stevenkesslar

So this final post in a series (I saved them up over several days because of the log in problems) is looking right at you, @lookin. I'll make some comments on Adenauer. And then invite you to meet some Trump supporters and comment on how you would persuade them to see Trump as the problem, rather than the solution. Konrad Adenauer Thanks for giving me a reason to learn just enough about Konrad to be mostly ignorant. That long Wikipedia piece did leave me feeling that my snap judgment when I read your post is correct. Which is to say, Adenauer was a lot more like President Toxic than like Biden. At least if we are talking about authoritarian traits. First, Adenauer was an authoritarian leader. You can make a good argument that Nazi Germany was so extreme that the only way to get from an evil authoritarian like Hitler to a Social Democrat like Willy Brandt was through a long period of benevolent authoritarian rule by a leader like Adenauer. President Toxic, fortunately, is no Hitler. At least not yet. I'm all for skipping the Adenauer phase and going directly to Brandt. Wikipedia says this about Adenauer: "As chancellor, Adenauer tended to make most major decisions himself, treating his ministers as mere extensions of his authority." Sounds more like President Toxic than Biden to me. Important to your basic point, Adenauer's political success was based on directing people's fear to an outsider. As Wikipedia explained, at one point Adenauer tried to label Willy Brandt as the outsider. As a sort of pre-Trump birther, Adenauer said Brandt was not fit for office due to his "illegitimate birth". That didn't work out well for Konnie. What did work much better, and was grounded in Stalin's reality, was fear of Marxism. That was what Adenauer used to unify post-WWII Germany. Marxism was the bogeyman. He also used it to tether West Germany to the West. It's fair to say that given a choice between demonizing Nazis or Marxists, Adenauer chose Marxists. I can see why. By the 1950's, the Soviet Union and it's satellite power of East Germany were the real threat. The Nazis may have been worse, but they were yesterday's bogeyman. So Adenauer granted amnesty to hundreds of thousands of Nazis, thousands of whom sounded like truly murderous sadists. Not even President Toxic has done that. Again, it does make sense to me that Adenauer was being shrewd. Had he sounded like a pawn of the UK or the US, it may have been harder for him to unify Germany and ally it with the US and the UK. There is one similarity here that may apply to a President Biden. If there is an outsider for Biden to focus authoritarian followers on, it's China. And to some degree Putin and Russia. President Toxic will of course try, and fail, to portray Biden as "China Joe". Biden seems to already be offering hints about "Made In America" initiatives that show he understands that the days of shipping factories to China are over. And the days of building new factories based on new technologies in the US may be here. Until he wins, it's all rhetoric. So what he tries to do, and whether it works, is for us to learn in the next four years. My worst fear is that Biden could be the new FDR, in the sense that we are headed to World War, whether we like it or not. I'm not arguing that Biden would do that. Or that China wants it. The more realistic scary idea to me is four more years of President Toxic. To paraphrase Jared Kushner, quoting the Cheshire Cat, if you don't have any clue where you're going, any path will get you there. Meaning President Toxic is the kind of bad leader who could take us down the path to war with China. Not because it is his goal. But because he doesn't have any goal. So war with China could just be where he ended up. Apparently Gen. Tillis was so worried about President Toxic inadvertently starting a war with Krazy Kim that he slept with his pants on. My picture of how Biden could use China as his scapegoat would be like JFK and the Space Race with the USSR. It's a better comparison, because the looming threats with China do mostly have to do with technologies. As Vice President, it's a fact that Biden presided over a period that restored at least several hundred thousand factory jobs to states like Michigan and Wisconsin. (Again, for whatever reason, Pennsylvania has done nothing but lose factory jobs for 30 years.) President Toxic has not done that. So there is some basis in reality for Biden saying he's going to double down what he did as Vice President and focus on creating middle class jobs. That's a good transition to the final thing I will say about Adenauer. It's the one way in which I hope Biden is a lot like him: the German "Wirtschaftswunder". Like Adenauer, Biden will have to rebuild a country after a national nightmare. For Biden, it will be the second time around on that. I'm going to keep insisting that these discussions about authoritarianism, identity politics, and the economy are all part of the same complex picture, looked at from different perspectives. It worked for Adenauer to direct factory workers who were good followers to go to work and rebuild an economy, always with a fearful eye on the Marxists and Soviets. So it could work for Biden to direct factory workers who are good followers to go rebuild the US economy - which President Toxic did not do. President Toxic did tell people to fear China, on the days of the week that he wasn't slathering praise on Xi. So Biden, who is at least a more talented and competent politician than President Toxic, ought to be able to do better than Trump. And maybe as good as Adenauer. We'll see. Trump Rally Goers On Why They Took The Risk To Attend Nevada Campaign Events So that is a nice profile piece about a handful of President Toxic's supporters who attended the Nevada rallies. @lookin. The things they say about why they are there, and why they support Trump, ring true to me. That's based on what I read in polls. And what I have hear talking to individuals who support President Toxic. I'll make one caveat. I've heard some really racist thinking from Republicans I'd known for over a decade. Especially after Trump legitimized saying those kinds of things. Like about how the Obamas are the biggest racists in America. Especially Michelle, who really does look like a horse. So this is not the type of event where people are going to say those kinds of things - at least to a reporter. So I take this article as a legitimate and accurate expression of the sunny side of Trumpism. There's a dark side, that this piece does not really talk about. So here's my question, @lookin You're saying we should consider persuading Trump followers that "Trump is leading them day-after-day toward death and destruction." What part of what they are saying suggests they are even remotely open to believing such a thing? How would you take in what they are saying and turn it around to convince them that President Toxic is, as I have called him, The Angel Of Death? Clearly, 200,000 dead Americans hasn't persuaded them. So what will? I'll tell you some thoughts I have from reading this article. I look forward to hearing yours. First, I think the reporters did a good job just letting people speak. Whether intentional or not, they started off by profiling a Black, a Hispanic family, and a drag queen. Maybe they are pro-Trump reporters and they wanted to implicitly say that these Trump people are not racists or bigots. Or maybe they are just profiling the different types of people that were there. My point, which I think you'll agree with, is these are not obviously bad people with obviously bad motivations. Second, one of their motivations probably is that they tend to be authoritarian followers. There's little snippets of that throughout. The Hispanic guy pictured above says he likes President Toxic because he will "speak out loud" and stand up to the "status quo". Third, there is this almost surreal sense of threat about how America will be lost forever if Joe Biden wins. These are interesting words coming out of the mouth of a Mexican American Dad: ""If Joe Biden wins this election, this country, no one's going to come here no more. No one's going to sacrifice and go through great lengths to be here anymore." So let me just make sure. We're talking about President Toxic, who puts kids that look exactly like your kids in cages? And you're saying that if Joe Biden is elected, Mexicans won't want to come to the US any more? Huh? Fourth, the sense of living in some other reality is pervasive. I've had conversations with Trump supporters who speak like this. If I want to be polite, I say things like, "Well, I'm glad you feel that way." They are not stupid, and they take it for what it is: a subtle dig. Because I don't trust them enough to try actual debate with actual facts. Here's a perfect example, relating to the key factual issue right now: the fact that 200,000 people died after President Toxic completely botched leading us through an ongoing national crisis. Again, I'd tend to be polite and say, "I'm glad you feel that way." Then again, I might say, "Really? Have you heard of a country called Canada? They hadddd zero deaths one day this week. And we have like 1,000 deaths a day. What do you make of that?" Again, all of that rests on the flimsy assumption that actual debate, based on actual facts, means something. It's not clear to me that it does. There's also the argument that just because Trump is the President of the United States doesn't mean he has to do anything. Because, actually, when you think about it, he can't do anything. This is what Governors do. Trump made that clear right away. Which is what makes him such a great President. So you have "idiots" like Governor Sisolak who do do these stupid things, like tell us we shouldn't have thousands gathered in a tight crowd indoors just because it's a great way to catch or spread Coronavirus. What a fucking idiot! So you can see how great leaders like President Trump have to tolerate the real idiots like Sisolak. Why blame that on President Toxic? I wish I could say I'm making this shit up. But that is what these people are saying. Fifth, this type of Trump supporter is not the George Will or Ronald Reagan principled conservative. Those people don't come to these rallies. They may tolerate President Toxic, and vote for him, because they like the tax cuts and don't like government regulations. But this is not a crowd of free market conservatives. If there's anything free market about them, it's red meat conservatism. Nobody can tell me how many guns I can own. Or that I have to wear a god damn mask. To go back to my themes, here's the way I see it. 95 % of these people, if not more, will stick with President Toxic and his remnant of a party after he loses. If you think you can persuade them differently, I'd like to hear how. The Hispanic Dad pictured above actually said he lost his job due to COVID-19. He voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. But he doesn't blame President Toxic, because he says the unemployment rate was going down before COVID-19 hit. (As it was under Obama/Biden once the Great Recession ended, of course.) So if Biden gets the economy back on track and this guy has a new job and is doing better than ever in 2024, will he then vote for Biden? My view is that if there is a way to win guys like him back, that's the way. Debating the facts about COVID-19, or whether there is a country called Canada. just ain't gonna cut it with these folks, I think. You and I agree that President Toxic has already led them to death and destruction and economic pain. But they don't see it that way.

All true. But part of my point is exactly the opposite. If most people thought Thomas Piketty was right (Jimmy Carter does!) Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee, poised to win in a landslide. And many of President Toxic's supporters, who are not economically better off even though they feel they are, would not be President Toxic supporters. Piketty's research explains a lot about what Brownstein labels "the coalition of transformation". It explains why for a while it looked like Bernie Sanders, of all people, might be the Democratic nominee. It does not explain why people who are no better off, and are actually probably measurably worse off under President Toxic, still view him as the defender of their economic interests. And the guy that fuels their resentments. But never in a way that produces panic, of course!

