stevenkesslar

Survey Of Texas Voters So this is just another post about poll data, in this case about Texas. The fact that it's a toss up between Biden and President Toxic is interesting in and of itself. But I'll focus on other data is probably way stickier than the horse race poll about where Texas and America is headed. There is almost no identifiable allegiance to any particular party anymore. The only segment that identifies strongly with a party is Black voters, who are 66 % Democrats. Among Whites, a very bare majority of exactly 50 % call themselves Republicans. @tassojunior keeps saying "Independent" does not necessarily mean centrist anymore. He's right. My guess is a lot of the Black and Hispanic Independents are younger Texans who voted for Bernie. Even more encouraging news for my party is that when asked who they plan to vote for in Texas State House races, 49 % say Democrat. That included overwhelming majorities of Hispanics and Blacks. 48 % say Republican, including 56 % of all Whites. I'm not even sure that makes Texas a "red" state anymore. Sen. Cornyn is doing about 10 points better than his Democratic opponent. Which is to say he's also doing about 10 points better than President Toxic. I'm not watching every Senate race. But in the ones I am watching, Trump and the Republican Senate candidate are usually within a few points of each other. So this will be interesting to see. In 2016 there was no ticket splitting between President and Senate. Every state that voted for President Toxic elected a Republican Senator. In 2018 it was almost the same - all "red" states elected a Republican - but there were a few exceptions, like Jon Tester and Joe Manchin. In terms of having governing majorities that can actually do things, I think this matters a lot. If Texas votes for Biden and Cornyn, and Montana votes for Trump and Bullock, it suggests there is some kind of center that can potentially work with a Democratic President to get things done. This poll says 10 % of Blacks in Texas will vote for President Toxic. I'm going to assume that if Blacks in Texas are leaning one way ideologically, it's slightly to the right - just because it's Texas. So the Rasmussen poll that says that it's a toss up in Pennsylvania because President Toxic has 27 % of the Black vote there just makes no sense to me. Maybe it's true. But I find it hard to believe Blacks in Pennsylvania are about three times likelier to support President Toxic than Blacks in Texas. Nobody knows who will vote in this election, and how they will vote. As a Democrat, I think it's better to assume that President Toxic may have a big lead in initial returns. He'll declare that's because he won. As mail-in ballots are counted, the chorus will be, "Fraud, fraud, fraud." That said, Texas suggests it doesn't have to be that way. In the July party primary run-off, 43 % voted in person early, 42 % voted in person on Election Day, and 11 % voted absentee. In the Presidential election, 53 % plan to vote in person early. 20 % plan to vote in person on Election Day, and 15 % plan to vote absentee. Twice as many Democrats will vote absentee as Republicans - 22 % to 11 %. Meanwhile, 26 % of Republicans plan to vote on Election Day, compared to 15 % of Democrats. So voters clearly have gotten the memo. 4 in 5 won't wait until Election Day to vote. No surprise, the 20 % who do plan to vote on Election Day is slanted to Republicans. My impression is that most states count the votes received early before Election Day. It seems they are often released to the media as soon as the polls close. So one big variable is whether those absentee ballot voters get their ballots in early. But, in theory at least, Biden could have a small lead right out of the gate in Texas. The 68 % of Texans who say they plan to vote before Election Day either in person or absentee lean toward Biden. So President Toxic could end up winning Texas only after the Republican-leaning votes cast on Election Day are counted. Again, I think 100 % of Democrats should be in a panic and prepare for the absolute worst. But it's possible that President Toxic could be losing in some states that maybe could be turned around as more ballots are counted. There's one other thing I find interesting about this poll that is an abstract point about ideology and mandates. I'll return to my pal Alan Lichtman. His core belief is that every Presidential election is simply a thumbs up or thumbs down referendum on the performance of the party in power. If we don't like what we got, we'll try something else. For 9 election in a row, that theory has been a good enough way for him to predict in advance who would win. If you buy that, it's hard to buy the idea that elections are "mandates" for conservative this or liberal that. Reagan didn't win in 1980 because of a mandate for conservatism. He won because people decided Carter sucked as President. Same with Obama in 2008. He won because people were sick of W. and Iraq and The Great Recession. That said, it's hard to argue there wasn't such a thing as "The Reagan Revolution". Or that Reagan didn't kick off an era of governing conservatism in US politics. But I think the two theories can be reconciled. I've looked at poll data for Reagan's eight years, and Clinton's eight years. The poll data suggest to me that voters became more conservative AFTER Reagan was in power, not before. Same with Clinton. There's poll data that suggests over the course of eight years Clinton nudged both the average Democrat and the average Republican to the left. That would explain why W. could only get elected right after Clinton if he ran as a "compassionate conservative". In some alternative Earth, maybe compassionate conservatism could have been a winning ideology. But in the world we live in, it never really was. Never Trumper Republican Stuart Stevens blames that on W. "having to be" a war President. That's debatable. He didn't "have to" invade Iraq. I've posted charts like this one, which measures public trust in government, a bunch of times. It correlates with what I said above about shifts in ideology, or "mandates". My belief has changed on this, partly due to Lichtman. I now believe that if there is a mandate, it is basically a mandate to "get shit done". That's hazier in an era like now when many people see the government as The Deep State. But I'm with Lichtman. Even most of those people expect results. Not all of them are authoritarian followers who believe that Daddy will always do the right thing, even if means 200,000 dead Americans. So it's no coincidence that the two Presidents who poll data says most moved the ideological needle in my lifetime - Reagan to the right and then Clinton to the left - are also the only two Presidents who left office having restored a significant amount of trust in government. In my crude language, people believed they got shit done. Most people did not feel that way about Obama. 2010 and 2014 were not examples about how he sold America on liberalism, and Obamacare. I'd argue the single most important factor to explain all that was ........................................... wait for it ...................................... it's the economy, stupid. David Axelrod privately predicted 2010's shellacking early in 2009. Because he knew Democrats would have to own, and pay for, the economic free fall they did not cause. That chart above could be taken as a sufficient explanation for why Hillary was swimming against the tide in 2016. And why President Toxic will lose in 2020. The only good news in that chart is that, hopefully, we've hit bottom. And this is as low as trust in government can go. Back to Texas. What jumps out at me is that if Biden does win Texas, which is possible, this explains why. It won't be a mandate for anything, other than change and some other President who will do the job better. It's of course more complicated than that. Texas is moving toward a tipping point. The last Democrat to win Texas was Jimmy Carter. Biden winning Texas would be as much of a reversal as Reagan winning what used to be the Democratic Deep South. That said, if a mandate for progressive politics was building in Texas, like Bernie was banking on, he would be the Democratic nominee. Part of my read of Super Tuesday is that people were almost desperate to vote for someone - anyone - who they thought could actually just be competent in the job. Biden hasn't really closed the deal on his own competence, either. Even if Biden does win Texas, it suggests that it has very little to do with a "liberal victory" or a "mandate for liberalism". I believe it would be a mandate to get shit done. And if Team Biden can't manage to get shit done, 2022 will be 2010 all over again. I'm reading that conclusion into these numbers. But that is what they say to me.

Speaking of which, Mayor Pete is on the transition team, and he'll very likely be a Cabinet Secretary. Pete and Chasten are among the stars of 2020. That makes me proud to be an American, too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There goes Joe being all touchy again. If you don't ask about it, I won't tell.

I actually found it rather charming. Let me slip into something more comfortable. We can be like two queens having a nice long chat.

@AdamSmith noted in a different thread that history has a way of turning on itself, in response to my point about 2004 and the "Swiftboating" of John Kerry. I'm continuing this here, since I didn't realize there was a thread on this subject. Here's another weird turn of history: Evidence piles up that the phony Atlantic story about Trump and troops was a slime job to boost Biden It's a thoughtful enough article if you care to read the whole thing. Maybe about 20 % of it reiterates that that this obviously can't be true, because people around President Toxic say it's not true. The other 80 % is about how this is all part of a .......................................... wait for it ......................................................................... vast left-wing conspiracy. Who'd a thunk that if we waited a generation, right wing rags like American Spectator would be repurposed as the new and conservative Hillary Clinton? This is a perfect metaphor for Trumpism. Because the argument collapses on itself. It's fine to argue that The Atlantic is one of the vague dark forces out there. But they might want to at least mention that three other major media outlets have confirmed the general thrust of the story. And, yeah, granted. Two of the other three are no doubt part of the vast left wing conspiracy. So why bother with those facts? But who'd a thunk that, nowadays, even Fox News is part of the vast left wing conspiracy?

There's something else I like about the idea, as an intermediate term political strategy. I like the idea that the message it sends certain (Tea Party/Trumpist) Republicans is, "Fuck off. You have no say. Shut the fuck up. What you think doesn't matter. In other words, fuck off." Now let me walk that back. Some parts of the US political system are clearly designed to foster moderation and protect the interests of minorities. We know, of course, that the Founding Fathers weren't particularly interested in "minority rights" if that meant their slaves. But smaller states having the same number of Senators who serve six years terms, and the Electoral College, fall in this category. So does the filibuster. In theory, it makes sense to say if we're going to make some big change like Medicare or Obamacare it ought to be able to get 60 votes. All that depends on the notion that compromise and getting things done is a priority. Or, it depends on the notion that the goal is the opposite. We're just looking for ways to obstruct and get nothing done. So I'll give a short rendition of a few pieces of history that I think most Democrats would agree with. Some Republicans blame Bill Clinton for poisoning the well. If they argue that Bill Clinton's cock poisoned the well, I'd agree with them. If we're talking politics, they're dead wrong. It's the opposite, I think. Clinton was a master at making offers Republicans could not refuse. When Kasich and other Republicans (Morning Joe) talk wistfully about that time like it was a Golden Age, I agree. A lot of important shit got done. It involved lots and lots of compromises. So my vote for Asshole Of The Decade who poisoned the well back then goes to Newt Gingrich. I view Tea Party the same way. Democrats can say that Mitch McConnell was already vowing complete obstruction the night Obama won. Republicans can say Obama was arrogant and he sucked at schmoozing or even tolerating people who disagreed. My view is all you have to do is follow the laws. Immigration reform passed 68-32 in the US Senate in 2013. Meaning McConnell didn't vote for it, but he didn't obstruct it. Obama said publicly that he didn't like some parts of the law, but that's what compromise was about. He wanted to sign it. It died in the House. And that was all on the Tea Party's Freedom Caucus. That's fact. The theory I buy is that by around that time Republicans like Boehner were starting to understand that they could no longer control their base. One Republican Senator expressed it this way: "We used to be the party of the Chamber of Commerce. Now we're the truck driver party." My personal breaking point was Justice Rapist. By that point I'd heard a mouthful of attacks by supposedly sensible Republicans against "RINOs" like Kasich and McCain, some of which I've posted here. I know why Justice Rapist was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Having fought good fights for good laws on Capitol Hill, I saw that nomination as a complete abortion of both process and truth. They lied, they lied, and they lied. In any other Presidency, they would have withdrawn the nominee for another conservative. So when I say "Fuck off", I don't mean the Kasichs and the McCains - or the Republican Govenors like DeWine or Hogan. I mean the Toxic Trump wing of the Republican Party. After what I feel is decades of lies and obstruction, I don't give a flying fuck what they think, or how they feel. Even though I feel like I'm right, I actually don't even give a shit if I'm right. The # 1 rule of organizing to me is, "the action is in the reaction". These assholes spent several decades getting me (and, I think, the majority of Americans) to this point. So if they don't like it, they only have themselves to blame. This is not a good political argument to make to moderates. And there is no assurance that we can steamroll who I view as the assholes in the room. But I've eliminated working with them and compromise as an option. I'd rather take the risk of trying something else. And I'll mention in closing. The idea that it's okay to steamroll most Republicans, including ones like Kasich, through things like ballot initiatives makes more sense to me given the nature of this fight. To me, it is a fight for democracy itself. Moving to a popular vote could in fact have some unintended negative consequences. But the idea that the candidate who gets 2 million more votes than the other one is the winner is not an obviously bad idea. I think it's actually important to let Republicans know that the lesson we've learned is there is just no point in working with or talking to some of them. The ones who want unity and compromise - like Kasich, and Hogan - are quite capable and quite good at letting people know that's the kind of Republican they are.

I assume you mean distance. Completely off topic, when I read "disremove" my mind immediately flashed to my favorite scene in The Fighter. Leo and Bale deserved their Oscars just for this scene. ""I've been doing this over 15 years. She comes in, disrespects me." "She don't mean no disrespect." Anyway, I agree. I don't mean history no disrespect, either.

