last updated: 15 September 2019 (approximate reading time: 6 minutes; 1234 words)
There are currently three hundred and sixteen (okay, twenty) Democratic candidates for the office of President of the United States of America in 2020. Each candidate has their own take on how to address the issues facing the nation, but perhaps one of the most pressing issues facing each candidate is that of electability.
On the surface, electability is a very simple concept: the ability to get elected. But in practice, electability is far more subjective and slippery, meaning different things to different people.
It’s one thing to say that electability means the ability to get elected. But in the American presidential race, that’s not as simple as getting the most votes in a primary, and then getting the most votes in a general election. A Democratic presidential candidate must:
As is obvious from the above, this is much more complicated than just winning more votes. If the Democratic party apparatus doesn’t approve of a candidate, they can use superdelegates to attempt to steer the nomination to a candidate that they prefer (ask Bernie how that works). If a nominee is then not strategic in about winning voters in swing states the candidate may win more overall votes, but still lose the electoral college as swing state electoral college votes go to the minority candidate (ask Hillary how that works1).
As if all that isn’t complicated enough, winning the Democratic primaries often requires a different set of appeals than winning the general election. During a primary, a candidate is appealing to like-minded voters, who want to know that the candidate will champion the progressive agenda that they want to see enacted nationally. But the general election must also win over non-Democratic voters who don’t necessarily want to see a progressive agenda enacted nationally.
In other words, what makes one electable in the primaries does not necessarily make one electable in a general election. So what does make someone electable?
Democrats generally agree that President Trump is an existential threat to the fabric of American society and American life, and that defeating him is the number priority. This means that while Democratic voters may have different ideas of which candidate appeals to their preferred direction of America, finding a candidate who can win in the general election is more important.
While some “true believers” in one specific candidate or another may find this attitude doesn’t pass the “purity test,” Democrats are absolutely right in putting electability at the forefront. In American history, 70% of all incumbent presidents have been re-elected. So this is Trump’s race to loose. Trump has proven that he is an effective campaigner and can appeal to enough swing voters to win the electoral college vote. If the Democrats nominate a candidate who appeals solely to a subset of Democrats, that will work to Trump’s advantage.
So what makes a Democratic candidate appealing to both primary and general election voters? That’s the rub–different people believe electability means different things:
• Some Democrats believe that electability means moderate social programs. There is a logic to this–more Americans are in the broad center-left, center, center-right alignment than either extreme. Biden and other moderate Democrats have been making the explicit pitch that they are the most electable for that reason. Biden’s wife went so far as to say at a rally that even if Democrats don’t like Biden’s policies they should “hold their nose and vote for him” because he’s the only one who can beat Trump.
However, fear of systemic change isn’t the only way to appeal to the middle. Exciting them is as well. Both Obama and Trump ran on changing the status quo, and both attracted large rallies of people hungry for their message.
• Another line of reasoning is based on identity; they believe that the majority of Americans will only vote for a heterosexual, white, Christian male, and so those candidates are the one who they deem as electable. In general, straight white men have more privilege in the USA than any other group, but women and minorities have definitely won major elections in American politics. Not only that, but while Hillary Clinton did not win the 2016 election, she did garner more votes, which lends credence to the idea that it would not be impossible for a female candidate who ran a more strategic campaign to win both the popular and electoral college vote.
• Other Democrats specifically want a candidate who they can imagine up on a debate stage verbally eviscerating Trump. To them, the most combative candidate is the most electable. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that Trump will agree to hold a single debate in the 2020 election (yes, it would be a breech of norms and protocol, but Trump doesn’t care about norms or protocol, and if there’s no upside for him, he might just decide to opt out). Also, trying to “out-Trump Trump” feels like a very risky strategy.
In other words, we have no idea who is electable or not.
All is not bleak, however. Arguments about electability usually focus on the identity and personality of the candidate, but once someone is nominated, the candidate is not out there by themselves. There is an entire Democratic party apparatus, volunteers, public relations team, and so on. No matter who wins, the team surrounding the nominee is going to have to run a strategic campaign to appeal to and excite voters nationally and specifically in swing states, to counteract and counterpunch against right wing attacks, and to make sure that voters can get to the polls and vote.
Trump has already shown that whomever is the nominee, his campaign is going to tar them as socialist monsters who want to give your house away to an illegal immigrant and force you to get a gay marriage and an abortion. That is going to be the same line of attack no matter who the candidate is, man or woman, moderate or progressive, regardless of ethnicity or orientation. In other words, nominating a moderate will not neutralize this argument from the right-wing arsenal, only those who become part of the candidate’s “team” can neutralize it.
And that is the message, and the message of hope: while electability is in many ways subjective and unknowable, ultimately we are the ones who make a candidate, any candidate, electable. Vote for whomever you believe in for the Democratic primary; and then whomever becomes the nominee, become part of that candidate’s “street team” to get them elected, and you can help make the nominee, whomever it is, electable.
Yes, there were other issues involved besides Hillary’s lackluster campaign: FBI Director Comey making seemingly anti-Hillary choices, foreign interference in the election, and so on. However, she did not have any control over those issues; she did, however, have the ability to direct the focus of her campaign, and that is the focus here. ↩︎
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