Memo to Democrats: “It’s the autonomy, stupid.”
What are the Democrats’ chances in 2024? This is a weird month to judge.
We started November off with some cherry-picked panic polls that showed President Biden losing to a fascist, racist, rapist, insurrectionist crime lord in five of six swing states. The youth of America flooded social media to say that because of the US stance on the Israel-Hamas War, they would never vote for Biden. This week, pro-Palestine protesters swarmed the Democratic National Committee headquarters, and arrests were made.
Also, Democrats swept every major race in the election.
As an evaluator of game theory, I value the latter fact over the things in the first paragraph. They’re statements of opinion, and opinion-gathering is challenging. Polls suck. Twitter and TikTok elevate rage-farming. Protests are undertaken by the most galvanized. Whereas elections, where Democrats have been winning all over since 2017, are statements of action. They represent a clear analogue to the thing we’re trying to measure here: Will Democrats win in 2024? My rational side favors the closest analogue.
And yet…
Biden and the Democrats have not closed this thing out. They need to. When one frontrunner is running for a second term and the other is running to be dictator for life, we have to win. Fortunately, we know how. There’s a clear strategy that, if Democratic leaders understand and enact it, will lead us to victory. All we have to do is make sure they stick to it.
In 1992, political strategist James Carville hung a sign in candidate Bill Clinton’s campaign HQ that read, in part, “The economy, stupid.” That phrase, with an “It’s” appended to the front, has been employed in every winning presidential campaign since. Republicans tried to use it this year, coasting on voters’ belief that the economy wasn’t doing well under Biden. (There are reasons to think they’re wrong.) The GOP got curb-stomped, because of a much more powerful message: It’s the autonomy, stupid.
We associate “autonomy” with bodily autonomy, around reproductive rights. Since the Dobbs decision, abortion has become a supereminent ballot issue for Democrats. They’re even further buoyed by their stances on voting rights, book bans, and LGBTQIA+ expression. All these are autonomy issues: they’re about what you can do with your mind and body. The key message: People don’t like it when their rights are taken away.
In game theory, we use a psychology term called the “boomerang effect.” It’s when you do something you think will persuade someone and it results in the exact opposite result. Curtailing rights can trigger the boomerang effect even in the supporters of the position. It doesn’t even matter which rights those are. It’s the nature of rights as rights that causes the boomerang to fly back at your face. Even your allies will vote against you if you try to eliminate people’s autonomy.
Many issues are not autonomy issues. They’re just ideological. In those, people will revert to party lines. Student loans are a great example. There is no right to loan forgiveness. Those inclined toward government helping those in need like it, and those against that don’t like it. The first group votes for Democrats, the second for Republicans. It’s just ideology.
Ideology issues can morph into autonomy issues over time. The battle over instituting the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was an ideology issue, because we didn’t have national health insurance. Democrats wanted it, Republicans didn’t. Democrats got it. Republicans tried to yank it away, but now they had a problem: Democrats, Independents, and Republicans were using Obamacare. Now it was an issue of autonomy. The GOP found that people who were on Obamacare didn’t want to lose their insurance, even Republicans. It had become a right. So, they stopped trying to kill it.
This is the beginning of a strategy. To win in 2024, Democrats must be the party of autonomy. They must work hard and do these six things.
1. Enshrine abortion rights everywhere.
Prior to Dobbs, these five states enshrined reproductive rights in their constitutions: Alaska, Florida, Kansas, Minnesota, and Montana. Most of those are not exactly liberal bastions. In each case, these rulings are based on an express right to privacy, and boy, now that list makes a bit more sense. If you’ve been to Alaska, Minnesota, or Montana, you know that people there value their privacy more than just about anywhere else.
Since Dobbs, there has been a flurry of efforts to enshrine these rights. Last year, California, Michigan, and Vermont voters locked abortion rights into their constitutions, and voters supported abortion in ballot initiatives in Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana. An Oklahoma judge blocked an abortion ban there. Ron DeSantis faces an uphill battle to override Florida’s constitutional protections. This is all over the map, politically.