Well, I wouldn't have posted it if I thought it was easily disprovable bullshit. After all, that would be terribly unfair to a decent and truthful man like President Trump. Actually, the reason not to do it is that this kind of thing can blow up in the face of the ones who started it. Which is what's so interesting about this. Presumably the people who started it are some of the most respected military leaders in the country. I'd love to find out whether The Atlantic went to them, or they went to The Atlantic. I suspect it's some of both. General Kelly's silence is deafening. All the denials from the Likely Liars like Pence and Pompeo only makes the fact that Kelly is not denying it more obvious. And if President Toxic expects that Kelly will do the valiant thing and tell the truth, which will clear President Trump's highly respected name, why is he trashing Kelly? The shit he is saying about Gen. Kelly actually CONFIRMS that he is more than capable of trashing military leaders his bone-spurred little brain has zero respect for. As much as I respect him, I'll reiterate that I'm not that hopeful that a conservative thought leader like George Will can purge the Republican Party of its self-destructive factions when President Toxic loses. But conservative military leaders? That's a different thing. Mattis weighed in already, publicly, in June. But his words come to mind. Be nice to every President in the room. But also have a plan to kill him. That's what this feels like to me. This could go on for the next two months. At some point, maybe Kelly will speak up. Or maybe someone else will. The longer Kelly waits, the more it sets him up to say, "Yes, it's true. The President said that about my son. But I felt I had an obligation to be silent out of respect for the Constitution, which mandates that the military is subordinate to the people." That's a twofer. He tightens the rope around President Toxic's neck for his contempt for the military. And he also reminds people that President Toxic has contempt for The Constitution, too. Biden may not have dementia, but I'm beginning to think I do. My recollection is that the Swift Boaters killed Kerry's campaign, and that happened in September. In fact, according to Wikipedia, they started the ads on August 4, 2004. And the attacks and rebuttals on Kerry's military record ran through August, culminating in the RNC in late August/early September. General Election 2004: Bush v. Kerry I'd take a glance at the 2004 Bush/Kerry horse race polls. When I looked at it I immediately assumed that the huge spike in early September was the "Swift-boating" of Kerry. But that's wrong. Like I said, that started in early August. What moved the dial was the RNC. It was a tie through most of August. Right after the RNC W. opened up an 8 point lead. It makes sense. Nicole Wallace keeps saying they knew that if 2004 was a referendum on W. or Iraq, he would lose. They had to make it a choice election. The RNC allowed them to do that. I have a few other reasons for bringing this up, one of which is obvious. That did not just happen in 2020. If President Toxic is going to make this a choice election - like between "Jobs And Mobs" - the RNC was his shot. If he was going to surge into the lead, like W. did in 2004, we would know by now. It just didn't happen. Poor decent, honest Donald! Why can't a nice fella like him ever catch a break? My biggest fear all year long is that 2004 was the precedent for 2020. An unpopular President loses the election but wins because of the Slavery Is Good Electoral College. Then even though his awful record makes clear he should lose his bid for a second term, in my mind, somehow he barely manages to win re-election. That could happen. But if you look at the 2004 horse race, there's no comparison. First, before the clock started W. was at one point (right after 9/11) viewed more favorably than any modern President. Second, all through Spring and Summer 2004 the race was close, and who was in the lead flip flopped - just like Kerry on Iraq, I guess. Third, the fact that he surged right after the RNC suggests that a decisive chunk of America was actually open to hearing what the incumbent President had to say. None of that is happening in 2020. And time is running out for President Toxic. Maybe we'll end up thinking of this as the Osama Bin Laden election. A stealthy and capable military came in with guns loaded. They took out a bad guy. It was a team effort. But we'll never quite know who took the kill shot. Poor decent, truthful Donald. Can't a good-hearted fella ever catch a break?

That right there is what I worry about. As well as Putin. Door to door, face to face GOTV is probably a no no in the areas that are strongest for Democrats. Meanwhile, in these small towns and rural areas that's where it's probably safest. Apparently President Toxic's followers are doing a ton of door to door right now. I'm assuming they are looking under every rock to find non-voters they can get registered to vote for President Toxic. So there's all the normal GOTV stuff, like you said, and then all these other huge unknowns. And it could work to the Democrats' disadvantage. I have read things that say some of this could bite Republicans in the ass, too. If people can and do vote by mail, it doesn't matter how big a mess the polling places are for that voter. Meanwhile, rural and small town polling places could have a huge problem with staffing. That said, I assume Trump volunteers will try to make sure all those polling places where it will be primarily President Toxic voters are staffed. I'll be broken record. This is why I'm sending money. I think this year GOTV will involve: Did you get your ballot? Did you vote? Did you return your ballot? Did you make sure it was received? Whether it's campaign staff or volunteers, that's what I hope people in the swing states are doing. In a certain sense, this is a campaign volunteer's dream. The frustrating thing I can recall as a campaign volunteer is calling people we knew were supporters who we knew had not voted yet. Often enough I called them multiple times over a numbers of days, or even over a number of hours on Election Day, to nag them to go vote. That will happen in 2020, too. But this year there's an opportunity to say, "If you wait until Election Day, it will be a mess, and unsafe. And if you wait to vote by mail, they'll try to prevent your vote from being counted. If you want to dump Trump, you absolutely have to vote now." I think it's to the Democrat's advantage to just be in sheer panic for two months. Until we're screaming vote, vote, vote in our sleep. Team Toxic has got the memo. They'll vote. What I seriously doubt is whether they can find a million or more new or disaffected voters like they seem to have done in 2016. So if both sides push turnout and are successful, Democrats win simply based on the numbers. Since President Toxic's base is older, that frankly means a chunk of his voters from 2016 have gone to the Godly eternal place that President Toxic will personally never be welcome in. And other than people who were too young to vote in 2016, everyone else - by definition - is not among the most fervent of Trumpets. If they were, they're already registered and they will walk through glass to vote. So they may have a turnout problem of their own. One of my brothers lives in a small town. He's right of center. He voted for President Toxic in 2016. He could be a poster child for the voter who wasn't in love with President Toxic, but thought he stank less than Hillary - who was also too liberal for his taste. By 2017 his disappointment was already clear. He was already saying Trump won't be re-elected. He's 10 years older than me and he's basically not leaving his home, even though he's hardly in a COVID-19 hot spot. So my guess is he may not vote. Or he may vote for Biden. I'll give him a nudge on that next month. Although he lives in Illinois so it doesn't really matter. I suspect there are lots and lots and lots of people like him. So despite all the loud noise from the True Toxic Trumpets, I personally don't buy that they will top what they did in 2016. They may not even match it. All that said, I think everyone should assume everything I said in the last few paragraphs is wrong.

I don't disagree. When I Googled it, I got this definition. It works well enough for me. pop·u·lism noun a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. I'd split the difference and say President Toxic's political success has elements of both populism and authoritarianism. And whichever one you call it, the US is hardly unique. It's also probably true that certain historical periods favor these types of movements and governments, since they are reactions to the established order and elites. I wouldn't say Hitler and Mussolini were simply populists. I would say they were classic authoritarians. We could have a debate about where populism stops, and authoritarianism begin. But let's not. Most of the politicians I've been closest to were populists. They based their appeal on being against elites and for ordinary people - "the little guy". They were not authoritarian. The opposite. Populists like Paul Wellstone were all about people power and organizing and empowerment of community leaders. You can argue there are elements of that in what President Toxic did to get elected. But I wouldn't compare the two in a million years. Paul would never say that his power was based on people that would still support him if he took someone out to the barn in Minnesota and shot him. I guess that's the Farmer Labor "prairie populism" equivalent of Trump and 5th Ave. The value in Dean's ideas to me are they explain why some people of both parties or no party were attracted to President Toxic. And will seemingly follow him blindly. 2020 will be a test of this. In 2016 you can explain a lot of it away by saying people were hurting. And it was precisely those people that decided to roll the dice, hoping he would make things better. Since 2016 the economy mostly improved. It didn't help most Republicans in the midterms. But at least President Toxic had that. If he wins in a recession after bungling COVID-19, it suggests that America is in far worse shape than I thought. I don't like to go there in my mind. But what it suggests is that we're moving into Hitler and Mussolini territory. You have a huge group of people who are so captured by an authoritarian figure that they'll follow him blindly, regardless of the consequences. I didn't feel that way in 2016. I will if he wins in 2020. Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ That article is somewhat off topic. I'm posting it because as I was reading it some sentences jumped off the page. Because they were exact matches with what I was reading yesterday about President Toxic's supposed "Social Dominant" leadership style. In addition to the words "suckers" and "losers", these are perfect examples: There's other psychological words you can use to describe this. Like narcissism, or lack of empathy. But the authoritarianism Dean talks about fits in perfectly. Socially dominant types like President Toxic see the world as a dog eat dog place where you either win and dominate, or you are a loser. So if your are a dead soldier, you didn't dominate, and you didn't win. So you're a loser. There's really just no other category. Smart people want to dominate. And that means making lots of lots of money. But, no. You wouldn't go into the military. You certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice your life. (Sorry. After I added the quotes it's double spacing everything). This also might explain the mystery about why President Toxic at least used to have a hard-on for generals. I've always thought the logical (or hopeful) explanation is that even a narcissist like Trump knows he needs experts around him, especially on things like national defense. And generals tend to be hawks. Implicit in that is that President Toxic respected these people. But if these statements are true, the explanation that Trump is surrounding himself with very smart and hawkish people he respects doesn't fit all that well. He doesn't respect these people. Because if they were smart, they should be out making fortunes. Not serving their country. Let alone getting killed for their country. So an alternative logical explanation is that President Toxic is a classic authoritarian. He expects obedience. Period. That's probably what he expected from his Generals. They are supposed to be good at following orders. If you buy what the author says, which is easy to believe, like Bob Barr and other Cabinet members they were supposed to be personally loyal to Trump. Not the United States of America. This would explain why President Toxic had a love affair with Generals, and then a falling out. If you buy this, which I do, it really is very scary stuff.

I agree with you that those numbers about people who have made up their mind should be taken with a grain of salt. I know I beat the YouGov poll of Independents to death. But I found it funny that something like 93 % of them said they'd made up their mind. And when asked who they were voting for, I think 13 % said undecided. Of course, they could pretty much know and just not want to tell. My conclusion from the poll is that maybe 20 % of Independents are persuadable. At least 4 in 10 say Biden is not mentally fit and would make America less safe. A slightly higher percentage (high 40's) say President Toxic is not mentally fit, is the cause of the chaos, and/or will make America more violent if re-elected. So probably at least 8 in 10 Independents have ruled out at least one candidate. The issue with some of that 80 % is simply whether they vote. I've been reading every article I can find from the smartest political hacks in the room. Every one says, no surprise, that BOTH GOTV and persuasion matter. That said, more than ever, it's all about the base. The fact that we have unprecedented issues about getting a ballot, returning a ballot, and making sure the ballot is counted only makes that more true. There is something quite different than 2016. It's a factor that proved decisive in 2016, according to my buddy Karl Rove and me. I hope it proves decisive again. A majority of voters will cast ballots in 2020, just like they did in 2016, holding an unfavorable view of President Toxic. In 2016, a majority also had an unfavorable view of Hillary. In 2020, however, a majority DO NOT hold an unfavorable view of Joe Biden. He's very close to having a majority who hold a favorable view of him. That could be decisive. I recently posted the Rove 2016 video on a different post, so I won't repost. But Rove said that 2016 exit polls said that people who had negative opinions of both President Toxic and Hillary threw the election to Trump. The 15 % who said neither was qualified favored Trump 66/15. The 18 % who said they viewed both unfavorably favored Trump 47/30. Election 2016 Favorability Ratings Election 2020 Favorability Ratings You can check out the difference in favorability ratings yourself. I read statements earlier this year that Biden has about as wide a lead on favorability with Trump in 2020 as Clinton did in 2016. So, really, he has no advantage. That makes no sense to me. The key thing about Hillary is that the Republican Death Star was fully loaded with really stinky shit way back in 2014. And they spent two very shit-filled years smearing shit all over America. When it was done they done a really shitty job. Meaning they covered Hillary, and America, with shit. So there was never a day in Fall 2016 - NOT ONE DAY - when anything close to a majority of voters viewed Hillary favorably. In fact, EVERY DAY in Fall 2016 somewhere from 50 to 60 % of voters viewed Clinton unfavorably. The final average on Election Day was Clinton 54.4 % unfavorable, President Toxic 58.5 % unfavorable. Oddly, according to the exit polls, the fact that she was only slightly less disliked than President Toxic cost her the election, because that subset held their nose and voted for change. The massive shit operation probably also was intended to, and did, discourage Blacks and progressives who weren't wild about Hillary anyway to just not vote. We know that Sweet Rudy and Poor Brad tried the same thing in 2018 and 2019. They had an even bigger Death Star, loaded with even more and higher quality Grade A Stinky Shit. Hell, they were even importing superb, really exceptionally rare shit from Ukraine. Somehow, President Toxic got impeached over it. Alan Lichtman will tell you that now that's the extra seventh nail in Trump's coffin, just in case history fucks up and the sixth one - the shitty economy - isn't enough. So right now Biden has 48.3 % favorable and 46.6 % unfavorable in the RCP averages. President Toxic has 41.9 % favorable and 55.6 % unfavorable. It's a given that some people who don't think President Toxic is a good person will vote for him anyway. But this is different than 2016. Maybe the public will sour on Biden over the next few months. But we know President Toxic has thrown everything his racist, hateful, poor little mind can think of at Biden. There's another great line I love from Karl Rove that applies here. He said something like this about his strategy to get W. elected in re-elected: "In 2000, we had to convince people that it was the best of times. So it was time for a change. In 2004 we had to convince people that we're going through a rough patch. So it's a bad time to switch horses." You could reformulate what Rove said into something like this: In 2016 a lot of people didn't like Trump, or Clinton, or the way things were. So they voted for Trump, because they got change. In 2020 a lot of people like Biden. But they don't like Trump, or the way things are. So they'll vote for Trump, so things stay the same. The last sentence doesn't make much sense to me. But that is what President Toxic has to do. He tried to make it so that at least a majority of Americans viewed Biden unfavorably. But it hasn't worked, at least so far. If this is another change election, and the candidate who is offering change is one people actually like more, it's just bad news for President Toxic. Even if people change their mind, which they will, Biden has a better chance of benefiting from it. One more set of numbers that aligns, and seem like bad news for President Toxic. This year, there's very tight alignment between the RCP average favorability ratings, and who people say they'll vote for. As of today, 48.3 % view Biden favorably, and 49.6 % plan to vote for him. 41.9 % see President Toxic favorably, and 42.6 % plan to vote for him. It people who view each candidate favorably stick with that candidate, President Toxic is fucked. If this is like 2016, and the remaining 8 % who presumably don't view either candidate favorably break to Biden, President Toxic is even more fucked.

