SIO264: Did Progressive Causes Lead To House Losses?

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:28 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 264. I am Thomas Smith, and I am here to talk about what happened in this election.

0:00:41 Thomas: Yeah, so, I mean, if you listened to my last episode, I didn't have a positive view of what happened. I still don't have positive view on what happened. Roughly speaking, I think everything held up in that episode where I assumed that Biden was winning and I assumed by a narrow margin. Now, it turns out probably a little bit bigger margin than I thought. But when all is done adding up, when we're all the states have come in, I am actually curious to do the comparison of, you know, how close these swing states were that would have put Trump over the top. I think it'll be a little bit more in Biden's favor than Trump was over Hillary. So as I said, and as we all remember in 2016, it was roughly 80,000 votes in three states.

0:01:28 Thomas: I think for Biden, it'll be more than that. Seems like his lead will be a little bit more than that. But it's still not going to be millions in terms of which states you need to flip to alter the outcome. Now, of course, he's winning the popular vote by at time of recording 5 million votes, which is just inconceivable. It is amazing that a candidate could win by that much and still it's almost a, you know, a bit of a nail biter in the electoral college. The electoral college system is crap. We all know this. But anyway, as far as the Senate goes, I think what I said was right on last week, if I remember right. We aren't winning the Senate. Maybe if we win In the Georgia runoffs, we have a chance to tie, which would give us the tie-breaking vote.

0:02:13 Thomas: Now, that 50th vote, though, is Joe Manchin, and that's still not great. Now, it's still imperative. I know this sucks, and especially because Joe Manchin just came out and said he was not going to support court reform, you know, adding justices to the court. He's not going support getting rid of filibuster. So that's awful. I hope he's saying that to, you know, who knows, maybe saying that to try to not scare people so that the Georgia elections go better.

Maybe he'll go back on it. Probably, maybe not. But even if he doesn't, it'll be devastating. I want that on the record. That's devastating. It will still be worthwhile to win those votes and win the Senate. It still makes a world of difference because the difference between getting zero, and I mean this, zero appointees, zero judges on any level, on the federal courts and in the Supreme Court, if there are any other vacancies during all of Biden's terms, that will be the difference because Joe Manchin will, and whoever the majority leader, if we win these two races, that person will put forth, uh, Joe Biden's nominees for votes, unlike McConnell, who just wouldn't, he won't even do that. Um, and that, that makes a huge difference. Um. There are a lot of other ways it makes a difference.

So, you know, it still makes a difference, even though Joe Manchin, um, has said that he won't do these things that we really need to do. That sucks. And what I, you know, I, I guess what, what's tough, though, what's tough to keep in mind is Joe Manchin will say these things and then people will go, ah, Democrats, right?

0:03:55 Thomas: And it's hard. It's so hard because Joe Manchin is in a red state. If Joe Manchin weren't there, it would be a Republican who would be worse. So we would just have nothing. And it is something about human psychology where it feels worse to have a Democrat, Joe Manchin call himself a Democrat kind of, but then not do all these things. Then it would imagine if it was the other way and it was just a Republican who then said, oh, no, I'm actually going to vote. I'm going to caucus with the Democrats in order to take the gavel away from Mitch McConnell. Like, imagine if that's what it were, if it was somebody who was a Republican and that Republican said, nope, I'm not partisan, at least to caucus with the Democrats to vote to have a democratic majority leader.

0:04:44 Thomas: I am taking that gavel way from McConnell. And furthermore, I am going to get through all your appointments, all your cabinet, I'm going to vote on and I'm willing to work on some legislation, you know, that would feel like, wow, what a, what, how awesome that that Republican is doing that. They have a backbone, you know, that was what a boon, you know, it, but, but to have it go the other way feels horrible, but that is the difference that, that I've said this before. I'll say it again. Manchin has one of the best net Trump scores in all of the Senate. That is, based on where he is, the percentage of his voters voted for Trump, what you would expect him to do, and the difference between that and what he's done is better than a lot of safe blue Democrats, as in we're getting more bang for our buck. This doesn't mean I like Joe Manchin.

0:05:30 Thomas: It just means that the alternative, AOC is not going to win that seat, you know, or Bernie Sanders, you know, like that's just not how it works. If you're in a red state and you're able to win as a Democrat by taking some of these centrist positions. And that kind of sets up today because, OK, here's what happens. So in the wake of Democrats losing somewhere in the neighborhood of six or eight seats, it's not totally finalized, but something like that in In the House, there was a phone call with all the representatives and there's blame going on, blame throwing going on. And Representative Abigail Spanberger said that she kind of chastised progressives for embracing defund the police and not pushing back against socialism and kind of said that's why Democrats lost.

0:06:25 Thomas: And then AOC hit back in a New York Times interview and she had some points going the other way. I'm going to get into it. But this kind of set off an opposite reaction, which I think justifiably so. I mean, when someone blames progressives, it makes sense that progressives are going to defend themselves. And this set off, and especially in my Twitter timeline, a lot of claims about how, no, actually, look, all these people who supported Medicare for all won and these people didn't lost. And there are varying degrees of this claim. There's... there's the claim that's merely pushing back and saying, no, these policies were not a liability. So that's like the weaker form of the claim. Then there are other people who are going so far as to say, no, actually Democrats lost because they didn't embrace these progressive policies enough.