That long post above was mostly meant to focus on where voters are at. And whether, as Brownstein and many others assert, we have a deeply divided electorate that is going to remain deeply divided. I agree with Brownstein, obviously. It's the "coalition of transformation" versus the "coalition of restoration". I would not advise holding your breath for a truce. Let alone peace treaties. Like they did for much of the 20th century before Reagan, mostly White Republicans will soon lament how they are losing the noble war to save America. That said, part of the point of my posts today is this. Is there any reason to think that anything the Democrats can do will win any of these people over? Is it even worth trying? And if it is worth trying, how? I find it interesting that @lookin and I more or less agree about 95 % of the way down the road on this discussion on authoritarianism. I'm arguing tendencies to follow authoritarian leaders like President Toxic are layered right in with this discussion about identity politics and the economy. We agree about many of the causes, the fear mongering, and the fact that these followers won't go away. Then at the end of the road, @lookin and I take sharp turns and I think go in exactly opposite directions. @lookin, ever the optimist, keeps looking for ways to win them over. I now feel more strongly than ever that Trumpism simply needs to be crushed. Now, in 2020. To quote John Dean, "they understand defeat". Period. That doesn't mean they go away. But it does mean they have to be defeated. Even if you take my more pessimistic view, in the post above I mentioned that Pew says about 5 % of 2016 President Toxic supporters voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. We know that was one factor in making Nancy Pelosi House Speaker. It could also be a factor in 2020 in making Joe Biden President. So even if it is just at the margin, this is not entirely set in concerete. I think what's most important to me is that authoritarianism seems to rear its ugly head the most in periods of economic tumult - like in Hitler's Germany. So even if we can't stop authoritarian followers from being authoritarian followers, history suggests that we can tone them down. And a lot of toning it down has to do with the economy, stupid. I think we all have the picture that if blue-collar communities in Bucks County, PA feel resentment about their "decades-long decline", that resentment has a basis in reality. Maybe if they weren't in decline, they wouldn't be as worried as they are about immigrants. Maybe they'd be less likely to be seduced by the fact-free, immigrant-bashing, and panic-stricken alternative reality offered to them by President Toxic. Right now, the only thing I feel certain about regarding 2021 is one number: 50. Even if Biden wins, which I think is likely, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can be counted to throw the country under the bus and focus on obstruction. Just like he did in 2009. He's already promised to be The Grim Reaper. And I'm sure he'll deliver on that - if he's able. So we need at least 50 Senators. And they need to get rid of the filibuster. If we're being honest, I'd rather just say that the Republicans spent a decade obstructing and fear mongering. It eventually resulted in its logical conclusion: President Toxic's America. So let's just cut all the bullshit about compromise, okay? The Tea Party/Trump Republicans have zero interest in it. Now Democrats have gotten the memo, and are in exactly the same place. We need 50 votes. The question I feel functionally schizophrenic about is whether a President Joe Biden is exactly the right man for the moment, exactly the wrong man for the moment, or somewhere in between? The theory of Biden being the right man is that he's Joe Unity and Joe Decency. And, in addition, he's Working Class Joe. If there's anyone who can pull these older and White working class Trumpians back, it's that Joe. And there is some evidence - both from the actual results in 2020 primaries and the general election polling - that Working Class Joe is doing his magic. I still feel his victory on Super Tuesday in states where he had zero money and zero organization is inexplicable. Working class voters and disgruntled Republicans were a part of that. Now that he actually has more money than President Toxic, can he pound more nails in President Toxic's coffin and seduce more of Obama's lost coalition back? Joe Biden Has a Long History of Giving Republicans Exactly What They Want That lefty article from Jacobin was written back in the early days of 2020 B.C. (Before COVID). At the time, it looked like there was a good chance that Bernie could be the Democratic nominee. It's one of the best articles I've read that documents in detail after detail everything that has been wrong about Joe Biden for the last half century, as both Senator and Vice President. The article is very long and very well written. To oversimplify, it makes a pretty good case that Biden has been a sort of Republican lap dog. Many of his biggest legislative victories were ones that advanced core Republican goals - law and order, Clarence Thomas, the Iraq War - and not Democratic ones. His particular skill as Vice President was being the pawn Mitch McConnell could use to thwart the will of a much tougher Harry Reid. Mostly when I just reread this article, it reminded me why I wanted Warren to be nominated. And why I voted for Bernie in the primary. Either Bernie or Elizabeth would have brought deep convictions about a new course for America to The Presidency. Bernie's problem, to me, is that he does view democratic socialism as better than capitalism. That may work in 20 years. It didn't work in 2020. What I particularly liked about Warren is that she started as a Main Street capitalist Republican. And then she simply noticed how it chewed up and spit out millions of decent, hardworking Americans. I thought someone grounded in a reality like that, and with her brains and will, could be a particularly effective President in charting a new course. My head and heart are split right down the middle on this. I want to think that some of President Toxic's followers really are decent people, who mostly believe it's the economy, stupid. So a President Warren could have been the person that refocused the economy (and tax code) away from predatory lenders. And from capitalists who really do want cheaper labor somewhere else, and really don't give a shit about factory workers in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, I find it easy to believe that after 4 years of daily tweets, almost all Trumpians are so rock solid now that they would view President Warren as, at best, a shrill bitch with bad ideas. And at worst a perpetually lying, cheating Pocahontas. The polls, and my personal experience with Trumpians, is that the latter is probably closer to the truth. Part of what is interesting about the article above is this. You could give it to Steve Bannon. He could throw out most of the facts, and add in some right-wing buzz words and red meat. And it would make a great article in Breitbart, as well. This is where the left wing and the right wing meet. You can easily portray Biden as the pawn of the bureaucratic Deep State, or the Silicon Valley Establishment (thus, Vice President Harris) or any number of other conspiracies. (But not Q Anon. Trump has a lock on that.) So as much as part of me really wishes that Biden could bring a big chunk of Trumpians back to the Democratic tent, or get them interested in unity and compromise, I just don't believe that's an option. In my mind, this is a recipe for a mostly unsuccessful Biden Presidency. His instinct, even as of today, may be to negotiate and compromise with the McConnells of the Senate. Which mostly means he'll be thwarted, just like in 2009. I think he gets much of the credit for flipping Arlen Spector into being a Democratic, at least nominally. But the idea that Vice President Biden would schmooze deals out of a bipartisan Senate never held up. Is there any reason to think President Biden will do better? ‘They made a really big mistake’: Biden confronts a regret of the Obama years The former vice president surrounds himself with a cadre of left-leaning economic advisers, a reflection of a policy approach seen as more progressive than during the last recession. This recent Politico article is an excellent rebuttal to the Jacobin article above. And I'm torn. These articles, to liberal me, accurately paint versions of the worst case scenario for a Biden Presidency, and the best case scenario. Which one will it be? Who knows. At this point, like probably everyone who thinks of President Toxic as a massive failure, I mostly care about just having a President Biden, period. After watching what Biden has done this year, I'm a little less persuaded by the first article I posted, and a little more hopeful that Politico is right in their reporting. A big chunk of Biden's success so far in 2020 is simply that he had the wind at his back. But there is a political skill in knowing you have the wind at your back. And knowing how to use it to move you along. I think that is part of the story of Super Tuesday. In other words, I think Biden is in his own way as good a manipulator as McConnell is. That's part of what I feel I've watched in 2020. What I also feel I've watched is that Biden is like most effective and enduring politicians. The # 2 most important rule is he likes to win. The # 1 most important rule is he likes to win in ways that get him re-elected. He is not the worst coalition builder in America, for sure. So the best case scenario for a Biden Presidency and beyond is that Biden is fully aware that this is not 2009. His buddy John McCain is no longer in the Senate. And Republicans like McCain that compromised and made pals with Democrats like Biden have long been viewed as "losers" or RINOs. The best case scenario is that Biden also knows how he survived politically from about 1970 to 2020. So he ought to be able to project out to 2030 or 2040. Meaning, unlike President Toxic, realize that the majority politics of the coming era is not what worked when he was a young man racing into what we now know to be the Reagan Era. Perhaps the Chinese fortune somebody left on my desk as a prank in my 20's is right: "In youth and beauty, wisdom is rare." Sorry, Joe. You're neither young, nor beautiful. Hopefully that means you've gained some wisdom. Part of my point in posting these articles is that I think this will be the framework in which we learn whether a President Biden can build a majority coalition that includes at least some people who once voted for Donald Trump. Like Alan Lichtman, I fundamentally believe what matters to most voters is governing. Not campaign tricks or political rhetoric. If there's a way Biden can win over former Trump voters, it will probably be much like Reagan solidified his coalition with "Reagan Democrats" after he won in 1980. A lot of Reagan's appeal was the "culture war" stuff: abortion, guns, race, and (say it ain't so!) just below the surface racism. Even the Never Trump Republicans will now admit to the racism that was always there. For Biden to do the same thing as Reagan, it will have to be on the economy. And he will have to produce results for the have nots and working class - on fundamentals like jobs and health care and a fairer economy. Biden will also have to make America safer and less racist for Blacks and Hispanics and Asians and LGBTQ folks, and any other minority. We know from the Pew poll I posted above that older Whites who lean toward Trump don't particularly give a shit about Black Lives Matter or gender identity. Biden may be able to ride COVID to The White House by getting some of President Toxic's older voters from 2016 to vote for him in 2020. But even if he manages to do that, he'll have to cement it when he wins. Again, hopefully he has learned a lesson from 2009 and no longer views Mitch McConnell as anything but an obstructionist who will try to stop Biden from succeeding. The reality is that the vast majority of Republicans will never vote for Biden, Harris, or almost any Democrat. They may be a free market conservative who doesn't even like Trump. But they do know President Toxic is the path to free markets, tax cuts, less regulation, and more conservative judges. They may be racists or gun nuts that do feel like the America they love (not to mention the Second Amendment) is gradually slipping away. Even if they lose President Toxic, they will always have their AR-15s and endless rounds of ammo. They deserve at least that, right? Biden won't win any of those voters, no matter how moderate he is. My sense is he doesn't even seem to be trying right now. The encouraging thing Politico is saying is that Biden, for his own political survival and success, is now likely to surround himself with a lot of the people a President Warren would have surrounded herself with. Including Elizabeth Warren herself. As a liberal and Warren fanboy, I'm biased. But if we're going to get a small but meaningful chunk of former President Toxic supporters - especially the Obama/Obama/Trump ones - to jump from the Trump trench to the Biden one, I think this is going to be the way to do it. Biden is going to have to prove that he can deliver some kind of economic transformation that makes a meaningful difference in their lives. If they are ever going to join the coalition of transformation, it will have to be because it's the economy, stupid. And Biden will have to produce things that they see as meaningful economic results.