Dead heat: Trump erases Biden’s 8-point lead in Pennsylvania as black voters abandon Democrat So that headline is an eye catcher. I think it may help explain what's happening in Pennsylvania, after you dig into the numbers. Bottom line: I think it's a crock of shit. Before I say why, let me just post a head shot of the White conservative who wrote this article. He looks like a nice enough guy. But this is what you can call my privileged White liberal problem with White conservatives. I think they have a serious and deep racism problem that will be with them, personally and politically, for the rest of their days. I don't know previously Democratic White factory workers in Scranton who lost their jobs when W. was President. I do know and have known many affluent White conservatives. They don't spend lots of time with Black people - at church, at sports games, or anywhere. If anything, they know Blacks from work. And the Blacks they know tend to be their subordinates. Yet, somehow, they seem to think they have their finger on the pulse of the Black community - which is of course, a very diverse community. It's understandable enough if all they do is cite poll data. That's actually good. I try to learn what Blacks think by reading poll data. But if you're doing that, it's hard to miss the fact that at least 3 in 4 Blacks are strongly against President Toxic. And that at least 3 in 4 think he's a racist. White conservatives never mention that. Yet many of them do insist President Toxic is the least racist guy you'll ever meet. And that the Black people calling Trump a racist are the true racists. Is it unfair of me to conclude that most White conservatives don't want to hear, think about, or publicly deal with what most Blacks think about President Toxic's racism? Or the deep racial justice problems in President Toxic's America? What this White conservative clearly wants to believe is that 27 % of Blacks in Pennsylvania now support President Toxic. That's based on a Rasmussen poll. The White conservative does not offer a theory as to why he thinks this might be the case. Which at the margin supports my belief that they don't particularly give a shit what Blacks are thinking. Even the ones that maybe support their guy. It also supports my belief that the real purpose of articles like this is to persuade Whites who are on the fence that President Toxic can't be a racist. And that the Republican Party can't be racially tone deaf. After all, 1 in 4 Blacks - more than twice as many as 2016! - think he's a swell guy. Now back to reality. This other article from 2016 says Hillary got 88 % of the Black vote nationally in 2016. But in some key states, including Pennsylvania, she got over 90 % of the Black vote. That's all in the ballpark of what I've read for years. The big problem in 2016, and the big danger for Biden in 2020, is Blacks who don't particularly care and will just stay home. Comparing this Rasmussen poll to the Monmouth poll that showed Biden's lead in Pennsylvania shrinking from 13 points in July to 4 points now offers some insight. First, the Rasmussen poll was done during the convention, and the Monmouth poll was right after. That could make a small difference at the margin. The RNC featured Black conservative men making the case for President Toxic. That could have generated a small pro-Trump blip while it was happening. More important, Monmouth says that "voters of color" in Pennsylvania were for Biden 76/16 in July and are now for him 72/15. The biggest shift they noted is that undecided "voters of color" grew from 3 % in July to 9 % now. Monmouth says, "The Republican convention attempted to sow some seeds of doubt among core Democratic blocs, especially young and urban voters." Makes perfect sense to me. My guess is that in a change election, which is what I think this will be, "voters of color" who were with Biden in July and undecided right after the RNC will more likely than not break heavily for Biden when they vote. "Voters of color" includes Hispanics and Asians as well as Black. Monmouth does not disaggregate Black voters as a distinct group. So if 15 % of "voters of color" in Pennsylvania are for President Toxic right now, that means maybe President Toxic is getting a very low single digit - 10? 11? 12? - percent support from Blacks, whose support for Trump is substantially lower than Hispanics nationally. That's a long way from 27 %. Either Monmouth or Rasmussen is way off. The picture Monmouth paints is way more consistent with 2016 and what we know. It suggests that Biden is in roughly the same ballpark with Blacks as Clinton was in 2016. There are some undecided Blacks and Hispanics and Asians leaning toward him in July that he needs to solidify support from. But probably the biggest issue is the same as 2016: he needs to persuade many potential Black voters to actually vote. I find it much easier to buy Monmouth's analysis of what really shifted between July and now: men, mostly under 50, who probably tend to live in "swing districts" that used to be Democratic enclaves. My guess is some of them are Black, more of them are Hispanic, and most of them are White. I think Biden has a problem with both Black men and Hispanic men. The biggest problem with Black men is getting them to vote. The biggest problem with Hispanic men is getting them to vote for Biden. This other article sounds right about Biden's problems with Hispanic men in Florida: Biden lags among Florida Hispanic voters A new poll finds the Democratic nominee is running behind Hillary Clinton’s pace in the critical swing state. The silver lining in this cloud, as the article says, is that Biden is doing better than Hillary with other groups, like older Whites. And he's doing better with Hispanics than Sen. Bill Nelson was in 2018. It's not clear from what I've read how Biden is doing with Blacks in Florida, relative to Hillary. But the polls suggest that he's doing well enough to win, so far. That's just another data point that suggests to me that to close the deal Biden needs to focus on the economy, stupid. I have a hunch that with Hispanics in particular there's a conflict between COVID-19 and jobs. If they are under 50, like the men who are on the fence in Pennsylvania as well, they may tip a little more toward "reopen the economy so I can work" as opposed to "if I go to work and get COVID-19 I'll be in a hospital without health insurance, or dead." Beyond that is all the stuff about President Toxic is strong and tough, Biden is weak, President Toxic is a good businessman, President Toxic wants to help small businesses. I have no idea whether things like Marco Rubio's Paycheck Protection Program have helped President Toxic, hurt him, or it's just a wash. I'm assuming that, unlike with Blacks, there's a bunch of Hispanics who didn't qualify for stimulus checks or unemployment based on their immigration status. I suspect this cluster of issues will move Latino voters way more than riots or looting or crime. Mostly i think Biden needs to take a sledgehammer and try to demolish President Toxic's image as strong and effective. He's weak, mean, and incompetent. This is a good point to mention how Bernie was a blessing and a curse. If Biden ends up winning Florida by a point or two, and therefore the Presidency, that tells me Bernie would have lost Florida. As the article says, the "socialism" tag is deadly there. It's another reason I think the Bernie Sanders Show was not ready for prime time in 2020, even though I voted for him. That said, Democrats should be eternally indebted to Tio Bernie. He came closer than any national politician I've seen to figuring out how to organize and inspire Hispanics. He won Nevada that way. While he lost Texas, that was despite the fact that he got 150,000 more votes in Texas in 2020 than in 2016 - which could be more than the winning margin in statewide races there in 2020 and the future. I agree with this article that probably the best case scenario for Democrats with Hispanics in Florida is to hold our ground in 2020. And to have a Plan B to make up any potential decrease in Latino turnout somewhere else: like older Whites or Blacks. Ultimately, I think what the Democrats need and don't have is a Tío Bernando. Meaning a Latino or Latina politician who is authentically of the culture and can play a leading national role. (I don't like the whole "x" thing. "Tíx Bernie sounds like a breath freshener to me. Or maybe an ice cream brand.) Here's an old (2015) list of the "10 most influential Hispanic Americans in US politics". It's interesting that only 5 of them are elected officials, unlike Jorge Ramos (# 1) and Justice Sotomayer (#2). Of the elected officials, they rank Rubio/Cruz slightly higher than the Castro brothers. Clearly, Julián Castro did not emerge as the Hispanic Obama in 2020. The obvious name missing from the 2015 list is Tía AOC. My perception is that Democrats are doing a better job of dealing with their issues with Black Americans than they are with their issues with Hispanic Americans. Julián said something to that effect recently. The Hispanic community is in no way locked and loaded for Democratic Party moving forward. While I was reading about Hispanics in Florida, I ran across this two minute DNC piece about a Mexican American Mom President Toxic deported. I missed this during the DNC. One more reason to want to dump President Toxic.

That's probably the best educated guess of what will happen. Which is to say, 2020 will be a ripple of 2018 and 2016. In 2016, it rippled one way. In 2018, it rippled the other way. But it could ripple either way in 2020. What's missing is what I cited about what historian Theodore White said in 1980, as it was first becoming clear on Election Night that a tidal wave was coming in. It was, in fact, a tidal wave, he said. And everything needed to be rethought. To keep it abstract, there is a big similarity in 2020. I'm not sure I get this part of White's thinking. But I read what I could find (but not his book) about what he thought happened in 1980. Part of his view was that history crushed Carter. Which is to say, the Democratic coalition became unglued. Part of what was interesting about watching the coverage is these smart anchors were saying, "Reagan might even win North Carolina." Now we're saying, "Biden might even win North Carolina." Recall that in 1980 Georgia was one of the few parts of the Southern Democratic base Carter held, only for Mondale to lose in 1984. Carter's victory in 1976 and 1980 were built on states that are now solid red. I thought it was funny that when they filled in the map in 1980, red was the color they used for the states Carter was winning. In 2020 the party that seems to be becoming unglued is the Republican Party. Even Rick Snyder, of all people, is saying President Toxic is a bully, and he's voting for Biden. I know you don't like the concept of "Biden Republicans". But the fact that we're even having the discussion suggests this is not 1972 ("Nixon Democrats") or 1980 ("Reagan Democrats"). Moving from the abstract to the practical, White would of course never have argued these tides happen in a vacuum. The essay of his that I did read about 1980 suggested that he thought it was largely the economy, stupid. Jobs, jobs, jobs. Inflation, inflation, inflation. And, back then, gas lines, gas lines, gas lines. is there a similar driver in 2020? I'll repost this chart from another model by UVA's Alan Abramowitz I posted above and called "Lichtman Lite", or "It's only the economy, stupid." This was published in March, just as were becoming aware that COVID-19 had hit US shores. So the assumption was that it could slow the economy down. And the author knew that President Toxic was an incumbent seeking re-election. So he modeled (he says within 25 electoral votes) what will happen to Trump based on what has actually happened to every incumbent since World War 2 in the Electoral College. The two variables are their approval rating in June and second quarter GDP. The author said that if President Toxic could improve his approval ratings by a few points, he might get past 270. But only if he could at least squeeze just a teeny tiny bit of growth out of the economy in the upcoming (at the time) second quarter. In fact, President Toxic's approval rating got worse. And 2nd quarter GDP was -9.5 %. If we're looking for drivers of tidal waves, I'd say that qualifies. Even if you assume Rasmussen is right, and the people who will vote actually see Trump as having 0 net disapproval. And even if you assume that a lot of these authoritarian followers simply believe Daddy is taking care of it all, no matter what they see actually happening around them with COVID-19 and a recession. If you go the other way, the numbers above suggest that the current "no toss up" analysis of RCP - that President Toxic will get 185 electoral votes - is wildly optimistic for Republicans. Coincidentally, RCP just shifted North Carolina from Trump to Biden. What matters to me is that the three states right on the edge that could tip to Biden are North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa. I'm assuming that 2020 will be like 2016 and 2018. If Biden wins those three states, he more likely than not takes four more Democratic Senators to Washington with him. We both agree, it seems. That only happens if there is a tidal wave. But not a ripple. The best all-purpose rejoinder to models like this is, "This time is different." Maybe so. My contrarian bias is that the more people say, "This time is different," the more likely it is that this time is exactly the same. Best to have flippers, a snorkel and a wet suit available come November. It's at least possible that a tidal wave is headed our way.

