Campaign postmortems - magical thinking edition

Another one bites the dust. Elizabeth Warren is suspending her campaign. As the candidates fall, they each get a campaign obituary which is always interesting to read as an insight on the world view of the New York Times and their ilk.

A frequent theme, given that the party is now consolidating between two septuagenarians, one a self-avowed socialist and the other an establishment oldie with a rapidly rising gaffe rate, is that the American electorate is too racist, sexist, and homophobic to vote for people of color, women and gays.

A curious argument given that we are not talking about the American electorate but about core Democratic voters. I can't say I disagree. I am appalled at how racist, sexist and anti-semitic the party has become in the past 10-15 years. It is astonishing.

But their close allies in the mainstream media validating the sexist, racist, and homophobic character of the party is pretty astonishing.

Earlier in the campaign the MSM was more explicit about their argument. They are getting more subtle. In Elizabeth Warren, Once a Front-Runner, Will Drop Out of Presidential Race by Astead W. Herndon and Shane Goldmacher, they don't come right out and say Democratic voters are sexist. They mask it as a concern about "electability". But it amounts to much the same thing.

Which is again, quite astonishing. Since the Democratic Party is perhaps 56% to 44% female, this is another rather perplexing claim. Not only are Democratic voters sexist, but female Democrats are sexist.

From the obituary:

Ms. Warren’s allies and supporters said the question of electability — who would be the surest bet to defeat the president — disproportionately hurt all the women who ran for president this cycle. Voters, they argue, were swayed by a media narrative that a woman would have a more difficult time defeating Mr. Trump, informed by Mrs. Clinton’s unexpected loss in 2016.

In an already bizarre argument, Herndon and Goldmacher almost seem to be making the claim that Trump is making Democratic voters more sexist and discriminatory against women. If the media, overwhelmingly registered as Democrats, are making this argument as Herndon and Goldmacher allege, then it is an intramural argument reflecting on the bitter biases of Democrats. Which Trump is exacerbating, the wretch.

After forefronting and trying to pitch the intersectionalist argument Herndon and Goldmacher come clean. Maybe it isn't about voting female Democrats who are sexist against women candidates. Maybe it has nothing to do with Trump at all.

Though her allies stress structural barriers, Ms. Warren’s shortcomings as a candidate had a great deal to do with her operation. At times, Ms. Warren’s campaign did not reflect the urgency of a candidacy trying to make history, not only as the first female president, but also through a program of systemic upheaval that would include government-run health care, free public college, student debt cancellation, breaking up big tech companies, universal child care, and significant tax increases on the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

During debates ahead of the votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states where Ms. Warren had invested many of her presidential hopes, she took a back seat to other candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar. Her campaign chose not to invest heavily in television advertising, and was dominated on the airwaves in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Its bet on organizing staff failed to change the picture.

She had also embraced a vague message declaring her the “unity candidate,” dropping the policy-focused message that had seemed to resonate with voters early on and pitching herself as the electoral compromise between the left-wing dominated by Mr. Sanders and the moderate wing led by former Mr. Biden.

It did not work.

Maybe she just wasn't a very good candidate with a policy program not well matched to the aspirations of Democratic voters.

Much of the received wisdom is simply wrong.

She invested heavily in the early states, with a ground game that was the envy of her rivals. But it did not pay off: In the first four early voting states, Ms. Warren slid from third place in Iowa to fourth in New Hampshire and Nevada to fifth in South Carolina. By Super Tuesday, her campaign was effectively over — with the final blow of a third-place finish in the primary of her home state, Massachusetts.

But Biden went into Super Tuesday with a weak or non-existent ground game in many of the 14 states voting. And then took commanding leads in them.

Bloomberg sunk almost as much money into TV advertising in the primaries as did Trump in the 2016 campaign and more than all his primary competition campaigns combined.

Ground-game is not determinative. Money is not determinative. Polling forecasts are not determinative. TV ads are not determinative. Just as with Clinton in 2016, she was simply not an appealing candidate to voters. Whether because of demeanor or because of specific policies is hard to say, but it seems compelling that sex had little or nothing to do with her rejection by the majority women voters of the Democratic Party.

When one of the top two surviving candidates is a self-avowed socialist, it also seems hard to make the case that Democratic primary voters were excessively concerned about electability.