My take on the Barry Goldwater debacle is derived from a book I read 50 years ago by Robert Novak, called The Agony of the GOP, 1964. The book was to tap the market that Theodore White found with “The Making of President, 1960” and subsequent works. I don’t think that Novak’s book did nearly as well. I read it only because my father was sent a review copy, and he was not interested.
What I remember from the book was all of the idiosyncratic factors that went into the 1964 election. For example, George Romney (Mitt’s father) gaffed himself out of the race by saying that a briefing he had received on Vietnam consisted of “brainwashing.” In hindsight, that remark seems like a nugget of insight, but it offended Republicans who were staunchly anti-Communist and saw Romney as giving aid and comfort to the enemy by accusing our side of brainwashing. [UPDATE: that gaffe came after 1964. I was a bit worried about my memory when I put up this post. I should have checked. By the way, I don’t still have a copy of Novak’s book. I with I could have remembered more of the idiosyncratic factors that were actually in it.]
Another random event that effected 1964 was Nelson Rockefeller’s remarriage. Having survived politically after a divorce, he figured that getting remarried would not be a problem. But he married the woman who had broken up his first marriage, an in those days that offended people, particularly married women. Down went Rockefeller.
Think of the events that are conspiring to make Donald Trump a possible (likely?) nominee. The primary schedule, with the largest early voice going to small states and southern states. The large field, which allows a candidate to appear to be a big winner with less than 50 percent of the vote. The strange “debates” in which the issues take a back seat to the dynamic between the media personalities and the candidates.
Unless Hillary Clinton is indicted I (and perhaps even if she is), I think that a Trump nomination will lead to a Republican debacle comparable to 1964. In a sense it will be worse, because the best the Republicans could have hoped for in 1964 was a respectable defeat. This year, they would be throwing away a reasonable chance of winning.
This is somewhat odd given that Trump is actually a centrist candidate. He is the least ideological of *all* of the candidates from either party. Goldwater lost because he was too right wing. But you may be right, well see. Either way, Rubio or Cruz have no shot.
That being said, everything else fits. It seems like the relative positions of the Republican base and the elites on the political spectrum have flipped from the 60’s. To the extent that the Birchers are an analog to any group today it would be a subset of the Trump base. At least I think that is fair to say.
centrist just means not using our current left/right split. Trump represents a ethno-nationalistic alternative “right” for the US which is a change and hardly a Evan Bayh type moderation
A subset of his supporters are ethno nationalists. He is not. He is closer to the median voter on more issues than any other candidate.The question is whether independents and swing voters will associate him with the nationalists and will that hurt him. Currently he is pulling a larger % of non white vote than the other 2.
There is a thin chance that a Trump would be able to pierce the veil of respectability that a Rubio could not in attacking Clinton, whereas Cruz would have a zero probability of it not backfiring because of his arrogant demeanor against which Hilary could play the victim against the vast right wing conspiracy. Trump would just deflate all that nonsense. So, in the immortal words of Dumb (or was it Dumber?) “so, you’re telling me there’s a chance!?!”
“I think that a Trump nomination will lead to a Republican debacle comparable to 1964.”
It’s possible. However, would you mind articulating your model that leads you to this conclusion?
Here’s why I ask. Practically everyone is on record having completely underestimated Trump up to now. Everyone thought he would implode immediately or long before now in a laughable collapse.
Suddenly he is the front-runner. Almost the entire pundit and political consultant class is somewhere between baffled and apoplectic regarding his appeal and success up to now. But how many have genuinely adjusted their models of American Presidential Politics in a way that is enough to really account for Trump’s rise?
I think maybe a few people have, but they have too few degrees of freedom. If one assumes that his success thus far is due to 100% luck (i.e. timing and the weird character of this particular election), then one is going to forecast the Trumpocalypse. because luck eventually runs out. But if the reality is even 50/50 luck/skill then one will be constantly surprised when skill and genuine appeal compensates for luck running out.
It’s possible to argue – as Matt Taibbi just did in Rolling Stone – that something like Trump was inevitable because the possibility was baked in the cake of the absurdity of modern democratic electioneering.