So, back on topic. Great article by Ron Brownstein that zeroes in as culture wars and racism, sexism, and "identity politics" as the deepest dividing line in American politics today. Why the stability of the 2020 race promises more volatility ahead A lot of this is the same old, same old that we've been debating since Hillary lost. Was it the economy, stupid? Or was it the racism, stupid? Or was it the authoritarianism, stupid? I like Brownstein because his data and political judgment do a better job than most integrating how all these factors meld together. It's not a shocker that the states that President Toxic barely won the "Slavery Matters" Electoral College with were Rust Belt states that suffered from the deindustrialization of America. Even if it's racism and ranting about immigrants, it also mdoes have something to do with the economy, stupid. There was a good article recently about Bucks County, PA as a suburban bellwether. Here's a line that jumped out at me: As I've said several times, for whatever reason Pennsylvania has been worse off than Michigan or Wisconsin in terms of the loss of manufacturing jobs. When Biden was in Detroit and interviewed by Jake Tapper I thought he did a very good job of hammering on the specific numbers of factory jobs that were created in Michigan by Obama/Biden. And the auto bailout, which was an effort that Biden led. Meanwhile, all three states have LOST tens of thousands of factory jobs since President Toxic was inaugurated. I suspect Biden will be all over numbers like that during the debates, when President Toxic tries to pin NAFTA on him like he pinned it on Hillary. President Toxic is, in fact, President. What has he done? He failed. That's what I suspect Biden will say. But that said, Pennsylvania is for some reason the worst of the three. During the good times, they simply don't lose more factory jobs. During the bad times, factory jobs evaporate. Unlike both Michigan and Wisconsin, there have never been these recoveries where tens of thousands of factory jobs come back. That's true going back to Clinton and the 90's. So the phrase "decades-long decline" captures the economic reality. And it's understandable that you can throw in lots of theories now. This explains why they blame it on immigrants. This explains why they want to go back to the glory days of the White working class. Even if they don't think they are racist, and some of the Trumpians are in fact Black and Hispanic. The really interesting question, I think, is why do they STILL feel President Toxic is "a defender of their economic interests"? Even if you stop the clock at February 2020, Obama/Biden simply did a better job of restoring factory jobs than President Toxic has in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If you stop the clock at August 2020, there's no comparison. Trump has shredded factory jobs. And, yes, you can say some of that is not President Toxic's fault. But you have to suspend a hell of a lot of disbelief and ignore a hell of a lot of facts to really buy that. So I think Brownstein is right. All of this has gelled together into a new form of civil war. There were an estimated 215,000 combat casualties in the Civil War. By election day, we will clearly top that with COVID-19 deaths. So we don't have a Confederate Army carrying muskets around. But we do have President Toxic rallies that may have killed Herman Cain. And lots of Trumpians who define "freedom" as "not having to wear a damn mask". So we're deep into a culture war which is not tethered to fact or logic all that tightly. And it is turning out to be quite deadly, as well. Here's an interesting Pew survey that confirms how far apart the bases of the two political parties are. For Republicans, these are the issues that over 70 % think are "most important": 1) the economy (88 %), and 2) violent crime (74 %). Meanwhile, income inequality, race inequality, and climate changes are priorities to very few of them. And I'm quite sure that just because they don't care about race inequality, and they buy President Toxic's message of panic about Blacks invading suburbs and violent crime, that doesn't make them a racist. Here's the issues at least 70 % of Democrats see as most important: 1) health care (84%), 2) coronavirus (82 %), 3) race and ethnic inequality (76 %), 4) the economy (72 %). Other than the economy, stupid, Democrats and Republicans are not even on the same page. And I think these "identity politics" and economic issues are layered on top of each other. Racism is a health issue for Blacks dying of Coronavirus. And it's an economic issue because they are disproportionately on the losing end of the economy. Mostly White Trump supporters just don't see it that way. I think all of this makes Brownstein's prediction sound right: no matter who wins, the divide is more likely to get worse. It is interesting that both Democrats and Republicans seem to be saying that. The side that loses is just going to be angry, and bitter, and dig in more. The data about why Democrats seem to be gradually overcoming the obstruction of the Tea Party/Trump decade is also telling. This New York Times article on voter preferences is encouraging. Based on mountains of polling, Biden seems to be doing measurably better than Hillary and better than 2018 preferences with two of three key groups in what Brownstein calls the coalition of transformation: suburban voters, and young voters. Young voters may not like Biden. But most despise President Toxic. The article doesn't focus on Blacks. I assume that's because for the most part they are not a swing group. There's no evidence so far that Blacks plan to sleep through this election. I won't be surprised if Black turnout beats what it was for Obama. And is one of the nails in President Toxic's coffin - not only in states like Michigan, but also states like North Carolina and possibly even Georgia. Where Biden is weakest is with the third group, Hispanics. Although that depends a lot. There's a good chance he may blow President Toxic away in Arizona, partly thanks to mostly Mexican American Hispanics. In Florida, it's a whole different story. Some of it, I think, is that Biden is as bad as Sen. Bill Nelson was in 2018. Rick Scott is saying he has won repeatedly with Hispanics in Florida because he "shows up". I think that's a fair assessment. That said, it's pretty clear that Biden is hurting in Democratic Dade County because the President Toxic hate and panic machine is trashing Biden with lies and lies and lies and lies about how The Deep State will probably put somebody worse than Castro and Chavez in charge if Puppet Biden wins. The goal has to be to just get Demoratic-leaning Hispanics to not vote. But, no, the hateful and racist and evil President Toxic would never want to actually panic Americans, would he? This leads me to a final point about why I think Brownstein is right, and the divides are more likely to deepen after the election. Bernie Sanders had a great opportunity in 2016 and 2020 to redefine America around class. In 2016 his messages about income inequality resonated more than even he expected. So there was every reason to think that 2020 could be the year when Sanders (or Warren, or Sanders/Warren) became the Democratic nominee. It just didn't happen. Those people in Michigan that voted for Bernie rather than Hillary in 2016 and were supposed to respond to messages about the working glass and jobs and a rigged economic system just didn't vote as Berniecrats hoped. They voted for Biden. And a lot of those working class White former Democrats were, and will remain, the base of Trumpism. In fact, the part of Bernie's base that seems most rock solid is built around identity politics. It's the Millennials, stupid. Again, I'll argue that all these issues - identity politics, the economy, racism, and also authoritarianism - are intertwined. The signs people are carrying say "Black Lives Matter". But what the polls and interviews all say is that the young Black, Hispanic, and White protesters carrying those signs all grew up sharing the experience of an America riddled with income inequality. So their movement is about police and the safety of Blacks, for sure. But as we move forward I suspect it will become clearer and clearer that it's a whole bunch of stuff all bundled together. Just like for the Trumpists, it's a whole bunch of identity and economics bundled together, too. The thing that is surprising about Bernie 2020 is there is one area I think he can accurately be described as having overachieved: outreach to Hispanics. That is why he won Nevada. It helped Bernie in Iowa and also Texas, even though Biden ultimately rode an organic wave that helped him win Texas. The very smart national Hispanic organizers that worked with Bernie to do what he did are all pushing the panic buttons about Biden right now. They're essentially saying the same thing Rick Scott is. If you want to turn this constituency into loyal and stable voters, you have to show up. And not just once. You have to show up consistently. Hopefully, Bernie 2020 will in part be remembered as an example of how it helps you on Election Day if you do that. Again, it wasn't enough for Bernie. But his success as "Tio Bernie" also suggests that he made more inroads in states like Nevada with identity politics aimed at Latinos than he did in states like Michigan with class rhetoric aimed at White working class voters. Here's one other Pew analysis of the 2018 midterms that just adds more weight to the idea that the two sides of this "culture war" are digging their trenches deeper. Only 3 % of 2016 Hillary voters voted for a Republican House candidate in 2018. Only 5 % of 2016 Trump voters voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. The biggest shift was people who DID NOT vote in 2016: they voted for Democrats by an over 2 to 1 margin. Another table shows 2018 voting preferences based on ideology. 2016 Trump voters who are Republican conservatives were even MORE likely to vote Republican in 2018: it was 94/3 in 2016 and 96/2 in 2018. That's President Toxic's rabid base politics at work. Sadly, the verdict is in that in 2018 it HURT President Toxic with everyone else. Moderate to liberal Republicans and moderate to conservative Democrats were all more likely to vote Democratic in 2018 than 2016. President Toxic has his rabid base. But he's losing everyone else. So there is a group of people in the middle who leaned Democratic in 2018 and for much of 2020 have looked like they may be getting ready to lean Democratic again. And if 2020 is like 2018, there is also a group of people who didn't vote in 2016 or 2018 who will vote overwhelmingly Democratic. My guess is the Lincoln Project's goal is probably to replicate 2018. At the end of the day, if 5 % of President Toxic's 2016 voters vote for Biden, and every other trend I've described here holds, that is probably more than enough for Biden to win. Possibly in a landslide. But it also means the other 95 % of Trump Republicans will have doubled down. They are not going to come out of their trenches, I don't think. They'll feel bitter, and start digging deeper.

Yeah. Since late last week every time I sign I have to reset my password. What I tried today is just using my original password as the reset, which is a six character password. When I go through the reset process there's a little popup box that says 8 to 72 characters, use caps, special characters, etc. It does not indicate that you need to follow all these rules in order for the password to work, however. So the first reset I did several days ago I entered an 8 character password that did not include a special character, and it logged me in. But it clearly did not remember that password, because the next day the new password did not log me in. Today I just reset to my old six character password, and it logged me in. I assume after I log out I will have to reset again tomorrow. So for now I'll just plan that I have to reset my password every time I log in. And I'll just keep using the same old password and see if it works. At least the reset process itself id relatively simple. As Oz said it seems like the issue is the system does not automatically remember my password. Although the odd thing as I said above is that my old password does log me in to Boytoy itself, and I can see my user profile. But then when I click on the Forum I'm not logged in. And when I try to login again in the Forum it's not recognizing the password. It's just fucked up. Good luck, Oz.

I had the same thing happen a few days ago. Reset my password and could log in again. What was weird is I could log in to Boytoy and see profile and messages, but could not log into the forum. I kept trying, and it eventually locked me out for 15 minutes. My old passwords was six characters and when I set up a new one there are different requirements - like at least 8 characters, caps, etc. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm posting this as an addendum to what I posted directly above. Presumably Gottlieb knows as much about the 30,000 foot view as anyone. And I'm in sync with what he says here. It would be nice to think that past exposure to other Coronaviruses has built up some type of immunity in lots of people. But we don't know that, as he says. Month's ago on Daddy's I was setting my hair on fire whenever anyone spoke up about the idea that we could go for herd immunity and magically put the vulnerable - particularly people in nursing homes - in bubble wrap for a year or so. My argument was what Gottlieb is saying here. If you have broad community spread, it's only a matter of time until it seeps into places like nursing homes and jails. That certainly describes what happened in the real world - all across Europe and the US - this Spring. It's not quite working out that way in Europe now. Some part of it has to be that in the Spring it crept in before anyone knew what was happening, or was prepared to prevent it from creeping in. So now maybe Europe is better prepared. Or maybe there is more natural immunity. But Gottlieb could also be right that it just will take a few months, as opposed to a few weeks. That is sort of what happened in the Sunbelt. At one point everybody breathed a sigh of relief that caseloads weren't spiking in Georgia or Florida or Texas. And then they spiked. They spiked pretty much the same in California, which did have a more sober public health message and was more cautious about reopening.. My sense is that part of it is simply human nature. People don't take it seriously until it really hits home. Once it hit home in these Sun Belt states, it seems like a lot of people changed their tune and were just more cautious. If young people are being less cautious, it's obviously because they just aren't seeing the direct health consequences to them or their peers. If they go home for Thanksgiving and their Granny is dead by Christmas, that will be a game changer. Hopefully, we don't need to kill Granny to learn our lessons.

What's particularly interesting is that the second wave spreading across Europe is a lot less deadly. Nobody seems to know why, for sure. I've read articles that speculate about different strains of virus and virus mutations that may make it less fatal. My take away so far is it is mostly about the demographics of who gets sick. This CNN article sums up what appear to be the facts pretty well. Young people are driving a second, less-deadly surge of Covid-19 cases in Europe That article is about a month old. So we know more now about the fatality rates of this second wave. The contrast in Spain is particularly striking. The pattern is the same across Europe, but I picked Spain because their second wave looks a lot like their first in terms of case loads. They peaked at about 10,000 cases a day, with the two peaks roughly five months apart. When you look at the fatalities, there's no comparison. With the March caseload peak in Spain, fatalities peaked a few weeks later, as would be expected. Spain had just under 1000 deaths a day at the peak. The second wave in Spain appears to have peaked in late August. So the maximum deaths should be hitting right about now. The recent one week moving average in Spain is about 60 deaths a day. On the face of it, the virus appears to be about 90 % less deadly. You can look at France or Italy or Germany and the basic pattern - lower fatality - is the same. France already has blown past it's Spring peak on number of cases. In the Spring, they had up to 1500 deaths a day. Now it's more like 30. I'm assuming a big part of this is that they're catching a lot more of the asymptomatic or minor cases now than they were in the Spring, due to mass testing. And some of it may be due to knowing more about treatments. Even so, the contrast in fatalities is striking. This article is only a few days old and gives anecdotal pictures of what's causing the surge in various European countries: 'Not a game': Europe pleads with young people to halt Covid-19 spread While it's not a game, it's also obviously not really bad news for Europe. And for any country that can get its shit together on a national strategy for managing the risk. Part of what's surprising to me is that young Europeans who are getting COVID-19 don't appear to be spreading it to older Europeans - so far. Other than a few articles, I haven't bothered to try to learn what may be driving this. But I suspect mask wearing and social distancing protocols are probably a big part of it. Meaning the Spanish 20-somethings may be partying without masks in bars, or in college dorms now that they are going back to school. But older adults aren't going into those bars. And they are wearing masks when they are around the 20-somethings. Whatever is driving it, this has been going on for well over a month. And the fatality rates are not spiking like they did in the Spring. I think we know already that colleges that are open for in-person classes in the US are already seeing spikes. The thing that I keep reading that makes sense to me is that young adults on college campuses should stay there. If they bring COVID-19 home for Thanksgiving or Christmas it could be a huge national shit show. When a vaccine does appear, it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. I'll leave politics out of this, other than to say that trust in the efficacy of any vaccine has already been compromised in the US. And we don't really know what natural immunity means for people who had COVID-19, or some exposure to COVID-19, or past exposure to some other type of Coronavirus. We certainly don't know what artificial immunity means for people once we get a vaccine. Nor do we know what herd immunity means due to some combination of the two. I'm with Fauci and his common sense approach. He keeps saying that the good news is that we know when we actually try to manage a spike by following certain protocols - like masks and social distancing - we can drive it down. So what Europe is showing, even if it is haphazardly, is that there is a way to manage this so that young adults can do what they want to do without killing thousands of older adults every day. I'm in no way encouraging it. Spain is obviously correct to be telling young adults this is not a game. But it is a fact that, at least so far, what's playing out in Spain and France right now is nowhere near as awful as what played out this Spring. The silver lining in the cloud of this pandemic is that it is not the Spanish flu. The second wave of that one was by far the deadliest. And it was particularly deadly to young adults. I think most people could really care less about the scientific nuances of this. Including me. They just want to know whether they are going to live or die. Or go broke from hospital bills, or losing their job. So the good news is that while this is not a game, we ought to be able to figure out better how to manage it so that it is also not a death sentence like it was for lots of older people in the Spring.

