The risk of Howard Schultz.

So, as you all may have seen, former Starbucks CEO and former Democrat, Howard Schultz, is contemplating entering the Presidential race as an Independent candidate.  This is bad news based at best on a willful misreading of the facts. There are lot of reasons why this would be an ill-fated effort. But let’s start with a basic point. It is almost impossible for Schultz to get to a point where he wins.  Every time one of these potential third-party challenges pops up, we are treated to some polling results that suggest Americans have a deep and abiding hunger for an independent candidate. But the 2016 election gives us at least somewhat of a guide to logical problems lurking within this conclusion.

In 2016, both the Democratic and Republican candidates were massively under water on their favorability numbers. According to the exit poll: Hillary Clinton was viewed favorably by 43% of the electorate; Donald Trump by an even lower 38%. Hence the rush to imagine that there is plenty of room for an Independent.  

 But let’s look a bit deeper. 82% of the total electorate expressed a favorable opinion of one or the other of them. This buoyant number had held despite the relentless surge of negative information about both major party candidates.  Only 18% didn’t like either of them. Those voters are vastly different and came to vastly different candidate choices, with 47% backing Trump, 30% backing Clinton and 23% choosing someone else. Opinions on Trump have basically not changed one inch since 2016. 38% had a favorable opinion in 2016; his job approval today sits on 39.8%. There is no evidence for suspecting a dramatic difference between job approval and favorability for Trump at the moment.   Whether it is 38% or 40%, this is not a particularly good number for an incumbent President, but it does appear at least somewhat solid.  While some polls have it lower and some polls have it higher, the general point of the 38%-40% range holds. While in theory some softening is possible, there is no real reason to believe it will fall a lot. Indeed, whatever appeal Schultz might have to those who voted for Trump to avoid what they saw as a worse option in Hillary Clinton, it’s hard to see him making any real inroads with people who like Trump even if their affection is slightly soft. Accordingly, Trump has an excellent chance to receive at least 38% of the vote.

To beat Trump’s expected floor of 38%, Schultz would need to win 63% of the remaining vote, which presumably will be cast by Trump opponents.  This is an exceptionally tall order, since Schultz would be running against a Democratic nominee who will have won in a field of very impressive candidates. The long odds might still dawn on Mr. Schultz, and he may still decide against entering the race. But one of the key problems of his very public consideration of an Independent bid is that it highlights divisions within the opposition to Trump.  In 2016, even the slightest division within the opposition was used by foreign adversaries to help Donald Trump. Heading into 2020, they will be looking for similar opportunities. Howard Schultz presents such a wedge, gift-wrapped and ready to be exploited all over social media. Among the potential Democratic candidates, views range widely from the Democratic Socialism of Bernie Sanders to the hard-nosed business perspective of Michael Bloomberg.  This range could produce a healthy discussion of policy that might ultimately lead to good governing.  However, as we saw during the Affordable Care Act fight and the elections through Trump’s electoral college victory in 2016, policy discussion can quickly become nasty, bitter and fearful.  

For example, many Democratic candidates are embracing Medicare for All. This idea polls very well, until its supporters are pushed into admitting that at least some and maybe many people will lose their private insurance.  Then the numbers plummet.  Such complications inside policy ideas will eventually matter if they are brought to bear skillfully in the campaign. Since Donald Trump has bad numbers, his major goal will be to drag his opponent’s numbers down to where his own numbers are at least close.  Trump needs fear or disdain of his opponent to achieve re-election. However, since he has bad trust numbers, it is hard for him or his campaign to convince people beyond his base of his policy ideas. 

Howard Schultz, however, can do it for them.  Trump will gain enormously if negative information about Democrats is thrust into the public sphere.  Already, Elizabeth Warren and Howard Schultz are feuding. Negative attacks he might launch on her may turn out to be more powerful than what Trump might do. Most elections, unfortunately, are often more about feeling than policy, and voters can easily remember the negative feeling Schultz might evoke about one of his rivals, even if the voter forgets what it was about. More conflict is good for Trump, and a candidate who is not trying to win over primary voters is better positioned to create havoc than one who must court primary voters.  

The Schultz bubble may ultimately burst, but for the moment it represents one of the greatest dangers to all seeking to defeat Trump. A viable Independent candidacy will lower the potential percentage of the vote needed to win. A third candidate would make Trump’s hold on his 38 – 40% much more powerful and important.  And it will reduce the number of votes Trump needs to secure from those who don’t like him. The less defined any one non-Trump alternative is, the better chance that alternative has simply because the idea of “not-Trump” is very popular.  As the non-Trump alternative becomes more fully defined, chances grow that negatives about that candidate will loom larger in the minds of some in the electorate. In short, Schultz has already begun creating the negative language that Trump and others can channel.  Should he launch a bid for the White House, this problem will only get worse. We will find out how serious the problem is as we go, but Schultz is a source of concern.