I’m guessing that pundits will continue to underestimate him, and so are greatly discounting Trump’s ability to take on Hillary Clinton. I’m sure it’s going to be an awful spectacle, but I don’t see a blowout.
it doesn’t actually require much adjusting. “will self destruct on his own” seems discredited but the idea of a “high floor & low ceiling” for trump seems sound and has been advanced for months. The real “problem” is the inability of the race to winnow down before this, suggesting perhaps that campaign finance changes & tech changes prevent winnowing in ways we didn’t fully appreciate.
the idea that trump has a 25-30% ceiling in teh GOP hasn’t been disproven as much as transformed into a 30-35% ceiling with some regional variation. just look at the RCP graph
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/2016_republican_presidential_nomination-3823.html#polls
the 25-35% ceiling understanding has shaped the ENTIRE race as it meant candidates felt free to ignore him. That doesn’t hold in the general or even now with the 3.75 man race (.75 for kasich-carson combo)
<blockquote?The real “problem” is the inability of the race to winnow down before this, suggesting perhaps that campaign finance changes & tech changes prevent winnowing in ways we didn’t fully appreciate.
That’s a good insight. I think the history of this election will be written in terms of the details of the investment of campaign assets. Who had them, how they got them, and what they did with them when. “Follow the money” (and fame).
For all the other candidates, most of the money comes from the usual suspects and big donors. For Bush and Clinton this is double true given the family-based machines. Usually these institutions budget for the war-chest in advance and hold most of it back until they can see who is able to gain the most traction. They are hoping to to save resources, not waste them on internal struggles, and deploy them as late as possible.
They seem to have waited too late this go around. And Trump is a unique figure who has yuge campaign assets of his own: his money and his celebrity. Just like Schwarzenegger, but writ even larger.
That will be something the party will have to try to neutralize in the future – the very rich and famous personality with good political instincts and big ambitions and ego to match. Who’s next?
If we’re thinking about rich alpha male types, I might have thought Larry Ellison, but he lacks the celebrity quotient.
I think that a John Stewart crowdfunded campaign on the democrat side might have good chances in the future. Not really sure of the republican side.
2 things people in Trump denial are discounting is how awful all the other candidates are (Just think about that Hilary Clinton is the de facto President) and how bad things are in the minds of voters (the new commanding heights are insulated from the forces affecting the hoi palloi).
I’m sure you’re familiar with the Scott Adams commentary at this point – his model for explaining Trump has him crushing the democratic nominee. He sees Trump as adeptly exploiting Gurri-like discontent toward elites. The Goldwater-esque candidate in this election is Sanders – too left for the moderates and anathema to the right. Trump may be alienating party elites, but who cares if the vast majority of Republicans line up behind him, *and* he picks up enough independents who find Clinton or Sanders to be distasteful
I was going to post pretty much the same thing about Scott Adams’ perspective. I don’t think the Trump=Goldwater analogy works so well, either. Adams has been pretty prescient so far, calling a Trump presidency way back in August. I know Clinton v Trump favors Hillary in the polls, but Trump is at his best when trashing his opponents. And Hillary has a landfill full of trash he can root through.
I disagree, Trump is perfectly suited to make the election about the dirt on Hillary (and there is no shortage of that). The circus is just beginning….just wait until Trump wears Monica Lewinsky’s dress to a debate on “women’s issues.”
On the other hand, Rubio would have to play “Hillary’s game” and she is a far, far superior combatant.
The thing that makes a Trump win possible is that the Democratic side is such a mess.
The GOP leadership, especially the Senate leadership, must shoulder much of the blame for this debacle. They blackballed Conservative senators, road-blocked Conservative legislation and impugned Conservative voters. The response of Conservative voters to the Republican Party has been to say: good riddance.
Trump is bringing new voters to the GOP but they are not Conservatives. Some are the Reagan / Perot democrats / libertarians who in general have no interest in party politics. Others are those who are stimulated by celebrity. Trump voters do not care about the ideological identity of the GOP. By all measures Trump is a RINO. He is a social liberal who has great love for Big Government. Trump’s name should be on the Democrat ballot. But his supporters do not care.
This ideological vacuum was created by the GOP leadership who unchained itself from ideology and pursued policies solely for self-serving politics. When you don’t believe in something you will believe in anything. Right now the anything getting the most votes is Donald Trump.
+1
“Some are … libertarians who in general have no interest in party politics. ”
Could you name one moderately well-known libertarian who joined the GOP because of attraction to Trump?
Trump is pretty much the model anti-libertarian: from the point of view of most libertarians, he’s wrong on national security and foreign policy, wrong on free trade, wrong on immigration, wrong on eminent domain, wrong on most criminal justice issues, and wrong on gun control. I’m struggling to find some topic on which a libertarian might agree with Trump: school choice, I suppose.
