The 2020 presidential election, like pretty much all presidential elections, will depend on appealing to voters in the middle. I know it’s fashionable to ignore this in favor of “turning out the base,” but base strategies mostly work at the skinniest of margins. If your base strategy is a little better than your opponent’s, you might gain a point or two at best.

That’s fine, and it’s why campaigns work hard to turn out their base. But the real money is in the middle, because every voter you win is a voter lost for the other side. In other words, while base strategies tend to cancel each other out, voters in the middle actually count double.

Now, it’s a truism that a reelection campaign is a referendum on the incumbent, and I think that’s true in spades this time. This election is going to be all about Donald Trump, and in particular, it’s going to be about winning centrist voters away from Trump. So give this some thought: What is it that worries centrist voters about Trump? If you were tasked with creating blistering attack ads against Trump that would play in suburbs around the country, what would the ads say?

The hard part about this is getting away from all the things that you hate about Trump. You don’t count, after all, since you’re already a confirmed anti-Trump vote. You may be outraged about Ukraine or Brett Kavanaugh or emoluments or immigration or whatnot, but it’s pretty obvious that these things haven’t made a big impact on non-political-junkies who don’t pay much attention to this stuff.

Nor does Trump’s temperament seem to bother them. Not enough, anyway. The most commonly expressed opinion is that, sure, they don’t like the Twitter stuff and they wish he’d run off at the mouth a little less, but in the end it’s not a deal breaker.

So what is? Put yourself in different shoes. Or ask some friends whose political views are more moderate than yours. What really worries them about Trump? And what would it take to turn those worries into a vote for someone else?

How is the economy doing? Pretty well. But is it doing any better than it did under President Obama?

Here are nine metrics that tell the story. In all cases, I’m comparing the last three years of Obama with the first three years of Trump. And to keep everything on a level playing field, I’m measuring growth, not absolute numbers. That is, how much better was 2016 than 2013? And how much better was 2019 compared with 2016?

Take GDP. In the last three years of Obama’s term it increased 7.2 percent. In the first three years of Trump’s term it increased 7.8 percent. So Trump did slightly better, largely thanks to Republicans deciding they no longer cared about ballooning deficits.

In some cases, of course, higher is better, while in others lower is better. I’ve labeled each one to show which president turned in the better performance. Needless to say, all figures are adjusted appropriately (i.e., corrected for inflation, rate per million, percent of GDP, etc.).

I don’t think anyone cares much about this, and it certainly won’t do any good on the campaign trail. A good economy is a good economy, regardless of how it happened. This is just for the record.

Michelle Goldberg describes the ending of Parasite, in which a poor family meets its final, inescapable fate:

At the film’s end, after a spasm of murderous violence, infamy and grief, the Kims’ son makes a “fundamental plan” to grow rich enough to save his father. There’s a gauzy sequence where this seems to be actually playing out, and “Parasite” briefly dangles the prospect of a Hollywood ending. Only in the last shot is it clear that it’s a fantasy and that he’s stuck right where he began.

According to the O.E.C.D., American social mobility is no more robust than South Korea’s. But with a few exceptions like Boots Riley’s surrealist 2018 indie film “Sorry to Bother You,” American popular culture hasn’t caught up to a world where brains and gumption are no match for larger material forces.

We liberals keep trying to push this theme, but it sure doesn’t feel like people are buying it. Conventional wisdom says that at least a few of them bought Donald Trump’s version of it, namely that China and Mexico are stealing our jobs and he’s going to get them back, but not that many. After all, Trump won a smaller share of the vote than Mitt Romney did just four years earlier, and his share was considerably less than the average of all the other Republican presidential candidates of the 21st century.

So even Trump’s apocalyptic version of this doesn’t seem to appeal to very many people, and the liberal version, if anything, seems to appeal to even fewer. And even if it does have some appeal, it gets us nowhere unless we have a great elevator pitch about how we’re going to fix it. But we don’t. We have Medicare for All, which is great if you lose your job. We have wealth taxes on billionaires, which is great if you lose your job. And we have infrastructure plans, which might provide work if—well, you know.

