We’re approaching the tipping point and it’s time, I think, to begin preparing. In the same way that pumpkin spice infiltrates food and Christmas tunes creep onto the radio earlier every year, election cycles become the primary ingredient of the news cycle as pundits grasp for something to fill the dead air earlier every time. Labor Day is less than a week away, and with summer unoffocially drawing to an end, that – more or less – will mark a year and change until the 2020 election, ergo we have to speculate about that, ergo we have to speculate about primaries, ergo we have to speculate about what drives those, and so on and so on. The wave is only beginning to build, but I suspect the next 434 days will be a test of endurance and drowning out the noise to try and find the things that matter – or, perhaps a healthier option, of drowning it out altogether! In that vein, I want to memorialize a few things I expect to see, what I will keep my eyes open for, and what I will actually undertake myself.
To start with, we have the standards. In the same way any calendar year that is a multiple of the 50th anniversary of a prominent event or person’s birth or death provides predictable coverage, we can predict the breathless news of the usual events as well as the corresponding meta-coverage:
- Iowa caucuses, with reflections on the character of Iowans and tactical necessities of winning a vote in a place that isn’t relevant to the country at large
- Meta-analyses of how we still need to reform the political process and have all states hold their caucuses on the same day, or at least close together to avoid the months of useless grandstanding and political theater. Look for a repeat of this topic in mid- to -late 2020 when the battleground states tap the fat vein of political ad and polling money and wizened commentators and battle-scarred Clinton supporters point out that we need to reform the electoral college. For my own benefit, find the quote (Jefferson? Madison?) to the effect that the electoral college was stupid and we should abolish it. Bonus points: conspiracy theories about disloyal electors now that courts have ruled electors don’t have to cast votes for the candidate that won the popular vote in their state.
- Debates, with hopes of substantive conversations dashed by moderators either intellectually unable to pose tough questions or hamstung by the need to funnel in questions from people who used the correct hashtag to participate in that evening’s event
- Meta-gaming the Democratic cottage industry of debate participation and arbitrary math to determine who is and isn’t a real candidate such that they, too, may answer empty questions in timeframes too narrow to develop any real sense of what they think. Whether there will be a challenger to Trump from the Republicans that garners a debate is almost moot as there isn’t much further he can drop in terms of lack of verbal aptitude. Square footage of stage will vie with square footage of the digital backdrop as the de facto metric that TV producers try to maximize. Bonus points: If there is a Republican debate, returning to Reagan as the ultimate American leader; for Democrats, racing to entirely dismiss or similarly lionize Obama as a way to stake out territory.
- Conventions are held in second-tier cities of Milwaukee and Charlotte, already an indication that the DNC and RNC are doing the equivalent of holding a management retreat deep in the woods, away from the big city so people won’t figure out just how febrile and fragile the situation has become. Despite apocalyptic backroom meetings, presenters at the conventions will go through their lines with rictus grins that prevent the screams held in their chests from escaping. No celebrities speaking to chairs here – just grim political stagecraft.
- Meta-analyzing the future of both parties, commentators will be desperate to look for future contenders, listening for even a hint of charisma and vision from the up-and-comers granted the chance to speak. Strong performances, if any, will immediately if briefly factor into vice-presidential calculus that has already been completed by that time; a dearth of results will instead cue pundits to roll out a pathetic list of “gone but not forgotten” names as a way to pass the time. Look for Ryan and Palin’s names on one side, Webb and Panetta on the other. Wild card a few generals and admirals for good measure, just to remember that some Americans get to watch all this nonsense while deployed in various misbegotten corners of the world. Bonus points: Articles making comparisons to the ’68 convention in Chicago with overt references to ACO and Pelosi have no impact on the proceedings but further increase the enmity to two wings of the Democratic party feel for one another. For myself, I’ll be interested to see if the official 2020 platforms of both parties are radically different from 2016, and if so how – the RNC’s was, if memory serves, the most conservative on record, while measuring how far the DNC moves left might be an indication of what the party will look like for the next two or three cycles.
- Vice-presidential calculus will remain, as ever, a dark art of polls, dirt-digging, favors, and seeing if candidates can forgive one another for the deep personal loathing that must surely develop on the campaign trail. At least one potential candidate will have their chances torpedoed by a revelation around money or personal relationships.
- Meta-stories on the powers and role of the vice-president, how they have evolved, and who has done a good or bad job in recent years will abound. A low stakes way for budding pundits to start to take up a few seconds of airtime with vacuous guesstimates based on nothing but the latest Politico article they read. Trump will likely keep Pence unless Pence is already preparing some golden parachute to take him away from the downward spiral, but even so his replacement’s identity (Jared?) would be mostly irrelevant; the Democrats will be doing multi-dimensional modeling of geography, race, age, leftness, and other factors. Burnout from years of campaigning will devastate the field such that pundits will happily roll out names of prominent non-candidates. Stacey Abrams will have been on the short list from day one, but will eventually bow out to wisely win an office outright before turning to the 2024 race. Bonus points: the (apocryphal?) quote on the vice presidency being worth a bucket of warm spit.
- Polls and modeling will be endlessly cited and then dismissed with a shrug because they “didn’t work” last time around. (See my earlier post on Nate Silver’s wonderful review of 538 predictive performance.) A race to the bottom of opaque statistical modeling will ensue as journeymen mathematicians are hired left, right, and center; even as high quality polls continue to do their good work in the background, their results will be roundly ignored by the news sites’ need to publish a “diversity of opinions” i.e. clickbait pieces from people who don’t understand math beyond PEMDAS.
- 538 will remain the standard-bearer for excellence, although their overstaffed politics desk will mean that there will be far too much dross to pick through as well as “chats” that superimpose the qualitative views of the writers over the less informative polls as we wait for major updates. The Upshot on the New York Times will try its best to keep up but will both fail to do so in a quantitative way as well as being hamstrung by the chaos and contradiction of the opinion page and house bias. Fox News will do the usual and ignore any reality that does not have Trump winning unless it absolutely has to – either way, warnings about socialism will be grimly announced with increasing frequency as election day approaches. Bonus points: A major pundit writes a piece dismissing statistics and polling entirely because America is people and people aren’t numbers, or something to that effect. For my own part, I want to recreate the Bread and Peace model of Douglas Hibbs, which I find to be the most useful base scenario to build from. At time of writing, real disposable income growth per capita during Trump’s term to date means he looks like a strong incumbent. Democrats must, perversely, hope for a recession or a major uptick in American military casualties to have the odds turn in their favor. (Although as Hibbs notes, there are other unscientific and idiosyncratic items that go into this – Trump’s unbelievable personal traits and actions may well be the tailwind the Democrats need.)
- Election security and foreign interference will be perennial favorites, sometimes explored in depth in a particular municipality that is doing an exceptionally good or bad job, sometimes a throwaway bugbear to stoke anxiety.
- Meta-narrative on whether the Mueller report changed anything, continuing allusions to collusion, transitioning to issues such as laws affecting voting eligibility and “get out the vote” efforts, as well as potential dives into how technology and social media impact the election. Bonus points: Cambridge Analytica gets mentioned, but not the overt ad buys by presidential campaigns. For my own part, I’ll be interested to see how the new voting machines work and after the fact commentary from informed experts.
I’ve missed something, I’m sure. Notice that I make no reference to issues, to causes, to what should be as opposed to what is. All of those are topics are worth their own discussion, but perhaps that’s more easily done when the stage is set for the background distractions and the frustrations of the new cycle are already baked in. Happy viewing!
smq.world 