“Could you name one moderately well-known libertarian?”
Fixed that for you. [And I’m a milquetoast libertarian.]
Trump was against Iraq and stood right up to GWBs brother on stage to say it. His likely opponent in the general voted for the Iraq war. He’s clearly better on foreign policy. I’m going to vote against the bitch that helped put shrapnel in my buddies back.
Libertarian stances on things like immigration are beyond retarded. The *PLAN* is to import millions if not billions of people hostile to libertarian politics and likely to be wards of the state. Great plan!
Free trade is largely about running a large continuous debt fueled trade deficit with a country and manipulates its currency, combined with thousand page long trade deals that are anything but free. How can people not be on board with that? Hey, I guess you can buy cheap plastic crap at Wal-Mart on credit that falls apart within a year.
I have no clue what his stances on crime and guns are, though one can at least say he is anti-PC which is usually good for those things. Libertarians should be tough on crime, crime is about violating other peoples property rights and safety. They are too up in arms about legalizing pot though to care about people getting their property stolen or mugged.
The problem with Trump is that he isn’t extreme. As other have pointed out he’s a boring centrist running on what is essentially the 1996 party platform of Bill Clinton and the style appeal of Perot.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is actually nuts to watch. Were did this apocalyptic vision come from? Because he doesn’t conduct himself in a manner you prefer. Because there are one or two topics in which he’s outside this years Overton window (but, ironically, not the Overton window of about five years ago). The mainstream has become so comical itself that even an actual clown seems less funny.
I would suggest that Trump derangement syndrome arises because, like the big bad at the end of the movie, he’s immune to all their ordinary weapons. Indeed, attacking him only seems to make him stronger!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FeedItWithFire
No, not understanding that libertarian positions on the welfare state and immigration go hand and hand is beyond retarded.
You are simply wrong about immigrants on average. Go look it up. Your concerns are speculative. I consider speculation type of a bias.
“Libertarians should be tough on crime, crime is about violating other peoples property rights and safety. They are too up in arms about legalizing pot though to care about people getting their property stolen or mugged.”
What are at least two logical problems with this statement? If you can’t find them I will give the answer.
How do you plan to get rid of the welfare state at the same time your importing new voters that support the welfare state?
I don’t. That is one fallacy. I went to a “Patriot” meeting once and said I thought reforming both go hand-in-hand. They said “I’ve never heard a libertarian say that before.” And I was like “have you actually ever talked to one before?”
On the other hand, as with assumptions about crime, I have no actual evidence that immigrants are not better than natives on understanding liberty. A lot of immigrants seem to know something is unique about America that a lot of natives think derives from being Americans.
I’m not importing anything, by the way. I would first put all the high human capital immigrants at the front of the line. This is how we know the Democrats are full of manure on the issue. Next, I’d have some form of immigration fee. Then it would be quite a while before someone would be “vested” for any entitlement benefits. Lastly, I would like to figure out how to have a “you must like America as it is” political test, but that could easily backfire because Democrats and Republicans neither like America as it is.
Glad to see this view arriving on public blogs. I have told friends for months that Trump will go down ala Goldwater vs. Hillbilly, unless the economy tanks and/or the homeland is attacked by terrorists within 2 months of the election
The pessimist in me expects Trump will win the nomination and, worst of all worlds, lose the general election but not in landslide fashion, causing many GOPers to double down on Trumpism and gravitate toward candidates in future elections who really are nationalists rather than Trump, who was just playing at being one for cheap applause here and there. That’s when the real GOP meltdown comes and the US becomes a one party state for good, probably led by some dark-skinned Bernie Sanders clone who can gin up just the right amount of race and class resentment to unite #BlackLivesMatter activists and Michael Moore’s fans into a pillage and plunder coalition that jumpstarts the US’ economic and cultural transformation into Brazil or Argentina.
But as I said, I am an eternal pessimist, so, you know….
Science says Trump will be the winner. And if he isn’t the nominee, there’s a 61% chance that a Repub will win.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-02-26/trump-will-become-president-statistical-model-says
Romney’s gaffe killed his chances in the ’68 election, not the ’64 election.
Right. He didn’t even go until 1965.