John Dean is out with a new book that offers another lens for viewing what's driving the election. This may help to explain some voting behavior that Lichtman's theory does not. Particularly the "stickiness" of President Toxic's supporters. John Dean's "Authoritarian Nightmare" That's a 24 minute audio interview of Dean. I listened to three interviews and read one review yesterday. If you prefer visual to audio this is an interesting interview of Dean on Democracy Now. The audio interview is longer and better for understanding his ideas. Amy asked him some interesting questions about current stuff. So it's a good interview, but a bit less about his book. I really miss Lookin from Daddy's forum. He was a very thoughtful poster. And he kept bringing up authoritarianism as a theme to explain Trumpism. As well as why so many people have been captured by the NRA. Dean and him were obviously reading the same books. Because everything Dean is saying echos points Lookin has made for years. I've got a very superficial understanding of the "science" behind this. But I'll summarize the basic theory in a paragraph, and then tell you my main takeaways from listening to about an hour of this stuff. The science of this started after World War 2. The initial question was: Could America fall to a Hitler or Mussolini? The answer researchers came up with was, "yes." Dean's co-author is one of the noted (and few) psychologists who is an expert on authoritarianism. There are psychological tests that have been used for decades that are believed to objectively measure support for authoritarianism. So the two key players in the nightmare are labelled Social Dominants and Authoritarian Followers. Social Dominants are the Trumps, who are power hungry Machiavellians who are driven to dominate others. Authoritarian followers are just that. In one interview Dean jokingly refers to them as "Daddy will make everything alright" types. They tend to be low information voters who are not great critical thinkers. At the extreme, this is the world of Q Anon and Deep State conspirators and radicals in dark clothes on airplanes. One takeaway is it reinforced my belief that the best way for people like me to change this is to do whatever I can to simplify defeat them. They're not John Kasich. They're not particularly interested in reason or compromise. But they do understand defeat. At one point, I think in the Amy Goodman interview, Dean says that, verbatim. They understand defeat. President Toxic is no Hitler or Mussolini. At least not yet. But it will end the same way. As I was listening to this I was reminded of that video Schwarzenegger made after Charlottesville about Nazis. He said growing up in Austria he knew these people were not heroes to honor. They were broken men who had been defeated. I suspect many of President Toxic's most ardent followers will feel the same way. They will understand defeat. But their impulse will not be to reconcile. This would be why they could nominate Don, Jr. in 2024, I think, even if his Dad lost. I hope I'm wrong. But I would not rule it out. If they nominate Nikki Haley, who I personally think is much less nuts, it would be because she succeeded in convincing the Trump base that she's basically Don in a dress. How exactly are these people going to be defeated? Dean says that young people don't follow President Toxic. He didn't say why in these interviews. But the fact that they are generally better educated and more critical thinkers probably has something to do with it, I suspect. The Berniecrats certainly have a different analysis about what's broken, and how to fix it. So the surest way to get rid of President Toxic is what I believe Dean called a "tsunamai" of youth voters. I've been reading smart Republican operatives for years who have been saying that a wave is coming that is going to wipe out Republicans, and Republicans are doing nothing to stop it. And that wave is young people. Separately, there is research that suggests that Millennials are acting like their parents: the older they get, the more likely they are to vote. That explains some part of Democratic wins in 2018. So this is just a huge unknown that could determine whether President Toxic wins Minnesota, on the one hand. Or loses Georgia, on the other hand. Rep. Omar was supposed to be vulnerable in her primary. But she blew her opposition away. That is one small data point that suggests that the opposition to President Toxic (and authoritarianism) may actually get out and vote. I checked on Omar. In 2018 she won her primary with 48 % of the vote out of about 135,000 votes cast. In 2020 she won 58 % of the vote out of about 178,000 votes cast. That may mean nothing. But I'm taking it as a sign that President Toxic's followers are not the only ones who are highly motivated to vote in this environment. One other point Dean made is that there has been a massive shift to the Republican Party of authoritarian followers. As a Democrat, that pleases me, if true. I don't want them in my party. The bad news, as @tassojunior keeps warning, is that if they consolidate in what is becoming The Authoritarian Party and elect someone even worse, that could move us into Hitler or Mussolini territory. Dean keeps referring to the known poll numbers of President Toxic's approval rating - 40 to 44 % - to describe his "base". I'd probably have to read the whole book to understand whether Dean thinks all of President Toxic's base are the "poorly educated" authoritarian followers President Toxic loves. Whatever Dean thinks, I think the slice he's describing is not all of them. My own sense is that President Toxic's followers are a minority, and this truly pro-authoritarian group is a significant minority within a minority. It is big enough that they were able to deliver the nomination to Trump in 2016. Which means they could do it again to someone else like him in 2024. In his closing comment to Amy Goodman, Dean says 24 to 29 % of President Toxic's followers said in a poll they will tolerate him ignoring The Constitution if he loses. Dean calls that "troubling". True. But even if we take the best case numbers for Trump, 29 % of a base that is 44 % of Americans on his best day is about 12 % of the electorate. If President Toxic loses, I don't see that 12 % of voters will be able to keep him in power. At least that's what I hope. Presumably this means 76 to 71 % of President Toxic's voters believe that if he lost the election, The Constitution says he has to go. This is another lens to view what is happening in the polls in Pennsylvania right now. The good news to me is that if Biden slipped back to "only" 49 % of the vote, that's consistent with the 49 % who said in both July and now they'll vote Democratic. So Democrats are close to what seems like a stable 50 % in Pennsylvania, at least so far. I think the best way to think about the people shifting around - who tend to be White men and under 50, and also maybe a slice of more conservative Black or Hispanic men, is this: jobs, jobs, jobs. It's the economy, stupid. But it's possible you can get to the same place by thinking authoritarianism, authoritarianism, authoritarianism. The phrase Dean used, "Daddy will take care of everything", sounds insulting and dismissive. But it does explain some things. It makes no sense to me, as an ideological guy who overthinks everything, that someone could say they'd vote for Bernie or Trump, but not Hillary. It makes more sense if I think the lens is simply, "Who's your Daddy?" Hillary isn't a very good Daddy. She's more like a nagging bureaucrat to a lot of these guys. Or just a bitch. So you can call it sexism. But seen through their eyes, it could be that they just don't see Hillary as the kind of guy that will take care of things for them. Standing next to Bernie in 2016, maybe they thought Bernie could take care of things better than Hillary. But then in 2020 we learned that Biden makes a better Daddy than Bernie all across states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Now they have to decide whether they like Daddy Biden or Daddy Trump. Viewed through this lens, it's even more clear that President Toxic's hateful tweet is aimed directly at people who Dean says are authoritarian followers. President Toxic is strong. All you get from Biden is a "weak response". So who's your Daddy? "President Trump is making it stop." President Toxic is your Daddy. He'll will take care of everything. If you buy this, Biden saying he's the most empathetic guy in the world doesn't close the deal. If anything, it confirms that Biden is no Daddy at all. He's a wimp. One of the things i think Biden is doing right is calling President Toxic weak. Biden and Harris are projecting the kind of strength that Angela Merkel and other female leaders in Europe tend to project. Which is to say, the kind of strength that appeals to women, and I think to critical thinkers. Biden can't be that and a mini-Mussolini at the same time. It makes no sense for Biden to try to out-Trump President Toxic to me. If these theories of psychology intersect with politics, I think the best way to connect the dots is jobs, jobs, jobs. The promise that Daddy made in 2016 that cut in the Rust Belt is that Daddy would go in to these devastated areas with closed factories and struggling families and businesses and lots of addiction and hurt. And Daddy would take care of things. Daddy has not only NOT taken care of things, which was true before the plague. He's made it worse. Before the plague, there were no new factory jobs in Pennsylvania. After the plague, which is thanks to Daddy fucking it all up so that over 200,000 will die by Election Day, they have fewer jobs. President Toxic isn't Daddy. He's not even Mommy. He's just chaos. Part of Dean's point is that these types of people are not high information thinkers. That's of course why they like Fox News. And why the ratings say in the Fox Universe they'd much rather listen to Sean Hannity than Chris Wallace. So here's some data, which is probably next to useless with true Trump followers. Even in the "best economy ever", Pennsylvania lost 2000 factory jobs between January 2019 and January 2020. If you start the clock from January 2017, when President Toxic promised to end American carnage, Pennsylvania has lost about 25,000 factory jobs under Trump, as of June 2020. Daddy isn't very good at getting the job done. There's a significant difference between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if you look at long term trends. Whether it has any impact on elections, who knows? In Wisconsin, there are periods of "recovery" since 1990. In the 1990's, Wisconsin actually gained in the ballpark of 75,000 manufacturing jobs, to a peak of about 600,000. By the end of the Great Recession, almost 1 in 3 of those jobs were gone. From the trough of The Great Recession, they did gain back about 60,000 factory jobs - mostly under Obama/Biden. So the sense of it is two or three steps back, one step forward. Pennsylvania has had no "recovery" of manufacturing jobs for three decades. Even in the Clinton heyday, they lost 20,000 or so factory jobs. Under both Obama/Biden and President Toxic, the "recovery" of manufacturing was basically a flat line. So Wisconsin today is at least better off than during the worst days of the Great Recession. Pennsylvania is actually worse off. You can make up any theory you want about how this might impact voting behavior. It certainly explains why people who are not necessarily racist or sexist felt that eight years of Obama/Biden was enough, and they didn't need Hillary. But President Toxic hasn't been any better. You can make a good argument, based on factory jobs, he's been worse. Or you can argue that this is the kind of environment that breeds authoritarian followers. Nothing works. Nothing gets better. But at least we can feel and hope that Daddy is taking care of us. Biden has done well, I think, by being disarmingly honest. His line about "Do I look like a radical to you?" worked. So one way to deal with this, which in most cases would be horrible political advice, would be for Biden to look President Toxic in the eye at a debate and say, "Donald, you choked. You promised decent hard working people you'd bring back their factory jobs. And you choked. There are fewer factory jobs. You choked. You're weak. You let people down. You choked. People are worse off today. You're a choke artist, Donald. Don't you get it? Because everybody else does." That's going way too far. But Biden has been effective using President Toxic's own words against him. And if you go back to 1980, Biden has the opposite problem Reagan did. Reagan needed to prove he wasn't a radical. So he had to NOT be inflammatory. The disarming, "There you go again" did the trick. Biden needs to prove he is not weak. So turning some of Trump's authoritarian language against him might make sense. President Toxic is not strong. He's a choke artist. Something like that might help Biden. This is where I find Lichtman helpful. His theory is based on the idea that over a very long period of time, American voters have made sound judgments based on fundamentals. Like, "it's the economy, stupid." If he's right, the sound judgment in 2020 will be that President Toxic fell short, and should not be re-elected. Dean's numbers, if I understand him right, don't contradict this. If 15 % of Americans would choose President Toxic over The Constitution, that's probably something America can survive. The most pessimistic thing I feel, especially if I really buy into Dean's ideas about authoritarianism, is that this is a big problem for America for a long time to come. These people won't go away. And they are not likely to change their minds. I'd like to think George Will is right, and after Trump loses these are the people that will be purged from the Republican Party. Or they'll just take their marbles and go home. More likely, they will blame President Toxic's defeat on RINOs like George Will. And they'll purge any of the RINOs that are still left in their authoritarian party. One other thing I've said ties in here, and in reason for hope for me. I said that I didn't think in 2020 The Bernie Show (or The Social Democratic Show) was ready for prime time. One reason I said that is that the Berniecrats didn't vote in the droves that were hoped for. That in itself is not a great omen for Democrats for November 2020. But if I understand Dean, he says they are ultimately the best solution to this problem. I certainly feel that way. They are not attracted to authoritarian leaders. So if any of this is in the ballpark of correct, it's only a matter of time until a minority that responds to authoritarian leaders is crushed by an ascendant electorate that rejects Trumpism root and branch.

I didn't take them to mean those were the only swing states. And let's all keep repeating this: nobody should take anything for granted. If things swing one way, President Toxic could win Minnesota. If things swing another way, Biden could win Georgia and maybe also pick up two Senate seats there. There's poll data that suggests that The Divine Miss Graham could even lose her job in South Carolina. It's turnout, turnout, turnout. The main words in everyone's vocabulary for the next two months should be "vote, vote, and vote." Trafalgar, the Republican outlier, has a poll out today saying it's a tied race in Minnesota. The RCP average, which includes that poll, says Biden is leading by 5.4 points in Minnesota. Trafalgar says that President Toxic has a 3 point lead in Florida. That poll pulled the RCP average down, so now it shows Biden with a 1.8 % lead in Florida. We don't even have to guess what's going on here. In 2016 Trafalgar was right on the money. They published the last two state polls in Pennsylvania and Michigan, a few days before the election, both showing Trump with a very small lead. In 2018 they were way off the mark in a lot of states. Their model of who would vote was just way off. What I found interesting is that Trafalgar screwed up in both directions in 2018. In states trending red, they underestimated how badly Democrats like McCaskill and Donnelly would lose by. In states going the other way, like Arizona and Nevada, they underestimated the shift to Democrats. They called both of those states wrong in the Senate races. Bottom line is it all depends on who the electorate actually is. And no one can predict that. But we can control it. Send money. Volunteer. Vote. What happened in 2018 is likely to happen again. The intensity on both sides will feed off each other, and lead to through the roof turnout on both sides. That in itself is not a bad thing in a democracy. If that happens, it will probably help Democrats in states like Georgia. McBath won in 2018, and Abrams came closer than any Democrat in about a generation. If Blacks and Millennials crawl out of the woodwork to vote, 2020 could be the opposite of 2016. Instead of the loose bricks in the Blue Wall falling, it could be the loose bricks in the Red Wall this time. But it's all turnout, turnout, turnout.

