John Delaney is backing the best (bad) strategy he has
On June 2, at the California Democratic Party Convention, former Rep. John Delaney, who is running for president, got booed and then some when he dismissed Medicare for All as a solution to this country’s health care crisis.
Since that day, he’s been saying two things consistently:
- Dissent — specifically, booing — is bad.
- So is Medicare for All as policy and politics.
On the former point, there’s a thing called the First Amendment that he might want to study. Democrats generally like it.
On the latter point, he’s simply incorrect. Medicare for All consistently tests as popular among Republicans, independents and — importantly — Democrats. A Kaiser poll in January (Figure 3) found support for Medicare for All at 56 percent nationally. That poll also found 80 percent of Democrats supporting Medicare for All (Figure 4).
13 percent of Democrats opposed it.
And that 13 percent is the pool of voters John Delaney is targeting.
It’s a vanishingly slim share of the Democratic Party presidential primary electorate. Since 2004 in Iowa (which is where I expect John Delaney’s campaign to end), voters have gone from 43 percent moderate or conservative to just 32 percent — a loss of more than 25 percent. And very liberal voters are up to 28 percent from 17 percent in 2004 — a gain of almost 65 percent.
But John Delaney was never going to get those very liberal voters. They’re not his brand, and if you can’t convince one voter to back you, your next-best option is to avoid losing a voter you already have. As such, John Delaney gains nothing by issuing whatever statement supporting Medicare for All — and he loses a lot.
Let’s say Delaney did abandon his principles in favor of trying to court more liberal voters (more soon on why this won’t happen, in my view). Would that convince Bernie or Warren supporters to back him?
I have a hard time seeing that happening. Part of Bernie’s appeal is his consistency. Here’s a guy who supported abortion before the Supreme Court did, who supported homosexuality before the psychiatric community did, who has been campaigning for the same basic things for more than 30 years. From health care to wages to the amount of soy sauce to use to flavor a cup of cooked brown rice, he has been who he is since forever. John Delaney suddenly finding progressive religion on health care wouldn’t cause so much as a rounding error’s rounding error of movement from Bernie toward John Delaney’s campaign.
So again, if he can’t peel voters away from Bernie, he can at least prevent his (few) voters from leaving for Klobuchar or whichever other centrist.
There is a bigger issue behind his decision here, though. It’s what led him to such success in business, and it’s the ship he’ll go down on as his campaign progresses and then (I expect) fails.
John Delaney has had a remarkable run as an entrepreneur and as a politician. And you don’t achieve success in business without blocking out the naysayers at key times. Business is hard, and most businesses fail. So for John Delaney to start two businesses that became publicly traded is impressive, and with that success comes a fair amount of guts and a fair amount of trust in those guts.
If John Delaney believes something, then, he’s going to stick to what he believes unless and until he sees a compelling reason to change his view. No amount of booing will change his mind. If you’re looking for a moderate Democrat who will change his mind because of critical feedback, abandon John Delaney and go hug Joe Biden. (Unless you’re a woman, in which case stay away from Joe Biden and maybe go hit up Kirsten Gillibrand.)
John Delaney is not going to win, but that’s not because of how poorly he’s polling. Representatives do not get elected president. Former representatives do not get elected president. And the exit poll data make very clear how dim of a future a conservative or moderate Democrat has as a presidential candidate.
But this is who John Delaney is. He’s stubborn, he believes what he believes, and if he’s going to lose, he’ll lose by playing his game, not someone else’s.