All modern elections have been turnout elections. Far more than by winning over undecided voters, the result is generally determined by which side is more effective at turning out their base. The Democratic base as been far larger than the Republican one for a long time. But Republicans have proved to be far more effective at turning their base out than Democrats have.
Pundits shorthand this as "the enthusiasm gap". It has been the key to Trump's success. Trump supporters are rabid. They turn out no matter what. Hillary should have won in a walk in 2016. But she was never able to generate any enthusiasm among the Democratic base. So, she lost in a squeaker.
Biden was more successful in 2020. But most of the Democratic enthusiasm was centered around defeating Trump. Far less of it was due to enthusiasm for Biden. This became increasingly clear as the 2024 campaign unspooled.
Biden had lots of money. He had a crack campaign staff. They did all the right things. But it became increasingly obvious that what they were doing wasn't working.
There was never any indication that Trump was gaining supporters. But there was lots of evidence that Biden was losing supporters. And that worried other Democrats who were up for reelection. Pressure built until Biden ultimately decided to step aside in favor of Harris. Enthusiasm immediately bounced back on the Democratic side.
Would it be enough? Pollsters and pundits agree that it will be a close race. So, maybe, maybe not. So far, all this has been conventional wisdom. And if I agree with the conventional wisdom, I don't bother to write a post about it. So, why am I writing this post? Because I think something important is happening that the conventional wisdom is missing.
Ignoring the Indians, what Canadians rightly call "the first peoples", this country has always been run by men. More specifically, it has been run by white men. And still more specifically, it has been run by rich white men. In the early days of the United States voting laws specified that only white men who owned real property were eligible to vote.
Real property is land, or sometimes other substantial assets. That disenfranchised many white men. If you were a working stiff who did not happen to own his own home, you were excluded. Farmers, assuming they were not share croppers, qualified. But hired hands, clerks, servants, assistants, apprentices, and many others didn't.
The franchise has slowly broadened in the intervening centuries. It broadened first to include all white men, even those who didn't own real property. Then black men were included, at least theoretically. Many impediments, the so called "Jim Crow" laws, for instance, were put in the way of black men who wanted to vote. Those impediments have largely but not entirely been done away with over time.
And, of course, women have been able to vote for over a century now. But when it came to the balance of electoral power little has changed right up to the present. Men have been able to remain in charge. That may change this year.
People vote in secret. So, theoretically, women could vote however they wanted to. They did not have to respect the wishes and desires of the men around them. In spite of this, many women did. They voted the same way the men around them did. In 2016 I did not understand how any woman could vote for Trump. And that was before the "Access Hollywood" tape came out.
But in 2016 52% of white women voted for Trump. And it wasn't like they lacked a viable alternative. Clinton was intelligent, competent, experienced, and a woman. And she led in the polls for most of the campaign. If she had secured 55% of the votes of white women she would have won the election.
But in that election far too many white women voted for the interests of the men around them instead of their own. And she lost. 2020 was a mano-a-mano contest. That is, it was the usual brawl between two white men, unusually old white men, but white men nevertheless. Biden portrayed himself as a viable alternative to Trump. That turned out to be enough.
The fact that he did a great job of running the government was not front of mind with voters in 2022. Democrats did relatively well, but they did not do nearly as well as they should have based both on the executive record (Biden) and the legislative record (slim Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate).
And that brings us to 2024. The fiasco that is the legislative record of House Republicans does not seem to weigh heavily on the minds of voters. The Senate is gridlocked. But that's mostly due to the fact that bills need to also make it through the Republican controlled House.
House Republicans can't even get their own agenda, such as it is, passed through their own chamber. But they are unanimous in their desire to block any initiative coming out of the Senate that has even a whiff of Democratic support, so they do. As a result, conventional wisdom tells us, ad nauseum, that control of both houses will be a close run thing.
We have seen this movie before, so that's not what is the potential game changer in this year's election. What is a potential game changer is the campaign the Harris people are running. They are going after the woman's vote in a big way. And it's working, at least according to the polling. Women favor Harris by wide margins. Of course, in order for the overall polls to be close, that means men heavily favor Trump.