0:07:15 Thomas: And actually we just need to do Medicare for all. And that's the key to winning these. They would have won easily. And after all, if you look in Florida, they passed a $15 minimum wage. So that tells you that they're actually, you know, there's progressive votes there, at least people who believe in progressive policy, and we just need to do that to get these votes. So that's a stronger form of the claim going that way. And I'm very interested in things like this. So I'll just go ahead and flag my kind of where I'm sitting. I guess my bias is, if you want to call it that. I am a progressive. I support universal health care. I would prefer to have a debate about which way to do that. So like Medicare for all is probably fine, but also I wish the Democratic Party was just an argument among people who want universal health care.

0:08:04 Thomas: And then like, which way do we get it? Because, well, this is a side note, but you know, Medicare for All didn't have to be the only way to do that. But anyway, let's suffice to say that if that's on the table, I support it. Or if there's some other way to achieve universal health care, I also support a very high minimum wage. I don't even know if 15 is enough. It's interesting based on, I don't know how much you want to do federal versus state. I could see smaller states where there isn't the market to support that. Maybe you set a slightly lower minimum wage federally and then states can adjust. I don't know. But either way, I support a high minimum wage. I think we have a $15 minimum wage in California. I support that, especially in California where there's a lot of business here, there's a lot people.

0:08:52 Thomas: It's definitely, it works here. So I support that. There's any number of progressive policies I support, but I'm sitting here and I don't necessarily always think that that means those are winning policies. So that's where I'm coming from. It puts me in a weird position because it seems like in the spheres that I'm in, at least from what I see progressive commentators that I listen to and people on social media, it seems like these things go hand in hand. Like there is a theory out there of politics that is people actually support all these progressive policies. There's some polling to back this up, although there's also some problems with that that I'm going to get to. And that really the fundamental conflict is between actual progressives who want to do what this populism that the people want.

0:09:47 Thomas: So this theory goes. And then the moneyed interests within not only the Republican Party, but within the Democratic Party and the establishment prevent these people from winning in different ways. And that's why we get more like Joe Biden or the status quo or Hillary Clinton. And that that's kind of the theory of politics among a lot of people on the burning left. And that is something I don't quite go for. I do think there are certainly problems with Democratic establishment here and there, for sure.

Um, and there's always going to be a problem of money interest in politics, of course, but I think it's a matter of degree often, and I don't really think the numbers back up some of these claims, um, because, you know, for the for the very reason that Bernie lost the primary worse than he did in 2016. The voters, the young voters, didn't show up for him and that kind of thing. So I've been sitting here wanting progressive candidates, wanting progressive outcomes, but I, I don't necessarily buy into the idea that that's all just winning politics and it's only a matter of, you know, the establishment holding people back and holding the candidates back. And I actually don't fully buy into that. But I mean, I'd be open to the data either way.

And this is why I wanted to do this. I wanted to dig into this data, which I have to the degree that we have it so far. We have a lot of results in New York for some reason is weirdly incomplete. I didn't know they lagged so far behind everybody else. I thought California was going to be historically, that's who I thought lagged behind the most.

0:11:21 Thomas: Cause we, we have the most mail-in vote. Um, traditionally we have like tons of it. A lot of people do it. So it takes us weeks, but, um, California is pretty much in, in the high nineties, if not fully in and New York is the results I'm seeing are like 70 something percent in. So, so those results aren't tallied totally. And also it's going to be a while before we have reliable exit polling. They need to adjust the exit polls to the actuals. They got to fit those in and get, and this is important because in 2016 exit polling immediately after the election was a bit inaccurate and some claims were made that got, you know, stuck in everybody's mind. So this is preliminary, but the things I was looking at are mostly settled.

0:12:07 Thomas: So what I decided to do was just look at vote totals by house district for 2016, 2018, 2020. 2020, granted, is a little incomplete, but not so much so that that makes this, you know, that bad of an idea. And it's complete for the most part in most states, just a few that are a little short. And because I wanted to see, like, I'm seeing these claims. You may have seen an image shared around Twitter about like, oh, no, here's why all these policies, you know, Medicare for all is actually the thing that wins it, you know, and it has these candidates listed and I took them all down. I wrote them all down, Abby Finkenauer, Colin Peterson, Debbie Marqueso, all these candidates.

0:12:54 Thomas: It has their district. It says like, here's the lean, the partisan lean, which is this from this Cook report that I think doesn't, I think that's where a lot of the problem comes in. It is accurately reflected from this cook number, but the cook number seems like nonsense to me based on what I'm looking at on this historical data. I don't know exactly how they're doing that. But anyway, and it's it's it conveniently the graphic shows how everybody who supported Medicare for all won and all these people didn't support it lost. And I guess it's not impossible, but I'm sitting here thinking and additionally, also Bernie tweeted out something like, oh, all these can 104 candidates who, you know, supported Medicare for All won and 98 candidates who didn't.

0:13:42 Thomas: They all lost. And I'm just sitting here thinking like I do not see how this could possibly be true. Like, maybe these facts may literally be true. It may be true that these candidates who supported Medicare for All won and these other candidates who didn't lost. But I would find it incredibly hard to believe, and this is just going into it, I would find it incredibly hard to believe that there would be that many marginal voters. So, here's what this would mean. If this were true, here's what this would mean. It would mean, in order for this to make the difference, and this is the stronger claim, to makethe difference, not the weaker claim that, you know, Medicare for all is not a liability, which I do agree with that. You know, I doubt it's a particular liability.

0:14:29 Thomas: But for the stronger claim of, oh no, the reason Democrats lost is they didn't embrace these progressive policies, that would have to mean that there are enough voters to make the difference, who were not swayed to go out and vote by the fact that we have a president who wants to take away healthcare in the middle of a pandemic and kill people versus, and also not to mention a fascist who's not going to, you know, who's toppling democracy, all these things, all these things we know to be true about Trump. But no, none of that would be relevant. And the fact that, you know, Biden wants to expand healthcare. Biden was, you know, going into this, we thought we're going to win the Senate by a healthy margin. So Biden would be the difference in fixing the court. All these facts that I'm not going to waste the breath trying to convince you of because I assume you agree with me, if not see me after class or something.