I think we agree. To oversimplify what you said, it is being passed in states the Democrats have majorities in. It is being obstructed by Republicans in states like South Carolina. It's a highly partisan issue, as that poll I posted above shows. So I'm pretty sure the only way to get to 270 is to have a solid Democratic majority. If President Toxic loses badly, I do think that Republicans will at least soften their opposition, as they did in the early Obama years. The key argument that may work, with some of them, is that taking power this way tends to result in the same thing. You take one step forward, and two steps back. If President Toxic loses badly, that's happened twice in a row. And even during that one step forward you're stuck with unpopular leaders who bungle things (W. in Iraq, President Toxic and COVID-19). While Republicans are taking the one step forward they won't want to hear this. They'd rather focus on appointing more conservative judges. After they realize they've actually fallen two steps back, and helped open the liberal floodgates in reaction to their unpopular and inept leaders, some of them may be a bit more open-minded. That's at least what the poll data shows happened with Republicans after Obama won. It became less partisan for a while. This will be a test of how permanent the damage caused by President Toxic is. I have no clue. It could be in 2024 John Kasich, or someone like him, will be the Republican nominee. If I had to bet, I'd bet on Donald Trump. Jr. - if those were my two choices. All these people that stand behind President Toxic are not going to go away. At least until they die. So I hope I'm wrong. But I see it as a solid wall of opposition that will just get harder, and more bitter, about "losing" their America. In that context, they will see this whole debate about dumping the Electoral College and letting the person who wins by millions of votes actually be President as a Deep State plot to destroy democracy. It's not rational. But who ever said that reason was these people's strong point?

That's the interesting question. What kind of a nation do we want to be? I've been saying for years that we are headed to a Moral Awakening. Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the growing awareness of income inequality, the Sanders campaign, the Warren campaign. To me those were all signs of what may be coming. Now I would not say an Awakening is coming. I's say it's here. By Awakening I mean eras like the 1960's and civil rights. You could also throw in the explicitly religious Great Awakenings in US history, although that fuzzes it up more. They are periods of social renewal and a focus on the "soul" of the nation. As opposed to what might be called "greed is good" values. And one sign that we've arrived is that suddenly people see things that they were slumbering or passive about previously. BLM is certainly a good example of that. There was protest, including violence and looting, after Ferguson. But not like this. What goes along with the new tide, which President Toxic is missing entirely, is that part of the movement is around personal morality. That was true in the religious Great Awakenings. It was also true in the Civil Rights Era, when MLK asked us to look into our own hearts. Is this the nation we aspire to be? Any leader who thinks the simple and one-dimensional answer is bulldogs or water hoses or federal troops or assault rifles is missing a huge part of what's really going on. Of course, why am I not surprised that President Toxic is not the kind of guy who gets this? I was impressed with a new Biden ad running which I will post below that fits into this theme. I went to find that "Jobs Not Mobs" tweet President Toxic sent out. When I Googled "Jobs Not Mobs Trump", this ad from 2018 came up, which I'd never seen. I thought the first part of the ad, about the economy, was powerful. This is clearly the campaign President Toxic was hoping to run in 2020 as well. And the little kick at Hillary at the end was a nice touch. So you have to wonder. If this didn't work in 2018, what makes them think it will work better in 2020? One number that pops up in this ad refers to 4.1 % GDP growth in the second quarter of 2018. In the second quarter of 2020 it was - 9.5 %. In 2018 they said "the core economy is on fire". In 2020 Coronavirus is spreading and killing like wildfire. I'm going to keep using Charlie Cook's 2018 phrase: "color intensifier". Ads like this probably did work in states like Indiana and Missouri and North Dakota in 2018, where Democratic Senators got their asses kicked to the curb. But they didn't work in most places. If it was just the economy stupid, the Republicans probably should have done better in 2018. So some part of this is that voters, particularly women, just aren't sold by this. This 2018 ad proves that this has nothing in particular to do with any of the riots or looting that happened when the BLM protests really took hold of the nation. This shouldn't be any surprise. It's the same President Toxic that was just Donald Toxic back in the Central Park 5 days, when he said this: Same hate, different century. So he got his wish. He's had three years to preach hate. My sense is that this is partly why things didn't go so well for Republicans in 2018, despite a good economy. I can't imagine the 2020 tweet is going to work much better, since it doubles down on the fear and hate without mentioning a thing about the economy, or COVID-19. Wonder why? Here's one of the Biden/Harris ads that is being blanketed all over about 15 swing states. I can't think of a clearer distinction between campaigning on fear, and campaigning on hope. I'd take it further and say it's the difference between offering up hope, and offering up hate. And that ad is Moral Awakening territory to me. Biden is gambling on the idea that the nation is ready to talk about racial justice. And the question, "Who do we want to be?" I used the word gambling. But if I'm reading the polls right, it's a pretty solid beat. I don't think the Democrats could have run an ad like this to rebut "law and order" in 1968. The fact that this is what Democrats are selling today is itself a small sign of progress, at least to me. Ron Brownstein has delivered yet another great analysis relevant to this, full of both good data and good insights. The Huge Snag in Trump’s Reelection Pitch The president’s own volatility complicates his effort to convince Americans that he can stabilize their lives. He's coming at it from a somewhat different angle, which I think compliments what I'm saying. It's a bit hard to sell "law and order" when even your supporters equate your Presidency with chaos. It's hard for President Toxic to say he'll calm down this situation when he's the one saying he hates "these people", and we should, too. The one thing he's got going for him is the idea that hating people gets something done. Although even the majority of Independents seem to think what it actually gets done is more violence, not less. This is where I wish Elizabeth Warren was our nominee. I think Biden is probably a bit more of a calming presence than her, actually. But he's not the guy I would put forward as the poster child to fidelity to the law. Which is not to say he's broken any law. But Team Toxic will keep arguing he did. As well as his family. All they had against Warren was "fake recipes" in a cookbook called Pow Wow Chow. She's the one that could have said "Really? President Law And Order? Really? I know you don't read, Donald. But the polls say people see you as President Chaos, and President Corruption. You want us to buy President Law And Order? Come on. Give the viewers a break!" That said, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that this issue of race/crime/safety does not hurt Biden, and probably mostly works in his favor. The polls certainly suggest that. There is zero evidence it's hurting him in Wisconsin. And my gut feeling is that President Toxic is making sure Black turnout will go through the roof. And not, of course, to vote for him. Biden is simply giving Blacks who think America has racial justice problems - meaning almost all Blacks - a positive reason to vote. If there's a problem with the ads above, it's not what it says but what it doesn't say. As Brownstein says in that article, for a lot of people it's not about race. And if it's about safety, it's COVID-19. But the biggest thing for most people is still the economy, stupid. PENNSYLVANIA: PRESIDENTIAL RACE TIGHTENS That poll is worth digging through a little. It's the only "bad news" for Democrats. And with bad news like this, who needs good news? The scary headline is that Biden dropped from a 13 point lead in July, 53/40 to a 4 point lead today, 49/45, in Pennsylvania. There was no change in support for Democrats in general. The partisan lean question went from favoring Democratic Congressional candidates 49/45 in July to 48/45 today. Biden's favorability rating actually went up, from 45 % in July to 48 % today. My read of those numbers is that Democrats are solidifying a lead that is close to 50 %, but not quite. Monmouth says this about the people who shifted away from Biden: My guess is this shift is more about the economy than anything else. The slice of President Toxic's supporters that think like the McCloskeys, and own lots of guns that they feel okay pointing at Black people, are never going to consider voting for Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. There's no reference to geography in the polls. But I'd also guess that a lot of these men under 50 live in the parts of Pennsylvania Jim Carville refers to as "Pennsyltucky". Or the ailing old factory towns, like Scranton. I'd also guess that some of these men under 50 are Black. And probably a big chunk of them are Hispanic. The 2018 version of "Jobs Not Mobs" didn't cut nationally, and it certainly would cut less well today. But it's the best thing President Toxic still has going for him. As an article I posted in a different thread argued, it's the last strength of President Toxic Biden has to go after. The good news in the bad news is that if Biden had these folks seriously thinking about him in July, there is no particular reason he can't close the deal with them by November. No one is talking yet about all the factory jobs NOT CREATED in President Toxic's three "good" years, before the plague started. Or about that fact that Pennsylvania now has fewer factory jobs than when President Toxic was elected. When I say we have arrived at Moral Awakening, that is a statement of hope as well as what I think is a statement of fact. I'm fine with Biden winning by asking, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Or by asking, "Are you safer than you were four years ago?" But he is definitely adding a moral dimension here, which is clearly targeted at Blacks. But not just Blacks. "Are we a better nation than we were four years ago?" I do find that genuinely hopeful. It is an invitation to move forward, into a new and better era.

First, let me say this about third parties. My hunch is you and I would agree about 90 % about third parties in general. And about all the value they could add to the US political system, in theory. In practice, in Presidential elections, there is no such thing as a third party in the 21st century. Sure, Ralph Nader can run. That elected W. Sure, Jill Stein can run. That elected President Toxic. (I'm adding their vote totals to the Democrats, which would have meant victory in Florida in 2000, and the three Rust Belt states in 2016.) So there is the Democratic Party on the one hand. And the Republican Party and all the others like Nader and Stein that elect shitty Republican Presidents on the other hand. In practice, those are my two choices. So speaking as either a Democrat or a liberal, the great thing about third parties is they elect incompetent Republican Presidents who do really shitty things I abhor. Beyond that, we have a number of huge fucking messes on the national plate. So a discussion of third parties is a luxury I don't feel I can afford. The main reason I'm sending the most money to the Democratic Senate candidates I agree with least is so we can have a Democratic majority and actually govern. Implicit in that is the idea that centrist or arguably center-right Democrats (you could call Steve Bullock center-right) can agree on center-left laws, and pass them, and make sure they actually make huge problems less bad. If we can do that - which is actually a collection of really big "if's" - maybe Democrats can withstand the barrage of Republican attacks, much like in 2010, about how [fill in the blank] Democratic initiative is the end of civilization. That worked for McConnell's attack on Obamacare in 2010. I have full faith he'll try it again. So for at least the next few years, anybody who wants to talk up third parties is basically shilling for President Toxic or McConnell, I think. Even if their intentions are the best. Second, I think most of what you said, and the map you posted, confirmed my main point. We're not going to have the power to get rid of the Electoral College until we have a very solid Democratic majority. Again, this is something where you and I, and in fact most Americans, would agree in theory. The electoral college should go. In practice, it doesn't work that way. After W. won there was still majority support for dumping the Electoral College. But Republicans opposed it. And since Republicans were in power, what they thought kind of mattered. Whatever their viewpoint, they got over it by the time Obama was President. But when it worked for them again in 2016, they shifted so dramatically that it was, at best, a 50/50 split in America. This also reinforces my point. Part of the Trumpist doctrine is that power is the end, and any means is justified to attain it. So Republicans may have stuck to their principles after W. won, and still felt that the Electoral College was an anachronism. By 2016 principles didn't matter. They could, and did, flip flop on a dime. Ironically, some of them see all this nonsense about the Electoral College as just another Democratic attempt to destroy democracy. I think I should add something about what I posted above. You might conclude from what I wrote that I think Democrats should make the argument, to Republicans, that if they support the Electoral College they are racists. I don't believe that at all. My point is that Democrats pretty much have to win this on our own, with the help of Independents. Republicans are a lost cause. I do think we should argue, to put it dramatically, that the Electoral College always was and always will be drenched in the blood of slavery and the hate of racism. Republicans won't agree. That said, I think we may have an opportunity starting in 2021. But only if President Toxic loses. Especially if he loses badly. My argument would be that the people who got fucked the most by this are Republicans. In the short term, they won. But look at what you won. Two Presidents who never had popular support. And who did their level best to destroy their party. The Iraq War. The Great Recession. 5 million factory jobs gone missing. 200,000 dead Americans from COVID-19. Two glorious and spectacular electoral humiliations in 2008 and 2020. (If, again, that is what happens.) My line would be, "Hey, Mr. Republican. Thanks to the Electoral College, it really sucks to be you, doesn't it?" The other part of the argument is that if you win and govern with a view that you have to actually get 50 % of the vote, you end up with Republican Governors like Kasich, or [fill in the name of any Republican Governor in New England]. If President Toxic loses re-election, this argument is much easier to make. Republican Governors who are popular and competent, like Kasich and [fill in the name of any Republican Governor in New England] can actually win re-election, and not take the whole party down the shit hole to Hell like Trump did. My best guess is that a significant minority of Republicans have secret time machines. So if President Toxic loses, they will all hightail it straight back to Summer 2016. Back then, they were all whining about how their party was being hijacked. Then, when they realized that meant winning and conservative SCOTUS justices and tax cuts, they liked that whole hijack/hate-mongering thing well enough. After President Toxic, some of them will go back to blaming it all on the hijackers. Mostly, I don't think there's any value in trying to persuade Republicans at all. Mostly, these days, I just don't see the logic in putting words like "persuasion" or "compromise" in the same sentence as the word "Republican". I hope that changes after the election. But I would not count on it. Even if they get their asses kicked in 2020, they might do what Democrats did in 1980 and 1984. Go from the humiliating defeat of Jimmy Carter to the even more humiliating defeat of Walter Mondale. In this case, I'd guess the Republicans - if they actually go that way - would be more likely to nominate Donald Trump, Jr. than Mike Pence in 2024. There is always, of course, Mike Pompeo. Back to the real world we actually live in, to me Democrats just have to win. If Democrats can't do that, forget about changing the Electoral College. And even if Democrats do win, we have to have the power to bring the baby home. Almost every state on the map you posted is solid Democratic. California and New York being the treasure troves. As blue states that would have more power if we bagged the Electoral College, why am I not shocked California and New York are for this? I checked on Ohio and South Carolina, where it is "pending", based on your map. I know nothing about this effort in Ohio. But with Governors like Kasich and DeWine, I doubt this will pass. Here's the main story I could find about Ohio, from Spring 2019: Organizers Withdraw National Popular Vote Proposal So it may be "pending", but it is hardly imminent. You actually argued that the anti-labor right-to-work fight in Ohio proved that people like Kasich. I was the one who quoted Wikipedia about how the people of Ohio disagreed with him, overturned the law by popular initiative, and Kasich basically got his ass kicked. So I could see how Ohio could enact this through a ballot initiative. But it would probably be over the dead body of Republicans. Probably including Never Trump Republicans like Kasich, who may still harbor the idea of being elected President after they clean up the wreckage of Toxic Trumpism. In South Carolina, a bill was filed in the State Legislature. I won't hold my breath for that to pass and be signed by the Governor. There is this from the website: If I go by the chart I posted above, about 55 % of Republicans were ready to bag the Electoral College in Obama's first term. After President Toxic won, that plummeted to 20 %. So if they are going off 2011 poll data in South Carolina, they might be surprised how Republicans would vote if this did actually get on the ballot. Now let's play out my fantasy. Jaime Harrison wins in South Carolina, and Rev. Warnock wins in Georgia. You now have powerful Black voices in red states to argue why the Electoral College needs to go. And if guys like that can win statewide elections, in theory you could get a majority of voters to kick the Electoral College into the trash heap. Maybe even some Republicans. They'd still be states that are mostly run by Republicans. But Republicans that are losing power rapidly. And if they have half the smarts of Jeff Flake, they know that this all happened after they received the gift of President Toxic. Not through God's grace. But thanks to the Electoral College. In my 20's, when I was helping to choreograph a big redlining fight between Blacks and a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and the Atlanta banks, I remember going to meet with whoever ran the SCLC at the time, at MLK's old church, which Rev. Warnock is now the pastor of. Somehow, I don't remember why, we got into a discussion about B'rer Rabbit and "don't throw me into the brier patch" as a political strategy. Only half jokingly, there may be some value in that today on this issue. Arguably, if President Toxic loses and takes the Senate majority down with him, that should be our play. If Rev. Warnock wins, which will only happen in a massive blue wave, he needs to profess the most solemn belief in the beauty and dignity and glory of the Electoral College, passed down to us from our Founding Fathers. Because whatever the goal was back then, when men were men and Black men were slaves, it now just elects Blacks to the White House and US Senate. That's what I'd want Warnock to say. You gave us W, through the Electoral college, and you got President Obama and a massive Democratic landslide in 2008. You did it again in 2016 with President Toxic, and you got me in the US Senate in 2020. And, if that happens, probably Stacey Abrams as Georgia's first Black Governor. So this works out great for Democrats. Every time you use the Electoral College to get an unpopular President in power, you take one step forward, and two steps back. Whatever else you do, please don't get rid of the Electoral College. It's a great way to build real Democratic governing majorities that an actual majority elect and re-elect, like Obama. If President Toxic gets his ass kicked, I think that chart above is predictive. For Republicans, the Electoral College won't look so good after all. I think that's when we have our best chance.

