Why Republicans keep nominating bad candidates and Democrats don't
This piece from The Atlantic and this response to and expansion on its point both address a major problem Republicans have had since 2016. That problem is nominating candidates who are personally revolting. The piece from The Atlantic mostly describes that problem while the other piece tries to explain it.
Since Trump won in 2016, many Republican candidates have tried to emulate him with none succeeding. In the last election cycle, Republicans failed to win the Senate while barely winning the House and losing governorships in large part because they nominated candidates who were obnoxious and unlikeable. Trump himself is as obnoxious and unlikeable as someone can be, but because he managed to win once and then commanded 100% loyalty from the entire party, there have been many others trying to repeat what he did.
I have written before that there is only one Trump and that nobody else can successfully replicate what he did. He has many advantages that his imitators lack such as name recognition and the ability to generate non-stop press coverage. Even though he got away with many more transgressions than a normal candidate would have, he still paid a steep price for it. When he won in 2016, he barely squeaked by in the Electoral College and got a lower share of the popular vote than Mitt Romney, John Kerry and Al Gore. His approval rating during his four years in office was underwater nearly the entire time despite a booming economy for most of it. In 2020, he lost an election that he should have won and cost Republicans the Senate.
If his style cannot be replicated and is, at best, a way to win narrowly, why are so many candidates trying to do it anyway? In the second piece I linked to, the author gives two explanations. The first is that many candidates have mistakenly believed that Trump is a strong candidate when he is not. His win in 2016 could easily be called a black swan event. That is an event that nobody expected to happen, but is unique and does not repeat.
The second explanation, which is much more significant, is that the reason Republicans keep nominating so many repulsive candidates is because the mentality that dominates among their primary voters is one of being constantly under attack. It is not a happy outlook at all. It does not offer a positive vision for how Republican and conservative ideas can make the country a better place. What it does offer is grievances and anger and candidates who espouse those feelings tend to be personally revolting or become that way. I find that explanation very convincing.
Before going any further, it is important to distinguish between being personally revolting and being extreme. The two frequently go hand-in-hand, but they are not the same thing. Being personally revolting deals with behavior while being extreme deals with policy. Trump is personally revolting, but not extreme on policy. Paul Ryan is not personally revolting, but is extreme on policy. Many Republican candidates last cycle managed to accomplish the feat of being both personally revolting and extreme on policy.
As I have written about before, the Republican Party has, by and large, abandoned governing and policymaking. The last time it made any attempt at it was under George W Bush. He and Reagan before him offered positive visions for how their ideas could make the country better, but the latter is way out of date and the former left office toxically unpopular and discredited. Since 2008, the dominant mindset among Republican primary voters has been one of doom and gloom, with Democrats being the antichrist and “establishment” Republicans being their enablers.
Trump epitomized the post-2008 mentality better than anyone else. He was always aggrieved. Even after winning the presidency, he was still a victim and wanted everyone to feel sorry for him. While there have long been institutions that Republicans have felt were against them, i.e., Hollywood and academia, under Trump that list expanded to include institutions previously thought to be aligned with them. Corporations were once seen as allies of the conservative cause, but now are woke. Even the military is now woke.
From the Reagan era through George W Bush, as the response piece notes, many conservative churches were seen as integral institutions that were aligned with the Republican Party. While those churches are still around, their influence is vastly less than it was fifteen years ago. The coalition Trump helped build relied heavily on making inroads with non-religious, non-college whites. That and losing many cultural battles has helped diminish the influence of the more conservative churches. The elevation of Trump and his support from the religious right showed their leaders to be huge hypocrites, making their moral authority zero.
In the eyes of many Republican primary voters, corporations and the military have now turned on them while churches have been diminished, leaving them all alone without support from institutions of any kind. It should come as no surprise that someone who thinks that would have a negative outlook on most everything. Offering a positive vision is hard when your primary voters are only interested in fighting against perceived enemies. As the author of the response piece notes, though, one problem Republicans have is that there is hardly anyone who offers both an appealing set of ideas and who is personally pleasant. There are plenty who offer one of those and plenty who offer neither, but virtually nobody who offers both.