Democrats build big edge in early voting Far more Democrats than Republicans are requesting mail ballots in key battleground states, including voters who didn't participate in 2016. There's been several articles recently about how Republicans have done a better job than Democrats of registering new voters under President Toxic. In particular, a recent Politico article said in Pennsylvania it appears that Republicans may have registered something like 170,000 more new voters than Democrats. That said, Democrats still outnumber Republicans by 750,000 voters in Pennsylvania. So if Democrats turn out at the same rate as Republicans, Democrats will win. Another unknown is that Republicans have been doing door-to-door and face-to-face voter organizing in a way that Democrats have not, due to the different perceptions about COVID-19. I have to imagine that door to door contact is going to help Republicans at the margin. That said, the very fact that COVID-19 is running rampant may deliver two Democratic votes for every Republican who votes because a Trump volunteer spoke to her at her door. We just don't know. This is a good summary by 538 of Republican efforts to make it harder to vote. It sounds like states and counties are all over the map in terms of how and when mail-in or absentee ballots get counted. And this is an area of huge legal skirmishes right now. Republicans in at least some places are trying to prevent any vote counting from happening before Election Day. Including, for example, verification of signatures on the outside envelope of mail-in ballots, which is one of the most time-consuming and important steps to prevent fraud. My contempt for the Toxic Trump Republicans just deepens by the day. These people, including President Toxic himself, have used absentee ballots in Florida to increase GOP turnout and win elections for a long time. That's fair, because they have the right to vote. But now they are bitching and moaning that this is fraud. But only in states where it may help Democrats. And right now they are actively taking steps to make it harder to catch any possible fraud by making it harder to carefully verify the signatures on mail-in ballots. Regardless, in some of these states it appears likely that the "red mirage" everyone is worried about could be offset by a flood of mail-in ballots, many of them cast early by Democrats. I've been guessing, or at least hoping, that all the noise about fraud and mail-in voting is a great B'rer Rabbit strategy. By making a big deal about Republicans not allowing Democrats to vote by mail, we're just ensuring that more Democrats will insist on their right to vote by mail. Maybe that is what is happening. It's too early to tell. But this is very encouraging. So encouraging that I have to go take a shower. I had an orgasm when I read this article.

And now that I've advocated for more Black Governors, let me argue against one. To me, this is a Justice Rapist moment for the Democratic Party. Democrat Fairfax announces bid for Virginia governor Of course, I don't live and vote in Virginia, and I'll have nothing to do with this race. But I do think this is a good opportunity for Democrats to set a clearer standard for our own versions of Justice Rapist. As a clarification, I get that Kavanaugh was never accused of rape. Let alone convicted of it. My use of the word refers to two forms of rape. The rape of the FBI investigation process, which did not take multiple credible allegations about a pattern of sexual misconduct seriously. We can thank President Toxic, Don McGahn, and Rich Mitch for that. And rape of the legislative process, which pushed the confirmation through even as President Toxic focused on humiliating pretty much any woman who was ever raped. I'm happily sending $100 a month to Sara Gideon. If Senator Susan Coverup - who I used to respect - loses, I'll be sure to send her a "Goodbye And Good Riddance" note in appreciation. I think there was an obvious solution with Justice Rapist, which was employed multiple times by Reagan and W. Nominate somebody else. President Toxic thought it was better to attack the alleged victims. There's no evidence that strategy paid off. They filled a vacancy with a conservative Justice, which they were sure to get anyway. And the voters threw in House Speaker Pelosi as a bonus. Trump isn't a genius, is he? I haven't followed Virginia closely since the initial craziness of the racism/sexual assault trifecta. But in a lot of ways it is like Justice Rapist. On the one hand you have a man accused of sexual assault who is fiercely defensive of his innocence. On the other hand you have multiple women making allegations that appear to be credible. Even more credible, in that they're clearly not trying to tear a Black man down just because he's a Democrat. There's enough ambiguity that you can go either way and no one can prove you wrong. Unlike with Justice Rapist, all the parties were adults and agree that something happened. The conflict is whether what happened is consensual. It's that last part that goes to the heart of Me Too. Define "consensual". I regret being one of the ones who called for Al Franken's resignation. I regret it in part because Republicans like Senator Susan Coverup, who called for his resignation, ended up being a total hypocrite, I think. More importantly, Franken was accused of being a slightly gross man that did gross things in public. Being gross is forgivable. In retrospect, his unforgivable sin was being gross exactly when the questions Me Too raises were right in front of the nation. For a comedian, it ended up being the shittiest timing ever. That "boob" photo said it all. You don't pose for a camera when you're trying to cover up rape. Some Democratic Senators have as much as said that they now feel they overreacted. The happy outcome perhaps would have been that Senator Franken became the poster child for why it's good to take a time out and get some training. Putting your hand on a female constituent's butt during a photo at the State Fair is tacky and offensive. But not criminal. At Franken's expense, his forced resignation prior to any investigation did have the virtue of giving a lot of people who have political aspirations a warning they'll never forget. The problem with Fairfax is that, like with Justice Rapist, there is no middle ground. I think it's even worse with Fairfax. With Justice Rapist, the argument that made complete sense to me is that he had the most to gain by a thorough investigation. In theory, they could have cleared him of all the new allegations that were coming out of the woodwork. My guess is it would have gone the other way, and the FBI would have at least further documented a consistent pattern or sexual assault allegations. A Virginia legislative "hearing" that resulted in a police or private investigation perceived as credible was being debated at one point. I'm not sure that's an option anymore. I think the standard that Democrats proposed for Justice Rapist makes sense for Fairfax. It is in his interest to clear his name. And I don't have a problem with putting the obligation on him to do so - whatever that means. The alternative is telling two credible Black women that the burden is on them to prove what they allege is true. That seems like Anita Hill times two to me. That's not progress. Besides, they have been trying to prove it, by calling for a hearing. Anita Hill at least got that. Given the ambiguity of the situation, the standard I like is that guys like Fairfax just need to step aside. In this case, part of the context that matters is there are several Black women (not the alleged victims) who have already declared they are running for Governor, too. The story directly above did state that regardless of what President Biden may do in terms of Cabinet appointments involving Democratic White Governors and Black Lieutenant Governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey, he is very unlikely to touch Virginia with a ten foot poll. That makes sense to me. Northam and Fairfax both have lots of options for successful careers, other than politics. I wish they went that route. Since Fairfax apparently sees it differently, perhaps the best option is for Democrats in the Virginia primary to just choose somebody else. If he wins the primary, and two Black women say they are being ignored, that's not a good look for the post-President Toxic Democratic Party. Where would others draw the line in what is clearly an ambiguous situation like this?

If we're comparing to LBJ, I think Biden wins that over Kamala hands down. And I say that as a California boy who voted for Kamala for Senator, respects her, and thinks she'd make a good Prez. The precedent from both The New Deal and The Great Society is that is started out more moderate and then grew more liberal. It's true that FDR got a lot of legislation passed right out of the gate. But my read of history is that he gradually lost faith in corporate America as the New Deal went along. The more incendiary anti-business comments he made were from 1936, not 1932. The Great Society was similar. That was bubbling up for years before JFK was elected, in an election in which civil rights was more background than top issue. So to get to the point where LBJ cut the deals and signed the landmark laws took maybe a decade. If I had to bet, history will repeat itself somehow. What happens in 2021, even assuming a Democratic majority, will be a first step that sets the tone and focuses more on immediate relief. If there are going to be huge landmark bills, they'll come later. What the Republicans do when President Toxics loses will be a big driver in which way this goes. The easy guess would be that the Never Trumpers who helped elect Biden will be a force of moderation in whatever happens right out of the gate. Biden will triangulate. And if he does he'll probably have the majority support President Toxic never did. The Toxic Trump Republicans can claim success in one thing. They made Democrats a lot more like them when it comes to compromise. The last time I looked at Pew's poll findings on that issue was several years ago. And as the graph shows, back then an overwhelming majority of Democrats put compromise ahead of the idea of "sticking to your principles." So when I just Googled it for this post I hadn't seen the recent big change. But I'm not surprised. Now people who favor compromise are just less than a majority in both parties. This poll tracks the timing of my change. It was around 2018 that I hit my breaking point. And the Justice Rapist fiasco was my straw that broke the camel's back. So I'm okay with where Democrats are. But this is not necessarily good news for President Biden. He is at heart a deal maker. Now Democrats are cooler on that idea. So I'm with you, @TotallyOz. That's of course obvious from my tone. I'm certainly done with the idea that the Toxic Trump Republican Party is going to work with us. Or that it even makes sense to have a conversation with them. Since the feelings of contempt (or something approaching it) seem to be mutual, that probably will help determine the direction things go. When this has played out before, long periods of "time out" (I love that phrase, which is what newly activist Moms say the national/Trump Republicans need now) have actually resulted in moderation. It took 20 years to get from Hoover's defeat to Ike's election. It took 12 years, and multiple landslides, to get from Carter's defeat to Bill Clinton's election. So as much as it sounds mean, or maybe even undemocratic, I think the best thing to do for people who like the idea of compromise and moderation is to tell the Tea Party and Toxic Trump types to just go fuck themselves. If we have the votes, we can get away with it. But that means Biden managing a circus that includes some people who would really prefer President Bernie, and others who would really prefer President Kasich. I would not want to guess what that could mean for 2024. Will Biden run again? If not, will Harris be a shoo-in to replace him? Will Berniecrats revolt? All of those challenges can happily get in line and wait a long time for the immediate and urgent calamities to be addressed. i do think @lookin is right that all these Trumpians won't go away. If they double down and we have a Toxic Trump TV station for them to watch, then they'll decide for themselves that they'd rather go off and plot revenge for a while. The more important issue to me is what happens with what I'll call the Kasich Republicans, or what Rahm called the "Biden Republicans" . Some of these Obama-Obama-Trump voters are going to be Obama-Obama-Trump-Biden voters this year. And others will vote for President Toxic, but will notice if some of the jobs and Rust Belt decline issues Trump won on, and then pretty much ignored, are actually addressed by Democrats. That's how we can build a sustainable coalition that will allow us to ignore the remnants of the Toxic Trump Party. That's where I was going with my question. Emotionally, I can't wait to look many Trump voters in the face for the next several years and say, "You people lost because you completely deserved to lose. Go the hell away."

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE Transcript: Kim Jong Un's letters to President Trump