The real reason we have an Electoral College: to protect slave states “In a direct election system, the South would have lost every time.” If the goal is to dump the Electoral College, this analysis makes it both easier, and harder, I think. It makes it harder because Republicans are for the Electoral College. For the obvious reason that it delivered them a minority President twice in a century. "Minority" in this case meaning someone who lost the popular vote by hundreds of thousands to millions of votes. It matters to me that the Presidents who got elected this way did particularly harmful and divisive things to the nation, compared to most other Presidents. And that the public ultimately rejected what they did. W. gave us Iraq, The Great Recession, and the loss of 5 million manufacturing jobs on his watch. 2008 was a massive repudiation of his leadership. Those lost manufacturing jobs are a great explanation of the pain and resentment that led to Trumpism. The verdict is out on President Toxic. But nobody feels 2020 is a great year. Then add that this whole racist edifice of the Electoral College is built on enslaving Blacks. Republicans just don't want to hear it. That's been my experience for a very long time. Meanwhile, if this is one of the points in American history where we're going to be open-minded about the legacy of slavery, as well as related issues about democracy and racial equality and income inequality that disproportionately hurts Blacks, this is a perfect time to have the discussion. As a practical matter, I doubt there is any hope of dumping the Electoral College until there is a solid Democratic majority, anyway. Republicans will make the point that there are lots of good things about the Electoral College. It protects minority rights (except for Blacks, of course) and small states. As does the US Senate, by the way. That was by design as well. If the Electoral College were history, the idea that small states have an outsized voice through the US Senate is still built in to the system. The argument that makes the most sense to me is that if we want to call ourselves a democracy, the person who wins by millions of votes should win the Presidency. Period. I think we are living in something like The New Civil War. It is not as deadly as the last one. But there is a lot of violence. And, like in the 19th century, there is a deepening reality of irreconcilable differences. The practical comparison that cuts for me is that in both civil wars there was a group who wanted to hold on tight to things that needed to go ............. and did actually go. In the 19th century, that was slavery. What needs to go now is everything that President Toxic is putting a face on. Biden has now used the word "toxic" to describe Trump. No one supports slavery anymore. But to me "Make America Great Again" has always been a way of putting a nice face on what has always been the toxic part of America. The part that gave us slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism. I don't think there is any simple or quick solution to this problem. Every follower of President Toxic is hoping that he gets four more years by winning a few states based on the "cultural anxiety" or racism or whatever you want to call it of a relatively small group of Americans. Who are primarily old, White, and male. If President Toxic loses by millions of votes again, they don't give a shit. And yet they want to argue that they are the true voices of democracy. What bullshit. They just want to hold on to power, and America as they know it. And any means justifies that end. I feel like they are shoving their racism and hate and inability to move forward down my throat. It doesn't matter that I'm in a majority that actually won in 2016. They just want to shove their racism down my throat and say, "This is the America we want. Shut the fuck up and deal with it." If you buy the idea that there is a New Civil War, I don't think I declared it. I don't think Barack Obama declared it. I think they declared it, and found their perfect leader in President Toxic. Although I know for a fact, based on the words coming out of their mouths, that they feel that Obama declared it ............. by being a Black man who, in their view, soiled their beautiful Constitution. You know, all that stuff that men who were 100 % men and 100 % White came up with centuries ago. In part to explicitly support slavery. Even the 100 % White 100 % men who were against slavery knew they had to somehow manage the deep political conflict slavery caused. That's a big part of the reason why we have an Electoral College. That's why they will fight to the death - in some cases, literally, given COVID-19 - for President Toxic and what he stands for. They know the economy is in bad shape. They know he was wrong when he said that the virus would miraculously go away. They know that we're much worse off than just about every other country on the planet. They know 1000 people are dying a day. But in the bigger picture, they also know that he is fighting for the America they believe in. I'll post it again here. This is their America: Freeze frame a few of the images. The face of the criminal mob is a dark-skinned Muslim woman. Can you believe, these criminal mob people actually got her elected to the US House? What the fuck happened to America? The face of order and jobs is 100 % White 100 % men, in the image where you see the word "jobs". That's just a coincidence, right? It doesn't mean anything, right? My read is this is why Never Trump Republicans like Stewart Stevens and Rick Wilson bailed on the conservative party they helped build. That tweet is not the America they planned on. Or the America they want. Part of the reason I think this is a New Civil War is guys like that, hardly radicals, are saying it's worth burning their ex-party down to the ground for. That's pretty strong stuff. I'm not 100 % sure I buy Nate Silver's analysis. He's good at projecting past trends into the future. But trends change. Lichtman has been more accurate, I think, because he focuses on historical forces that are far more stable - like the economy. As opposed to poll numbers or even election results from any particular election. This is a great article from Ron Brownstein that goes to the heart of this. He's one of my favorite journalists. He's a data whore, like me. And he is better than most at using data in the service of trying to figure out what's really going on below the surface. He wrote this a few days before the election in 2016. For anyone who says the polls were wrong, and no one saw it coming, read this. He even specifically names Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania as the "loosest bricks in the blue wall." His key point relative to this discussion is that Team Hillary was "betting that the surest path to victory is to fight mostly on terrain that Clinton can win without". Oops! It must have been in some other article he wrote before the election, but there was a poignant image I recall him using of how he thought Hillary could lose. The idea was that she could be crushed in a very narrow passage between the future of the Democratic Party, and its past. That's exactly what I think happened. Arizona and Georgia and even swing state Florida were a bridge too far. Meanwhile, those bricks in the Rust Belt were just loose enough to bring The Blue Wall down. Lichtman would argue that Republicans were poised to win in 2016, anyway, based on the fundamentals. So I tend to view it as a victory that President Toxic almost fucked up. Not that he's some political genius. Part of the reason I think President Toxic almost fucked 2016 up for Republicans is that there have not been many Republican victories since. Larry Sabato helpfully lists close House races that have incumbents who are the opposite party of who won the Presidential vote in 2016. So there are 6 close races with Republican incumbents in districts that voted for Hillary in 2016. There are 30 close races with Democratic incumbents in districts that voted for President Toxic in 2016. Most were new pick ups in 2018, like Lucy McBath in suburban Atlanta and Lauren Underwood in suburban Chicago. The graceful way to remember Hillary is how we remember MLK. He pointed us to the mountaintop, even though he never got there himself. Hillary pointed us to the future Democratic Party she will never lead. Some of which actually arrived in 2018. It is possible that 2020 will be the opposite of 2016, where pretty much every close call broke wrong for Democrats. Sinema won Arizona in 2018, and Biden and Kelly are way ahead in the polls in 2020. Meanwhile, moderate pundits like Morning Joe are saying that right now Pennsylvania looks like the wobbliest of the three loose bricks in the old Blue Wall Biden is trying to rebuild. I suspect there is a tug of war between Black Lives Matter types and those older factory workers, or ex-factory workers, who just don't like what the Democrats are saying. It's possible that Biden could lose Pennsylvania and win Arizona and Florida, and be President. Or, it's looking quite possible that "Scranton Joe" could patch up the Blue Wall, at least with him on the ticket in 2020, and be the one that anchors Arizona and North Carolina and maybe Georgia into the new Democratic majority. When Jeff Flake came out for Biden, he said if Republicans do nothing Democrats are poised to win Texas by 2024. Flake is not a flake. Something very similar to this happened in 2016 and 2018. In 2016 Republicans got 49.1 % of the House vote, and Democrats got 48.0 %. Yet Republicans got 241 seats to the Democrats' 191 seats. There was a logical argument that Democrats would need to have a 3 or 4 or even 5 % margin of victory just to get a one vote House majority. In 2018, Democrats won 53.4 % of all House votes cast. They ended up with 235 seats, which is 54.0 % of the total. Part of the reason why is that Republicans used gerrymandering to create "safe" Republicans seats in suburbs that were not viewed as Democratic prospects around 2010. But because they were suburban, they were not as safe as conservative rural areas where Republicans usually win in landslides. So the same thing that happened with the House in 2018 could happen on the Senate side. Arizona and Georgia, once fairly safe Republican strongholds, could tip. Discussions about the Electoral College will be even more divisive than where we are at now. They won't go anywhere anytime soon. Not until there is a solid Democratic majority. Which will be accused of being ................wait for it .......................................un-democratic. So I think we all need to ask our conscience this question. Is it un-democratic to say Hillary should be President because she actually won by millions of votes? Who is being un-democratic now? There's another thing Republicans need to forced to own up to, I think. I'm very used to the dogma that says that I don't own slaves, my parents didn't own slaves, and my grandparents didn't own slaves. So what the fuck does all this slavery bullshit have to do with me? Get over it. If some Black guy got shot in the back, it's because he's a thug. They sexually assault women and deal drugs. What did they expect? This has nothing to do with slavery. The argument usually goes something like that. Black conservative ex-cops support this analysis. If we want to get rid of the Electoral College, my own view is that we'll have to force Republicans to face facts. It exists because lots of White men wanted to own lots of Black men and women. If Black men and women didn't agree, they were brutally tortured and murdered. So, sorry. Republicans can't divorce the Electoral College from the fact that the whole idea was to own, torture, and brutally murder Blacks. That is what the Electoral College is. That is what the Electoral College actually did for a big chunk of US history. It's easier to argue that Blacks like Jacob Blake are just today's Willie Horton ............. a thug. But it's harder to sell the argument that these Black thugs and Muslim radicals are actually electing Marxists and radicals like Rep. Omar and soon-to-be Rep. Cori Bush to the US House. Who's being un-democratic now? I don't think it's a coincidence that all this is happening when the Electoral College, not the popular vote, was kind enough to hand us a racist and hateful man like President Toxic. The Electoral College is still doing what it is there for. It may not be slavery. But I believe it's still dishing out the vicious torture and murder of Blacks. It's still undermining democracy with a small "d". In conversations with Republicans, I have tried to take another approach. I'd actually quote the statements of the Founding Fathers, like from the article above. Some of them did clearly state that they put the Electoral College in place to support slavery. In theory, conservative Constitutionalists who think Obama pissed all over the Constitution should at least be willing to listen to the words written by The Founding Fathers. But they won't. It may be hypocrisy. But the easiest way to think of it, for me, is that any means justifies their end. They want to hold on to power, and their America. So arguing about what The Founding Fathers said or meant is useless. I think what we need to focus on is the hate and lies and racism their leader is spouting today. Including the defense of torturing and killing Black men like Jacob Blake and George Floyd. You can of course argue these men were no saints. But neither was the White vigilante who took out peaceful protesters. President Toxic says the White kid "probably would have been killed" if he didn't defend himself. After all, as Morning Joe pointed out, some of those protesters were armed with skateboards. Again, I think they'll use any means necessary to justify their end. Including White vigilantes who love weapons of war and are good with killing people who believe in their right to protest. If the MAGA conservatives are good with vigilantes using assault rifles to kill protesters, I very much doubt they will be open to compromise on the Electoral College. Any more than the South was open to compromise on slavery. That's not quite true, because the Electoral College actually was THE compromise on slavery. But what I mean is that it did allow The South to hold on to power, and their slaves. Just like today it's helping MAGA conservatives hold on to power, President Toxic, and an America where systemic racism is alive and well. We are just going to have to take power. And to win this debate, after we take power, we are going to have to be very clear about what The Electoral College was built for. And what it has actually done through US history. We'll especially have to be clear about the election of President Toxic, and the racism and hate and division he has promoted and thrived on. I was going to post this YouTube video on another thread. But I think I'll post it here as an afterthought. If only to avoid starting yet another long-winded post. I stumbled on that yesterday when I was wandering around YouTube. It's about 6 1/2 hours of live election coverage from 1980. I scanned through maybe 30 minutes of it. Partly it was fun to see what the computers and clothes looked like back then. And to see a young Chris Wallace (covering Reagan) and a young Judy Woodruff (covering Carter). I was going to post this on the prediction thread. The interesting point is that people didn't know history was happening, even in the moment it was happening. Pat Caddell, Carter's pollster, always thought it was the last minute turn in hostage negotiations. Even Reagan, in his victory speech, said he thought it would be a "cliffhanger". George H.W. Bush said he was surprised, because he thought it would be close. In the last minutes before sign off, Garrick Utley announced that the Republicans won surprise Senate victories in New York and Florida. No one saw that coming. The Democrats had a 9 seat Senate majority before the election. The Republicans had a 3 seat majority after. At one point, David Brinkley said this wasn't a complete surprise, because Reagan had a huge lead in the polls after the convention that year. But while many of the polls showed Reagan leading, none called the margin. And there was none of the "wisdom" around why things were shaping up that way. It's quaint that someone as smart as Brinkley would use the words "wisdom" and "polls" in the same sentence. The only person I heard that had a sense of the historical bigger picture was - this ain't a shocker - historian Teddy White. (At about 42:00 in the video.) He was interviewed early in the coverage, before any of the Senate surprises were called. So he said it's a bit too early to say. But some elections are the end of an era, when a big historical wave comes in. Most elections are just ripples. He cited 1932, and 1964. And maybe 1980. He of course turned out to be right. 1980 was the end of an era, and the beginning of the Reagan Revolution. Lichtman is a sort of Teddy White. His critics might say he is Teddy White revisited as a snake oil salesman. He is not calling for revolutionary change in 2020. He's saying the election will be close. And that while President Toxic should lose, voter suppression and Russian interference could change the outcome. I was going to post this in the Lichtman thread. But it fits here, I think. If we're going to dump the Electoral College, it would take something like the Reagan Revolution. And I don't mean one dramatic election, necessarily. From the vantage point of history, we know that what happened in 1980 foreshadowed what happened in 1984. The even bigger landslide in 1984 confirmed that the Minnesota liberalism of Humphrey and Mondale was, in fact, history. That's still playing out. If President Toxic does win Minnesota, it will be because of those blue collar Iron Rangers who once voted for Paul Wellstone, but now vote for President Toxic. What the polls seem to be saying today is the opposite. If Biden wins Wisconsin, it presumably will be because people simply rejected President Toxic's fear and racism and hate. Not because they are for looting, fires, and radicalism. And, of course, because they care about the economy, stupid. And the soon to be 200,000 dead. All I feel I can do is send money to people running for Senate in places like Arizona and Georgia and North Carolina. If they win, history may show that it was one big nail in the coffin of the Electoral College. And in the toxic and racist parts of American history is was designed to support. And has in fact supported up to and including today.