One huge error in all of the discussion about elections is describing “the democrats” or “the republicans” as doing something. “The republicans have failed put forward a sensible candidate…”
As though either of those names applied to actual organized entities with leaders with any actual authority. It’s NOT as though The High Coven Of The Democratic Elite holds a closed door meeting to pick their candidate. (Or perhaps they did and the primary voters are ignoring them?)
The fact (stylized fact?) that the primaries are open to anyone with the resources to enter them, and that anybody can “become” a republican or democrat on generally 5 minutes notice, means that “the parties” really are just “host organisms”.
You want to fix this? Here’s one way. Go to a two stage election. Everybody who can visit the 50 states and get 1000 signatures within 1 year is on the ballot everywhere for the first election. Every citizen gets say 5 votes that they must spread over at least 3 candidates. The top 4 in those votes go on to the 2nd election, which decides the President. If you don’t vote in the first election, you don’t get to vote in the second.
This fixes at least some of the problems that arise when relatively small (and somewhat weird) groups de-facto pick the candidates that everybody else gets to pick among. Force the above described “unified primary” and people like Trump (or Sanders) won’t get so much traction. People like Hillary might be ejected from the race early as well.
It might well still be that some kind of nationalist-nativist-fascist would win – such things have happened to civilized places before. But at least it should remove the scenario where say 25% of the population filters the choice everybody else gets to make to being between a communist and a fascist.
Such a dreamer! That is how the establishment sees it, but Trump is actually their best chance (which still isn’t that great and the establishment may sabotage). Win or lose, he has redefined what is possible in the party but will anyone follow him? Does anyone have the courage?
It is beyond that Trump did well in four early states, the reality is his poll numbers in the Republican moderate NE states are off the charts (some over 50%.) So MA, RI, NY, NJ and OH is where the traditional moderate Republican in past primaries collected all the delegates for the nomination against the disruptive candidates. (Even by March in 2012, it was obvious Romney had the delegate math was near victory against Santorum.)
However, I don’t see Trump as being a Goldwater or Mondal type loss. Realize the states PA, OH, WI, VI and IA were all background states that Obama won 2012 and could easily support Trump in 2016 if the ex-Perot come out and vote for Trump. Additionally, some background states like NV, CO or FL will have massive battles of who can bring the vote out the most. (However with Trump running the Latino vote may increase their voting participation as well.) HRC needs some (not all) those states for the win.
“Unless Hillary Clinton is indicted I (and perhaps even if she is), I think that a Trump nomination will lead to a Republican debacle comparable to 1964.”
This sounds more like emotion than reason. Hillary not indicted = Republican debacle. Hillary indicted = STILL A REPUBLICAN DEBACLE?
Even if you believe the first scenario, you mean an actual indictment by a Democratic Administration is going to mean close to nothing by the voters?
You may feel this is “fully priced” into her electoral chances today, but keep in mind that her current opponent (Sanders) doesn’t want to talk about it and therefore the media is only sparsely discussing it. Trump will certainly want to discuss it in detail, forcing the media to discuss it in similar detail as well.
Also consider the other things which can happen, neither of which are good for Hillary as closely as she’s tied herself to Obama:
1. Downturn in the economy
2. Another terrorist attack on US soil
Given that there is no upside for her in either of the two events NOT happening, I don’t see how you can feel her electoral chances come up “Republican Debacle” without there being an irrational personal view of Trump being factored in somewhere.
Think of the events that are conspiring to make Donald Trump a possible (likely?) nominee.
1) The Republican Party really picked crappy front runner with Jeb Bush. He was completely out-of-shape campaigner and ran on Bush Sr. platform in 2004.
2) His first understudy, Scott Walker, burnt out early and his second, Rubio, really needs more experience. Throw in the hot new libertarian Rand Paul who was terrible and the truest firebrand conservative Ted Cruz is more unlikable than Gingrich or even Nixon.
3) In reality 2012 Primary was almost as bad if you look back.
4) Is the Republican biggest problem that most people are better off today than they were in 2008?
“issues take a back seat to the dynamic between the media personalities and the candidates.”
The issues of immigration, trade and intervening in Syria are as prominent as I have seen in a nomination battle.
“Trump nomination will lead to a Republican debacle comparable to 1964.”
It could be a debacle. I think running on the Bush Jr platform, which all the other candidates are, is a more probable defeat. If Rubio or Cruz did manage to win they would send the US into more stupid wars in the Mideast.Is that what you want?