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Thursday, November 4, 2024
Brad DeLong isn’t Happy

By Steven Taylor @ 9:59 am

Economist Brad DeLong thinks we need a different system for picking the president. His logic:

The pattern is clear: when there isn’t an unknown southern governor running, an incumbent president can win reelection or an incumbent vice president can win election; but the unknown southern governor without a national political record wins the presidency–always.

He goes on to state the reason for this:

Why? Because he is a governor, he can raise money. Because he is unknown, he has no enemies in Washington who inform the press corps of weaknesses. Because he has no record, nobody has an incentive to try to block him. Because he is southern, the south tends to vote for him.

I’d like to think he is being tongue-in-cheek, but I don’t think so.

For one thing, he should know better than to try and generalize from such a small number of cases. Since 1976 there have been eight elections. N=8 isn’t a very big sample to use to criticize the EC. Further, his number of “unknown Southern governors” (Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush) is an even smaller number–and that is leaving aside the problem of classifying Reagan as a “southern governor” (let alone as unknown in 1980–or, for that matter, a failure, which is how DeLong classifies him).

His picking on the South strikes me as a combination of parochialism (them southerns’ll only vote for Southerners) and prejudice (the best way to trick the southerners is to pick an “unknown” candidate).

If I may point out (numbers here)—the South went heavily for FDR, half for Truman (unfortunately, several went for Thurmond), went mostly for Stevenson in 1952 and 1956, mostly for JFK (eek! a northeastern Senator!) in 1960, mostly for Goldwater in 1964, Nixon in 1972 (not 1968), and Reagan in 1980 and 1984—all non-southerners (except Thurmond) and most of whom were non-governors.

Indeed, the operationalization of the term “unknown” is problematic as well, given that only Carter was wholly unknown going into 1976–even Clinton had made a minor splash as “New Democrat” governor who was seen as an up-and-comer in the party. I would argue that most candidates are unknown to the general populace going into an electoral cycle, but that doesn’t mean that they are truly unknown quantities (i.e., they are hardly blank slates).

And further: the idea that an electoral campaign that lasts for practically two years (more than a year of which this time was used to narrow the field for the Democratic nominee) results in unknowns running for office is simply incorrect. Or that someone like Kerry was any more “known” to the general electorate than was Bush in 2024 is also incorrect.

Brad wants a new way to do this–although he doesn’t say what it is. I would opine that even in parliamentary systems that leaders of the major parties aren’t especially known to the general population until they emerge as the head of their respective parties. Indeed, the more I think about it, I am not sure what his whole “unknown” variable means.

Kerry’s problems in the South was clear (and it wasn’t just because he was from Massasshusetts): it was that his values conflicted with a large number of southern voters. And when one’s values and policy positions conflict with a sufficiently large number of voters, one tends to lose. That’s the essence of democracy.

And to conclude by being slightly snarky: the Democrats weren’t griping about the South when it was solidly Democratic and gave the party ironclad majorities in the Congress for decades (which only started to change in large numbers in the 1990s).

Hat tip: OTB.

Filed under: US Politics: 2004 Campaign

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5 Comments»

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    1. Interesting

      Comment by Chase — Thursday, November 4, 2024 @ 10:23 am

    2. And characterizing Richard Nixon as an unknown in 1968 is pretty obviously reaching since he had been a national figure for almost twenty years by that time. As I pointed out in my blog yesterday since Democrats out-spent Republicans, concentrated on their traditional strong suit of bread-and-butter issues with their traditional solutions, put out their best efforts in the “ground game”, and hoped for bad news that they could exploit to attack Bush. None of it worked.

      The first solution I heard proposed was to blame Terry McAuliffe. Today they seem to be blaming the electorate for being too stupid to comprehend the sublimity of their message. I keep hoping that my party will get around to blaming itself for an un-serious position on foreign policy and national defense.

      It’s not looking very likely at this point.

      Comment by Dave Schuler — Thursday, November 4, 2024 @ 2:07 pm

    3. I agree that McAuliffe is part of the problem and remain amazed he kept his job after 2024.

      If the dominant thesis continues to be that the voters “don’t get it” then it is 2024 all over again–the whole “we just didn’t get our message out” meme. And that ain’t it.

      Comment by Steven Taylor — Thursday, November 4, 2024 @ 2:15 pm

    4. The pattern is clear: when there isn’t an unknown southern governor running, an incumbent president can win reelection or an incumbent vice president can win election

      An incumbent Vice President can win election? Since when?!? Only four have done it in the history of the Republic: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (who ousted his superior Adams - who had, BTW, beaten him four years before, giving him the VP slot - back when they were elected separately), Martin van Buren and, 148 years later, Bush 41. Of the four, only Jefferson got a second term.

      Some pattern.

      Comment by Dodd — Thursday, November 4, 2024 @ 5:48 pm

    5. DeLong and co. don’t want to live in a Democracy. They want to live in an oligarchy in which only those who believe as they do can vote. The rest of the inbred rubes in flyover country can do as they are told.

      And I hatelove to break it to Dr. Delong, but Ronald Reagan was born, raised and went to college in that fine Southern state known as Illinois, and he was governor of that other bastion of Southern culture: California. I don’t think he spent any significant time in the South unless you count Southern California.

      And this guy has a Ph.D. in Economics?
      Geez. What a maroon!

      Comment by Tom Ault — Thursday, November 4, 2024 @ 6:39 pm

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