0:15:20 Thomas: All these things are facts, but not enough for voters. They're merely waiting to see whether or not their House candidate supports Medicare for all. And that's going to be the difference as to whether or not they go out and vote. And I just, I have a very hard time believing that's true. What happened, what I think is happening is that our politics has pretty much just collapsed into a national race. And that for the most part, there's some exceptions I'm going to talk about that I found in the data, and I'm sure there are plenty that I don't, you know, I've done a limited analysis here, but for the most part, I think that it is mainly decided by the presidential ticket. And then those people who go to vote for president usually just fill out the down ballot D or R.

0:16:07 Thomas: And that's going to be a large portion of the vote. That seems to be what happens in Senate races. You know, the senators are mostly determined by whoever wins the state. There's one exception that blows my mind. I think I've, well, we've talked about a little bit on Opening Arguments. I'm going to talk about it again. And there are a few exceptions in the House, as people who have done really well relative to their district's history in these past three elections, I guess it would be.

A few examples, and I'll go through them, but they are exceptions. For the most part, people go to vote. I'm pretty sure this is true. People go to vote for president and then they fill out the down ballot. And I would also add that in, in an election like this, where you have a Joe Biden who is viewed as the safe pick to restore our democracy, somebody who appeals to the center, obviously, I don't think anyone would argue that he doesn't appeal to the center somewhat, you're going to get some amount of voters who will vote for Biden, but maybe either don't vote Democratic or vote third party for Senator. And we have seen that in these Senate races. Basically, every Democratic Senate candidate underperformed Biden. And I think that's probably why there tend to be third-party Senate candidates who get meaningful numbers of votes, at least 1%, 2%. And the Democrats tend to lag behind Biden by about 1%, 3% in these races, so that could be people who are truly never Trumpers. There's not that many of them, but I think there are a few.

0:17:46 Thomas: It's like the Lincoln Project voter who's going to go in there and say, I'm voting for Biden because I just can't do it with Trump, but I also don't want Democrats to have the Senate, so I'm going to split my ticket there, and there might be some amount of that. But how many voters could there possibly be who are either, again, for it to make the difference, for the stronger claim, and I want to be absolutely clear, this is not the claim that every progressive is making by any means. I think it's not even the claim that AOC is making, really brilliantly, I fully agree with AOC on this analysis, something else is going on and it could have to do with social media, buying ads and how people are campaigning and all that. But it would have to be the case, again, for this stronger claim, it would have to been the case that there are marginal voters who were not interested in going, or they would vote for Biden but not vote for their house candidate because they didn't think they supported Medicare for all enough.

0:18:43 Thomas: And I don't even know if my house candidate supports Medicare for all. Honestly, I don't. I mean, I'm a pretty informed guy, but again, I can't help but think it's collapsed into this national contest where everything is about the top of the ticket, really, for the most part in, you know, when the presidential election is being decided, midterms are a different story that we can talk about. But even then, I even think the 2018 midterms were basically a response to the top of the ticket and everything is pretty much national. So anyway, like I said, I don't even know if my candidate supports Medicare for All. I guess I'm being a bad constituent, but I haven't bothered because I know that I will be voting for my Democratic candidate over any Republican because, A, I live in California.

0:19:31 Thomas: Sometimes there isn't even a Republican. Sometimes Democrats are either running against each other or unopposed, and I do tend to make a decision based on who's the more progressive Democrat, but then I instantly forget and now I don't remember. But more than anything, I, that my first response to this election, um, and you know, you've heard some of my thoughts on that, um, was when I saw 70 million, a record, a record, the second most voters ever for Trump, by the way, of any president, you know, more than Obama, more than Hillary in '16. 70 million voters voting for Trump. And then we see all these Democrats fighting each other and saying, oh, you had the wrong policies here. It was either too progressive here or too defund the police here or two, you know, or too centrist over here.

0:20:20 Thomas: And I'm just thinking, what are we doing? What are we doing blaming each other for this? You know, 70 million people voted for the fascist who has no control of a global pandemic that's killed, now, what are we up to, 250,000 or so, or is it more? Don't even, it's, the numbers are staggering now. It's too much to even take in. And that, so my first feeling was, if that fact is not breaking through, if that fact, that just indisputable fact of how disastrous Trump's COVID response is, if that is not breaking through, do we really expect that a subtle policy difference is going to be the deal breaker here?

0:21:06 Thomas: Like there's a candidate who, you know, I want to expand Obamacare to, you know, 20 million people, and someone else is like, oh no, I want Medicare for all. Like that incremental difference is going to be the thing that pokes through to the voter that that's not already voting because Trump is killing us. I just, I, I don't know, I mean, maybe somehow, like, you could make an argument that like if we could, well, you know, people make the argument like, well, Democrats just can't, they aren't delivering anything, they aren't delivering that change, in order to deliver that change they need to be pro-Medicare for all or whatever it is. And it's like, we don't have the power to deliver change. Nobody gets to see what that's like except for two years every 30 years or whatever, 20 years, like two years from 2009 to 2011, roughly, we had power.