It's not clear to me at this point that President Toxic needs yet another nail in his political coffin. But it's hard not to imagine this won't be a huge political nail in his coffin with this somewhat amorphous group of Independent/Undecided voters. People like me who despise President Toxic don't need more reasons. We're rabidly waiting to vote him out. And the true Trumpians will react to this by yawning. Or arguing it just goes to show what a good leader he is by not wanting to panic us. So this post is mostly about where the Independent/Undecided folks are now. And partly this is going to take a dive into polling, and prognosticating. Including whether the polls were wrong in 2016. This is from an article in Rasmussen about which voters are being quiet about their support for or opposition to President Toxic: I don't take this to mean that anyone is lying to pollsters about who they support. I take it to mean they are simply being quiet because they know they'll get push back. If 21 % of Independents aren't saying much, it's probably because they don't particularly care. About 1 in 5 Independents are truly undecided, or at least still open-minded, according to the mountain of poll data about Independents I've commented on. They're not very tuned in. And they don't much like either choice. In a close election, like 2016, these are the voters that can and did determine the outcome. I won't post the video again. But on Election Night 2016 Karl Rove argued, correctly I think, that Trump won because voters who disliked both candidates broke decisively for President Toxic, who represented change. Politico has had a series of articles going for the last year where they interview four Republican political hacks who ran the campaigns or Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, and Bush in 2016. On the big questions, their consensus has been on the money: 1) Biden would be the strongest nominee for Democrats to choose, and 2) Harris would be his best pick as VP. This final article in the series is an interesting read in its entirety. The consensus is that the outcome could range from a repeat of 2016 - a popular vote loss for President Toxic coupled with a narrow win in the electoral college - to a landslide for Biden. No one thinks President Toxic can actually win the popular vote. Of the four, the most optimistic case for Trump was made by Jeff Roe, who ran Ted Cruz's campaign. The single most interesting statement he made was this one: There's probably several ways to interpret what he means. Maybe he means negativity drives getting Trumpians out to vote. Maybe he means negativity could depress Black turnout, like in 2016. Most likely, he's probably saying that President Toxic could end up winning the "hold your nose and vote" crowd like he did in 2016 by a relentlessly negative attack that smears Biden with all the shit in creation. This is where all this toxic stuff hanging in the air comes in: like COVID-19, and President Toxic's "downplaying" or "misleading" statements about it, as well as his betrayals of the military. What Roe said is consistent with the polls I've seen. The group that handed the electoral college to Trump in 2016 is back again. Like in 2016, they don't like either President Toxic or Biden. Like in 2016, they are leaning toward change being better than more of the same. Unlike me, they are not particularly tuned in. Many of them won't know how they vote pretty much until they vote. In an environment like that, it seems like having all this toxic stuff hanging in the air is just fatal to President Toxic. I think Claire McCaskill is dead right about how politics works for this slice of Independent/Undecided voters. They're not watching MSNBC or listening to Rush Limbaugh. This stuff just hangs in the air, like COVID-19 will be all Fall. As it settles in, it will likely reinforce that change is better than more of the same. I think it's worth a paragraph to review how this translated into poll data in 2016, and then an update on what it could mean in 2020. In 2016, on this date, the RCP poll averages showed Hillary had a 3.1 % lead over President Toxic. In about a week, September 16th, she had a lead of exactly 0.9 % over Trump. In other words, Hillary outperformed her mid-September polling in the final November election result, when she won the popular vote by 2.1 %. So anyone who says she had it in the bag, or that the polling was wrong, is just plain wrong. And all along the way, there were of course undecided voters. So the final poll average on Election Day was Clinton 46.8 % and Trump 43.6 %. They both outperformed. Clinton ended up with 48.2 % of the votes, or 1.4 % above what the final poll averages showed. President Toxic ended up with 46.1 % of the vote, or 2.5 % above what the final poll averages showed. All of that was within the margins of error of the polls used to create the average, anyway. But there's two factors that obviously drove these numbers. First, Independent/Undecided voters had to decide. And they voted disproportionately for Trump. Second, the turnout assumptions were slightly off. President Toxic was able to grow the tent by a few millions voters compared to what Romney got in 2012. He still lost the popular vote by 3 million. But it was the 77,774 votes in the Rust Belt that counted. Compare the trend with Clinton/Trump in 2016 to the trend with Biden/Trump in 2020. Unlike in 2016, it's not close. And it's never been close. Let's assume President Toxic does exactly the same thing as 2016. He shaves 1.1 % more off his losing popular vote margin, compared to what the poll averages showed. Based on current polling, he'd cut a 7.5 % loss to a 6.4 % loss. Again, that's based on the people who are decided and willing to state their voter preference. A margin like that rules out a narrow electoral college win, as the current state polls clearly show. When you add in these undecided or "hold my nose and vote" voters, I think it just gets worse for President Toxic. That 7.5 % margin today is based on 50.5 % for Biden, and 43.0 % for President Toxic. So today there are 6.5 % of voters who are in the undecided/someone else/hold my nose bucket. In 2016 it was 9.5 % of all voters. Even if President Toxic won all 6.5 % of those voters, he would still be one point behind Biden today. But what the polls point to, as Roe understands, is that these undecided/someone else/hold my nose voters are already saying they lean toward Biden. There's another thing about this worth mentioning. If Biden can hold the lead he has today, and more undecideds break for Biden than Trump, Biden ends up with well over 50 % of the vote. If what we expect to happen happens, I like that number. Yeah, you can argue millions of the ballots are fake votes. But if Biden gets 52 % or 53 % of the vote, which seems possible, it's very hard to argue that the majority of America did not tell President Toxic he is fired. Like in 2016, the polls will be up and down until November. That said, it's not likely that the wide lead Biden has enjoyed since last year will just go away - unless something really huge changes things. Roe probably thinks that if a strong man like President Toxic just hammers the shit out of a weak guy like Biden every single day, he can turn the undecided/hold my nose crowd around. The only problem with this seemingly wishful thinking is there is no evidence in the real world to support it. The evidence in the real world is that President Toxic will be hammering the shit out of himself every day this Fall. And if he somehow forgets his hammer, Bob Woodward or some anonymous General or God knows who else will be kind enough to use their hammer to pound those nails in the coffin shut. President Toxic's contempt for the military and his willful misleading about a plague that killed 200,000 Americans are not small things. they are toxic. They will hang in the air every day. Especially given that the pace of COVID-19 deaths is more likely to pick up than slow down this Fall. There's a huge irony in how history will look back at these recordings. With 20/20 hindsight, I'd guess that historians will say President Toxic wasn't only talking about COVID-19 here: I'm pretty sure President Toxic was describing his own political demise. And why these people who haven't made up their mind or don't like either Biden or Trump will ultimately decide that change is better than more of this horror story.

Claire nailed several things. It's just stupidity. President Toxic was the one who gave Woodward access to his staff. The interesting question is not why some of the staff gave Woodward access to Trump. It's why they gave Woodward access to themselves. Most of them had to know better than their stupid boss. But it fills in the picture. These are not men and women of honor. They know what they have to do to be able to come to work the next day. Claire is a politician. So I think she nailed how the political reaction to this and the military betrayal works. It's not like a train wreck, in the sense of sudden and devastating impact. Although you can see that it already stopped and possibly reversed the modest recovery in Trump's approval ratings since the RNC. This is more like COVID-19. It blows around everywhere, and gradually settles in. So I think Claire is right. This will reinforce the way a lot of older voters who have been moving away from President Toxic feel. And the way a lot of active military, vets, and people who honor military service feel. It settles in and further cements the judgment people are gradually making. That said, it's more than just stupidity. Claire is not a psychiatrist. But one of the most interesting phrases in her rant was, "Who in their right mind ....?" That's a very good question. As a political hack, she was smart to leave it at stupidity. But you have to add either narcissism, or dementia, or both. Why you don't tell Woodward this stuff on tape right before an election is not difficult to figure out. So how could President Toxic have such a distorted view of reality? This would be the equivalent of Nixon never having secretly taped the conversations that destroyed him. It would be like Nixon instead calling up Woodward and Bernstein and saying, "Hey guys. Got a tape recorder? Let's talk for 18 hours." No sane President would do that. I won't drag all the stuff about authoritarianism into this thread. But I'll make one point. This gift President Toxic has given to the American political psyche is going to keep giving after he loses. The reaction already from Trumpians, and the reporters that know them best, is that this isn't really news. It's just more Deep State bullshit. We knew that this was dangerous. We're glad he didn't want us to panic. Yawn. Almost 200,000 dead Americans, and many more on the way. But, no. Their leader can do no wrong. All the TV I watched about this story focused, correctly, on what President Toxic said. But I'll end by reposting what President Toxic's enablers were saying at the time. And the impact it had on real people. Who suffered horribly. And died horribly. Claire's right. People did not know they were in a burning building. They were not protected, or told what to do to protect themselves. They were lied to and lulled into not caring. They were told it was a Democratic hoax. And being good authoritarian followers, many of them will choose not to remember that now.

Below are two articles that I view as two sides of the Make America Great Again coin. I agree with the prognosis of the first article, from The American Conservative. As I read it, it's the voice of pre-Tea Party Ronald Reagan/George Will "principled" conservatism. The article predicts that the MAGA effort is doomed to end in failure. The second article talks about the challenge facing Democrats and Biden if we win, as seems likely. If the Republicans couldn't make America great again, can Democrats? And is there any hope that some of the people who voted for President Toxic can be nudged into the Democratic Party - if not in 2020 then further down the line? Or will they view Democrats as a permanent existential threat, as the conservative author of the first article portrays them? After Trump Loss, ‘Deplorables’ Will Be The Democrats’ First Target Blame the president for leaving his core supporters at the mercy of the opposition's cultural and economic revolution. Two reactions before I cite the second article. First, I agree with the prognosis that triangulation could have saved President Toxic. That said, it is far easier said than done for President Toxic. Let's forget that he seems to completely lack Bill Clinton's skills in governing and political deal making .... ironically. Even if he was a master at the art of political deals, the kind of bipartisan immigration reform the Senate passed 2-1 in 2013, only to be killed by the House Freedom Caucus, surely would have been seen as a worse betrayal than H.W. Bush's "no new taxes" pledge. I always figured the reason President Toxic got away with trashing McCain's war heroism is that many Trumpians saw McCain as a RINO. And while it's true that lots of Trump supporters say they don't like the tweets, it's also true that President Toxic basically ran against everything that makes Washington work at its best. Like compromise on good public policy. The most flattering thing I can say about President Toxic is he does have reptilian survival instincts. He probably feels, not incorrectly, that if he betrayed his base they would eat him alive. Second, this article deeply resonates with what I've heard from "principled" conservatives for years and years. Like the author, they don't have much regard for the Tea Party/MAGA types. They view them as an unstable and potentially corrupting influence on the Grand Old Party they've been loyal members of for life. Yet going back to the W. years, as I listened to the "principled" conservatives' arguments, it sounded pretty much just like the Tea Party's arguments to me. This author seems to almost completely agree with the Tea Party/MAGA definition of the problem: Democrats who are out to destroy America. He just doesn't agree that President Toxic was the proper solution to the problem. Regardless, the dreaded Democratic "cultural and economic revolution" is proceeding apace. Like the plague, it's apparently coming soon to a bucolic rural hamlet near you. In light of Bob Woodward's hardly shocking tapes of President Toxic, there's mountains of tragic irony here. Trump played down an existential threat because he didn't want to create panic. Which resulted in a deep recession/depression that has killed 200,000 Americans so far. And yet the bigger existential threat is the Democrats? Huh? It's not exactly news that as far back as the 1980's, Reagan won by appealing to blue collar union families who were conservative on issues like guns and abortion and law and order. But how exactly is the so-called Democratic economic revolution worse than COVID-19 and a recession? Are unions more deadly than COVID-19? In fact, there's plenty of evidence that Democratic successes in the midterms and state races weren't simply driven by affluent suburbanites. Polls suggest that lots of working class voters abandoned President Toxic over bread and butter economic issues. Like the high cost of health insurance. Or unexpected medical expenses that are one of the leading contributors to poverty. Even with a recession and COVID-19, Trump's highest disapproval rating this year (56 % in July) hasn't reached his 58 % disapproval rating in 2017 when he tried to kill Obamacare, breaking his "repeal and replace" vow. ‘A tale of 2 recessions’: As rich Americans get richer, the bottom half struggles We've now had two election cycle in a row where income inequality, Bernie and democratic socialism, Medicare For All, and Elizabeth and wealth taxes on Jeff Bezos are a major driver. The fact that income inequality only got worse under President Toxic's government is hardly a surprise. What is a surprise is the pandemic made income inequality worse still. Those unemployment numbers really are surprising to me. Home values in parts of California and Portland are spiking, even as we read that Portland is ablaze. So somebody out there isn't poor. Meanwhile, what's not stated in the first article I posted is that a lot of President Toxic's supporters are feeling the pain. I get that many, maybe even most of them blame it on Democrats who want to close your Main Street, slap a mask on you, and take whatever livelihood you have left away. That's the Trumpian rant, at least. But the polls also suggest that the majority of Americans fear COVID-19 more than they fear the temporary damage to the economy of protecting the health of ourselves and our loved ones. I'm relatively confident that the people who judge the flow of history like Lichtman and Jon Meaham and now Bob Woodward are right. President Toxic was not the man for the job. The American people will agree and fire him, I think. He has not made America great again. So the question is: are Democrats, if empowered, up to the task? Is there any possibility of pulling some of these Trump supporters back our way - on these bread and butter issues like jobs and health care? Or are Democrats, as defined in the first article, simply going to be viewed as a permanent existential threat to the cultures and economic well being of those who voted for President Toxic? I'll add one other point that spoke to me about this question. Michael Moore has been loudly warning that 2016 could happen all over again, because the intensity of Trump supporters is through the roof. But he's also saying something very different than 2016. When reminded how he portrayed Biden in 2019, as an overly moderate political hack, Moore pointed out that it almost doesn't matter anymore. Maybe some of it was Moore having to find a way to spin Biden, now that he's the nominee. But his points made sense. Remember all those people opposed to Medicare For All because they liked their employer health insurance? They're unemployed and without health insurance now, Moore said. Remember all those people saying that Andrew Yang's $1000 freedom benefit was unaffordable and un-American? They survived COVID-19 because of Nancy Pelosi insisting on $600 a week unemployment payments. Of course, not everyone did. We don't have an accurate picture of who the losers in this recession are yet. But we know its tens of millions of Americans. And I'm pretty sure lots of those tens of millions who are hurting have been President Toxic supporters. My premise in posting this thread is that Biden and Democrats are going to take power. If we do, given how the entire deck has been reshuffled by the plague, is there a way to co-opt some of the Make America Great Again message and coalition? Or are they going to circle the wagons around their vanquished savior, and harden their minds around the idea that Democrats are now going to destroy America for good?