About a month ago some pollster, I think a Republican, said he'd been doing focus groups and the "Biden is a few steps behind" thing kept coming up among undecided voters. The pollster's main point was don't underestimate President Toxic's resilience. It comes up both in positive ways (Trump is strong. He gets things done.) and negative ways (Biden is weak. He's two steps behind.) That's a good warning. We should certainly not ever assume this is a slam dunk. That said, some of this is that people are just repeating the scripted talking points of President Toxic. We'll be hearing Biden is senile all through Election Day. I'm not sure it hurts Biden. All that poll data I posted included that the number of Independents who think Biden is not mentally fit to be President is in the low 40's (I think 42 %) whereas for Trump it's in the high 40's (I think 47 %). And with Biden it has lowered expectations to the point where it's easy for him to look good unless he really screws it up. I was not a Biden fan last year, partly for this reason. He'll never be someone I view as eloquent and smooth as silk. But I've been impressed, both with his scripted teleprompter speeches and the impromptu stuff. He will almost certainly make some gaffes this Fall. The only question is when, and will it matter. It's actually a plus that he has a history of gaffes, as well as stuttering. Because of that, it's harder to argue that when he's less than dazzling it's a result of clear cognitive degeneration. I agree with you that Lichtman's argument that what happens during the campaign basically doesn't matter is a stretch. But I do agree with his fundamental point that winning is driven by governing, not campaigns. As in, if you governed really well people are going to vote for you. If you governed really crappy, people won't. He has been right 9 out of 9. So the basic concept that people are predisposed to reward competence and punish incompetence makes sense in theory, and holds up in practice. Lichtman's claim to fame is obviously that he's been able to call elections based on how political parties have governed. I think the greatest value of his theory is to flip it. Instead of using it to predict who will win, use it to figure out how you govern in a way that will result in re-election. If you forget about the prediction part and just look at Lichtman as a theory about how you govern, and what voters really care about, it makes a lot of sense to me. I'll be really interested to see how Biden works with Congress. There's theories that Obama was his own worst enemy. He was condescending, he made anyone who disagreed feel like a racist, blah blah blah. We know for sure he was not from the back slapping, poker playing, "where's the bottle of whiskey?" school of deal making. I've also read that at least some staffers in Obamaland wanted Biden to stop cutting deals with Congress (i.e. Republicans) during crises because they thought he gave away too much. I never felt it was worth worrying about this. Because by the time the Republicans took back the House in 2010, I think it was a known fact the McConnell, Gingrich, and other Republicans had adopted an "obstruct everything" strategy. So even if Obama bent over backwards, which I don't think he did, I assume he still would have been met with obstruction on any big policy - like Obamacare or climate change.. Biden better go in with the understanding that he needs some major policy achievements if he doesn't want it to all come crashing down in 2022 and/or 2024. in theory, Biden should be better than most Presidents at getting what he wants out of Congress and cutting deals. And if he does that, that isn't something that makes him looks senile. Even though I voted for Bernie in the primary, one reason I'm not too disappointed in Biden as nominee is I think he has a much better shot than Bernie would at getting laws passed that people support. And that actually make a difference in their lives. I certainly hope Lichtman is more right than wrong that this is what people care about: governance, and getting things done that have a real impact in people's lives.

Congratulations! You got my point. I know there was a ton of content I posted about Independents in the YouGov poll. But what they found is entirely consistent with this poll you cite. For a lot of Independents, this is a "hold your nose" election. A minority view President Toxic favorably, and a minority view Biden favorably. Add Pence and Harris and you get the same thing. So I suspect that adds up into a majority of Independents who view either President Toxic or Biden favorably. But there's also some who don't like either. And while it's not clear from the poll, that probably correlates with the 20 % or so who say they care little or not at all about who wins. Probably because they don't like either of them. We have been here before, and done this before. In 2016 the people who didn't respect or trust either candidate swung heavily to Trump. And it was probably at the last minute, because their thinking is fluid. Which would explain why Trump did better than the polls suggested. There's almost always a late break to one or the other candidate. In 2016 it broke to President Toxic. Karl Rove said on Election Night 2016 that this is why President Toxic won. People who didn't like either candidate voted for change. In 2016 that was Trump. That 6 minute analysis sums up most of the important lessons of 2016. But particularly the last few minutes is where Rove talks about how President Toxic won the "hold your nose and pick one smelly turd" vote. South Park satirized it as the choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich. My guess in 2020 is this is bad news for President Toxic. The same people who didn't like what they saw, held their nose, and voted for change may do so again. Of course, President Toxic could portray himself in 2016 in a way Biden can't. He was the outsider who'd go in and flip the table and drain the swamp. Biden is Mr. Establishment and, if Trump has his way, the poster child Swamp Thing. Those polls suggest that Independents are already leaning toward the idea that President Toxic isn't making things better. And, if re-elected, he will probably just make things worse. If I'm right, and they hold their nose for Biden/Harris, it won't be out of love and deep respect. I do think Biden (like Reagan) is playing to hope. I do think President Toxic is playing to fear. My biggest criticism of Hillary in 2016 is she played the fear card too much. She assumed that people would be so afraid of Trump that he couldn't win. Trippi confirms that in the 2016 piece above. Fear did not work in 2016, if you view it that way. I don't think President Toxic will convince voters that Joe Biden is the end of civilization as we know it. This article below only tangents on your point. But I think the author absolutely nailed it. I'm putting it here because I think this applies in particular to Independents who don't believe the worst things people say about either President Toxic or Destroyer Joe. The Democrats’ Next Challenge: Hit Trump Where He’s Strong It's the economy, stupid. The polls show that if there's an area where Biden needs to close the deal, it's the economy, stupid. I agree with Shafer. If Biden and his team can't figure out how to sell that, Biden doesn't deserve to be President. There's another point Shafer made that did help me to understand something. I've said in this thread that it amazes me that only 30 % of Americans see President Toxic as a good person. About half of America sees Joe Biden as a good person. I don't remember the exact number, but I think about 1 in 3 Republicans say President Toxic is not a good person. So how does that work? How do you elect someone you see as a bad person to be POTUS? Shafer's point is that Biden can't turn this around, and should not bother trying. He can say, like Hillary tried to in 2016, that this guy is a bad person who doesn't deserve to win. But he did win. And he won despite the fact that many Republicans don't think he's a good person. And Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is not the one to make the case. Here's what Shafer said: There could be a debate zinger in that. Biden could just read the poll data that 1 in 3 Republicans think Trump is not a good person. So it turns out that I have a lot of things in common with Republicans, after all. Mostly, he should keep asking people if they are better off and feel safer than they did when President Toxic came to power.

