The Bad Math Driving Democratic Infighting

Everyone just chill the f*** out!

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Two recent developments from deep inside Democratic politics strike me as important barometers for those of us interested in the future of the party.

First, the New York Times opinion writer Mara Gay published a revelatory story about Barack Obama’s quiet admiration of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York mayor, whose left politics have received an icy reception from the party establishment.

While New York Democrats were nervously chewing their nails after the primary, Obama called Mamdani—both to congratulate him, and to offer him governing advice. Several weeks later, Hakeem Jeffries, the New York-based House minority leader, still has not offered his endorsement, even though, as Gay notes, Mamdani won Jeffries’s Brooklyn district by almost 20 points.

Second, Democratic-aligned and adjacent data analysts are embroiled in a math controversy over whether the party has been systematically overestimating the electoral value of fielding and running moderate candidates.

The Substack-based election forecaster,

G. Elliott Morris

, built a new, open-source model of candidate performance, which can be used to estimate how variables like moderation affect candidate odds of winning. He calls it “Wins Above Replacement in terms of Probability,” by contrast to the standard measure party strategists use: “Wins Above Replacement.” As it turns out, his model finds that moderation yields candidates a much smaller dividend than the proprietary WAR model published by Split Ticket, which has had a ton of influence over Democratic strategists.

It’s an important corrective. Though it does not support the progressive notion that ideological purity juices turnout, while moderation deflates it, it does make the Democratic Party’s years-long, multi-front panic over issue positioning look a little silly. If, as Morris writes, “moderates do not substantially outperform their party's average member,” do Democratic elites like Jeffries really need to keep Mamdani contained as if he were a biohazard?

MOD CONS

All else equal, in a close head-to-head race, you’d rather be the more moderate candidate. To be more precise about it, you’d rather be the one the electorate perceives to be more moderate.

In Democratic laboratories, this insight typically reduces down to the notion that Democrats should take further-right positions on the issues of the day, particularly issues that either fleetingly or generally play to Republican advantage.

But of course:

1. All else is never equal, and;

2. A candidate’s perceived moderation is a function of much more than just their issue positions.

You can campaign comfortably along almost any part of the Democratic ideological spectrum, while developing a moderate image, by, e.g.:

• Describing your agenda as “common sense” rather than revolutionary;

• Being white and/or male rather than black and/or female;

• Being “folksy”;

• Having good propaganda, and good responses to oppositional propaganda;

• And, yes, emphasizing heterodoxy on an issue or a small number of issues.

Voters perceived Joe Biden to be more moderate than Donald Trump, whom they perceived to be more moderate than Hillary Clinton, even though Biden ran to Clinton’s left, and Trump is a fascist who feigns heterodoxy on a small number of issues.

All of which raises the question: If the dividend of issue moderation is so easily overwhelmed by non-substantive factors and tactics, what is the point of all this factional war?

I suppose the answer depends on where you sit. If you find progressives annoying, the point is to make the professional climate of liberal politics more hospitable. If, more reasonably, you think gaining ground by one percent nationally might mean the difference between democracy and fascism, you’d want to put some effort into making the party at least seem more moderate.

But it becomes very hard to accept that the effort should entail blowing up the party and starting over.

W.A.R. OF THE WORLDS

Either way, if improving odds of victory is the goal, and moderation is the means, it’s important to moderate using well-calibrated instruments.

Over-estimating the political value of moderation can lead to weird places.

If moderate over-performers had the secret knowledge and well-honed skills required to win higher office, Democrats would be idiotic not to nominate someone like Amy Klobuchar for the presidency, and Republicans would be idiotic not to nominate Susan Collins in turn. Now imagine that race! Two low-wattage white women, with relatively similar politics scrambling to capture the center, trying to nationalize the popularity they enjoy in their home states, only for the winner to, in all likelihood, dramatically underperform her state-level record.

To be a bit more reductive about it, in a WAR-driven world, Collins would trounce AOC in a race for president, and Klobuchar would have wiped the floor with Trump last year. I obviously can’t refute those assumptions…but I have my doubts.

I’ve proposed a more modest approach to reform than dismantling the party and rebuilding it with moderates. It goes something like this:

• Expanding the map will entail recruiting candidates who are good cultural fits for their states and districts.

• Ideally, they will appeal to voters with heterodoxies that are genuine and salient, rather than with Kirsten Sinema-style, lobbyist-driven “centrism.”

• Ideally members and activists in the party’s progressive wing will give them space to run their races.

• Ideally, their moderation will not extend to proceduralism, such that they can be constructive partners in realms like Trump accountability, court reform, executive branch rebuilding, and so forth. Moderates like to say fighting isn’t purely the province of progressives—let’s prove it.

• Ideally they will run in a climate of renewal—where congressional leaders have announced their retirements and fresh-faced, ambitious Democratic presidential candidates have hit the hustings.

Not a small feat, but hardly a root and branch overhaul—indeed, something like this seems to be taking shape already.

BIG TENTATIVE

Beyond swapping faces I think Democrats need to think through how they want to be perceived—about what kind of partisan culture will have the greatest appeal—and then try as hard as possible to embody those things.

If the dividends of moderation are small, then the investment in moderation should be small, too. No model can measure the unforeseen consequences of a full fledged intra-party civil war. Moderates could purge progressives, capture a few more votes in the middle of the electorate, but simultaneously hemorrhage voters on the left.

More to the point, this would be a strange way to build the big tent that party leaders and frontline members like to talk up. It would be akin to plopping the same old tent down somewhere new, hoping to envelop more people. To me, big tent politics entail making more people feel like they want to squeeze in, using ideological diversity as a major draw. But that would require taking real pride in the diversity, wielding it in explicit contrast to Republicans: their viciousness, their bad faith, and their expectation of total fealty to Donald Trump.

You’d want people across the party to brag about the good faith disagreements they have with their colleagues: We all think health care should be a right in America, we have some disagreements about what that looks like in practice, but if you want health care to be a privilege, the GOP might be for you. We all agree that every person should be treated with dignity, we have some disagreements about how to adjudicate disputes when rights come into conflict, but if you want to be abusive to trans people, or slap chains onto grandmothers and drag them to El Salvador, you should check out the Republican party. We are all serious about making everyone in America safe from crime, we have different ideas about which approaches maximize justice for all, but if you want police in your community to be more violent and less accountable, that’s the other party’s thing. We all feel free to disagree with our leaders, but if you want to stop thinking for yourself, you know where to find Donald Trump.

Hakeem Jeffries might consider an approach like this before throwing in with the fatalists, leaving the party irretrievably divided, with little to gain.