It took till Ohio’s Issue 1, though, for voters in a red state to up and say, “the right to carry out one’s own reproductive decisions is in our constitution now.” Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin foolishly made banning abortion his top priority, and voters punished him by flipping the House of Delegates and expanding control of the State Senate. Pennsylvania Democrats snagged a supreme court seat over abortion, in the same manner Wisconsin Democrats did earlier this year.
More states are looking at ways to put this issue in front of voters. In 2024, Maryland and New York are offering direct constitutional amendments that look sure to pass. Reproductive rights advocates are trying to get abortion protections on ballots in at least Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota.
Democrats shouldn’t be pro-choice; they should be pro-abortion. This issue drives turnout among Democrats, and sways Independents and some Republicans to our side. If your state isn’t on this list, demand to know why.
2. Take every school board race seriously.
Y’know what was even more popular than abortion rights in this election?
Books.
Moms for Liberty, a well-funded group of crusaders against freedom, ran more than 130 candidates in school board elections around the country. They got annihilated. Every candidate endorsed by Moms for Liberty in Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina and Washington lost. Thirteen of fourteen in Iowa lost; similarly, five of six in Virginia, 20 out of 25 in Ohio, and 15 out of 19 in New Jersey.
Moms for Liberty says it doesn’t do book bans. Voters begged to differ. Book bans rose 33% last year, prompted by groups like Moms for Liberty. The specific subjects of the bans — slavery, gay rights, self-expression — are also things that Democrats talk about, so it’s no wonder Republicans are falling down this rabbit hole. It’s a bad hole to get stuck in.
The freedom to choose what your kids read is a right, and voters are on Jane Cramer’s side. Cramer is a mom from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where voters sent five Moms for Liberty school board candidates packing. She is the face of the American voter.
Democratic candidates for office need to find people like Jane Cramer and promote them. They are winning the war against fascism. People like that.
3. Expand voting rights wherever possible.
If you asked “Is it getting harder or easier for people to vote,” I think most folks would saying it’s getting harder. They don’t like it. In 2021, 73% of Americans polled said voting should not be more restricted than it was during the 2020 election, when COVID opened up mail-in voting all over the place. Yet, Republicans are on a mission to curtail voting rights.
In response to made-up claims that the 2020 election was stolen, at least 11 red states passed more restrictive voting laws, which disproportionally impact voters of color. This month, Mississippi ran out of ballots in minority areas. Yesterday, Republican judges on the 8th Circuit, ruled that only the Department of Justice can sue under the Voting Rights Act, setting up a showdown at the conservative Supreme Court. That’s all very bad.
Here’s what’s not: At least 23 states expanded voting rights with 47 new laws. This includes battleground states like Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada and New Mexico. The theory is that where voting rights expand, Democrats tend to do better. That 2021 poll shows that voters believe it.
This stuff can affect the presidential election, and can have a major impact on Congress. One state that expanded rights is New York, which flipped several U.S. House seats in the wake of a court smackdown of a stupid attempt by Democrats to gerrymander the state. If you wonder why New York Republicans are leading the charge to expel fellow Empire Stater George Santos this month, it’s because these laws mark them for defeat.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has forced the creation of a new African American–majority district in ruby red Alabama. Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana have seen their maps rejected by judges for disenfranchising voters of color, and South Carolina’s is up before the Supreme Court. But North Carolina’s GOP just gerrymandered the hell out of the state for 2024, which could cost Democrats three or four seats. Things are in flux.
Every single Democratic candidate for Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General should run on voting rights. People like to vote. They don’t like it when people take their rights away. So, Democrats, tell people you support their right to vote. And remind people that your opponents oppose it, maybe forever.
4. Stop trying to kick Trump off the ballot.
As a corollary, people like to vote for candidates they support. They do not like it when they are told they can’t. Except maybe with this guy.
Donald Trump tried to end democracy. Constitutional scholars of all political stripes say the Fourteenth Amendment’s Insurrection Clause prohibits an officer of the United States who engaged in insurrection from holding office. A New Mexico county commissioner was recently removed for his January 6th activity. If that guy’s ineligible, so is Trump. Secretaries of state could just remove Trump from the ballot.
