Thread by @Nate_Cohn

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

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

It's worth emphasizing that last point about 2012 on race etc., because the Shorism debate on this website has not always proceeded from clear and shared assumptions about what his vision looks like on race/immigration/etc

I should note that I think that's Team Shor's fault: I have not seen very many (any?) efforts from the populists to spell out what Democrats can/can't do on race/immigration on this framework, other than try and make it go away somehow

But Obama is an obvious blueprint. After all, he was the star in the holy grail'12 election. We know Obama's tweeted Shor. His broadly liberal sensibility puts him at odds with the new new left. We can work with this in lieu of a full proposal.
nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/…

And I think it's pretty easy to see the Obama campaign as an exercise in popularism.
Its core message in the Midwest was to tout the autobailout and attack Romney as a corporate raider who would outsource jobs and hollow out the middle class.

For future reference, note here that this is basically a defensive jobs/growth message: we will protect you from corporations and globalization.
The ACA, stimulus, green jobs were not really part of the winning message. And they probably weren't a winning message.

In peripheral but important roles, Obama attacked the GOP defunding planned parenthood, argued for CIR and gun control--esp post-Aurora shooting. Obama backed gay marriage but didn't talk about it much.

So Obama didn't exactly shy away from talking about liberal cultural issues. But it is true that they weren't the central question of the election, either. I am open to the idea that they could have been under other circumstances.

On immigration, it's fair to say Obama did a lot to defuse these issues by '20 standards. He talked a lot about border security and deported enough undocumented immigrants to earn attacks from activists. Biden '20 wasn't really willing to defend this in the primary: I was just VP

On race, Obama ran on a now very out-of-style brand of hopeful, colorblind postracial liberalism, which plainly helped to defuse questions about race in the northern United States (not the south). On net, perhaps he defused it entirely, at least compared to prior white Dems.

It's worth noting that when Obama appeared to even slightly deviate from that brand--the Gates incident, noting his son would have looked like Trayvon--he quickly found himself in controversy, though I'm not clear on how much damage was done by it. Wasn't in the campaign, either

And in general, Obama's approach to these issues was always aiming to be unifying and conciliatory, in a manner consistent with his overall DNC '04 liberal message, while secondarily acknowledging the legitimate grievances of African Americans

So lets assume that all of this is more or less what Shor would like. Is it feasible? What would accomplish for the Democrats at this point?
I'll make three points:

1. Leaving feasibility aside for a moment, a rerun of the 2012 campaign in 2022/2024 does not yield 2012 electoral outcomes. It just doesn't.

The last ten years have had a huge effect on the partisan allegiance of millions of white working class voters who used to vote for Democrats. The old bonds of party loyalty are gone. They don't default to Democrats anymore. Many are now just Republicans.

The '12 campaign was an exercise in reassembling the Obama coalition: getting a bunch of voters who usually voted D and voted for Obama to vote for him again, despite a mediocre economy.
The Shor task is now to *win* votes back.

According to data from Pew, Midwestern whites have gone from R+6 to R+14 by party ID from pre-12 campaign to post-20.
Nationwide, whites without a degree have gone from R+12 to R+23 over the same period
This is a formidable obstacle to achieving '12 results again.

2. Popularism does not seem to have any obvious options for *winning* votes back.
It is mainly about *defusing* the issues that hurt Democrats.
But if you buy my framing that Democrats need to *win* votes back, they need something powerful to lure back now GOP-leaning voters

For comparison, think about how Trump *won* these voters. He did not simply 'defuse' Obama' 12 issues. He did not simply raise issue salience. He totally reoriented the GOP toward winning wwc Dems, from trade, immigration, crime, race, China, guns, etc nytimes.com/2016/06/30/ups…

This was a huge reorientation from Romney to Trump. It was a deeply traumatic event for the GOP.
And I think if Democrats want to undo the last 10 years, that they would probably need to think on that kind of scale--not just saying a few less unpopular things

3. You can't rerun '12 in '24. Most obviously, there are huge changes in the Republican Party--just discussed--that cannot be undone.
There were two sides of the 2012 campaign, after all: Obama and Romney. You don't get to fight Romney '12 again.

Less obvious are vast changes on the Democratic side, as well.
Obama didn't have to talk much about race in '12 because... it wasn't 2013 yet. Today, there's a large vocal progressive left. It can't simply be undone.

The shift to the left is driven by long-term changes like rising educational attainment and generational replacement.
Dems are liberal now. There are new groups and ideas. They'll have to be placated. There may be tactical ways to do it, but making them go away isn't an option

It's worth noting that popularism doesn't actually argue for them to go away. It argues for a filter: subject progressive ideas to a poll-based test, and get rid of the least popular things they advocate.
That may be an option for campaigns, but it's not for activists

I think it's totally reasonable to argue that campaigns shouldn't embrace ideas before they are popular. It is not realistic to argue that activists shouldn't advocate for ideas before they're popular.

I think the most optimistic case for Shorism is that the rise of the left /overton window makes Obama style liberalism popular. Consider the reactions here
nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/…

This would require political campaigns to do something a little bit more than simple popularism. It would candidates to distinguish themselves from the left in forthright ways, that I don't see Shor et al. arguing

I think the best case for Shorism (and i doubt true) is that liberal Obama 04-08 type rhetoric--unifying, emphasis on equal opportunity, acknowledging legitimacy of other side views--alone would be enough to distinguish a candidate from the left

https://twitter.com/gregmaturin28/status/1447214261118242821?s=20

More realistically, I think there would be explicit push back against the left. I don't think that would need to be a Sister Souljah moment, unless you think the aforementioned free speech example from Obama counts (I don't)