But how about a plan to keep people from losing their jobs in the first place? Or making their jobs better? That’s what they want. Trump at least makes fake promises about that, but we don’t do even that much.

There are really only two options here. First, we just stop talking about how unfair the world is, because all it does is discourage people. Or, second, we offer an actual solution that’s credible and appealing. The only one I can think of is a big, loud, endless promise to rebuild unions. But there’s not even a single Democratic candidate who has made that their trademark in the same way that Medicare for All is Bernie’s trademark or a wealth tax is Elizabeth Warren’s.

Why not?

On Monday morning I wrote my most controversial and reviled post of the year so far. The subject was subtitles in movies. Perhaps, I suggested, they are not the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Subtitles! Does this strike you as an odd topic to generate a huge Twitter storm? If so, it just shows that you don’t know Twitter very well. Of course people went nuts over it. It’s Twitter! A couple of people decided they didn’t like what I said, and a mob followed in their wake.

Normally I just get a laugh out of this stuff. The tweets are mostly from the same gang of folks who despise me already and don’t really care what the latest two-minutes hate is about. But a few of the comments were offered in good faith, and they got me curious. Before I get to that, though, here’s a short clarification of my position on movie subtitles:

Do you, Kevin Drum, hate subtitles?

No, not at all. More on that later.

Then you must hate the hearing impaired?

Nope. I myself am mildly hearing impaired and always watch movies on TV with closed captioning on. But my post was about subtitles (i.e., words that are translations from the spoken language of a film), not closed captioning (i.e., words in the same language as the film, primarily meant as hearing assistance). They are different things.

Then you must be racist. Why do you hate foreign films? Why do you hate Korea? Why do you hate Parasite?

Don’t be ridiculous.

You said you didn’t see any movies last year. But if you know nothing about movies, why even weigh in on this?

It’s true that I went to very few theatrical releases last year. Partly this is because I just didn’t, and partly it’s because my moviegoing has been severely curtailed since I got cancer. (Generally speaking, it’s good to avoid crowded, germy places when your immune system is compromised.) However, this doesn’t mean that I’ve never seen any movies and know nothing about them. Nor does it mean that I never watch movies on TV.

Your father was a film scholar! Your parents wrote a biography of Carl Th. Dreyer! How could you?

This is true, and my father, if he were alive, would be the first to defend subtitles. However, my father was also good at reading comprehension, so he probably wouldn’t have been upset at my brief little post.

Why not?

Because I didn’t say that subtitles are bad in an absolute sense. I said that subtitles detract from the theatrical experience and there are legitimate reasons to dislike them. This seems obvious: if possible, everyone would prefer to watch movies made in their native tongue. This is because subtitles distract from the cinematography; take a long time to read for some people; don’t replicate the vocal nuances of the spoken voice; and never perfectly capture the words written by the screenwriter and spoken by the actors. We need subtitles if we want to watch foreign language films, but that doesn’t mean we have to deny that they do indeed have drawbacks.

This really should be all I need to say, but it turns out that many people got upset by a collateral point I made: that everyone hates subtitles and it’s faux sophistication to pretend that no one should have a problem with them. So let’s address that.

First off, “everyone hates subtitles” was, I thought, humorous hyperbole. I meant that most people dislike subtitles. What’s more, the context was my annoyance at Alissa Wilkinson saying that “Americans just don’t like reading subtitles,” a derisive attitude that’s uncalled for since in fact it’s a very global phenomenon.

But is even this true? Do most people around the world dislike subtitles? This is not really a provable statement, but I think the evidence certainly points strongly in that direction. What follows is a bit scattered, but should be enough to persuade you that, indeed, “most people dislike subtitles.”

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Let’s start at the start: When sound was added to movies, intertitles went away almost instantly all over the world. Plainly, people preferred to listen to human conversation instead of reading dialogue on the screen.