0:21:57 Thomas: We had all three branches. And from 1992 to 1994, I think it was, or 94, yeah, 1992 to 1994. So those two times in the past last 50 years, we controlled all three branches of government two times for two years. And, and we're talking about like, oh, we don't deliver, we don't deliver, we don't deliver. What? How would we ever know that we had a chance to? And, I agree, like it's, it's a hard problem. Here's the, here's the other thing. I also am familiar with research, and there's a book written on this. I heard an interview about it in Vox, and the book is called Democracy for Realists, and I remember this, it's after 2016, I think they came out with this, probably because of 2016, and what it, what it says is, what it shows is that voters just don't have coherent preferences in the way that we wish they would. People don't vote on policy, they aren't digging into the intricate differences. It's tough because people like you, you and I were trying, we're really into the weeds.

We, we know the differences between Medicare for All versus like in a, you know, uh, Buddha judges, Medicare for All who want it plant like this, the differences there, like we're dialed into all that. And truth be told, voters by and large do not vote based on anything like that. They don't have coherent preferences. Honestly, they aren't very rational.

0:23:28 Thomas: And, and, you know, this has been my reaction to this the whole election is that I don't, I don't know what to do. It's tough because the way easier message, believe it or not, is the, almost the bootstraps message. It is the... I think Andrew Yang said this the other day. Ah, this shows that, you know, Democrats need to learn to talk to the working class voter. They need to do blah, blah, and I'm just like, what, what world are we living in where, you know, again, a fascist could kill 250 million of us with his incompetence, million, thousand, 250, 100,000, sorry, 250 hundred thousand of us with his incompetence, all the stuff he's done. And Democrats could campaign on trying to give people health care versus taking it away in a pandemic.

0:24:17 Thomas: And but we need to talk to the working class better or something and deliver them more stuff with the power we never have. I'm just tired of kicking ourselves about this. I don't know what's getting through, but at the same time, you can't get on CNN and say this. This is useless information. That's the thing. It's barely worth me saying. You can't go on CNN and be like, yeah, voters are just not well-informed. Their preferences are weird. It's probably mostly racial. There's a lot of racial tension in that, and this is something I want to talk about. A lot of the candidates who get labeled as the most socialist or the most defund the police, whoa, they're the darkest candidates. Isn't that a coincidence? Regardless of whether or not they actually hold these positions.

0:25:04 Thomas: And all of a sudden, you know, it's not everybody, but a meaningful percentage of voters are more activated to come out against candidates of color. And they are more apt to believe the Democrats as a whole. Like if you've seen that. I'm sure you've seen the statistic where both parties, if you ask them about the other party, they actually don't know much. Like they overestimate them. For example, if you asked Democrats, what percentage of Republicans are like rich, you know, or make over a hundred thousand or something like that, they, we estimate that it's like an absurdly high percentage, like 60% or something when the reality is like, you know, 5%, like it's really small. And the same goes, it's even worse though, for Republicans. They think that Democrats are like 80% of them are gay and like 90 are black and like all this stuff, like all their, what are their worst fears?

0:25:54 Thomas: Like gay people and dark people. They just think that's all Democrats. And I, that's a huge thing. That's a big problem. That's I don't see how we fix that. That's an, that's a generational Fox news problem. And also just fundamentally a, a white racist America problem. Um, I, what do we do about that? That. But every take has to be, no, the Democrats are failing. They're not talking. Everything has to be that. Because, you know, honestly, otherwise it just sounds like whining. I don't really blame anyone in this situation because the better thing to get up and say as a Democratic candidate is, no, we need to do better. The people at their kitchen table, they need to hear our laugh.

0:26:40 Thomas: Yeah, I'm sure that's it. It's either you watch the right-wing media and your sources are terrible and you think everybody's a socialist, or you don't and we have some chance of getting you to vote. And the difference is not, is it Medicare for all or is it Medicaid for all? I do not believe that makes the slightest difference. The difference is, did somebody physically talk to you if you're a marginal voter and make you register to vote? Honestly, I really think that's it. That's what our elections come down to. Did we do enough grassroots mobilizing of people who roughly already agree with us and aren't fascists? And, you know, it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight for progressive policy. Don't, do not get me wrong. I started off this show by saying I'm progressive.

0:27:26 Thomas: I want, and if anything, it's actually an argument that we should fight for progressive policy. If it doesn't, like, if I'm right and it makes almost no difference, then yeah, what, what the hell? Let's go full on socialism. Let's fight for everything we can. Eliminate student debt, free housing, jobs guarantee, high minimum wage or whatever, you know, like, or maybe a jobs guarantee plus a minimum. Yeah, just all this stuff. Healthcare for everybody. Double healthcare.

0:27:55 Thomas: Why not? So it does cut both ways. And I've gotten a little disorganized because I have so much I want to say as usual. Let me get back to my hard data here. Okay, so talking about the House election results, because I really did want to know. Guys, folks, I have done hours of data entry today just to do this for the podcast, like honestly, and just because I want to note, don't mistake my somewhat fatalistic attitude on this particular topic as me not caring. I really care, and I wanted to know, like, honestly, it would probably be good if somehow it were true that supporting Medicare for All makes a difference in a house race. That would be a good sign.

0:28:40 Thomas: I want that to be true, actually. I'm rooting for that to be the case. But I'm looking at these numbers, and they're not adding up. I'm working at where we lost, you know, which house seats we lost. And I'm working at where we didn't lose. Let's step back. What would you expect to be true? And, you know, I'm still working on this theory. Feel free to give me feedback. But what would you expect to be true if it were the case that Democratic policy like progressives, whatever it is, the Medicare for all that that makes a difference or, you know, also that a lack of support for those policies would be the difference in the election? What would you you expect from 2016 to 2018 to 2020? Let's assume it's a candidate that, well, there's lots of different scenarios.