Biden as President May Mean More Black Governors An interesting story. On the good news side, there are 15,000 local Black elected officials today - a more than tenfold increase from 1970. On the good news/bad news side, the good news is that President Biden is in a position to "create" more Black Governors in one month than the US has had in a century. That's also the bad news. The US has had almost no Black Governors. In theory, appointing the Democratic Governors are four states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey - to Cabinet posts would result in the immediate elevation of four Black Lieutenant Governors. In theory, the 2020 election could also result in four new Black Senators, all Democrats. Jaime Harrison (South Carolina) and Rev. Warnock (Georgia) could win through election. Gov. Newsom could appoint someone like Rep. Karen Bass to replace VP Harris. And if Warren becomes Treasury Secretary, she could be replaced by Senator Pressley. Although that would require a special election, before which a Republican Governor would no doubt temporarily appoint a Republican placeholder. I like this scenario a lot. I also like the scenario that South Carolina would improbably have the honor of being the first US state to elect concurrent African American Senators of two different political parties. That right there makes a very positive statement. I tend to agree with Republican Sen. Tim Scott that more than anything else what enabled his election is, to quote him, "the evolution of the Southern heart". If he were not speaking at the RNC, my guess is he would agree that Obama's election counts, too. And it's really about the evolution of the American heart. So I don't discount the importance of gradual changes that can not be seen or measured in concrete results - until something big like Obama's or Scott's election happens. That said, so far the concrete achievements of Black Lives Matter have been minimal. That's okay. If we're talking about police reform, it's going to take years. And the incremental changes are probably the ones that will make the most significant difference in the long run. The swift elevation of four Black Governors and four Black Senators would make a very clear statement about something Blacks have made clear they feel strongly about. I'm all for this kind of racial justice math. 4 + 4 = GREAT.

Minnesota’s myth-making met stark reality. Where does Gov. Tim Walz go from here? This post is anecdotal, and pushes more around the margins of understanding what's driving authoritarian behavior in the US today. It's an interesting interview with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. I'll cite the parts I found most interesting and relevant. Translation: @lookin is speaking more like Gov. Walz, and I'm speaking more like Mrs. Walz. (Are we married? Who knew!) That said, I agree with what Walz said. As a Governor, he has to try to be publicly bipartisan. Even if he privately thinks his wife is right. I'll repeat what I said above. The Republicans Democrats can most fruitfully work with are the "Kasich Republicans" or "Hogan Republicans", I think. They are the ones turned off by President Toxic's ignorance and authoritarianism. That's a fascinating comment coming from a guy like Walz. The first paragraph acknowledges that at the core of what we're calling authoritarianism is real economic anxiety and, more important, real economic pain. That said, how do you get from that to what Walz describes in the second paragraph? Its definitely authoritarian thinking. And scapegoating. The most ardent members of Team Toxic will not be easily persuaded that The Socialists or The Deep State or whatever is not out to destroy them. If anyone can talk with people who feel this way, it's somebody like Walz. And implicit in his statement is an acknowledgement that he can't. I'd say Kasich has reached pretty much the same conclusions. I'll reiterate Dean's point. They do understand defeat? Is it possible there will be more receptivity to moderates like Walz or conservatives like Kasich after President Toxic is defeated? I at least hope so. That the public education divide is THAT stark in Minnesota surprises me. But it fills out the picture. It's a coin toss whether Trumpist authoritarianism is more about real economic anxiety and pain, or about racism and scapegoating. I've always felt it's both/and. A lot of MAGA conservatives seem to have reached the conclusion that there is no real point in conversations about racism. Let alone self examination about what could be their own racism. Rather, they now just want to throw the word "racist" back at Obama, or Blacks, or woke White liberals. President Toxic modeled how to do it, and legitimized it. That is why I single out Daddy. He doesn't need to endorse "Black Lives Matter". Arguably, in the position he's in running a social media website he should NOT take sides. But by taking sides and labeling Black Lives Matter as racist, he has revealed his own racism. It's a free country, so he has every right to. But he also made his website permanently into Daddy's "Racism Is Okay" website. It's not exactly a shocker to me that this is where President Toxic has moved many people who have always been conservatives. Trump just made them feel their racism is not only perfectly okay, because it's not racism. It's righteous. I'm not holding my breath for them to suddenly or even slowly move to some other more tolerant space. Bottom line: I applaud Gov. Walz and his open-hearted and tolerant impulses. I wish him luck. My prognosis is that his wife is wise. And he'll need all the luck he can get.

I'm going to post a few other things that push around the margins of this issue. First, just to prove I can tolerate ambiguity, here's a little something that pushes back against some of my own thinking: ‘What do we do?’: Trump gains rattle Miami Dems The president is running ahead of his 2016 pace in Florida’s most populous county. That article allows you to make the authoritarian argument either way. And both arguments would be correct. On the one hand, some of President Toxic's support in Florida is NOT because people want to be authoritarian followers. It's because they don't want to be. If they left Cuba or Venezuela, it was to get away from oppressive and authoritarian regimes. I don't have a hard time understanding why these voters would be attracted to Trump as a symbol of a self-made business success and American prosperity. Even if they cut him some slack because Daddy made everything good for Baby Donald, who cares? On the other hand, authoritarian followers are exactly the kind of people Dean is saying would buy this bullshit about socialism. Biden is so NOT SOCIALIST that I frankly find it hard to believe Team Toxic is stupid enough to make such arguments. I'm glad they are. Because if they weren't screaming "Socialist witch!" at people like Harris, they could be making arguments that actually gain traction. That said, it makes sense that if you left Cuba or Venezuela, this nightmare resonates in a way it just doesn't for White suburban women in Wisconsin. The good news in this is that the articles about Biden and Florida, and Biden and Hispanics, may be more a localized issue than a national one. There's probably multiple causes of whatever is happening in Florida. But it does not appear to be happening in Arizona, where there are also lots of Hispanics. I checked, and here is a comparison of the 538 polling average in four states from Aug. 28th to today. I arbitrarily picked Aug. 28th because that's when the polling gap in Florida noticeably started to close: Florida: Biden leads + 2.8 today versus + 5.6 lead on 8/28, net loss of - 2.8 to Biden Pennsylvania: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 5.8 lead on 8/28, net loss of -0.7 to Biden Wisconsin: Biden leads + 7.0 today versus + 6.2 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden (so much for racist ranting helping President Toxic) Arizona: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 4.3 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden I'm tempted to say that whatever is going on in Florida is more likely local factors than national ones. That said, he's got issues with Hispanics. That's no surprise. It's also noteworthy that he is doing as well in Arizona as in Pennsylvania.

I think we're both saying mostly the same things. But we're coming at it from different angles, and with different emphasis. My emphasis right now, and I believe Dean's, is they need to be defeated. And they will understand defeat. Even if I'm right, that is not permanent. As you say, they could be back for more. Possibly worse, and as early as 2024. That's when @tassojunior suspects we may get President Nikki, and fascism. To their credit, I think part of why authoritarian followers understand defeat is that they are not stupid. The reason to follow President Toxic is he promised they would "win". If they didn't win, and they were badly defeated, some of them will do a rethink. The easiest solution to many of the problems would be a well-paying factory job. Period. What that says to them is that your fear isn't crazy. It's actually quite sane. It's real. We know that support for President Toxic in 2016 and 2020 was tied to being worse off, or living in places like Scranton. The difference was in 2016 jobs was a promise. In 2020 the lack of said jobs is a failure. But that is clearly part of what is driving all the fears of immigrants, The Wall, China, etc. And this is not a new thing, of course. The fact that we mostly had vibrant industries that fueled middle class jobs after World War 2 is partly why we had more (mostly) positive conformity. I'd argue there is a similar (mostly) positive in California today, built around the fact that the Silicon Valley economy actually does work well enough for lots and lots of people. But it does require a different set of ingredients than the steel worker economy. Part of the immediate problem is that talk of a Green New Deal does not help, and may hurt. It just pushes the fear buttons. Talk of the government doing anything may hurt more than it helps with some of these people. The "Liberate Michigan!" protests were the logical and tragic conclusion of a mindset that the government trying to keep you alive means the government is trying to destroy your way of life. The "Liberate Michigan!" folks of course did not see it that way. The bottom line is that in China people agreed with the government told them to do. Arguably, Xi and COVID-19 are a good example of "good" authoritarianism. I've read articles about how most Chinese accepted masks and fever clinics and strong-armed protocols as a sort of patriotic duty. Regardless, you had no choice. And it worked. Fewer people died. And the Chinese economy is growing again. If President Toxic had produced something similar, he would be re-elected. I think where I differ with you the most is the idea that they are going to be persuaded about anything. At least by you and me. I'm more optimistic that they may persuade themselves. And that will take time, and results. It is possible to reverse engineer what got them to where they are today, I think. Possible, but not easy. I posted that 12 minute video a bunch of times already. Paul Lewis, the journalist, totally nailed it. This was published in September 2016, when the polls were a toss up. It was a true "Holy Shit" moment for me. Everything you needed to know about why President Toxic could win, and did win, is in that video, thoughtfully articulated. Krazy Racist Kathy is what got the headlines. And smug liberals decided that messages like her's could not win. Oops! My feeling at the time, and still today, is that people didn't buy Krazy Racist Kathy's racism. Which is not to say that there isn't racism in America just under the surface. But people were clearly not trying to make a statement about how racist they are. It was about the jobs. As one organizer said, people understand they used to have an $80,000 a year job in a factory. And now they understand they have two jobs that pay them $30,000. The true "Holy Shit" moment for me was at 3:30 in that video. This is about my biases as a former community organizer. When you get to the point that people are having picnics, and singing folks songs about Donald The Hero, and Krazy Racist Kathy is holding the lyrics page, you are 97 % of the way there. All this happened before President Toxic was elected. It was building for years. So he's the symptom. Not the cause. How do you reverse engineer this? it will have to happen organically - just like how they got to where they are. They're not going to listen to a journalist from The Guardian. Or California liberals. Bernie tried to do what you are suggesting: give them something else to fear. He gave them corporate greed, and a global capitalist oligarchy that puts profits over people. It looked in 2016 like he might have persuaded a bunch of people in Michigan. But that didn't hold up in 2020. I've read a bunch of articles that say, for whatever reason, class consciousness just does not cut it any more. So people agree that Jeff Bezos is a rich fat cat and he ought to pay wealth taxes. But they didn't vote for Bernie or Warren, who were the ones proposing such things. There's a theory that they were friendlier to Bernie than Elizabeth because he looked and sounded more like them. All of these are riddles yet to be solved, I think. None of this suggests to me that the core of President Toxic's base, the authoritarian followers, are going to be easily persuaded about anything. I think they're going to grow older, and more bitter, and keep fighting. If Trump loses, more likely than not ex-President Toxic will start a tv show and be a sort of resistance leader. On some alternative Earth, what would work is to bring back those 5 million factory jobs lost while W. was President. The picture that reverse engineers the images in the videos above is a Democratic picnic in 2024. Maybe even one where the old White people and the Black church people picnic together. And the folk song would go like this: They said no one can do it. But Joe Biden can. The factory pays me 80 grand. Joe Biden - he's my man! Very simple and black and white. But the hardest thing in the world to do.