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An early take on the Democratic field.

            Welcome back to week two of the New Scorecard.  As promised we take our very first look at the Democratic field.   A lot has been going on, even since last week, and it can be hard to keep track of it all.  So this is merely a helpful guide to thinking of candidates in four distinct categories.

Senators (9): So far three Senators have entered the race, Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Kirsten Gillibrand (New York) and Kamala Harris (California).  We also see campaigns brewing from Senators Cory Booker (New Jersey), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont). We also have two more Senators who are mulling Michael Bennett (Colorado) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon) These 9 Senators seems to be the only ones genuinely considering the race at this point.  Successful Senators need to end up capturing their homes states and doing well in their regions.  Having too many candidates from one’s home region or more than one from home state can devastate their ability to win. This is mostly so far good news for Harris.  She is mostly alone in California, and it is far and away the largest place.  

Current and Former House Members (5) So far two have jumped in: Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (HI 2), who is off a rocky start with just a small, if loyal, following and former Congressman John Delaney (MD 6) who has been running the longest but has so far failed to gain traction. Three others are strongly considering the race: Beto O’Rourke (TX 16), Tim Ryan (OH 13) and Eric Swalwell (CA 15). Of these Beto O’Rourke is clearly the strongest and someone we might well be waiting to hear from. So far the other two would appear to face long odds. 

Executives (8) These are current or former Governors or Mayors. Two are in, Julian Castro former HUD Secretary and mayor of San Antonio, and 37-year-old Peter Buttigieg Mayor of South Bend, Indiana.  Six others are seriously contemplating a run: Michael Bloomberg, billionaire and former Mayor of New York City; Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles; John Hickenlooper, former Governor of Colorado; Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington; Mitch Landrieu, former Mayor of New Orleans; and Terry McAuliffe, former Governor of Virginia.  Each and every one of them has at least an interesting story to tell, but part of their problem is that executives can often be less known than Senators because they lack the ability to get press coverage in D.C. The list also includes several former officials, who can face even more difficult challenges because without being able to do something on one’s own, it can be too easy to become lost.  Bloomberg, because of his resources, obviously stands out as an exception, but he has other problems. Whether someone from this lane can seriously compete remains to be seen.

The Vice President and the Rest: This group includes some people running or considering a run to make a point, such as Richard Ojeda, former state Senator from West Virginia, and Andrew Yang an Entrepreneur running on a platform of ideas.  Of course, Joe Biden former Vice President of the United States, looms over the field as someone who because of name recognition and the massive field would doubtless start off as the front runner (when given too many flavors, vanilla seems pretty good). In the absence of Biden, Eric Holder, former Attorney General might still throw his hat in, though he has been quiet for a while. Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO, was in the mix though word is rumbling that he may be considering an Independent run instead.

            It is obviously early, but these are four places from which candidates are starting.  Those who are in have an advantage over those who are out, with Biden looming over the field. More to come next week.

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Welcome back to Scorecard Lesson One for the New Year – Remember the Rules

It has undeniably been a rough two years with Donald Trump as President, and, while I have continued a decent amount of blogging in other venues, The Scorecard has regrettably lapsed.  That ends today. You may notice a departure from the relatively non-partisan take adopted in 2016, because, as I look around, I see pundits on both sides of the aisle wishing fervently for Donald Trump to be gone.  However, wanting something and producing evidence that it is likely to happen are different things. So, we will try and be as cold and calculated as possible.

        We begin where the process of choosing President Trump’s opposition is likely to commence, namely the Democratic nominating process and accompanying primaries.  Analysis of who is running, where they are going and why will come later. We start, where everyone should, with getting a handle on the rules.

Rule 1. Winning the Democratic Nomination for President requires winning a majority of the votes from the delegates elected to the convention. If the first ballot does not result in one candidate receiving a majority, voting proceeds to a second ballot and on and on until one candidate wins a majority. We can expect many well-funded candidates from different geographic regions, and there will be opportunity for candidates with even a faint pulse to stay in the race longer because of the internet’s potential for keeping the money flowing.

