe doing well in last 2 debates and interviews

He and Jill gave some good interviews and Joe got at least a B+ on those last 2 debates during early voting and right before Super Tuesday plus the weaknesses of Sanders and Bloomberg brought a lot of negative attention to them. Most voters felt they had to coalesce around the strongest moderate to have a chance to win in November.

[Awsi Dooger]

10. This segment was particularly terrific

"Scratch a political junkie and you’ll almost always find the same theory of turnout underpinning their plans: If only a candidate would say what I already think, but louder."

Exactly. I thought immediately of Rachel Bitecofer while reading that. She has the overboard belief in turnout so no kidding the other day she was insisting that only a young female liberal balancing act at vice president could deliver the magical turnout.

Someone who overrates turnout is also going to overstate the impact of the vice presidential slot. Rachel Bitecofer is anything but unpredictable.