0:29:26 Thomas: It could be a challenger to a swing seat, or it could be like a centrist incumbent who then lost in 2020. What I would think is that you would see some lack of enthusiasm among the Democratic votes, and then all things being equal, that might make a difference in the election. But just not knowing who I'm talking about, if there was a district that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016, then went slightly for a Democrat in 2018, and then the Democrat lost pretty narrowly in 2020, what would you think? Would you think it has anything to do with policy or who they are?

0:30:14 Thomas: Because I'm looking at these numbers and I think what happened was everybody set their expectations, or a lot of people set their expectations based on 2018. And I'm looking at all these, I've got rows and rows of data. I've got like 60 different house seats I went through. It's a lot because I, again, I had to pull this data for all these years of vote totals. And if you look at the difference between 2018 and 2020, what you might think was, wow, tons of Republican enthusiasm and a little bit of Democratic enthusiasm, but not enough. And therefore we lost. And maybe you could put that down to, wow, we didn't activate as many Democrats as they did and maybe you could say policy was a problem there.

0:31:02 Thomas: But when you pull in 2016, if you calibrate based on 2018, yeah, you're going to think Democrats lost. That's what it feels like. Oh my gosh. 2018, we didn't really perform as much as we should have in 2020 based on 2018. If you pull in 2016, what really looks to be the case is, and I'm sorry that this is such a boring conclusion. In 2016, tons of Republicans came out to vote for Trump and Democrats for the most part had an average showing, not an overwhelming showing, pretty decent showing for Hillary. I mean, if you remember, Hillary got, you know, a ton of votes. It's not as though, you know, it's not so she lost the popular vote. She won it by 3 million. People showed up in 2016 for the most part for Democrats, not like record breaking per se. I think it was in some cases, but you know they showed up and in 2016 Republicans out showed us up in some, you know, key places.

0:31:55 Thomas: And then in 2018, what happened was Democrats, in some cases, even improved upon their 2016 numbers, if you remember. And that is insane. In a midterm election, for Democrats to just about match or overperform a general election total is insane, that is a crazy amount of activism and activating voters and all that stuff. And it's amazing what we did in 2018. That was incredible. And Republicans didn't really show up. Their numbers are way down from 2016 to 2018, but that's what you expect, actually. That's the norm. So Republicans did the normal thing that voters have done for decades, which is you show up for the general, and especially if you control the presidency, you don't really show up as much for midterms because, I don't know, things are going well.

0:32:47 Thomas: You control the president, whatever. That's pretty much what always happens. And then in 2020, this is the most alarming part. Looking at district by district, the votes, the voters that showed up to vote Republican in 2020, they, they blew their 2018 numbers out of the water. And they basically, I'm looking across these, uh, these years here, they basically returned to their 2016 vote. So that that's what I'm seeing happen. So if anything, 2018 was the outlier. And if you, you know, if a house seat was red in 2016 and then we flipped it barely in 2018, chances were we were going to lose the hell out of that seat in 2020 through no fault of the candidate.

0:33:34 Thomas: But just because we overperformed in 2018 Democrats showed up through the roof. And by the way, in 2020, we outperformed 2018 and 2016. So what you see, if you look at democratic candidates across the board, you see a pretty Pretty steady, healthy increase from 2016 to 2018 to 2020 for most of these house seats. People who are in this meme where you're like, ah, look at, for example, there are two Florida house seats in this mean Florida 26, which is actually mislabeled in the images 29, but that's okay. And Florida 27, that's Debbie Marqueso Powell and Donna Shalala. And if you just look at that meme, it says, oh, wow, they should have won, you know, but they didn't because, you know, then they didn's poor Medicare for all those difference.

0:34:25 Thomas: If you look at their vote totals through the past three elections, you see a steady increase and a quite a bit of turnout in 2020. So you see in 2016, 115,000 for that Florida 26 district, 119,000 in 2018. So more voters came out for 2018 midterms, pretty astounding. And then in 2020, 165,000. So a huge bump. So let me just clarify. This was a seat that a Republican won in 2016. I don't have the detail, tail break. It was probably the incumbent. Either way, a Republican won both these districts. So in Florida 26, a Republican won 53 to 41, 12 point spread.

0:35:14 Thomas: In Florida 27 in 2016, Republican won 55 to 45. So a 10 point difference. Let me reiterate, that's a 12 point Republican win in 2016 in this district and a 10 points in the other one. And then in 2018, 2018, Debbie, Marquesa Powell, and Donna Shalala increased the turnout by a little bit from 2018 to 2016. But again, to increase turnout slightly in a midterm over the last general election is remarkable. And they were able to win. So they won 50.9 to 49, so very close, and 51.8 to 45, that one a little less close, but that's because Republicans didn't show up.

0:36:00 Thomas: So again, Democrats, slight increase in the raw number of votes. Republicans, massive decrease in 2018. That's consistent with what always happens. And so there you have it. You have Democrats who came in and won in 2018, and then they run for re-election in 2020, and guess what? They massively increased their votes. So from 130,000 for Donna Shalala in 2018 to 166,000, that's a huge increase. And similar, even more for Florida 26, Debbie Marqueso-Powell, 119,000 in 2018 and 165,000 in 2020. Just take that. If you just looked at those differences and you said, wow, look at that increase from 2016, a modest, tiny increase in 2018, and then 2020 blew it through the roof.

You would say, wow, that looks like a success story. Somebody flipped a district from red to blue that was, by the way, 10, 12 points red, flipped it in 2018 and increased their votes in 2020. That sounds awesome until you look at what Republicans did, and that is blew their 2016 votes out of the water in 2020. So in these two districts, the Republicans got 176,000 in each of them versus 148 and 157 in 2016. So do you think that's fair to say that the problem was that Debbie Mercasel Powell didn't, or I'm sorry, I don't know how to pronounce her name, but didn't support Medicare for all. By the way, from, from what I'm seeing, she ran a pretty progressive campaign.