I'm not sure I agree with you that authoritarian tendencies are Mother Nature at her finest. The fact that you had to go to War Of The Worlds - fiction - to argue how authoritarianism helps us kind of makes my point. And I'm not even sure that's a good example. The only version I've seen is Spielberg's. In the end, might made right, basically. The aliens were winning. The reason the human race was saved is science, and luck. Earth turned out to be a COVID-19 sort of world for the aliens. Hitler. Mussolini. Mao. President Toxic. I just named four authoritarian leaders that clearly put their countries through hell. Trump did not really belong on that list until 2020. But he does now. I suspect most of the 200,000 dead would agree with me - if they could. Can you name four authoritarian leaders who clearly made their countries much better places? Some of what I read about Dean suggests that education helps. There are, of course, highly educated people who are great authoritarian leaders or followers. But we agree on the mindset. An intolerance for ambiguity. I like Dean's simple language. Daddy will take care of it. And make it black and white and easy to understand. That's the antithesis of the critical thinking that colleges profess to instill in people. It fits that many true Trumpians think of liberal arts colleges as these places where they try to make you Gay - or, worse, a liberal. (Oh my God. I went to a liberal arts college. I'm Gay. And liberal. Eek!) (I went on a hike last year with one of my nieces and her husband. He's from a blue collar family in Nebraska, but they met in college. So he has a foot in both worlds. I went off the rails with statements like I just wrote, about how young Trump supporters see college as a conspiracy to make everyone Gay and liberal. He laughed. But he told me that he has friends from high school who didn't go to college. And I'm pretty much in the ballpark of how they really see it.) Dean also seems to think that young people can solve the problem for now by voting in droves. I'm not sure if he thinks that because they are younger, or better educated. Both may be factors. That said, we agree that authoritarian followers will always be with us. And you can make good abstract arguments that in some situations they benefit society. What could possibly go wrong now? I actually think President Toxic, The Sequel could land us in World War 3 with China. In some ways it's reassuring that he doesn't like the military. It's not reassuring that he thinks he's smarter than them. And he's happy to use them as props. Mostly, he's the kind of stupid asshole who would get us in a war even though he didn't intend to, I think. If Biden wins, I can only imagine what horrors the MAGA types fear. Given eight years, Biden will be fully senile - if he isn't already. The Deep State will have us all in chains by then. We'll be working in Chinese factories by day, and being re-educated in mind control camps by not. I'm sure Hunter Biden wanting to make a few extra billion has something to do with it. I think it's also probably a given that certain times and environments breed authoritarian followers and conformity. It's not a coincidence, as you said, that during the Cold War there was greater conformity. And, I think related, most people trusted their government. If there is an argument to be made for Daddy knows best, or Generals know best, Ike was it. It fits into the picture that instead of nominating a suspected drunk and sex assaulter like Justice Rapist, and then mocking the women who claimed to be assaulted, Ike chose to appoint William Brennan. That would fit into a picture of how a more benevolent Daddy/General breeds conformity and consensus, and does try to make things right. It's an interesting question whether the thing MAGA people fear most is China, or broken factory towns, or liberal cultural norms that are destroying America, or Blacks invading suburbs, or something else. President Toxic is clearly throwing all the fear and hate and racism he can muster at The Wall to see what sticks. If there is an objective driver, the data suggest it is not the suburbs. It is those factory towns in Pennsylvania where an old way of life doesn't work as well as it used to. If China is in the picture, it's because of those lost jobs. Biden visits Michigan amid effort to rebuild ‘blue wall’ I think that article relates to this discussion. When I read it, it was music to my ears. It fits precisely with what I think Biden needs to do, particularly during the debates, to close the deal. And to throw in Lichtman, he'd argue that whether or not Biden does a particularly good job, people do get it. They're not stupid. Or, they're not all lemmings looking to follow a leader off the cliff. This election will be a test. The most obedient sheep will buy the black and white idea that Daddy Toxic did the best job ever beating COVID-19. And but for that, it was the best economy in the universe, ever. Even those War Of The World aliens couldn't build an economy better than the one Daddy Toxic built. If you're open to facts, and ambiguity, even before COVID-19 the Biden/Obama record on factory jobs in the Rust Belt was just better. It depends on whether you blame Obama or Biden for The Great Recession. If Americans did, they probably would not have been re-elected in 2012. So if you start from Summer 2009, the bottom of the jobs free fall, Obama and Biden created about 1 million factory jobs. It didn't come close to restoring the 5 million lost under W. But blame that on W., not Biden. In 2019, factory job growth in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio was at best flat. Some of those states lost a few thousand factory jobs in 2019. The best economy ever? Bullshit. Daddy was in it for Daddy. THREAT PERCEPTION AND TECH POLICY How to Jump-Start America—and Why That's another great article I've posted several times on Daddy's "Racism Is OK" website that is relevant, I think. Note how the author says it marries "threat perception" to tech policy. Interesting. The article is a conservative response to the left-of-center book Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream. It argues such a thing is possible. I'd add it will be easier if people can get back to the idea that, just like in World War 2, government can be helpful in priming the pump of basic science. (Assuming you value basic science, of course.) The conservative author differs with the liberals in regards to how this could happen. The liberals say that America's "all for one and one for all" spirit is enough. The conservative argues there needs to be a serious threat - like Hitler, or the Soviet Union. The question I wonder is what a new conformity would look like. How would we get to it? And would it be a good thing? Does China need to be the perceived threat? Would a new Cold War with China be unifying? Or could the existential threat by climate change? Or COVID-19 and it's sure to follow successors? Or could it be some combination of all three? Part of what I'm saying, implicitly, is that one way to deal with authoritarian followers is to become more like them. I don't meaning we all become hateful little Toxettes. I mean we try to find unifying - and probably centrist - ideas and also threats we can unify around, like we did before. As you say, there is nothing wrong with conformity if the goal is to have jobs, and make the trains run on time, and to get a vaccine that works and that people trust the government to deliver. This is partly why I'm sending money to Democrats I pretty much like least, like Bullock and Hickenlooper. The immediate goal is to win the Senate. But the bigger goal is to win the center, and try to build unity around that. For that to happen, it will happen gradually. Authoritarian followers understand defeat. But they also understand results. I'll close with one more article. It is all pretty much boilerplate pro-union propaganda. My presumption is that factory workers who are proving to be good authoritarian followers are doing it partly because they want to be good factory workers. That's not a bad thing. At tis point, rhetoric won't do. There will need to be results, which will take time. But if there is a new center and unity to be built, I think this is part of the recipe. Joe Biden and Richard Trumka: Put power back in workers’ hands Amid struggles, the labor movement faces an additional burden: a union-busting president

Howdy @lookin. It's great to read your post. I was not even aware that you posted here. Post more! I of course realize that I am the liberal Bloviator In Chief. But it's clear that the social media silos are hardened so much right now that there is almost no possibility of thoughtful discussion with MAGA conservatives. Even the most thoughtful ones tend to use facts and logic to defend anything President Toxic says or does. We all do that, of course. But this is extreme. Perfect example: a story that's really about President Toxic's ever-worsening relationship with the military over three years is being reduced by the blowhards to one incident in France. And rather than actually reporting on that, they lie about Bolton denying it, and use the official record as their cover. As if the official record was going to say, "Trump thinks the military are suckers and losers." What's the point of debate? I include that because it's also a perfect example of authoritarian followers. It's understandable that any Republican would perhaps pop a chub when given the opportunity to throw a dart at Hillary. But taking aim at the military? Dismissing stories about President Toxic not caring about bounties on US soldiers? How do you call yourself a conservative and just dismiss that? So, yeah, that's authoritarianism for you. I will repeat what I said in my blovia-post. My knowledge of Dean's ideas is superficial. So he probably has a detailed list of how to deal with authoritarian followers. Like you, I could not find it in a review or interview. That said, I think he has a bottom line. He said it in his interview with Amy: "They understand defeat." I think the timing of his book may have something to do with that. I can't speak for him. But I suspect he feels the best thing we can possibly do right now is defeat them. I don't think he sees authoritarian followers as "let's meet in the middle" types. Let's go to the extreme. Perhaps they're more like those loyal German soldiers you cited, whose response to disloyalty after Hitler was dead and the war was essentially over was to blow the brains out of "disloyal" soldiers, anyway. By the way, that's a good reason not to be around MAGA diehards right after they lose. Which is not to say they will then just go away. Dean says emphatically they won't. Another thing he mentioned that factors in is that there has been a massive shift of authoritarians to the Republican Party. That right there could explain a lot of shift that has happened. Maybe the shift of some Democrats to President Toxic has elements of racism, or sexism, or just plain anger. But the idea that President Toxic makes them feel like Daddy will take care of it, to paraphrase Dean, makes sense to me. It goes without saying that they won't be overly critical about judging Daddy's success. If that's right, and Biden wins, it won't be a good time to be a Republican. If there is such a thing as a "Biden Republican", they are by definition people repulsed by the MAGA conservatives, who respond favorably to a dominating leader like President Toxic. So it's hard for me to imagine that a tent full of losing Trumpians are going to quickly rush over to the Democratic tent to join their ex-Republican Never Trumper friends. More likely, they'll double down on their feelings of anger and loss and conspiracy. Since they are a minority, it is arguably better to have them in somebody else's tent, anyway. For now, my read of the timing and summaries of Dean's book is that he thinks we just need to defeat them. If we use the examples of Hitler and Mussolini, we know that defeating an authoritarian does change things. So at least for now I think the main value of Dean's book is to help us understand what we're dealing with. And why a majority of Americans have to speak up, vote, and defeat President Toxic. I'll make one criticism of Dean's approach that is academic. I bring it up mainly because it speaks to your point about why more people aren't interested in this. I understand why he keeps referring to this field as "science". And he uses the "science" lingo like "authoritarian followers" and "social dominants" and "double highs". Some of the terms confused me. I think he wants to ground this in the idea that this is as solid as 2 + 2 = 4. It's not some cult theory. That said, I think it also limits the ability to connect with people about this. President Toxic's supporters can explain away 200,000 dead Americans and say their guy did a great job with COVID-19. If they can do that, dismissing another egghead is a piece of cake. They won't be reading Dean's book. Nor will President Toxic. Bill Clinton's language for this kind of threat was that some people are "strong and wrong". That language makes sense. It may be better than gambling that grounding this is science will legitimize it to people who happily ignore science, anyway. Dean leans fairly heavily on science. That implicitly tells me Dean is NOT really speaking to authoritarian followers. He almost certainly knows they'll just dismiss him as another egghead Deep Stater. I've got my script written for after President Toxic loses. The bumper sticker is this: "You lost. Trump is a loser. L.O.S.E.R." That may sound bitchy. But I'm serious. That clip above is from right before President Toxic won in 2016. It's my go-to clip on explaining a few things as I see them. First, President Toxic won more based on hope than fear in 2016. Second, he won on winning. The most interesting part of that video to me is watching the faces of the crowd. It is like an orgasm. They love it. Dean used the phrase in one interview, "Daddy will take of everything." It's not much of a stretch to say, "Daddy is going to win big. Daddy is going to win for you." So I think there is some value in undeniable reality. When President Toxic loses in November, that means he didn't win. It means he's a loser. A big loser. It means they didn't win their factories back. It means they didn't win their jobs back. It means they have a bigger mess than when he was elected. It means they lost. Oh, and let's throw COVID-19 in as a bonus. Again, I'm aware this sounds bitchy, or maybe mean. But to quote Dean, verbatim, one things they understand is defeat. It makes sense to me that the first thing that has to sink in is defeat. You lost. Your guy lost. He's a loser. Loser. Loser is spelled L.O.S.E.R. Loser. Do you get it? Loser." I'm of course going overboard. But your over the top example of the German soldiers makes my point, I think. These folks are not going to have a personal Enlightenment. Many of them will never feel they were wrong. I was shocked in the late 1970's when I lived in Bavaria for a Winter to learn there were older Germans who STILL worshiped Hitler. The loyal German soldiers shot the innocent ones because they needed to still believe they were right. Since I'm going to Hitler, I need to qualify that Trump is not Hitler. And his followers are not Nazis. But many of them are authoritarian followers. They will not lose easily. In their minds, they may always feel they were right. After Charlottesville, Schwarzenegger said that right winger MAGA types should not be glorifying Nazi flags. He said he knows better than most, since he grew up in Austria. The Nazis he experienced were old, broken, and bitter men, he said. I think that's going to be part of the picture here, as well. My other guess is that authoritarian followers will decide for themselves whether and how they become un-followers. The flip side of Dean's assertion that lots of authoritarian followers migrated to the Republican Party because of President Toxic is that some of them may choose to migrate back when he is defeated. That may be a mixed blessing for Democrats. But I agree with you that once the shock of defeat wears off, it makes sense to have a nuanced approach. "You lost, and you deserved to lose" is a valuable thing to say, I think. But we need a lot more than that.

