How The AOC And Omar Endorsements Could Matter
I thought this was interesting.
Particularly, it was interesting to me that, for all the hoopla about them, "the squad" members have "negative net favorability ratings among adults nationwide: -17 percentage points for Omar, -16 for Tlaib, -14 for Ocasio-Cortez and -11 for Pressley, although they remain relatively unknown to many voters."
Screenshot_2019-10-17 How The AOC And Omar Endorsements Could Matter.png
Of particular interest is their negative ratings among my group - the Independents.
I thought this was interesting.
FiveThirtyEight has been tracking endorsements throughout the Democratic primary. There have been more than 150 of these so far, out of the fairly broad universe of potential endorsers that we’re monitoring. But most endorsements don’t make national news.
Tuesday night was an exception — probably the first time all cycle that an endorsement has led the news cycle. Just as the fourth debate was concluding, reports surfaced that at least two of the four members of the “The Squad,” a group of first-term congresswomen who are outspokenly on the left of their party and often critique their party’s leadership, would be endorsing Bernie Sanders. Specifically, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has already officially announced her endorsement of Sanders, and Rep. Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez of New York will reportedly endorse Sanders at a rally in Queens this weekend. (Contrary to earlier reports, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has not yet officially endorsed Sanders. A fourth member of “The Squad,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, has no imminent plans to endorse Sanders or anyone else.)
I have quite a few thoughts about this, which partly go to how I think Sanders’s campaign, and Elizabeth Warren’s, are going overall. If you want a takeaway headline, though, it’s basically that this is the kind of thing I’d want to see more of from Sanders. In other words, it’s good news for him, but it will be better news for him to the extent it presages a more coalition-oriented approach to running a campaign, which includes building alliances with diverse groups of voters and winning endorsements in an effort to expand his coalition. If, on the other hand, it signals a desire by Sanders to provoke an establishment vs. anti-establishment confrontation with Warren, I’m not sure that’s as helpful to him. OK, here we go: Nine quick-ish thoughts about the AOC and Omar endorsements of Sanders:
1. There’s reason to think endorsements matter. Historically, endorsements have been a good predictor of presidential primary outcomes, often rivaling early polls for how well they anticipate how the vote will eventually turn out. The theory behind the importance of endorsements, as perhaps best articulated in the book “The Party Decides”, has come under attack in recent years, mostly because Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016 despite a lack of support from Republican endorsers was a poor data point for the theory (to put it kindly). In addition, some Democrats who received a number of endorsements earlier this year, such as Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, have not yet gained much traction in the polls. Nonetheless, the theory has a fairly good long-term track record. Incidentally, the theory is not necessarily that the endorsements directly influence voters — for instance, that a voter says to herself “Senator Such-and-Such is endorsing Governor So-and-So; guess I’m going to vote for So-and-So!”. (Although, an endorser with as high a profile as Ocasio-Cortez could be an exception.) Rather, it’s that endorsements are a proxy for support from “party elites,” and that party elites’ preferences tend to be a leading indicator of voter preferences.
2. But endorsements matter more when they cross ideological lines — and these ones were more predictable for Sanders. Imagine that, rather than AOC and Omar, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had endorsed Sanders on Tuesday night. That would have been quite surprising, given that Manchin is fairly conservative while Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. It would have sent a signal, however, that Sanders’s populism could resonate beyond his left-leaning base. Ocasio-Cortez and Omar, by contrast, are more in line with Sanders’s current base, being both quite left-of-center and quick to rebuke the Democratic Party establishment. Those sorts of endorsements matter less, according to “The Party Decides.”
3. The timing was smart for Sanders, and will help to fend off the media narrative that his chances are fading. This is a very pundit-y type of observation, so I’ll be brief. But dropping these endorsements after a fairly strong debate for Sanders1 — and after concerns about the long-term viability of his campaign following his heart attack — strikes me as smart. It could contribute toward a “Bernie comeback!” narrative, especially if Sanders gets a boost in post-debate polls.
4. This is going to intensify intra-left fighting. Want a fairly safe prediction? The primary is going to get nastier. In my read of the various Warren vs. Sanders spats, they’re less about who is further to the left per se and more about how to achieve change, with Warren wanting to work within the Democratic Party and Sanders wanting to upend the Democratic Party and “the system” overall. (To bring about a “political revolution,” as Sanders might say.) One reason I’ve been skeptical about Sanders’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination is that while seeking to upend the system is perfectly valid as a theory of change, it’s a fairly hard way to win a party primary when the party sets the rules, those rules are designed to achieve consensus rather than to reward factional candidates, and voting is restricted in many states to party members. In any event, because Ocasio-Cortez and Omar have a somewhat anti-establishment message — although less so than Sanders himself does — their endorsements are likely to send additional tremors down emerging Sanders-Warren fault lines.
5. “The Squad” is a potential general election liability. A July poll by YouGov found all four members of “The Squad” with negative net favorability ratings among adults nationwide: -17 percentage points for Omar, -16 for Tlaib, -14 for Ocasio-Cortez and -11 for Pressley, although they remain relatively unknown to many voters. (I’d love to cite a wider sample of polls, but I can’t find many others that asked about Omar, Tlaib or Pressley. A number of earlier polls on Ocasio-Cortez found her with negative ratings, however.) They are reasonably popular among Democrats, of course, and Sanders’s objective for now is to win the nomination, not the general election. His campaign has sometimes tried to emphasize his “electability”, however, and these endorsements won’t necessarily be helpful in that respect.