The closest example that has been cited when it comes to maximizing Trump’s appeal with any sort of vision is Ron DeSantis. While he is a culture warrior, he has also enacted many substantive items such as restoring the Everglades and raising teacher pay. He was reelected easily last year and was one of the few things Republicans had to celebrate.
But does that success translate nationally? The authors of the piece from The Atlantic and the response piece both say no. The reason is because what he has done in Florida that normal people like is not something Republican primary voters care about and it is not something voters in other states are going to know about nor will it be relevant to national issues. As the author of the response piece also notes, DeSantis’ crusade against wokeness is just pushing back against the cultural left. It does not form the basis of a positive vision for how Republicans can improve peoples’ lives and it relies on maintaining the mentality of being constantly under attack even after winning elections.
DeSantis has done some substantive things that normal people like, but it is his culture warrior persona that has gotten him national attention and made him a star. Assuming he runs for president, that is probably what his primary campaign will revolve around. Republican primary voters want to hear about how candidates are fighting against perceived enemies, not about how they allocated more money to fixing bridges.
While nobody has any idea how the Republican primary will unfold, there is one scenario that I have been thinking about lately. That is a repeat of the 2012 Republican primary. You don’t remember it? Good for you, that means you’re normal. I remember it very well because I’m a glutton for punishment. Let me refresh your memory.
The quick version is Republican candidates went way out into right field. Ideas pushed for by candidates included a flat tax (9-9-9, anyone?), a national sales tax, eliminating capital gains taxes, returning to the gold standard, privatizing Medicare, ripping apart Medicaid and eliminating the minimum wage. Rhetorically, it was all about “job creators” and “makers.”
Mitt Romney, the least extreme of the 2012 candidates, still ran on the most right-wing platform since Barry Goldwater in 1964. He fully endorsed privatizing Medicare and ripping up Medicaid and spoke almost exclusively about business founders and owners. His running mate was none other than Paul Ryan. He lost and it turned that out every 2012 candidate’s perception of what their primary voters wanted was wrong. That is where Trump came in four years later.
In this cycle’s Republican primary, I don’t expect to see much discussion of economic policy. What I do expect to see is a lot of culture war fights. Republican primary voters want to fight over that, not over the size of government, which nobody actually cares about. With culture war fights being all the rage, it seems likely that the candidates running will try to outflank each other by being the most aggressive. I expect to see plenty of talk about wokeness, critical race theory, gender issues and whatever Fox decides is important at any given hour.
The problem with doing that is that while Republican primary voters will eat it up, to most everyone else it is irrelevant to their lives at best. Otherwise, it is obnoxious and off-putting. A primary where candidates spend their entire time showing off their culture war bona fides is not a great way to nominate a strong general election candidate.
Trump would almost certainly be a weak general election candidate, but the same can be true for anyone else running. Imagine if DeSantis beats him in the primary, but does so by outflanking him as a culture warrior. He has already gone well to Trump’s right on vaccines. He could try do that on a host of other issues. Let’s say he succeeds, but comes out of the primary as an obnoxious culture warrior obsessed with the latest fight of the hour that nobody knows or cares about. Essentially, he becomes Trump without any charisma and remains highly vulnerable on economic issues.
What Democratic primary voters want
Unlike their Republican counterparts, Democratic primary voters are a much more diverse group. The influence cable news and social media have with them is very limited. With Republican primary voters, being associated with “the establishment” is a death sentence whereas with Democrats it is not. Democratic primary voters vary widely in terms of demographics, but are very underrepresented on cable news and social media.
Joe Biden is proof positive that Democratic primary voters are nothing like what is seen on cable news or social media. If only people on Twitter and MSNBC could vote, he would have gotten zero votes. While Republicans can be said to have a “base” of voters, for Democrats, it is more like having “bases,” as The Atlantic piece notes. For example, middle-aged black voters in southern states and young, white liberals on the coasts both vote for Democrats, but have little in common beyond that.
