Electoral Incentives

All right, Jonathan, Well, it's been a few days, so you've been able to digest the recent events midterms. Obviously, we're not fully decided yet. There's still a couple of seats that are not fully counted, but we do know the broad outlines of what we want to see in the next Congress. What do you after a few days of rumination is the most surprising thing about what happened in the midterms? You know? I think that I'll go

along with the conventional wisdom. Democrats definitely did a little bit better than I think reasonable expectations based on polling and what the expert opinion was. I think they beat some of the expectations. There's no question that there was sort of some momentum that came out in the mainstream media. Few outlets in particular sort of bought the Republican spin that it was going to be a landslide. The polling really never said it was going to be a landslide.

It said it should be a moderately good year for Republicans. So I don't think that there was much that was sort of a shocking surprise, but there was a lot that was. It turns out that the ball bounced a little bit the Democrats way in enough races and enough states that it wound up being an unusually good year for Democrats. I guess I would say there wasn't that any huge shocker on election day, and then the returns

came in. If you look at the broad sweep of things, if you look at what happens when there's a democratic president, and in particular, unpopular democratic president in the White House, then it is a big surprise that it was basically a draw and that Republicans didn't pick up forty seats in the House and you know, several seats in the Senate. This was one of the very few elections. I think there's been six or something the last hundred years where

the in party picked up seats and state legislatures. So while overall it was sort of a you know, Democrats will either pick up zero or one Senate seats, Republican are picking up a handful of House seats, Democrats are plus two and governors and plus a handful of state legislative seats. But it's sort of a fifty fifty type of election. But that in itself is over the course of history, very surprising and any year where inflation has been insane as well, so you would think that the

incumbent party wouldn't be benefiting from that. Is it fair for the Democrats to do a lap of honor or was this a little bit of luck? You know, that's a good question. Sure, everybody deserves to take that was when they win. I don't think it was really much that Democrats did, especially governing Democrats. If you look at grassroots, I think that there was a huge amount of enthusiasm, again for the fourth cycle in a row, coming from women,

different demographic groups of women over the abortion issue. So in a sense, it was Republicans shooting themselves in the pot in some ways or conservatives, I should say yes, I think that Republicans basically blew it rather than Democrats. So two things. First of all, the presidence of Donald Trump, a very unpopular former president who remains very much in the public eye and keeps trying to put himself in

the political space. That probably changed things a little bit, which is interesting because it wasn't clear whether it would be a positive or negative in the early days, at least of the campaign, and even in October. I think all along it looked like to the extent that he was a major figure, it was a negative. You know.

The thing is that normally people think, ah, the president, he's the most important person right now, let's balance him out some or if things are going badly, blame the president. But with the former president being a very important figure in politics to this day, people could blame Trump very easily, even though he's not around as a governing official. The other thing is that Trump, and this is only partially Trump's fault, but he's getting blamed for it. A lot

within Republicans are the influence on the candidates themselves. There were a whole lot of terrible candidates chosen by Republicans in this cycle, some of them because Trump intervened in primaries a lot, because those candidates are just very popular among Republicans, in Republican line media, among Republican voters who didn't see going in any penalty to be faced. And I think some of that may have to do with

Trump and his electoral history. That if they don't see Trump as a loser for his various things that made him very unpopular, as he was a loser, he is a loser. He was never popular as president. He was always unusually unpopular, and then even more so if you take into factors, like you know that the economy was generally very good for his first three years in office. So the Republicans wound up with all these terrible candidates

and that certainly cost them. Do the make Republicans moderate their views a little bit now, given what we've seen and given how leadership is going to change, even though there will obviously be some extreme candidates and some fringe candidates. Still, I don't think those people moderate their views because I think what they're up to is in views as much as it is confrontation. And what does happen is some

of them go away because they lost their elections. Um, so, to the extent that we have fewer of those extremists in the House, in the Senate, as governors, as secretaries of state of the various states, that does make a difference, But there still are quite a lot and there still are quite a lot of people who in the House, for example, voted to overturn the election, and you know, and then new people who mostly subscribe to that kind of thinking, and so, um, you know, do they moderate?

I I don't see what in the party there is to push them in that direction. Well, just the idea that perhaps their seat won't be absolutely guaranteed next time because the voters are seeing which way the wind is blowing conservative voters. I mean, yeah, I don't see that as a likely outcome. It's possible it will be. There are certainly people in the Republican Party who believe now if they didn't before, that extremism is an electoral minus

in general elections. But the problem with the Republican Party is that the normal incentive the political parties always have to try to win elections above all else has been weakened, in part because Republican align media is such a powerful force within the party and the Republican aligned media has much weaker incentives for electoral victory than do campaign professionals, governing professionals, politicians themselves, and that it's such an important

point the incentives are so different. Well, we already have Andy Biggs, Conservative from Arizona, telling the GOP that he's planning to challenge Kevin McCarthy. We spoke already about Kevin McCarthy and how you know he might have to negotiate, But it's not clear what promises he can give people or what he can offer them. Does anything come to mind, No, m Kevin McCarthy is let's assume that he winds up having a four seat majority to nineteen to two fifteen.