0:37:37 Thomas: It's not like she was like a, you know, like a centrist, but does that really seem like the the difference? Or, or is this data better explained by the fact that for whatever insane reason, Trump really motivates people to the polls and in Florida, by the way, weirdly, um, you know, got a lot of Hispanic voters out who maybe didn't vote in 2018, especially in 2016 too. And the numbers were a lot better than they were. I mean, honestly, that, that this is not a case of of Democrats losing, like if it was, if it was that Democrat vote totals went down or stayed kind of static, but they also went up for these two representatives in a district that in 2016, again, was R plus 12.

0:38:27 Thomas: And these were close losses. These are very close losses. I mean, these were within, you know, 10,000 votes in 2020 after being R plus 12 and R plus, no, no, sorry, R plus, what did I say? R plus 12 and R plus 10. Yeah, in 2016. And we got it to within 10,000 votes. That's pretty close. After that, I realize I'm just reading a bunch of numbers at you, and that's a difficult podcast thingy to do. It sucks because I have so many more numbers. I'm not going to, I'm like, I, you know, I data entered a lot of stuff that I'm not going get to, and that said for me, but whatever. But I do want to bring up, this is kind of a weird example. Example. So on the theory, again, I'm trying to test this theory, this, this that I think a lot of progressives hold that actually it's just all you have to do is adopt those progressive policies and there's a bunch of secret voters that will come out and overwhelm the other voters.

0:39:24 Thomas: You know, that kind of, that kind theory. I realize that's not what everybody holds. I'm not trying to respond to every progressive. I see it a lot out there. Um, here's a weird counterintuitive example and that's Colin Peterson. Now at first blush, this is a Minnesota seventh district. Colin Peterson, you look at him, he's actually kind of a piece of crap. Like he's almost he's actually like a Joe Manchin type, but in the house. And so you look on face value, you think, ah, see, he lost in 2020. There you have it, Thomas. Joe Manchen types, they lose. And, you know, this is that he was the incumbent, blah, blah. But you go back and look at the history of the of the district and the kind of doesn't really fit the theory of, well, Well, it's actually because you need someone who supports, you know, Medicare for all and blah, blah, because Colin Peterson won in 2016 in a district that is heavily Republican.

0:40:19 Thomas: So this district went for Trump pretty overwhelmingly. In fact, I, I let's see, I wrote down this was a Trump plus 31 district. So this guy won. I wonder how he did it, actually. So it isn't to say, you know, again, there are weird exceptions to when parties win against the votes of the presidential candidates. It does happen. And I think you have to look at those individually. I think there's, there are things that can break that tension. I think it happens more often the lower down you go, you knows, when maybe things are less national.

As I said, I mean, it only happened like in, in the past, I think, three elections, it's only happened like once in the Senate, and that is Susan Collins of Maine. So it doesn't happen a lot in the Senate. I think it happens a little bit in the House, and I think you could put that down to certain things like really good campaigning, maybe really good at getting out the vote, sometimes especially in smaller districts, those things can happen. But this was a Trump plus 31 district that Colin Peterson won in 2016 by five points, so that's pretty impressive.

And then in 2018, so you're thinking, you know, if you're trying to test this theory, and again, Colin Peterson is in this meme, is in the shared graphic showing how all didn't support Medicare for all, that's why he lost in 2020. Well, guess what? He won in 2018, and having opposed the ACA and have, like, all these again, Joe Manchin type positions.

0:41:53 Thomas: One in 2016, opposing the ACA in 2018, won again by about 4.3 points in 2018 over the Republican. And this is, again, this is a Democrat who, like a Joe Manchin Democrat. And then in 2020, basically held the same amount of votes as in 2018. Roughly the same, about 145,000 for both those years. Um, so, you know, the Republicans increased their vote from 134,000 in 2018 to 194,000. I mean, that's a huge, that is just a massive increase. And so therefore, because of that, Colin Peterson lost despite having won in a Trump plus 31 district and maintained the same number of votes that he, that he had won with the previous time he lost because Republicans just absolutely drowned him with, uh, with way more votes, but it showed up overwhelming numbers.

Now, is that because he didn't support Medicare for all? I, I just really don't think that's it. I, it doesn't make sense to me. I think that for whatever reason, Donald Trump motivated a lot of Republicans to vote. And 2020 basically was a return to 2016 with a few modifications. Honestly, maybe this is the new norm. Maybe it's, maybe it's a norm. Okay. A couple of things we don't know. Is this a norm just because of Trump? Is it, or is it because things are so polarized and there's so much negative partisanship that basically every presidential election will go something like this?

0:43:37 Thomas: I don't know, but we won't know until we see a new candidate in 2024. But, uh, okay. So as I said, I have million more numbers. Maybe they'll be relevant later. I'll hang on to them. Um, cause I'm already like almost out of time, but let it suffice to say that with almost very few exceptions, with very few exceptions, what I saw in these house, in these seats that changed hands. And I, and I looked at all the ones on two 70 to win. I think there's a few that were, that weren't called yet. So they weren't there, but I, almost all of these seats that changed hands, it's the same pattern. It's we won them in 2018 or we did, or we didn't win well in them. There's a few that we weren't the incumbent, you know, that we expected to win that didn't happen. We won them In 2018 when Republicans didn't show up and then we lost them in 2020, which was a reversion to 2016. If you remember in 2016, we didn't control the house.