Tuesday night was an exception — probably the first time all cycle that an endorsement has led the news cycle. Just as the fourth debate was concluding, reports surfaced that at least two of the four members of the “The Squad,” a group of first-term congresswomen who are outspokenly on the left of their party and often critique their party’s leadership, would be endorsing Bernie Sanders. Specifically, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has already officially announced her endorsement of Sanders, and Rep. Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez of New York will reportedly endorse Sanders at a rally in Queens this weekend. (Contrary to earlier reports, Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan has not yet officially endorsed Sanders. A fourth member of “The Squad,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, has no imminent plans to endorse Sanders or anyone else.)
I have quite a few thoughts about this, which partly go to how I think Sanders’s campaign, and Elizabeth Warren’s, are going overall. If you want a takeaway headline, though, it’s basically that this is the kind of thing I’d want to see more of from Sanders. In other words, it’s good news for him, but it will be better news for him to the extent it presages a more coalition-oriented approach to running a campaign, which includes building alliances with diverse groups of voters and winning endorsements in an effort to expand his coalition. If, on the other hand, it signals a desire by Sanders to provoke an establishment vs. anti-establishment confrontation with Warren, I’m not sure that’s as helpful to him. OK, here we go: Nine quick-ish thoughts about the AOC and Omar endorsements of Sanders:
1. There’s reason to think endorsements matter. Historically, endorsements have been a good predictor of presidential primary outcomes, often rivaling early polls for how well they anticipate how the vote will eventually turn out. The theory behind the importance of endorsements, as perhaps best articulated in the book “The Party Decides”, has come under attack in recent years, mostly because Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016 despite a lack of support from Republican endorsers was a poor data point for the theory (to put it kindly). In addition, some Democrats who received a number of endorsements earlier this year, such as Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker, have not yet gained much traction in the polls. Nonetheless, the theory has a fairly good long-term track record. Incidentally, the theory is not necessarily that the endorsements directly influence voters — for instance, that a voter says to herself “Senator Such-and-Such is endorsing Governor So-and-So; guess I’m going to vote for So-and-So!”. (Although, an endorser with as high a profile as Ocasio-Cortez could be an exception.) Rather, it’s that endorsements are a proxy for support from “party elites,” and that party elites’ preferences tend to be a leading indicator of voter preferences.
2. But endorsements matter more when they cross ideological lines — and these ones were more predictable for Sanders. Imagine that, rather than AOC and Omar, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had endorsed Sanders on Tuesday night. That would have been quite surprising, given that Manchin is fairly conservative while Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. It would have sent a signal, however, that Sanders’s populism could resonate beyond his left-leaning base. Ocasio-Cortez and Omar, by contrast, are more in line with Sanders’s current base, being both quite left-of-center and quick to rebuke the Democratic Party establishment. Those sorts of endorsements matter less, according to “The Party Decides.”
3. The timing was smart for Sanders, and will help to fend off the media narrative that his chances are fading. This is a very pundit-y type of observation, so I’ll be brief. But dropping these endorsements after a fairly strong debate for Sanders1 — and after concerns about the long-term viability of his campaign following his heart attack — strikes me as smart. It could contribute toward a “Bernie comeback!” narrative, especially if Sanders gets a boost in post-debate polls.
4. This is going to intensify intra-left fighting. Want a fairly safe prediction? The primary is going to get nastier. In my read of the various Warren vs. Sanders spats, they’re less about who is further to the left per se and more about how to achieve change, with Warren wanting to work within the Democratic Party and Sanders wanting to upend the Democratic Party and “the system” overall. (To bring about a “political revolution,” as Sanders might say.) One reason I’ve been skeptical about Sanders’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination is that while seeking to upend the system is perfectly valid as a theory of change, it’s a fairly hard way to win a party primary when the party sets the rules, those rules are designed to achieve consensus rather than to reward factional candidates, and voting is restricted in many states to party members. In any event, because Ocasio-Cortez and Omar have a somewhat anti-establishment message — although less so than Sanders himself does — their endorsements are likely to send additional tremors down emerging Sanders-Warren fault lines.
5. “The Squad” is a potential general election liability. A July poll by YouGov found all four members of “The Squad” with negative net favorability ratings among adults nationwide: -17 percentage points for Omar, -16 for Tlaib, -14 for Ocasio-Cortez and -11 for Pressley, although they remain relatively unknown to many voters. (I’d love to cite a wider sample of polls, but I can’t find many others that asked about Omar, Tlaib or Pressley. A number of earlier polls on Ocasio-Cortez found her with negative ratings, however.) They are reasonably popular among Democrats, of course, and Sanders’s objective for now is to win the nomination, not the general election. His campaign has sometimes tried to emphasize his “electability”, however, and these endorsements won’t necessarily be helpful in that respect.
Particularly, it was interesting to me that, for all the hoopla about them, "the squad" members have "negative net favorability ratings among adults nationwide: -17 percentage points for Omar, -16 for Tlaib, -14 for Ocasio-Cortez and -11 for Pressley, although they remain relatively unknown to many voters."
Screenshot_2019-10-17 How The AOC And Omar Endorsements Could Matter.png
Of particular interest is their negative ratings among my group - the Independents.
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