There's still some possibilities around that. The thing is that in normal times, all you have to do to become speaker is to win the vote of your caucus. Yeah, a majority of your caucus, and then everybody loyally supports that person when you have the floor vote. The formal form for speaker where McCarthy will be opposed, if it's him, will be opposing either Nancy Pelosi or whoever the Democrats

leader is. Republicans to some extent. Democrats, but especially Republicans, have challenged that norm over the last oh seven eight nine congresses already, and they say, well, we can use this procedural tick, which Mitchell Collin doesn't have to worry about because there is no vote like that in the Senate, only a vote like that for one office, which is Speaker of the House. We can use that to hold

the party hostage. And if it's a majority, if five of us vote for King Kong or Donald Trump or you know, whoever to be speaker, then nobody will have a majority and we can use that. Now, what they can use it for, Well, they're not policy demanders. We're talking about people like Marjorite Heller Green here, Jim Jordan's that's right. What they want is to create controversy. That's their you know, as as members of the House, is to get their appearances on Fox News and to be

on conservative talk radio. And so Kevin McCarthy can't give that, Yeah, exactly. Um, So there's nothing to stop them from doing it, and other than the realization that oh, we'll have chaos if we do that, but they may not mind having some chaos. So who would be the unifier in the Republican Party, then there isn't one. There isn't one. The bottom line is there is no unifier because the people who are revolting are not looking for unity. More next on Bloomberg Opinion,

I'm Vonnie Quinn. Is there anybody else that's emerging as some kind of a maybe not a unifying figure, but even a polarizing figure, even somebody that would, you know, lead the chaos? You have to go through the House Caucus with a lot more intimate detail and knowledge than

I have, But I don't see it. Um. You know, when John Bayner, who is the last good leader of the Republicans had when he resigned, McCarthy wanted the job, didn't have the votes they recruit did Paul Ryan because he was he was the one who had the respect of different factions within the party. They don't have that now. There's no replacement for Ryan, who turned out to be terrible anyway. But you know, at least they all sort

of thought he could do the job. I don't so the best my knowledgeism there are members who are well liked. There's always members who are well liked, and so they may eventually find that that works for them. But in terms of someone who has liked and respected that can actually lead them. If there's somebody like that, it has not been reported who in the party is going to decide who should be the candidate for president. There's a lot of controversy within political science and within the world

really about who has the power of these things. What I always say and my reading of it is it's party actors who make the decision, and that means it's a huge number of people, thousands of people of politicians and campaign and governing professionals and formal party officials and staff, party aligned interest groups, party aligned media, all of whom have their candidate, have their interests that they're pushing for

within the process. Because what matters almost more than who the candidate is is which interests in which groups within the party are represented by that candidate, and how that the whole process goes on. Within the Republican Party. It seems to me that the biggest players are Republican aligned media talk show hosts or the people who make the decisions at the Fox shows, Fox News, Fox News imitators.

They have a huge amount of clout within the party, so that it would seem like Rhanda Santis does have an actual shot at the next presidency. Now, if you were on his team, and I'm suggesting you ever would be, but put yourself in that position as team exactly if you had to get out ahead of Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or any any of the others that might emerge or might jump into the fray, who would you be trying to appeal to beyond the Republican media, who

obviously already has appealed to. Yeah, And the problem is that we don't know if those people will still be supporting him six months in the future, levels fifteen months in the future when Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina vote. So, you know, you try to build up support within the party. Then you try to fashion positions and attitudes that are popular. You try to appeal to

all those people, you know, activist donors. Obviously, people with money are important, But people who can you know, snab their fingers and have a thousand people come to Iowa to walk door to door for you are important too. Does he have that kind of general liability to the Only reason I'm talking about him is because you know, he's sort of on everybody's lips right now. But it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't mean that somebody else won't to merge or that Ted Cuz won't suddenly grab the

spotlight again exactly. And you know, we have there's a whole history of this, and the political scientists John Sides and his co authors talk about a cycle of discovery, scrutiny, decline where somebody all of a sudden becomes the candidate at the moment and everybody's all excited about that person and then yes, you know, Rudy Giuliani, Scott Walker, Ben Carson Um, you know, and then after a while that part wears off, and then they start to look at

and they discover stuff that's not so flattering about that person, and that's what they run with. And then you know, support sometimes plateaus, sometimes crashes. And do we know whether that will have with the Santas. We have no idea. And I you know a lot of people will like watch them on TV. Oh does that person have the appeal?