Next: Anyone of my age who’s traveled a lot has seen the changes in film translation in Europe since the ’70s. In the past, an American could turn on a TV in Europe and find quite a bit of English-language content because most imported shows were subtitled American productions. Over time, that went away. There were more shows produced locally, and the remaining American shows were mostly dubbed. Subtitles slowly but steadily disappeared.

More recently, Monday’s subtitle Twitter storm was kicked off by the fact that Parasite was the first subtitled movie to win Best Picture and that, more generally, subtitled movies have long had difficulty gaining large audiences in America. This certainly suggests something pretty similar to “most people dislike subtitles.”

But different countries have evolved different preferences. Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, for example, are “dubbing countries,” meaning that dubbing is popular with theater audiences. The Nordic countries, by contrast, are “subtitle countries.” But even there nuances abound. In France, for example, Hollywood blockbusters are always dubbed, while smaller, less popular films are usually subtitled.

Why? Mostly it’s because dubbing is expensive, which means it’s only practical in countries with a fairly large movie market. Generally speaking, dubbing is common in large, rich countries, while subtitles are common in smaller, poorer countries. This suggests that subtitles are mostly used only where there’s no choice. They start to fade away as countries become richer and develop a large, mass movie market that can support the cost of doing voiceovers instead.

But there are exceptions. China, for example, started out as a dubbing country, even though it was very poor, for reasons related to literacy rates, political dictates, and a desire to standardize Mandarin—although this is changing as China continues to develop its own movie industry. Spanish-speaking countries, regardless of how rich they are, have long been dubbing countries and still are, for reasons that are unclear. Conversely, the United States, the richest country of all, has always been a subtitle country (albeit one with a very limited appetite for foreign films).

All this said, there are also demographic differences between those who like subtitles and those who don’t—and this is true all over the world. This gets us into delicate territory. Sandra Vega explains things this way: “Popular classes prefer the dub, the sense of immediacy and ease in understanding, enjoyment effortlessly.” Put more bluntly, we intellectual types prefer subtitles. The unwashed masses prefer dubbed movies. More on this shortly.

Even rich, English-speaking countries can switch away from subtitles if people are given the opportunity. Great Britain, for example, is historically a subtitle country, but Miguel Mera tells the following story: “In 1987 the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 questioned the idea of a single dominant form by broadcasting twenty-six episodes of the French soap opera Châteauvallon twice weekly, once with subtitles and once in a dubbed version. This was the first time in the history of British television that such a long foreign language series had been shown and that a programme was transmitted with a choice of the language transfer method. The audience response to this experiment was gauged and the results were fascinating and completely unexpected. In a country that generally looks down on dubbing as being inferior, a significant preference was shown in all age groups for the re-voiced version.”

You should not be surprised to learn that in countries with a long tradition of dubbing, they’ve gotten very good at it. If you’re thinking about the kind of comical dubbing you hear in old Japanese Godzilla movies, think again. Because dubbing is uncommon in the US, most Americans are way behind the times on what the technology is like and haven’t bothered to learn anything new about it since the 1960s. But in many dubbing countries, lip syncing and voice acting have gotten very sophisticated, and the voice actors who do the dubbing have become well-known names.¹

Even in America, where our position as the world’s pre-eminent moviemaker has meant that we don’t have to tolerate foreign-language movies in any form, dubbing is becoming more popular as streaming companies start to buy up more foreign content. Netflix has been dubbing like crazy over the past few years. Why? Because their research shows that “dubbed versions of hit shows are more popular than their subtitled equivalents.” For example, “the German drama Dark was watched in its dubbed version by 81 percent of audiences in English-­speaking countries.”

