The two parties, learning from... something

Democrats over-learn from their losses, Republicans under-learn from theirs

I recently spoke at the Travers Conference on Ethics & Accountability in Government at UC Berkeley on the topic of how the two major parties pick their presidential nominees. What follows is a rough transcript of what I had to say.

To many, it’s remarkable that the 2024 presidential election has come down to a matchup no one seems to want. Of course, we don’t get a choice on the matchup; at best, we have a very small impact on one party’s nomination contest. But those nominations were deliberate choices by the parties. And the two parties’ choices and the means by which they reached them show very different approaches to nominations across the two parties. Democrats continue to demonstrate something of a top-down, elite-led (if not elite-controlled) approach to party nominations, while the Republican system has become much more voter-driven, arguably more “democratic.”

My last book was an examination of Democratic activists, especially those in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and DC. I interviewed and surveyed dozens of them repeatedly starting in early 2017 to understand mainly how they interpreted the 2016 election and what that was telling them about 2020.

I started by asking them why they thought Hillary Clinton lost. The answers were lengthy, but covered a wide range of narratives — she made mistakes as a candidate, the ads were bad, she campaigned in the wrong places, she relied too much on identity politics, Russia interfered, James Comey interfered, there’s racism and sexism in the electorate, etc. But a lot of these narratives pointed to Joe Biden, or someone like him, as the solution for the next time around. They felt Clinton had been something of a risk — a woman, a feminist, a lightning rod, etc. — and what was needed was someone “safe.” As I described it, Hillary Clinton was New Coke — she looked good on paper, the market testing was great, but somehow something went catastrophically wrong and they wanted to get back to Coke Classic as quickly as possible, and Joe Biden looked like Coke Classic.

Importantly, Democratic voters and activists were unusually fixated on electability going into 2020. Many preferred Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and others, but were voting for Joe Biden solely because they thought he could beat Trump. They were willing to give up policy gains to win the White House.

And by just about all measures — party-loyal donations, endorsements, activist sentiments, and more — party insiders gave Biden a lot of advantages to make sure he won that nomination. When that looked to be in doubt in early 2020, they pressured other candidates out of the race to allow him to beat Bernie Sanders. Biden’s nomination was a choice party insiders made, and the party’s voters followed along.

The Republican nomination of 2024 has been a different story. I’ve been interviewing activists and consultants in Iowa and New Hampshire for several years now, as well as conducting surveys of county chairs across the country. The lean toward re-nominating Donald Trump is less about learning (many reject that Trump even lost in 2020) and more about rationalization (if you like Trump you think he’s electable, if you don’t you don’t).

Interestingly, endorsements by members of Congress and governors leaned strongly pro-Trump from a very early stage. He dominated endorsements the most completely back at the end of 2022, when he was arguably at his least popular and was still being blamed by many for Republican underperformance in the midterm elections.

My impression is that while some backed him because they liked him, others just figured that’s where Republican voters were going to end up, and if they were caught not endorsing him they could lose their careers and even face death threats. They saw little chance for them to actually sway Republican voters in a different direction.

This is, of course, a striking distinction from 2016, when Republican party elites basically didn’t endorse anyone, while expressing a lot of problems with Trump. In that environment, with no real party favorite but a very wealthy and famous candidate in the middle of a crowded field, that candidate has a big advantage.

In the Trump era, the Republican Party has developed a very bottom-up, “democratic” style to its party nominations. It is notably distinct from the Democratic Party’s approach, which is largely elite driven but cognizant of voter preferences and constraints.

Importantly, Trump’s nomination in 2024 was not an accident or a product of luck. He faced strong candidates. We can certainly criticize Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and others, but without Trump in the field they would have been highly competitive and credible candidates. As long as Trump was running, though, it was never going to be much of a contest.

It’s my impression that Democrats tend to over-learn from losses, while Republicans tend to under-learn from them. Democrats tend to look back at the last 50 years of elections and see McGovern losing because he was too liberal, but Carter winning because he was more moderate… Mondale and Dukakis losing for being liberal but Bill Clinton winning for being moderate… same with Hillary Clinton followed by Joe Biden. Democrats believe that they win when they moderate.

Republicans, conversely, were told Ronald Reagan couldn’t win, and then he won. They were told Donald Trump couldn’t win, and then he won. They were told they had to moderate with candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain in order to win, and those guys lost. Republicans came away with the idea that they win when they stand up for what they believe.

Neither of these beliefs is exactly wrong, and they’re both supported by evidence. But they lead party activists to behave in very different ways.

Despite all these differences in the way the major parties pick nominees, there is an important area of similarity: both parties are hugely deferential to their incumbents. That’s not new, but there’s no reason that parties should have to automatically re-nominate their incumbents, and yet this is a big part of the reason we’re getting this rematch in 2024. (See Julia Azari for more on this topic.)

And yet, even if the parties didn’t automatically defer like that, there’s a reasonable chance that we’d be getting these nominees this year anyway. The people who are influential in Democratic nominations like Biden. He’s delivered on a lot of core party priorities, including environmental investments, college debt relief, gun restrictions, and Covid mitigation; he’s good at managing a diverse coalition; and he’s the one person who’s ever beaten Trump at anything. There’d be a good case for re-nominating him even if it was an open contest.

And the people who are influential in Republican nominations (e.g.: Republican voters) like Trump. They believe his presidency went well and they look back on it fondly. Even when parties are strong, it is really hard to dislodge a person who most people in the party actually like.