No one has ever tried a "women first" campaign before. So, why Harris? Remember, not only is she a woman, she is a minority. And part of her heritage is black. For a lot of reasons I am not going to get into, it is common for black families to be headed by strong black women.
Being surrounded by strong, black female role models is not the experience of any previous presidential candidate. Even in Barak Obama's early life, the important women around him were white.
The Harris campaign staff is also loaded with women and people of color, often people who are both. Campaigns, particularly Democratic campaigns, have often had lots of non-white non-male staff, even in key positions, But not to the extent that the Harris campaign is using them. The campaign does not look like any campaign that has come before it. And that applies to both the public facing and the private side of the campaign.
If it works, it will be a game changer, a paradigm shift. As recently as 2016 there was good reason to believe that a woman-centric campaign was unlikely to work. Hillary did not try it. But she should have been heavily favored by women voters without having to have made an explicit pitch to them. The facts were self evident, weren't they? The election result showed that they were not.
Trump is the quintessential "bro" candidate. It's his whole schtick. He channels macho at every opportunity. This is not unique. Teddy Roosevelt did the same thing a hundred years ago. In Roosevelt's case it was real, while in Trump's case it is fake. But Trump's supporters don't care. And if he is concerned about losing the woman's vote, he gives no indication of it.
And experience, his own experience, tells him that he is right not to worry. He gave women excuse after excuse after excuse in 2016 for them to vote against him. But they didn't. He lost in 2020, but the loss was not attributed (at least by the pundits) to a shift in how women voted.
He campaigns like he expects that the same thing will happen to him this time around too. Enough women will stick with him to enable him to win. Or, again according to conventional wisdom, he is planning on stealing the election, so the actual vote totals don't matter. But sticking with the potential election results and not with Trumps response, or lack thereof, to them, there is another path to a win for him.
There is a weak variation of Newton's law that applies to elections. Newton's law states that, "for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction". In the politics version, there is an opposite reaction, but it is not necessarily equal. Politicians often gain more votes by favoring one faction than they lose by disfavoring a different faction.
Trump in 2016 did many things that should have put women off. If we characterize these actions as "pro men" then the opposite reaction should have made women pro Hillary. And no doubt there was some of that going on. But, while the reaction was opposite, it was not equal. Trump gained more, presumably from men, than he lost from women. So, he came out on top in the end.
The Harris campaign is trying to do the same thing, except working the law from the other end. They are trying to gain more votes from women than they lose from men. There is widespread reporting about the gains and losses, especially the losses.
When it comes to losses, more black men are voting for Trump than ever before. The same is true for Hispanic men. And for young men. So far, the gains and losses the Harris campaign is experiencing are roughly balancing out.
But that's where turnout matters. Women are saying they will vote for Harris, at least they are according to the polls. But will they? Men are saying they will turn out to vote for Trump. But will they? We don't know now, but we soon will.
Everything (the pundits and the polls) points to a lot of enthusiasm on the Democratic side (high turnout) and not so much on the Republican side (low turnout). But Republicans are notorious for turning out even when they are not expected to. The Democrats, not so much.
And we have repeatedly tested the question of what women will do in the face of a "bro" candidate. We have never put the question of what men will do in the face of a "me too" candidate to the test.
If the "me too" candidate wins, and especially if she and the Democrats win by a bigger margin than expected, elections will definitely have gone through a possible paradigm shift. It will have to happen more than once before it becomes an actual paradigm shift. But more women are registered to vote than men. And more women vote than men.
So far, this idea of explicitly structuring a campaign to be woman-centric is not something that has garnered much attention and comment by the chattering class. I hope they continue to mostly ignore it. If they start making a lot of noise, men who haven't figured it out all on their own, might catch wind of it.
That might cause them to climb out of their Barcalounger and go vote when they otherwise wouldn't bother. I'm rooting for them to stay home. They have already done more than enough harm.