I think it's very very difficult to know. I think that especially with you know, we've seen a lot of candidates who didn't appear to be that strong on television but we're good enough person to person because even though it's it's thousands and thousands of people, it's sort of a discreet universe, it is. And also it's not clear that he has a national profile here is I mean, he's more than anyone right now? Yeah, exactly, He's just building one up and we'll see how it plays over time.

And there's it's just not in my view, it's not especially predictable. What we what will start to be meaningful is if he gets real support, permanent support, permanent as permanent as anything is in politics. If he gets endorsements, if he gets commitments from donors, if those sorts of things, those tend to be good markers that the candidate is

playing well and not just of the moment. But he definitely has the backing of some will treaters like Ken Griffin and people like that right now, So that's always helpful. I don't ever want to write him off, as you've said in the past, But is Trump done or when will we know if he is? And I don't mean done in the sense that he might run or not run, I just mean is his influence not what he used

to be, you know, I wouldn't want to make any guesses. Um, what I read as as far as I see the pundits, and there's there's sort of a group of pundits who are, oh, don't pay any attention to anything that's going on. Trump owns the party and when he snaps his fingers, eventually everybody will come back to him. And then there's another set that think he's finished. And I just don't think we know. I think that this stuff plays out over time.

And what I would say is it's very clear that there are a lot of Republican Party actors, especially politicians, who have no use for him, who understand how he's hurt the party and who would love to have him go away. Whether that will be enough to prevent him from being the nominee, I don't know whether those people will fight hard against him. I don't know whether they're willing to compromise on another candidate in order to stop him.

I don't know. Well, Also, people's wings have been clipped January six, and the hearings and so on has to have clipped some of the fans wings. Um, I wouldn't worry as much about at the sort of voter level. I don't want to say people automatically do whatever the media says, because it's not quite that simple. But I do think that if Fox News reports favorably about Trump, most Republican voters are not going to care about any

of that stuff. And if Fox News starts ignoring him, then you're going to find more and more voters going to the candidates that they pay favorable attention to. So you're saying that there's a scenario in which Trump could get popular again and could whip up crowds just like he was able to do in the past. Oh yeah, that's very plausible to me. But hate to be the person saying I don't know what's gonna happen. But in fact,

I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't think anybody anybody who acts completely convinced that they know what's going to happen in the presidential nomination battle that's still fifteen months away or thirteen months away, whatever it is, and that there's no consensus among party actors. You know, we knew Hillary Clinton was going to win in UM because everybody in the Democratic Party had already endorsed her at this stage UM, and even so she had to fend

off a pretty serious challenge from Bernie Sandar. She was never in that much trouble at that time, we knew. But any time that we don't have that kind of consensus that we had, say around George W. Bush when he first ran, we don't know. It just takes time for the stuff to shake out. Is Biden doing the right thing he said he'd announced, but in the new year, after the new year sometime, Yeah, I do think that he probably the happy impression that most Democrats have about

the elections. Yeah it wasn't the democratic landslide, you know, but but that no disasters happened. I think probably bought him even more time than he would have had anyway. But yeah, I think he needs to decide sometime in the first several months of the year in order to give the party time to react if he chooses not

to run. If he does choose to run, as long as he can maintain around the level that he's at now, he's around approval, I think that he may yet a minor challenge, but nothing too serious, and the data may actually work out for him because we're not quite sure about a recession yet, but it looks like inflation is coming down. So if inflation comes down, and if we don't have a recession, then I would expect Biden we

don't go to war or anything like that. I would expect if economic news is good, no other particularly bad news, one would expect that Biden's approval rating will gradually recover, and he will a year from now be certainly popular enough the Democrats would rather live with him than get into the mess of a of an domination battle, if that's what he wants. I think it has a lot to do with what his health actually is, you know. I mean, there's a lot of crazy stuff about his health.

But he's not young, and and we don't know how it feels to be an eighty year old president. Yes, and you know he's gonna have to make that decision as long as he's not any less popular in is now. If he gets truly unpopular, then the party will start making it for him. But as long as he is, and certainly if he becomes a little more popular than this or less unpopular, I should say it's his decision and nobody can get into his head for that. Bloomberg Opinions.

Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg opinion airs every weekend on Bloomberg Radio and as a podcast every week on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. Do send us your opinions too. I'm at Quinn at Bloomberg dot net. We're produced by Eric mollow This is more than the