Thread by @Nate_Cohn

Perhaps even more important is recalling the flawed assumptions, data and conventional wisdom that made this piece so important at the time, even as it seems fairly obvious in some ways today (at least to me)

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1443670814075850762?s=20

After the 2012 election, the conventional wisdom held that Obama's victories reflected the power of a new coalition of the ascendent, or even an emerging democratic majority, powered by sweeping generational and demographic shifts

A lot of this flowed from the 2012 exit polls, which showed Obama winning just 39% of white voters--lower than any Democrat since Dukakis. But he nonetheless won easily, as Latinos surged to 10% of the electorate and whites fell to just 72%

This was interpreted to mean that the Republicans had essentially maximized its support among white voters, and the party lost because it lost ground among growing Latino votes. Therefore the RNC autopsy focused on cultural moderation and immigration

It's difficult to overstate the power of this interpretation at the time.
Before FL/exits, the story of the election was Bain, the autobailout, and the Midwestern Firewall.
After FL/exits, even Sean Hannity felt he had to embrace immigration reform!
politico.com/blogs/media/20…

For Dems, the implication was that they didn't need to think about white voters and especially white working class votes anymore. They could more-or-less win without them--or at least without trying to win them.

The assumption, again, was that Obama was the worst case. He was at a multi-decadal low among white voters, and it was obvious why: he was black, elite, liberal. He struggled back to the '08 primaries against Clinton, their next nom. Virtually every D Sen cand ran ahead of him

If so, then the thing Democrats needed to focus on was mobilizing the so-called Obama coalition: young, Black, Latino voters. That was the part that was plausibly unique to Obama, that was the party that distinguished Obama from Kerry. And that the party couldn't count on.

This interpretation of the Obama coalition was bolstered by the nature of the Dem losses in' 10 and '14, which really were partly because of a big GOP turnout edge, including low turnout among young/black/latino voters

As the piece in the original tweet shows, huge swaths of the interpretation summarized in this thread were wrong--even completely wrong. The data it was based on was wrong, as well.
Obama's decisive strength was among white, working class northerners.

As a result, major strategic choices flowed from this erroneous interpretation of the American electorate. Obama pushed gun control and esp immigration, rewarding the group for seemingly deciding the election in his favor. Big swaths of the GOP establishment embraced it too.

In doing so, a lot of the conditions for Trump's victory fell into place. The GOP establishment, including all its top candidates like Rubio and Bush, seemed to sell out its base by embracing immigration reform and arguing for moderation.

Democrats, meanwhile, leaned into a strategy that basically omitted the white working class entirely. A huge white education gap had emerged in Obama's ratings by fall of 13 (maybe 14, forget).

At the same time, a triumphant youth liberalism became dissatisfied with limited progress and moved toward the left, exemplified by Bernie, BLM, etc.
This created added pressure on Democrats, esp in the '16 primary, to move left to hold the 'Obama coalition'

You know how the story ends: the real Obama coalition--an alliance of northern white working class voters and high Black turnout--evaporated
nytimes.com/2016/12/23/ups…

One interesting thing, though, is that the traditional narrative of the Obama coalition was so powerful that it persisted way after the article in the original post. Many people were deeply reluctant to believe that Clinton lost because of mass defections among northern wwc.

It should be noted, btw, that this was clear throughout the campaign. It was evident at the start of the campaign nytimes.com/2016/06/30/ups…
And at the end
nytimes.com/2016/11/07/ups…

Since then, Democrats have charted a fairly different path to victory--certainly a more novel one than the Obama coalition: run up the score among white college graduates, a group that didn't even vote for Obama in '12, while losing ground among virtually every other demographic

This probably slightly paid off in the national vote?
Biden won by 4.5 pts, while Obama won by 3.9 pts. It's probably more efficient in the House, too.
But college grads are underrepresented in the Midwestern states, so Dems are at an E.C. disadvantage now

On the first question, my boring answer is 'yes' when Biden's approval rating is over 50 and it's 'no' when his approval rating is under 50 percent

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1443930496816357377?s=20

I'd note that right now Biden's ratings among core Democratic constituencies--ie everyone but white college grads--seems to have tanked a bit, perhaps temporarily
nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/…

I'm addressing some critiques, here

https://twitter.com/Nate_Cohn/status/1443946684950663168?s=20