My main message here is: (1) Don’t be parochial. America is generally a subtitle country, and most of my readers are pretty educated folks. Of course you prefer subtitles! You’re a product of your culture just like everyone else. That’s probably also why I personally prefer subtitles most of the time. (2) Don’t be classist. People who aren’t film buffs generally prefer their Hollywood blockbusters to be dubbed, and that’s a perfectly defensible choice. Stop sneering at them because they don’t read as rapidly and fluently as you do.² (3) Don’t be stuck in the past. The technology of dubbing as an alternative to subtitles has changed a lot over the past couple of decades. (4) Don’t ignorantly sing the praises of subtitles. They are a necessary evil, not a sacred cow. A true film buff understands the pros and cons of both subtitles and dubbing and feels no need to pretend that subtitles are faultless. (5) Don’t be racist. Lots of movie audiences in brown-majority countries prefer dubbed movies over subtitles. Your preferences are no better than theirs.

And that’s that. Civil conversation about this is welcome, either in comments or on Twitter.

¹Here’s an excerpt from a Hollywood Reporter piece: “Christian Bruckner — the actor whose deep rumbling bass has been synonymous with Robert De Niro in Germany for nearly 40 years — has become a star in his own right, using his aural connection to the two-time Oscar winner to build a successful career in commercials and audio books….Across the globe, other voice-over stars have emerged. Spain’s Constantino Romero has given voice to Clint Eastwood for decades. In Japan, Koichi Yamadera is the go-to voice for pretty much every big African-American star from Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington to Will Smith. Not wanting to become typecast, Yamadera also has provided the Japanese voice for Charlie Sheen, Jim Carrey, Brad Pitt and Tom Hanks. The prolific dubber recently pulled off an impressive double play, providing the voice for Don Draper in the Japanese version of Mad Men and Walter White for Breaking Bad.”

And another from The National: “Deeny Kaplan, executive vice president of Miami dubbing house The Kitchen, describes the process as painstaking work, going from breaking down the original script by syllable and delivering a translation in a metre and structure as close as possible to the original. Actors are used who have carefully studied the tone and tempo of the original speech, with intricate time coding also a feature of the process, while video is slowed down or sped up to correctly lip sync speech on occasions when an appropriate translation can’t help by itself. The key to a successful dub, she says, lies in ‘using native speakers, correct casting and proper adaption’. ‘There’s no room for mistakes today,’ she says. ‘You have several levels of quality checks, for everything from sound checks to music and mixing. All of it is scrutinised.’ ”

²Plus there are way more of them than you. This is why it’s safe to say that “most” people don’t like subtitles. The number of highly-educated film buffs may seem large on Twitter, but in real life there just aren’t that many of them.

Here is the answer to this morning’s mystery chart:

• Incumbent presidents lose reelection if economic growth dips below zero in either the election year or the year before.
• Otherwise they win.
  

  

• This rule has been 100 percent accurate for every incumbent since 1950.

Economic growth did not fall below zero last year and it is not going to fall below zero this year. This means that Donald Trump has a strong wind at his back and will be hard to beat in November. I sure hope liberals are all aware of this and are willing to work their guts out no matter how discouraged they may get from time to time. This includes being discouraged because your candidate didn’t win the primary; because your policies are not getting the priority you’d like; because things look dire in the Senate races; because the polls sometimes show spikes in favor of Trump; and because of general angst over how things are going.

If you ever think of giving up, just remember 2016. All the way until a couple of weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump looked like a sure loser. Two days before Election Day he looked like a nearly sure loser. But he never gave up. And he won. Stuff happens. If he can do it, so can we.

David Brooks notes a change in Donald Trump’s pitch:

Trump has cleverly reframed the election. I can see why Nancy Pelosi ripped up his State of the Union speech. It was the most effective speech of the Trump presidency. In 2016, Trump ran a dark, fear-driven “American carnage” campaign. His 2016 convention speech was all about crime, violence and menace. The theme of this week’s speech was mostly upbeat “Morning in America.”

I don’t know if he can keep this tone, because unlike Ronald Reagan, he’s not an optimistic, generous person. But if he can, and he can keep his ideology anodyne, this message can resonate even with people who don’t like him.