Having a “base” versus having “bases” has its upsides and downsides. One upside is that if one part of the coalition goes insane, the other parts don’t necessarily follow. That goes a long way towards explaining why Democrats did not nominate someone way out in left field in 2020. There were parts of the Democratic coalition that went way out into left field, but most parts did not follow them there.
With Republican primary voters being heavily invested in feeling aggrieved, appeals to fighting work. As The Atlantic piece alludes to, “owning the libs” is very popular among that crowd. Saying and doing things that outrage the left is a guaranteed way to get positive attention. DeSantis has done a great job on that front as has Trump.
With Democratic primary voters, it is very different. Ideologically, while Democrats have moved leftward over the years, there are still plenty of Democrats who are moderate. Candidates who go way out into left field significantly limit themselves by doing that. Candidates who treat professional activists like they speak for voters tend to do very poorly. There is no Democratic equivalent of “owning the libs.”
Democratic primary voters have different expectations regarding how their elected officials should act and what they should focus on. For example, in a recent survey, most Republicans said they believe Republicans in Congress should not compromise with Biden even if that means they are less likely to get anything done. Most Democrats favored working with Republicans to try to get things done even if they were short of what they would like. Although the survey did not ask if participants were primary voters, it is a safe assumption many, if not most, were.
That disposition probably helps explain why Democrats tend to be much more satisfied with their leadership. Obama is viewed positively and as a good president by virtually all Democrats. In the last election cycle, almost every Democrat running in a competitive race wanted him to campaign for them. When leadership in the House was transferred to younger members last month, there was no fight at all. Democratic primary voters simply like their leaders and believe they are doing a good job. Republican primary voters don’t feel that way at all towards their leaders, as Kevin McCarthy’s struggle to get the votes needed to become Speaker of the House showed.
As a Democratic primary voter myself, I am very satisfied with how things have gone over the last two years and I suspect most Democratic primary voters feel the same way. A whole lot of good has been accomplished and most of it was bipartisan. Between 2009-2011 and 2021-2023, the amount of legislative accomplishments has been incredible. Those periods saw the first ever comprehensive legislation dealing with healthcare and climate change. The former is now a permanent feature of the healthcare system and the latter is already having a big impact on clean energy initiatives.
Unlike Republican primary voters, Democratic primary voters are not an aggrieved bunch. As with any large group, there are people with a negative view of things, but with Democrats they are not the majority. The group that is the most unhappy, white liberals, has the least amount of influence in real life even though they are very overrepresented on cable news and social media.
While Fox hosts and talk radio have a huge influence on Republican primary voters, MSNBC hosts are all but irrelevant to Democratic primary voters and the influence of talk radio is approximately zero. When it comes to news sources, Democrats (including primary voters) tend to get their information from a wide array of sources. For Republicans, it is much narrower. That set up allows for just a few sources to have a huge influence with them. There is no Democratic equivalent of Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity.
Democratic primary voters are, above all else, pragmatic. Leading up to 2020, the most important consideration for assessing presidential candidates was their perceived ability to beat Trump. All other considerations were secondary at most. It is easy to forget, but Biden led the polls almost the entire time despite having no fans among the activist wing of the party. While many other candidates went way out into left field, Biden did not.
For a brief period in 2020, it looked like Bernie Sanders was going to get nominated after winning the Nevada caucus. Within a week after that, Biden, having been left for dead, got a major endorsement from Jim Clyburn and went on to win the South Carolina primary easily. After that, virtually the entire party coalesced around him and he won the nomination in a cakewalk. In the history of modern presidential primaries going back to the 1960s, there had never been a reversal of fortune nearly that fast.
There is no Democratic equivalent of Trump because someone like that would never get nominated. That is true not just for presidential primaries, but also for primaries for competitive races of almost any sort. Democrats who are pragmatic and more centrist have a definitive advantage in most primaries, even in blue states and districts. Democratic primary voters want to win while Republican primary voters want to fight even if it puts winning at risk.