If that’s true, then why is no one doing it? Nobody wants to be the one to push that button. Secretaries of state in Arizona, Michigan, New Hampshire, and other states have declined to boot Trump. Judges in Colorado, Florida, and Minnesota kicked the can down the road, with the Colorado judge calling Trump an insurrectionist but carving out a bizarre presidential exception. Why won’t anyone take this leap?
Well, death threats. But also, doing so is antithetical to their jobs. We want our election officials not to put their thumbs on the scale. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the Republican who blocked Trump from overturning the 2020 election in his state, said this:
“For a secretary of state to remove a candidate would only reinforce the grievances of those who see the system as rigged and corrupt. Denying voters the opportunity to choose is fundamentally un-American.”
We like choice, right? Being able to vote for qualified candidates is a right. Our elected officials know that. I think most Democratic voters know it too. Banning Trump likely will swing Independents to his cause. The way to beat Trumpism is to beat Trump, even if takes lots of beatings.
(Also, are we sure we want a different Republican candidate? At last count, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley didn’t have 91 felony indictments.)
5. Act smartly on guns.
Guns are the biggest problem in America, since every other problem is exacerbated by people with guns. We need serious gun control. But even though the Second Amendment doesn't actually say that any fool can own an assault rifle, millions upon millions of Americans believe it does. They consider gun ownership to be a right, and they will not vote for anyone who tries to take that right away. We can’t get gun control if we don’t get elected.
“Common sense” gun control is popular with both Democrats and Republicans. More than 70% of both groups support background checks, banning the mentally ill from buying guns, and red flag laws. But this agreement falls apart when we get to the heart of it. 83% of Democrats want assault weapons banned, but only 37% of Republicans do. When measures codifying gun control come before voters, they run from their areas of agreement in droves. Look at these underperformances on background-check referendums in the mid-2010s, per the New York Times.
These are places where gun control should be draws, and it sure wasn’t. You can win with an anti-gun campaign in certain places. For example, in Justin Jones and Justin Pearson’s Tennessee statehouse districts, it’s been a resounding message. I’d take my chances in Seattle. But other places require a different approach. Take a look at the Democratic candidate for Montana governor. Ryan Busse is a former firearms industry executive who strongly favors gun control. Here’s his ad.
There’s also the simple approach: get power, then enact gun laws. In 2022, buoyed by the abortion referendum, Democrats flipped both houses of the Michigan legislature, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer cruised to re-election. They wasted no time passing background checks, requirements for gun storage, and, this week, bans on gun ownership for domestic violence offenders. But that wasn’t the party’s campaign. They just ran to win.
America’s gun fever will break sometime in my lifetime, I expect. It might take something big, like the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. The horror of 35 deaths led to Australia passing the National Firearms Agreement two weeks later. They‘ve had 20 mass shootings since. We’ve had 600 this year. Our fever will break, but probably not in 2024. This year, running statewide campaigns against so-called “gun rights” is a risky proposition. Because imaginary rights are just as real as the ones we have written down.
6. Stand with civilians in the Middle East.
Biden has two major wars to deal with. One is baked into the electorate. Most Democrats and some Republicans support Ukraine in their struggle against Russian aggression, though they vary on whether we should spend more on the war. Biden’s on the right side there. He’s going to lose every pro-Russia voter, but he was going to do that anyway. They’re all too far right or too far left to support him. The rest of us support him on this front.
In the Israel-Hamas War, it is far less clear that Biden’s doing the things that will get him re-elected. Democrats are split between those who want a ceasefire and those who support more military aid to Israel. Meanwhile, the Republicans want Israel to turn Gaza into a parking lot. Is Biden going to get any of those voters if he is more pro-bombing? Hard to tell. But what’s clear is that support for Israel is eroding in the US. Per a new Reuters/IPSOS poll, some 68% of Americans support a ceasefire, and only 31% support sending Israel more weapons. This is a sharp downturn. That’s because there’s no greater rights issue than human rights. And if we are on the side of rights, then we have to be for human rights for all. That means supporting Israeli victims of terror and Palestinian victims of war.