0:44:32 Thomas: It's quaint to think about, but Paul Ryan was the speaker of house from 2016 to 2018, or I guess, sorry, 2017 to January, 2017, January, 2019, or whatever it would be. Um, isn't that weird to remember, to think back on that, that he controlled the house for those two years. But so 2020 was a reversion to that. And to look at it as 2018 was a baseline that we should expect. And then if anything changed in 2020, it's because we did something wrong. I, I don't think that's quite right. I think that for whatever reason, oftentimes the incumbent party doesn't show up for midterm elections. And that gives you some swing seats, gives you some unexpected results like the blue wave in 2018 in the House.

0:45:19 Thomas: We won a lot of seats. Now that I look at this, it makes me feel more positive, weirdly, like I'm glad we held on to the House. What if we had lost the House, oh my God. We could have, based on what I'm looking at, and this is kind of a reversion to 2016, you know, good thing we generated even more turnout, like record turnout, despite the fact that Trump did the same nearly. That's a crazy thing. It also, I'm a little positive based on how well we did in 2018 midterms. Now, again, I am very fearful for 2022. Are we going to do what Republicans did in 2019? Are we gonna not show up. I know that's none of you, but are there a lot of voters who are motivated by Trump being on the ticket?

0:46:04 Thomas: And then 2022, they'll think, yeah, Biden's whatever. He's president. I think the odds of that are very high. Personally, it sucks. I'm going to do everything I can to fight it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna volunteer. I mean, raise money. I meant to do phone calls. I do all that stuff. Try to keep the energy up, but I'll be honest. I am expecting a massive defeat in 2022. That's what I'm expecting. It really sucks. And if not, that'll be awesome. Again, I'm still going to do everything I can. I do take a, what I think is, you know, people call me negative. I think I take a pretty realistic view on stuff. I still want to work to change that. I'm sorry if my realistic view is not optimistic enough for some people, but we live in a country that just cast 70 million ballots for a fascist.

0:46:51 Thomas: Forgive me for not being super optimistic. Here's another thing I want to say, and it backs up what I was saying earlier. Georgia is far and away probably the massive success story that we've all been tuned into for this election. That's a huge success. And what was the difference there? Was it because the candidates supported Medicare for all or $15 minimum wage? Well, no. Biden's going to win Georgia. He doesn't support that stuff. So it's not really that at the top of the ticket. Oh, was it that in the Senate? Yeah, I don't really think so. I think what it was was Stacey Abrams, as we've already kind of talked about, or maybe that was on opening arguments. Stacey Abrahams got out there and organized the hell out of the place and got millions of people registered to vote, or like 800,000, I think it was, registered to vote.

0:47:41 Thomas: And that made a gigantic difference. And Stacey Abrams is pretty moderate. She didn't support Medicare for all. She was actually, she is a pretty moderate Democrat and she made a massive difference. She delivered a state, Georgia to us, essentially. That's why, like, look again, the argument cuts both ways. I'm not saying people should not adopt progressive policies. I think they should, uh, not because they're a, they're just the best policies. They're the policies I want. They're The policies I think are the most just. So don't mistake me here. I'm not making an argument that we need to be centrist. I think it's possible that in certain districts you might need to beat, depends on who your voters are.

0:48:27 Thomas: But I think largely it doesn't have that much to do with policy. I think it has more to do with organizing because we live in a country where half the people, not this election, cause we got record turnout, but you know, in midterms and other elections, half the people don't vote. And so the biggest pool of people is people who are probably mostly on your side, but just haven't done the, done the registration for whatever reason, could be any number of good excuses. Could be they, they're just too busy. They got to, they got to work 12 jobs to make it. Who knows what the reason is, but helping those people to get to the polls, that honestly might be the biggest difference. We saw it in Georgia. Georgia, again, you know, that was like the biggest success story of this election, had nothing to do with policy, had everything to do with just getting people registered.

0:49:18 Thomas: It's depressing. It shouldn't be that way. If I could change anything, I would probably change that, you know, make voting mandatory. And then then this, you know, then it would be more about probably crafting the right policy for the right districts and states and all that. But, uh, when I was researching Stacey Abrams stances, I want to also point out that, you know, I came, I, I stumbled upon smear articles about how she's the most radical Democrat of all. Wouldn't you know it? I wonder why this fairly moderate Democrat was called a radical, a radical. Why do you think that any, any, could it be anything to do with the color of her skin, do you think? And the fact that she's a woman.

0:49:59 Thomas: So I hope I made my point clear. I am absolutely rejecting the idea of Spanberger, that progressive policy that defund the police or Black Lives Matter, that that is anything you can blame for weak election results. I reject that. That is bullshit. And I absolutely think AOC is right to speak up against that. Um, and, and I, again, I agree with AOC in this article that, that I'll link. She talks about how they, these, some of these candidates who lost just did not organize properly, didn't spend money on digital. You know, they're still campaigning in her opinion, like it's 2005. That strikes me as pretty plausible that that's the actual cause.

0:50:45 Thomas: That makes sense. I'll buy that any day, but the, but I am pushing back on the idea that progressive policy is just a straight ticket to, uh, to winning. And I want to bring up a crucial example. People bring up the fact that Florida passed a $15 minimum wage. I got in an argument with somebody, and I'm going to tell you about it because I feel like I made a good point. I think it might have been the very person who first shared this graphic with me, claiming, you know, that essentially claims that Medicare for All is the difference. And, you know. They said, look at Florida. They just had a ballot measure for $15 minimum wage. That tells you that the progressive policy is supported by Florida voters overwhelmingly. And we just didn't have any Democrats who went hard enough on that policy.

