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Nate Cohn Profile picture
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9 Oct, 5 tweets, 1 min read
Two pieces from NYT Opinion worth reading in tandem on, more or less, how individualism is shaping the current debate over the Biden agenda
nytimes.com/2021/09/14/opi…
nytimes.com/2021/10/08/us/…
I don't think I've ever written up before, but I do think that understanding the role of a broadly defined individualism--as a world view, value system--is vital to understanding American political debates, on everything from social democracy to coronavirus to racism
I actually added the wrong second link (it was supposed to be an opinion piece, after all). this is what i meant!
nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opi…

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More from @Nate_Cohn

Nate Cohn Profile picture
10 Oct
Since it's @davidshor weekend here on Twitter, I thought I'd add some focused thoughts on one way of thinking about the Shor case: what would happen if the Democrats tried to go back to 2012?
It's oversimplified, but in the absence of a fuller program I think it's one of the clearer lenses for thinking about what his ideas mean in practice.
And I think it's fair: he's clear about wishing to go back to 2012 edu. polarization--it's explicit in his power sim Image
He's also clear in believing that the Obama '12 campaign is the model for Democrats. As far as he's concerned, that was the last time Democrats thought in a popularist--tactical--way, including about salience/messaging on race, immigration, culture
Read 31 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
8 Oct
Strange piece and report, perhaps reflecting some of the inconvenience of Trump's gains among nonwhite voters in a high turnout election.
But I'd like to note some of the numbers in the report, which speak to real '20 data challenges
To take an obvious case, this report appears to think that Democrats made gains among Hispanic voters in most states--including Florida!
This is clearly based on pre-2020 voter file partisanship modeling, like party registration or primary vote history, without any effort to incorporate polling or results from 2020
Read 8 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
5 Oct
The certification step is where this sort of optimistic case on election subversion becomes too tenuous, as I think I've mentioned to @DouthatNYT before (can't find the thread)
nytimes.com/2021/10/05/opi…
The refusal to certify an election on a pretextual basis could change the game as we saw it in 20. It would around flip the politics of the fight, by denying the winning party the appearance of what was their most important advantage in '20: the reality of an uncontested election
Realistically, the courts would eventually intervene--but it's not quite enough to be sure. The state laws are often very vague, and often don't have clear evidentiary standards. Litigation could take longer than the safe-harbor deadline.
Read 7 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
4 Oct
This article from 2019 seems relevant to some of the conversations in my Twitter feed this morning: swing voters aren't really disproportionately white working class anymore
I think a lot of the findings in this piece are reflected in the 2020 outcome nytimes.com/2019/11/05/ups…
And while this poll is two years old now, it is probably the last unbiased battleground polling we had of the 2020 cycle (at least v. the result). I think lots of the lessons from this series are still very worth keeping in mind
nytimes.com/2019/11/04/ups…
nytimes.com/2019/11/07/ups…
Read 9 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
1 Oct
A few extra thoughts on this thread, mainly responding to various questions, criticisms, etc.
One overarching point, which I think is fairly obvious but worth stating: this is not a comprehensive account of everything that led to Trump. It's account of the effect of an inaccurate electoral narrative, which is hardly the only thing that helped Trump!
To take one obvious example: Clinton's unpopularity, emails, sexism, etc., does not get mentioned once. That is not because it's unimportant! It's because it's a different issue; it does not stem from bad exit polls or something.
Read 29 tweets
Nate Cohn Profile picture
1 Oct
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)
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%
Read 22 tweets

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