Winnowing

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- recently published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  We are concluding the early stages of the 2020 race.

Nathaniel Rakich at FiveThirtyEight:

To you, “leftovers” might mean the two-thirds of a honey-baked ham still sitting in your fridge — but to political junkies, it means the rapidly dwindling number of presidential candidates. In the past 24 hours, two Democrats have dropped their long-shot bids for the White House: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and former Rep. Joe Sestak.

After the number of major presidential candidates (by FiveThirtyEight’s definition) peaked at 24 in early July, there are now “only” 16 candidates remaining. (Finally, Democrats have fewer presidential candidates than Republicans did at the height of the 2016 primary!)
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Both candidates argued that a grassroots approach of convincing one voter at a time could build them a loyal following, and both focused on Iowa in particular, where they spent much of their time. But as they discovered, the reality is that retail politicking may not actually help candidates win votes.

 In fact, these days, media coverage may be the most important factor in presidential campaigns, and Bullock and Sestak got very little of it. My colleague Dhrumil Mehta has been tracking the number of cable and online news stories featuring the 2020 candidates, and he consistently found that Bullock was among the least-covered, while Sestak was regularly dead last in TV and online news mentions. Indeed, it was not without justification that Sestak lamented in his dropout announcement that his campaign lacked “the privilege of national press” — although given that he hadn’t won an election in nine years and entered the presidential race relatively late, we were skeptical about his chances anyway.

Outsiderism

As mentioned in an earlier post, the Ceaser-Busch book on the 1992 election, Upside Down and Inside Out, offers insights into the current political climate. It is particularly relevant to yesterday's election results. In Pennsylvania, incumbent senator Arlen Specter lost to a challenger who ran to the left. In Arkansas, another challenger from the left forced Senator Blanche Lincoln into a runoff. In Kentucky, a Senate candidate from the libertarian right defeated the establishment choice in the GOP primary. In a special House election in Pennsylvania, a Democrat won by running against his own party's liberal agenda and the GOP's purported pro-corporate bias. (See an ad here.)

The media have noted anti-establishment tone to the results. This "outsiderism" has roots in the anti-federalists, the Jeffersonians, and the Jacksonians. Ceaser and Busch explain how candidates as disparate as Rand Paul, Joe Sestak and Mark Critz can call claim the same "outsider" mantle:

[Modern outsiderism] functions almost entirely as a symbol, devoid of any specific content. Its essence is the appeal of being "not part of," and thus not tainted by, the inside, or the establishment, or the ways things are done ... Outsiderism has a powerful attraction in part because it is so amorphous and multifaceted. It is like an empty box with a false bottom from which almost anything can be pulled. Some outsider positions may be serious and thoughtful, others meaningless or downright dangerous. But much of the time, it is not a question of position, but merely of positioning. What strategists and candidates understand is that with the use of a vague symbol, they can appeal to diverse positions united only by a common mood or discontent

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