Stop Glorifying Political Victors
Political Actors Are Way Less Important
I remember exactly where I was sitting the first time I ever swore at a teacher in my life. The back left (when facing the Prof) corner of a third floor classroom was where I was sitting, hearing the news that Lynton Crosby would be joining the Canadian Tories as an advisor for the 2015 campaign, hot off "winning" David Cameron a majority in the UK. My prof revealed the news, which I had otherwise missed, and then there was a class conversation about it. He said that he thought it was a gamechanger, and that the Tories were back in the game. To which I remember my unprompted, uncalled on question back.
"I'm sorry, are you fucking kidding me?"
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The Tories would go on to get wiped the fuck out, going from a solid notional majority, with a projected seat total in the 180-190 range, to 99 seats, and the supposed strategic genius of Crosby became a laughingstock. Or, he would have, if not for the fact that he leaked soon after that he wasn't a real player in that campaign, he was just an occasional advisor. I laughed when I saw that, because that is the way Crosby, and his Australian partner Mark Textor work. They claim a 75% win percentage on campaigns before 2010, but there was not an Australian state election won by the right of Australian politicians between 1998 and 2007. That's not an exaggeration - literally every state election from the 1997 South Australian election until the 2008 Western Australian election was won by the left. So, what, did the leading election consultants in Australia just take a decade off, only working federal campaigns and just taking a pass on those? Or, more likely, are they talking out their asses?
If Crosby-Textor were so good, how come they weren't ever able to get a single state election win in a decade? The answer is simple - Australia has huge amounts of fatigue or blowback from the party in Canberra against their state cousins, and so, with John Howard elected in 1996, there was a run on bad Liberal governments losing from 1996 to 2002, when the final government lost in South Australia. No amount of good campaigning could change the fact that Australians don't want unity of government when it can be avoided, and unpopular federal governments make state politics easier for the party out of office in Canberra. This isn't hard to understand, except for the part where that sort of answer doesn't get consultants rich.
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There is an autopsy out on the performance of the Texas Democrats, and they are claiming that the lack of canvassing and in person campaigning is a leading cause of the problems in the Rio Grande. That is, bluntly, a lie. It is untrue. It is false. I'll allow the inspiration of this column to take the credit for the point, but it's just broadly crap.
The thing is, I know why the Texas Democrats want to blame that on their failures - it's not going to be a problem in 2022, and if that's the case, then there's no need for deeper introspection or to look at fundamental problems. But more than that, it is what can best be described as the deep arrogance of everyone who either does politics in a professional way or thinks they could. Anyone who has ever written a column or a tweet and said that any individual outcome or event changed or could change an election is feeding into that arrogance.
Elections are fairly boring things, structurally. Not many people change their minds, most people either vote religiously or don't vote, and so campaigns are increasingly about getting your voters out, and getting the swing voters to break your way. There is skill to that, but it's also plenty of luck. I don't think anyone would say that Georgia Republicans had a good runoff election cycle, and yet, they came a lot closer than they had any business getting to winning the Perdue/Ossoff race.
In Texas, I'm sure there were some voters who didn't turn out because Democrats didn't knock on their door and drive them to the polls, probably. But "I didn't get my voters out" doesn't work as an answer when Joe Biden got something around 1.4M more votes than Hillary Clinton did in the state. Did Lindsey "I Keep Going On Fox To Beg For Cash" Graham run a good campaign in South Carolina? Of course not, but he won, and won handily, and it was idiocy for me to think he could ever lose. It was my own arrogance that made me think it was possible, that if Democrats did their jobs they could pull it off. South Carolina was, is, and remains a red state, and thinking of it as gettable was a mistake born of overrating how much any of this shit matters.
Remember when Mike Espy's comms person claimed that a DDHQ contributor didn't understand Mississippi because he had the temerity to say the whites in the state were too Republican to make the state competitive? Espy lost because white voters broke too Republican, as they always do. People are trying to make Gavin Newsom getting recalled into a thing, as if Newsom won't win a recall vote 60/40 because he's a California Democrat and California Democrats win 60/40, and legitimate reporters are taking this shit seriously. Why? Because they think good campaigns can seriously change things. They can't.
How many times do we need to see well funded, credible Democrats in rural white America get destroyed before we realize that it's not a question of campaign quality, but something more fundamental? How many more times do we need to see vanity projects like McGrath For Senate before we realize that most of this shit is baked in before a campaign begins. I know why the media does it, because it's a way to suck up to sources, and I know why staffers engage in the practice - it's cash in hand and a higher fee next time. What I don't understand is why political parties and partisans are so willing to delude themselves with such obvious fictions.