This is nothing surprising. All along, Trump’s obvious strategy has been to declare victory and go home. That is, no matter what the reality is, simply claim over and over that things have turned around during his three years as president and America is now great again. The economy is the best it’s ever been. Our military is stronger than ever. We are respected again around the world. No one takes advantage of us on trade anymore. NATO is paying up. It’s OK to say “Merry Christmas” again. Etc.¹

Can Trump keep this up? Of course he can. That’s because nothing is changing. Trump’s theme is and always has been that things are terrible when he’s not in charge and great when he is in charge. We’re now just seeing the second half of this.

¹Reality: The economy is about the same as it was during Obama’s final years. The military is also about the same. Most of our allies think we’ve gone nuts and are just holding their collective breath until we come to our senses and elect a normal person as president. We’ve made no significant progress on trade, and what progress we have made is all stuff we could have had immediately if Trump hadn’t blown up TPP on his third day in office. NATO started paying up when Obama was president. It was always OK to say Merry Christmas.

 

Are more New Hampshire polls going to drop between now and tomorrow? I don’t think so. Here’s the latest:

Compared to Friday, Sanders is surging even more strongly, while Biden and Warren are tanking even worse. But the big news is Amy Klobuchar. On Friday she was at 9 percent, several points below both Biden and Warren. Today she’s surged to 12 percent, slightly ahead of Biden and Warren. If she accomplishes the holy grail of primary campaigns—“better than expected”—could that mean she’s starting to peak at precisely the right time?

Hard to say! And in three weeks, Mike Bloomberg gets his first real test on Super Tuesday. Nationally he’s now in fourth place at 13 percent, but still doing poorly in California, the biggest delegate prize of them all. Stay tuned.

Today’s photo has been three years in the making. It’s a picture of a double-crested cormorant.

Now, cormorants are pretty common around here, so you might wonder just what took so long. The story is simple: I took a nice picture of one of our local cormorants about three years ago. But I never got around to using it, and then I bought a new camera. The new camera was so much sharper than the old one that I no longer wanted to use the old picture. I wanted a new picture that would be sharper. But over time, my efforts became a sort of running gag. Every time I took my camera along on a walk, there were no cormorants. Every time there were cormorants, I didn’t have my camera.

But last week my patience finally paid off. I took my camera along on a walk and our little flock of cormorants was out! I took a quick picture. Then I got closer and a couple of them flew away. I took more pictures. Then I got closer still and a couple more flew off. Finally I got even closer and snapped some pictures just as one got spooked and the other was still posing. A few seconds later it took off too.

But I got a nice picture! Finally. After three years I can now go back to not caring about cormorants.

Here is today’s mystery chart. It shows every incumbent president who has run for reelection since 1950. For each one, the two red dots represent the year before the election and the year of the election. What do you conclude?

UPDATE: Answer here.

Over at National Review, Robert VerBruggen channels the conventional wisdom:

The president’s new budget is out. I have not looked at it and probably won’t. It is an irrelevant document that mainly serves to give political journalists stuff to complain about. Oh my, look at the cuts to the safety net! Ha ha, the economic-growth assumptions are really out there!

The fact of the matter is that the president does not set the country’s budget; spending and tax bills come from Congress. Congress is under no obligation to use the president’s suggestions as a blueprint, and the president has shown little willingness to veto spending deals that stray too far from what his budgets say he wants….Ignore the purported budget plan. Pay attention to what the president and lawmakers are actually trying to enact.

This is just a longer way of saying that the president’s budget is “dead on arrival,” a phrase that’s routinely used for every presidential budget proposal. And it’s true. So why do presidents bother with budgets in the first place?

Well, it’s been required by law since 1921, so there’s that. And perhaps back in 1921 the president’s budget was taken more seriously. But for at least the past few decades, the budget document has been nothing more than make-work for drones in the OMB and the various cabinet departments. Other than that, it does little except give the president a platform for make-believe growth forecasts and fantasy budget cuts.

So why bother? Why not eliminate the requirement for a budget and save both the effort and the money that goes into it? You know, sort of a down payment on the national debt. It’s a small start, but you know what they say about the journey of a thousand miles.