That Harry Enten tweet about the Florida poll speaks to my worst fear. Which is that it's the economy, stupid. And President Toxic somehow manages to add to his zero sum older base by pulling in younger voters. There's not a whole lot of evidence in the real world that such a thing is happening. As Enten said, beware of margins of error on small samples. But he's also right that this is not the only poll that shows Biden's weaknesses with Hispanics and some younger voters. My theory, which I have no real data to support, is that a segment of younger voters are just more worried about their jobs and incomes than about COVID-19. I've seen at least one poll that suggests that may be true in the Hispanic bucket, as well. If you only look at Hispanics, it was working age Hispanics that were leaning somewhat more to Trump. There's still a lingering "health v. wealth" debate going back to when the plague started. It doesn't make much sense to me. China is growing again. Other Asian countries and European countries took a bigger hit than China. But most of them took much less of an economic hit than the US has. I don't think it will be hard for Biden to connect the dots in debates and commercials that the biggest driver to the economy being so weak is that President Toxic's leadership on COVID-19 was weak and ineffective. I'm not very worried about race and safety and crime tipping the election to President Toxic. And I don't think he can just bullshit his way out of his mistakes, and a shitty economy. But if there is an argument to be made for how he wins, this is the path it would follow. Even if President Toxic can solve his math problem by replacing older 2016 voters who are no longer with us with some younger 2016 Clinton voters, there's another factor. Arguably the biggest unknown is what the Millennials and Gen Z will do. It's not a good sign if President Toxic is pulling more younger voters in Florida than he did running against Hillary. But the math remains the same. If a million new young people vote, it would of course be better for Biden if he gets 60 % of them, as opposed to 55 % of them. Either way, whether it's 600,000 Biden to 400,000 Trump, or 550,000 to 450,000, it's a hell of a lot more votes for Biden than for President Toxic. If youth turnout spikes, it's just going to be bad news for Republicans, period. Even if concerns about reopening the economy more quickly lead a slice of young voters to vote for Trump. Biden Doesn’t Really Have A Young Voters Problem That 538 article is three months old. And it's national polling data, not Florida. At least at that point, Biden was in the same ballpark with Hillary. Of course, Biden has never been the poster child for young Democrats. Not was Hillary, for that matter. But that article cites polls saying Biden led Trump by as much as 20 points with voters under 30, and maybe 6-12 points with voters aged 30-44. That Florida poll puts the cutoff at 45 years old. I think the real question is voters under 30. They have the potential to make this a slam dunk for Biden. Whether or not they actually do that is a whole different matter.

That's a bridge too far. President Toxic is not, and never was, a liberal Democrat. I've never read any real comprehensive analysis of his political donations, going back decades. I know he gave lots of money, and I know a bunch of the names he gave it to. My guess is he gave to both parties to do what any developer would do: wield influence. The easy apples to apples on this is racism. You can say anything negative you want about Biden and the crime bill. But you have to add that the majority of the Congressional Black Cacus was for it, crime was at records highs, crime went way down from that point forward, and to this day older Blacks like Rep. Clyburn insist there is no distance between Biden and the Black community on that issue. Meanwhile, Trump called for the death penalty for the kids involved in the Central Park Five case, and said loudly that Whites should hate "those people". He's not a liberal. He's a racist. I'm going to post this article in a different thread and comment on it more extensively. It's an honest and sober article from a true principled conservative magazine. One of the points they make is relevant in this context. After Trump Loss, ‘Deplorables’ Will Be The Democrats’ First Target Blame the president for leaving his core supporters at the mercy of the opposition's cultural and economic revolution. I'll take issue with some of the points in another thread. Like whether the "revolution" MAGA conservatives supposedly fear is real. But I think the overall analysis is correct. Both that President Toxic is likely going to lose. And that he only has himself to blame. In the context of what you said, he may not have been a liberal Democrat. But he was, sort of, a Democrat. He's never been wedded to any ideology, other than perhaps the ideology of money and power. That could have been a plus if he had chosen to do what Clinton did in the 90's. I will always suspect that one impactful difference between Clinton and Obama was that Obama was just more ideological. Maybe it's noble that he put liberalism before cutting deals, at least more than Clinton did. But it ended up being good for the country and the economy that Clinton compromised some of his principles and cut some deals. Since President Toxic has more or less no principles, he should have been able to easily trump Bill Clinton on triangulating. Alas, it was not to be. My one sentence explanation for it is President Toxic just has really shitty political judgment. He was the right hateful racist in the right place at the right time. Which is not to say all MAGA types are racists, or haters. And I will repeat that in 2016 I saw Trump as more hope ("Make America Great Again") than fear ("Jobs Not Mobs"). Maybe he'll surprise me and pull a rabbit out of a hat in November. But this feels more like very desperate people doing desperate things. Mostly, I figure President Toxic figured out in his reptilian way that it made sense to play a MAGA President on Reality TV. He is not wedded to MAGA conservatism, or any type of conservatism. I think it was all about power, money, and ego. My reason for bringing it up in this context is that if The American Conservative is right, which I think they are, President Toxic will do the same thing with his base that he has already done to the military. They'll go right under the bus. The only difference is that the military is smart enough to figure it out. And the MAGA base is largely clueless. Maybe, as you said, it's that the military is full of people with college degrees. And integrity, too. The biggest reason I might be wrong about what I said in the last paragraph is that ex-President Toxic may choose to become a cult-like figure among his dying and diminishing base. He could be facing slammer time. So that might be one reason for him to hold on to as much political power as he can. The types that read George Will and The American Conservative will try to reconstitute a more decent Republican Party, I'm sure. So that will be interesting to watch. I'll add one other concession to your stream of thought, which I suspect we'll both be happy about. I'm hardly the military's # 1 fan. And it's not so much the military, per se, as warmongers like Cheney and Rumsfeld. So the good news in this is that President Toxic has slowed the military down, in two ways. First, he's made it clear that the Republican Party isn't the "pro-war" party it seemed to look like, at least to me, when we decided to go bomb the shit out of Iraq. Second, as AB Stoddard pointed out in a recent anti-Trump rant, it will take a very long time just to undo the damage President Toxic has done to our global position. So we're hardly in a position to start World Word III. Which is not to say that's what the military wants. I don't think they do, of course. Given all the challenges we have, one thing I hope we won't have to worry about for a while is the Cheneys and Rumsfelds of either party war mongering.

Good point. What I decided several months back is that I was tired of the mind-numbing experience of these yammering online back and forths with conservatives. As in this instance, no matter what President Toxic says, they will defend it. So there's no point. I like intellectual masturbation more than almost anyone. But the yammering is more like using a catheter to induce mild pain, rather than using a well-oiled hand to induce pleasure. You and I mostly see things similarly. And this one I just don't get. I'll go with "neanderthal NeoLibs" or "warmongers" and leave it at that. There is some thread of logic with you and Baby Glenn and Matt Taibbi, among others, that seems to say that if it's coming from the NeoLibs or warmonger class, it must be wrong. It's not the same as President Toxic's Deep State. And I certainly agree with you that warmongers and the military industrial complex and the corporate media are all powerful interest groups that are healthy to fear and keep a close eye on. To me, though, Baby Glenn and Taibbi have done a lot to discredit the particular forms of journalism they claim to represent. Their arguments don't hold together. And they are both sloppy with facts. Let's just agree to disagree on this one. We've both made our points. So I'll take it in another direction. The military itself seems to have already weighed in on this. You were the one who pointed out that for a very right-of-center group of people, support for Biden is off the charts. In theory, that could be because they love The Green New Deal. In fact, the logical explanation is that many, maybe most of them believe what we're hearing now. If you believe the story, they've been hearing and talking about this for years. Watergate itself was, as break-ins go, a relatively petty crime that Nixon was not personally involved in as a burglar. Not going to a cemetery is not even a crime. And if you isolate it to that one thing (either the cemetery in France, or the cemetery in the US where anonymous people think President Toxic dishonored his son to Gen. Kelly's face), this is arguably not a big deal. If you believe the anonymous sources, Gen. Kelly himself took President Toxic's words about his dead son to be an awkward comment about the volunteer nature of the military. Like Watergate, this seems to have become a big fucking deal because it speaks to something much bigger and seriously wrong with the President of the United States. And I say it's a big fucking deal because before The Atlantic broke the news, the attitudes described seem to have impacted the way members of the military and veterans are voting. If they saw President Toxic the way he sees himself, he'd probably be pulling as much support as any other Republican President - if not more. This article from 2004 does not give clear poll data on active military. But it does state that support for W. was strong among active troops. And that they viewed W. himself more favorably than his conduct of the Iraq War, which the military itself was starting to sour on. The closest I could get to seeing how the military voted is a CNN exit poll saying veterans favored W. 57/41, whereas people who hadn't served were a toss up: Kerry 50/W. 49. A Gallup poll from June 2008 shows McCain slaughtering Obama among people who served in the military, 56 to 34. That actually exceeded the partisan registration split among veterans, which was 47 % Republican/39 % Democrat at that time. So this data suggests that, not surprisingly, military voters and veterans probably tend to support one of their own, or leaders who they feel have their back like W. What's happening now strongly suggests the troops do not "love" President Toxic, as he seems to feel they do. Wonder why? Desperately Derailing Donald The effort to stop President Trump is growing comical. I find that article from Trumpian American Greatness comical. It's all well and good for Trump propagandists to hammer Biden, the corporate media, and various other segments of the vast left-wing conspiracy. But last time I checked, the military was not a part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. What's interesting as a liberal outsider looking into the so-called "conservative" tent is that the MAGA types really don't seem to give a shit about the military, or their sentiments, at all. Large chunks of the article above could have been written by Baby Glenn, who is certainly NOT a fan of the US military. There's similar shitty reporting. The article above, just like Baby Glenn, cites Bolton as a primary source who "denied" the story. He actually confirmed some elements of the story (mostly about McCain), said the President is not credible, said he did not hear Trump use the alleged words "losers" and "suckers" in the meeting he was in, and offered that if President Toxic did say those words, it was "despicable". That's not a denial. It's understandable to me that Baby Glenn's sympathies don't go out to the military. But what about MAGA conservatives? Isn't a strong military supposed to be what they are about? This military story is an octopus that covers the entire Toxic Trump Presidency in all kinds of facets. Including, for example, the allegation that President Toxic hasn't lifted a bone spur to object that Putin put bounties on American soldiers. So for American Greatness to dismiss all this as a desperate and comical lie seems to be a slap in the face to the military, which conservatives are supposed to respect - I thought, at least. Again, these people suck at facts and actual journalism. But if they want to talk about "Trump's current polling trajectory", they might want to note that he is deep in the shitter with the military. And that is unprecedented. Neither the tone nor content of this article will help. It goes along for the ride with the idea that all this concern about President Toxic's disregard for military lives and disrespect for military service is just comical. Try explaining that to the military, if the journalists and the polls are right. They may not see it as very funny at all. Again, I'm just a liberal looking into the conservative tent. It seems like there's a war going on in there. If they are this busy throwing bombs and barbs at each other, how do they plan to win?

First, I'll take that as a compliment. You don't really have a rebuttal. So our main strategy here seems to be to again change the subject to something else, like DC cops shooting another Black guy. The closest you get to the specific content of the claims is to dismiss them all as the sort of thing "totalitarian" countries do. I heard Bernstein say in an interview today that of the 200 or so stories Woodward and him wrote on Watergate, almost all of them involved anonymous sources. As the story played out, more and more of what had been sourced anonymously went on the record by some named person. We of course only learned the identity of the most famous anonymous source after his death. Since you won't address any of the content, other than call it totalitarianism, address the standard of using anonymous sources. As Bernstein said, it means in practice you confirm it at least twice, and often three or more times - all, of course, anonymously. We now have four different news outlets, including Fox, citing God knows how many anonymous sources. Are you saying that you are opposed to this? Should we go back and void Watergate from history? And if there's a difference, what is it?