This weekend, Biden wrote an editorial in the Washington Post that outlined a nuanced policy that has a chance to resonate with voters:
- Support Israel against Hamas
- Support Palestinian statehood
- Block the Israeli occupation of Gaza
- Insist on humanitarian pauses
- Ban Israeli settlers who attack West Bank civilians
- Increase humanitarian assistance in Gaza
- Tamp down on Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US
- Bring the hostages home
For some left-leaning voters, since those words don’t contain “ceasefire,” they will never matter. But none of the words matter anyway. Biden faces a serious crisis in Gaza; he must respond with serious action. The time of “The Israelis can make their own decisions” is over. Because they can’t.
Israel’s invasion has been horrific, incompetent, and self-destructive. A month in, they can point to no significant results that advance the goals of defeating Hamas. What they have achieved is the complete demolition of Israel’s reputation as a world power. The IDF’s propaganda campaign has been laughable. Israel has killed more than ten thousand Palestinians, and boisterously quibbles over how many children it has massacred. Everyone knew this would happen. Instead of allowing time for the world to empathize with their losses and rally around them, Israel’s leaders let their anger unleash their worst impulses. Biden warned Netanyahu that the invasion would be a disaster. He invaded anyway.
Only the United States and United Kingdom stand with Israel, and both those nations’ peoples are sharply divided on that support. Biden must know that “Genocide Joe” is a label that’s going to stick, especially among the young people for whom this war is not an ideology issue. It’s a rights issue for them. Not only can they see themselves in the children being killed in Gaza, they can see themselves going to war too. That’s their liberty they fear for. People fight hard against having their rights taken away.
This weekend, we saw a glimmer of hope: a potential deal between Israel, Hamas, and the US that would institute a five-day ceasefire in exchange for some of the hostages. That’s a good thing, if it happens. Biden needs to lock this down, and then do more, and more, and more. A rage-blinded Netanyahu government cannot be allowed to end American democracy.
I have faith in the youth of America. Pro-Palestinian activists will pound Biden and the Democrats to support human rights in Gaza. They will say and do all manner of indelicate things. They won’t relent till they guide their leaders to change. More and more are already there. Biden should listen to them if he wants a second term.
Bet on rights and we win in 2024.
Being the party of autonomy gives Democrats a winning six-part strategy:
- Enshrine abortion rights everywhere.
- Take every school board race seriously.
- Expand voting rights wherever possible.
- Stop trying to kick Trump off the ballot.
- Act smartly on guns.
- Stand with civilians in the Middle East.
Do those things, Democrats, and you’ll save America.
This is the 72nd installment of a series on politics and game theory. It has covered impeachment of Trump, Russian collusion, white supremacy, abortion, guns, nuclear war, debt, Colin Kaepernick, sexual harassment, the Mueller probe, taxes, Trump’s first year, the Clinton Foundation, immigration, parades, the Democrats, hope, family separation, trade wars, the midterms, the Times op-ed, Justice Kavanaugh, Speaker Pelosi, lame ducks, the GOP legacy, the stock market, the Democratic field, shutdowns, third parties, the Virginia scandals, in-party impeachment, the Trump mafia, college admissions, William Barr, Brexit, Iran, the Mueller Report, Joe Biden, Oregon’s standoff, the environment, Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s lies, Pelosi’s strategy, the impeachment inquiry, political outsiders, Rudy Giuliani, the Berlin wall, protest art, Boris Johnson, religion, engagement, Bernie Sanders, progressive unity, the Democratic nominee, the pandemic, unemployment, rioting, the Klan, the Confederacy, the GOP 2020 strategy, Biden’s strategy, the wildfire crisis, civil war, Kamala Harris, Trump’s COVID diagnosis, Biden’s case, Native Americans, the Capitol insurrection, Blizzard, election delegitimization, and the Israel-Hamas War. Most of these appear in my book Game Theory in the Age of Chaos, which you can get on our store now.