Rule 2. Delegates are awarded following geographic contests and allocated proportionally according to each candidate’s % of the vote, with a 15% requirement to receive delegates (Subject to two or more candidates reaching the threshold.)  The most important thing to remember is that delegates are allocated proportionally and per contest. Each contest is in fact not a state but the geographic category from which delegates come. In most states this means by congressional district, but some states use different geographic measures, also each state selects two different kinds of statewide delegates. There is the regular selection process for ordinary delegates and a separate selection for VIP types (note these VIP’s are not the same as the superdelegates about whom you will also read).  

The two-bucket approach mostly matters because when doing the math each category is calculated separately. For example, in cases where there are only two candidates, if each bucket has an odd number of delegates, then a mere one vote victory will net the victor a two --delegate margin at the statewide level. Things get more complicated where there are even numbers of delegates.  Where the number of delegates is small, the burden on the winning candidate to get more than an even delegate split is higher.  So in a six delegate unit a four to two split would require the winner to earn a high enough percentage of the vote to be closer to 2/3 than to 50%.  (somewhere above 58%).  But in a ten-delegate unit, in order to gain a 6-4 delegate split, the winner must be closer to 60% than 50% (55% or above).  So the two-bucket approach, which might for example divide 10 statewide delegates into buckets of six and four, will reduce the likelihood that the statewide winner will gain better than an even split.  Virtually none of the pundits follow any of this.  But sharp campaign teams are watching carefully in selecting how to spend resources. 

As one would expect, more votes generally means more delegates, but the way the rules work being strong in some regions can help win more delegates than one earns from equivalent strength in other regions. You can take fewer votes and more delegates depending on the spread.  A large field can also make the delegate division almost automatic. In a contest with four delegates and four candidates who reach viability (15%), each candidate will get one delegate unless one candidate is closer to deserving two than the bottom candidate is to deserving one.  Assuming candidate 4 is exactly at 15%, the top candidate would have to hit 40% or more in order to get a second delegate and deprive the bottom finisher of anything.   This is an incredibly high bar.

Rule 3. Rule 2 decided the winner in the contest between Obama and Clinton in 2008.  All this math might seem boring, but let me repeat that it was the delegate apportionment rules that ultimately swung the Democratic nomination to Obama and not Clinton in 2008.  

If you look at the overall vote totals from 2008, depending on how you count, the race ended with the candidates merely one percentage point apart.  Indeed, there is a plausible argument that Clinton actually received more votes. The bottom line tie between them that most accurately reflected voter preference was broken by Obama’s quite small but nearly insurmountable delegate lead, which ended up being about 160 delegates out of 3200.  It would take a long time to track exactly where each extra delegate came from, but the reality is these little details mattered.  As just one example, on Feb 5^th Obama netted more delegates from Idaho than Hillary did by winning the New Jersey primary.  Obama’s team was better focused on the exact delegate allocation system, and this is a major reason why he won.

Rule 4.   How many candidates are viable matters a lot in each and every contest.  Viability numbers can flip meaningful numbers of delegates.  In a four-delegate district, if four candidates are viable, then the most likely outcome is one delegate for each regardless of who gets more votes.  But if only three hit the threshold then winning the contest will earn the victor an extra delegate. Four viable candidates in a five-delegate district means that the person finishing fourth might earn one delegate and the person fifth be shut out even if the margin between them is a single vote. In the same five-delegate district, the second-place finisher would very much like to push the fourth candidate below the threshold because in most cases (unless the first-place winner wins big) the delegate that would have gone to the fourth-place candidate now goes to the person finishing number two.  In a six-delegate district the math changes again. Now the top two finishers are likely to earn two delegates each with candidates 3 and 4 getting one. If you are near the top, slacking off a little bit to allow candidate # four to beat the threshold might be worth it if you are more concerned with reducing the delegates going to candidate 4. The point of all this, as noted above, is that the smart campaigns will be making countless decisions on tactics relating to delegate totals that will be invisible to the average media consumer and overlooked by all but the best pundits. Have you ever heard anyone on election night explain the difference between winning districts with odd versus even numbers of delegates?

Conclusion:

It’s too soon to tell whether all this complexity will have a meaningful impact in the 2020 contest.  But as we start our survey of the process, charting how many candidates are able to reach the viability threshold and in how many places is exceptionally important.  A candidate who is viable everywhere is a candidate who is in contention, whereas one who is not viable everywhere is more likely to struggle. If three or more candidates are consistently viable, we will enter into somewhat unchartered territory. We were almost there in 2008, but in the end, John Edwards was unable to stay viable. Keep these rules in mind as the process begins. Next time we will examine who’s in, who’s out and where the candidates stack up.

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