0:51:32 Thomas: The only problem with that theory is Andrew Gillum exactly did support that policy in 2018 and lost. And we all thought he was going to win. The polls showed he was gonna win, then he lost. And I actually don't find this as confusing as I think a lot of people do. You know, a lot of people are like, why is Florida voting for $15 minimum wage and then going for Trump and all this? I think it makes sense. I actually agree that in a vacuum, a lot of people support progressive policies. And that is a good thing. And again, it is a reason we should adopt those policies. I hope I'm making my position clear. But it doesn't mean that if a candidate, especially someone who's black, supports that policy, that they will be embraced as a liberator or whatever, yeah, with open arms and that they will be voted for.

0:52:22 Thomas: There is more going on. And I think that things pull well in a vacuum. And then once again, Obamacare pulled terribly, but the Affordable Care Act pulled great. It's the same thing. People don't vote based on policy. They vote based upon what Fox News told them to be scared of in some of these places too much. And so it's, I don't find it very confusing. And maybe, you know, hopefully, I guess that means we ought to do more ballot measures with progressive policy on them. Maybe that'll be a good way to to change things in this country. Um, it's unfortunate, but there is a massive machine playing into people's biases about the Democratic Party. And it's calling them socialists and calling them, you know, they're going to defund the police, and it sticks for some reason, and all of that, negative partisanship is overwhelming.

0:53:15 Thomas: And so our candidates lose, but our policies in a vacuum might win. So yeah, again, I absolutely think Spanberger is wrong. I think AOC is right. I just want to push back on this idea that progressive policy is just a straight ticket right to victory. It's not. I don't believe it works that way. The squad, if you look, look, I ran the numbers on their districts. I mean, I love the squad. They're in unbelievably safe districts. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, AOC, they are in unbelievably safe districts and good. You know, I'm glad that in safe districts, progressives are primarying centrists and winning. That's awesome. That's what I want to happen.

0:54:01 Thomas: What I want to happen is progressives to primary centrist Democrats and win. There's an, oh, I'm out of time, but I got to make, there's one exception. There's a couple, but there's a big exception and that is Katie Porter. Katie Porter took in 2016, California 45, Katie Porter's now district. Not that, she won in 2018. But in 2016 the Republican won 58 to 41 in her district, 58 to 42, 17 point victory. In 2018, she squeaked out a pretty healthy victory, about a four-point victory, 52% to 48%, roughly, in 2018. And you might think, oh no, that pattern where we flip a district in 2018 and then it goes back to where it was in 2020.

0:54:52 Thomas: In 2020, she turned out the vote like crazy. She won 218,000 votes to 190,000. Now Republicans, that 190,000 is an increase of 45,000 and it's slight increase over 2016, but Katie Porter is magic. She could have easily lost her seat based on the history of this district that she's in, but she went from, so her vote total in 2018 was 158,000. And she garnered 218,000. And actually that might be slightly incomplete because of the counts not fully in as a couple of percentage points at most. But anyway, the point is 50,000 or more, almost 60,000 actually increase in votes.

0:55:41 Thomas: 60,000. I mean, that's phenomenal. And you might say, you might be tempted to say, well, she's very progressive. She supports Medicare for All. Maybe that's the difference. Well, could be part of it. I, you know, I can't say for sure either way. I'm looking at the rest of the numbers and the rest of the candidates and that, that that pattern doesn't really hold. I think it is that Katie Porter has made a massive name for herself in being a resistance figure, and everybody knows her whiteboard, and she has done amazing things and gotten people excited to vote for her. And my theory is that there are people who break through this pattern that I've outlined, and they are people with higher profiles, have made a name for themselves nationally. That's not something that everybody can do. I mean, just by definition, definition, not everybody can stand out. You can try.

0:56:26 Thomas: But I think that explains that. And I just want to point out that Katie Porter is amazing. I cannot believe how handily she won re-election in a district that, again, in 2016, was a 17-point Republican victory in that district. That's incredible. So Katie Porter ist amazing. Ich liebe sie so sehr. Und sie ist definitiv in an exception in the numbers. When I'm kind of doing comparisons, she really did break the pattern by quite a bit. So that's my episode.

I do not think progressive policy was any reason that we lost. It is bullshit to blame it on that. So Spanberger, anybody else doing that, that's not right. I disagree with that. I also do not think the flip view is true that progressive policy was the reason all these House candidates won, which is what that meme, what that shared graphic, what that strongly implies is that everybody who supported Medicare for All would win and everybody who went against it would lose. I just do not see that as the case. I think that what happens is in districts that are safer, those Democrats have tended to be more progressive. And because they're safe districts, they win in general election victories easily. Individually and in more contested districts, they have had to take moderate views and they might have flipped it in 2018. But then when all the Trump voters came back in 2020, they lost it again. And by the way, plenty of progressives also fit that pattern. Plenty of people. So when you cherry pick and just show the centrists who lost and the progressives who won, that looks like one thing.

0:58:09 Thomas: One thing I actually did do, I didn't have time for. I went through this entirety, there's this website of boldprogressive.org, I think, boldprogressives.org. And lists all the candidates that supported Green New Deal and Medicare for All. And, uh, it's a mixed bag, you know, uh. The ones in safe districts won easily, as you would expect. And the ones who were in close districts, a lot of them lost. Um, it's not a, it is not a magic carpet ride to winning if you support those policies. So, that's my view. Um, I, I hope you got something out of of this. I was just very curious about the truth of these claims, and I did my best to investigate them, and I know the data is a little incomplete, but that's what I've got as of now. I'm happy to hear your feedback on this, and thanks so much for listening, and I will see you next time.

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