To use the 538 averages, Biden is leading by 4.3 in Pennsylvania today. His lead was as high as 7.7 in mid-July. So all these polls show that things aren't looking quite as bad for President Toxic as six weeks ago. The economy is maybe a bit better. COVID-19, which was surging then, has stabilized for now at about 1000 deaths a day. Some of it may be the RNC and a small convention bump. Remember. Even McCain, in 2008, was in the lead with his Palin convention bump for a week or two around now. President Toxic needed a lot more than this out of his RNC. And the Palin fiasco might be a relevant comparison . President Toxic doesn't have Palin, of course. But throwing red meat at the crowd may help a little in the short run, but hurt in the long run. Just as an anecdote, Morning Joe said today that speaking as a "law and order conservative", which he is, this isn't even close. Biden is being thoughtful and balanced about the underlying issues. As in condemning violence, but condoning policies to reform the police and promote racial equality and justice. President Toxic is just presenting a one-dimensional picture. Pure red meat. There's not even a question anymore whether President Toxic is peddling hope or fear. This is pure authoritarianism. Pure fear. To me, it feels un-American. And is it working? Is Biden behind in the polls? Did Rep. Omar lose her primary? The whole strategy is built around ignorance, fear, and reaction. Biden will defund the police and make America less safe. The only problem is that a majority of Independents - let alone Democrats - just don't buy it. Maybe ads like this will persuade them. But I think the majority of Independents will look at that ad like Morning Joe does, and say that President Toxic is throwing fuel on the fire. That ad says, "President Trump is making it stop." About half of Independents flat out disagree. They think he is making it worse. And if he's re-elected there will be "more violence". I think a good phrase everyone should have in their mind is "color intensifier". That's Charlie Cook's phrase from 2018. It ended up being an accurate description of why things went in two different directions at the same time. Meaning areas that leaned blue got bluer, and areas that leaned red got redder. In 2018 his prediction came true. It explains why Democrats like Lauren Underwood and Lucy McBath won so many suburban House seats that were trending blue. Even Newt Gingrich's old seat! So Gingrich right now is blathering on about how Democrats are causing lawlessness and every other type of evil known to old White men. But his district is now in the hands of a Black woman who wants reasonable gun control laws. This stuff appears to be toxic with suburban women of any race. Meanwhile, in 2018, I was sending money to women like McCaskill and Heitkamp, from red states that were getting redder. They got slaughtered in the polls in Fall 2018. And it was White men that slaughtered them. Who can blame old White men whose very testicles were on the chopping block - at least according to old White man President Toxic? I'm a Lichtman boy. Most of this is noise. Behind the noise what I suspect is happening is that people are making a decision that President Toxic is the wrong guy for the job. I've read polls this week that suggest that some White men have shifted back to President Toxic relative to a few months ago. And a small portion of Blacks - maybe 5 %? - have shifted into the undecided column. Probably black conservatives who listened to guys like Brewer and said they'd think about it some more. Among other groups, Biden does not appear to be slipping. In terms of everything I said above in this thread about how I don't see how Kenosha and this issue automatically hurts Biden, I stand by that. Morning Joe said that emphatically this morning. He thinks Biden is playing this right, and getting ahead of it with his big ad buy. And this story provides a lot of data about the same thing: Trump attacks take a toll on Black Lives Matter support But a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows more voters favor Joe Biden to handle public safety. I think that sums it up. The visual version of this is the picture of the fat cat McCloskeys holding an assault rifle and waving a gun at Black people. The poll results are slightly better for Biden than that massive YouGov poll I went on and on about. In this one, Biden has an even bigger advantage on dealing with race relations. In the YouGov poll, President Toxic led Biden on crime by a few points. This one uses the word "public safety", and Biden is leading on that. One of the talking heads on Morning Joe said that part of what Team Toxic is desperate to do is change the subject from COVID-19, where the majority of America now believes President Toxic did a poor job. Biden did an excellent job of tying the crime and COVID-19 issues together, I thought. "Do you feel safer? Are you safer today than you were four years ago?" Biden just needs to keeping asking the question relentlessly. I'm a liberal Democrat. But I look at that Trump filth above and see it as pure hate, pure fear mongering, pure authoritarianism. Conservative Never Trumper Republican Morning Joe sees it the same way. This is bad news for President Toxic, I think. The other question that Biden needs to keep asking is the Reagan one: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" The objective answer for most Americans is NO. Playing off what I wrote about Ohio above, this election will test to what degree perception is reality. Even if it is the economy, stupid, maybe people who like President Toxic will simply decide that the economy is fine. And that COVID-19 is under control and China's fault. The day Trump was elected a lot of Republicans decided the economy was a lot better all of a sudden. And a lot of Democrats decided it was a lot worse. If you go by data, like jobs, Youngstown is no better under President Toxic. Even in January 2020, before the plague started. And now it is actually worse. Will that matter to White men in Youngstown? (There are Black factory workers in Youngstown. If they are conservative, this rhetoric may be nudging some of them too.) Morning Consult released a bunch of state polls in the last few days. A bunch of them are from Aug 21-23, so before the RNC. But they were all taken the same days. And I thought the results were interesting. And they may have something to do with a trend. Biden was up 9 points in Wisconsin, 10 points in Arizona, 3 points in Georgia. President Toxic was up 1 point in Texas and 5 points in Georgia. A different poll out today from Opinium, which seems like an outlier, says Biden was up 13 points in Wisconsin for a poll from Aug. 21-28. It reinforces the idea that there is no evidence that Wisconsin is buying President Toxic's fear and hate. It's one poll. But think about that. Biden is probably doing well in Wisconsin. But he's doing just as well in Arizona. He's actually doing better in Georgia - and Texas! - than he is in Ohio. At least in this one poll. So these may all be blips and useless noise. But that story about Minnesota I posted nailed it, I think. Wherever there are people of color and cities and suburbs, Biden will do better. Wherever old White men and cows roam free, and perhaps wherever there are working class factory workers of any race, President Toxic will do better. I'll say it again. Some of those factory workers are Black and Hispanic. What's just not clear is whether they will hold President Toxic accountable for the fact that he never brought the factory jobs back, as promised. Morning Joe made another point that is relevant. Remember how Blacks would never turn out for Mr. Crime Bill Biden? Well, President Toxic has actually turned that into an advantage for Joe Biden. It's hard to recast Mr. Crime Bill as the guy who will unleash the fires of hate on every city in America. And then when Chicago and New York and LA are toast, President Crime Bill and Vice President Prosecutor will lead the angry swarms of Black Marxists (one of whom was elected to Congress!) into the suburbs to pillage and destroy. No one is safe. Our only hope is President Toxic. Be afraid. Be very afraid. G.I.V.E.M.E.A.F.U.C.K.I.N.G.B.R.E.A.K. My guess is that we are watching Black turnout in the 2020 election go through the fucking roof. President Toxic is cozying up to White vigilantes who have actually shot peaceful protesters dead. So the symbols of Black America include Jacob Blake's Mom, who is being the voice of hope and unity and healing. And Jocob Blake's Dad, who called on BLM protesters in Kenosha to raise a clenched fist. I suspect both parents, and both messages, speak very powerfully to most Black Americans. One speaks to the hurt and anger and rage that is authentic. The other speaks to the fact that Blacks haven't forget who MLK or John Lewis were. or what they stood for. I can't imagine Blacks will greet this election with apathy. It has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. While there is a small minority of Black conservatives like Jack Brewer who may be thinking about voting for President Toxic, I imagine many more will do whatever it takes to get this horrific racist asshole out of office.

I'm not really responding to your post @Pete1111. But the specific states you cited dovetail with something I was going to post, anyway. I thought this was a really good analysis relating to Lichtman's ideas about fundamental drivers. It's a counterpoint to, "it's the economy, stupid." Why Has Minnesota Been Slow to Realign? The author makes a great argument that, at least in the Midwest, it's the geography, stupid. Iowa, for example, had the biggest Democratic lean of these seven Midwestern states he looks at back in 1988. By 2016 it had the second biggest Republican lean. (Indiana was # 1.) Why? Here's what the author says: The easiest way to make his point is to just list the percentage of voters in these states that live in large cities: Illinois: 69 % Minnesota 63 % Michigan 55 % Ohio 51 % Indiana 48 % In the article he doesn't give a specific number for Wisconsin or Iowa. And it's not 100 % clear how he defines "large cities". But it is clear that he's including suburbs and exurbs. To me, this dovetails with Rahm Emanuel's idea of "metropolitan alliances". So you won't like this much, @tassojunior. I'm throwing Rahm and suburban women into the melting pot together. Watch out! The whole article is detailed and thorough. His point about Minnesota is that the Republicans might be waiting a while. Because despite being called The Land Of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota is kind of The Land Of Twin Cities And Suburbs. Mike Pence put on a good show up in The Iron Range. But if The Iron Range becomes redder, and the suburbs become bluer, that's not good math for Republicans. The 538 poll averages today show Biden with a 6 point lead in Minnesota, and President Toxic with a 2 point lead in Ohio. As the author argues, the pattern is clear. In 2016, Michigan was the cutting edge between winning and losing. So far, at least, it looks like the pendulum is swinging to blue, not red. But it's too early to tell. This other article from 538 covers a lot of the same ground as the article above, and presents a somewhat more optimistic picture for Republicans who want to take Minnesota. I'm including it because the thing it adds is one possible driver: the concentration of non-Hispanic Whites without bachelor's degrees. This graphic from the 538 article sums it up nicely: Arguably, you could also say "It's the education, stupid." Having gone to a liberal arts college in Minnesota, this all makes sense to me. Paul Wellstone won in 1990 because he could go up to the Iron Range and preach left-wing populism, and it worked. As long as he went easy on the gun stuff. Now there's more guns, and fewer jobs in the Iron Range. So where the educated people are - the cities and suburbs - that where Democrats do well. And it's about the only place they do really well these days. 2020 will be a test of whether, and how, economic fundamentals matter. If Lichtman is right, President Toxic can't survive an election in which the economy and jobs have tanked. Not to mention COVID-19 and all the other stuff. That said, Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 on the backs of Blacks, who turned out at an even higher rate than 2008. Despite the fact that the Black economy in particular was the slowest to recover from The Great Recession. So will Team Toxic not only turn out their base, but add to it with new voters that didn't vote in 2016? Given what happened with Obama and Blacks in 2012, it's possible. But Blacks knew that Obama did not cause The Great Recession. So far it looks like Trump's America doesn't think he's to blame for anything going on in America in 2020. I'll be fascinated to see how that plays out when people vote. And to see which people vote. Ohio county tells story of the seismic shift of working-class voters toward GOP I'm including that article mostly for the headline. If you read the whole story, the headline sounds better for Republicans than it is. So in the county around Youngstown, Ohio, enthusiasm for President Toxic is high. But the article also states that in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in 2018 a Democrat came within 4 points of tossing out a Republican in a district that was supposed to be totally safe for the GOP. For me, it all keeps coming back to the bumper sticker "metropolitan alliances". One question I have that 2020 will maybe help answer is whether there is anything that "The Establishment" can do that will make things right for these places like Youngstown. I say "The Establishment" because one way of looking at it is that whether it's Jeb! or Hillary or good ole' Destroyer Joe, some Trumpians seem to be convinced they are all at best blood sucking swamp creatures, and at worst pedophiles who eat babies. The other question is whether President Toxic can do anything that will convince his supporters that we're not really on the fast track to Greatness in 2020. I'm going to close with a summary of all manufacturing jobs in Ohio and the trend going back to the 1990's. I picked January of certain years because that's the month new Presidents were inaugurated. So the assumption is that Presidents are somehow judged based on what actually happens while they have power. Again, if Lichtman is right, and voters make judgments about how well incumbents governed, President Toxic should have real problems in Ohio. And at least some polls show him behind. All Employees: Manufacturing in Ohio January 2001 992,900 manufacturing jobs January 2009 671,000 manufacturing jobs July 2009 609,700 manufacturing jobs January 2013 655,100 manufacturing jobs January 2017 689,900 manufacturing jobs January 2020 697,000 manufacturing jobs July 2020 657,200 manufacturing jobs The best way to get the picture of factory jobs in Ohio is to look at that long-term chart. It's bleak. Ohio lost about 300,000 factory jobs under W. "Recovery" didn't get close to getting back to the 1 million + factory jobs Ohio had under Bill Clinton. They never even got back to the 767,000 jobs they had in December 2007, when the Great Recession started. You can look at Obama/Biden a few ways. If you start counting from July 2009, at the bottom of The Great Recession, Ohio gained about 80,000 jobs. Again, that didn't even get them back to December 2007, let alone December 1999. If you count the 61,300 jobs lost in the first six months of Obama/Biden, that works out to a new gain of 20,000 manufacturing jobs after eight years of Obama/Biden. I don't think Ohio factory workers look at this FRED data every month. But I do think what the numbers speak to - stagnation, crappy paying jobs, addiction - is what we keep reading about that led them to gamble on President Toxic. On an objective level, President Toxic has made it worse. There's over 30,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in Ohio than when he took office. Even if you count from January 2017 to January 2020, pre-COVID-19, the "best economy ever" produced a net gain of about 7,000 factory jobs in three years. If the question is whether President Toxic brought jobs back, the answer is no. If the question is whether those rich "job creators" took their tax cuts and created factory jobs, the answer is no. President Toxic will replay 2016 and blame all this on NAFTA and Destroyer Joe. But there is a difference. Trump speaks as if he isn't really President. And he never really made promises. But he is President. And he did makes promises. And people are not better off. Biden can at least say in 7 1/2 out of 8 years the recovery created tens of thousands of jobs, without having to fill the trough of the greedy millionaires and billionaires. Even if you count before the plague, President Toxic just couldn't do that. Jobs and the economy are not the only issue driving this election. But to the degree people in Ohio vote on the reality of their jobs and lives, as opposed to the Trump Reality TV Show, it's not clear to me that President Toxic can pull this off. I don't believe he can simply make the same promises that Smartest Business Genius Ever Donald Trump did in 2016.

Exclusive: Dem group warns of apparent Trump Election Day landslide So this post goes the exact opposite direction of the one above. This one is about GOTV and getting the base to vote. While both matter in pretty much every election, my own view is that getting the base to vote is the single most important thing. The one sentence explanation of why Democrats got shellacked in 2010 is a lot of Democrats did not vote. I buy the idea that turnout in 2020 will be off the charts on both sides. Which, if true, is good news for Democrats. Since there are a lot more of us. (News flash: Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 by millions of votes.) Arguably, the biggest challenge in 2020 won't be whether Democrats vote. It will be how they vote. And how they know their vote is counted. And what happens if President Toxic appears to be "winning" in a landslide on Election Night. Maybe I'm too optimistic. But the thing I worry about least is President Toxic declaring he won, and there's no need to count ballots. Even if you forget mail-in voting, it's not like we're not used to elections that go one way, until they go another. If I remember right, Andy Gillum was ahead in the early counting, and then it was all downhill from there. Doug Jones I think was behind most of the night in Alabama, until city votes came in and put him over the top. Granted, that took four hours. Not four days. But the principle is the same. Everybody who cast a legal vote deserves to have it counted. What that article describes is basically what happened in California in 2018. Here's an article about how Paul Ryan whined about possible voter fraud. It went nowhere, because they had no argument. Ryan's position was basically that "it defies all logic to me" that it takes more time, but is cheaper, to have a system that actually makes it easier for more people to vote. It also defied logic to him that when you do that, Republicans got their asses kick. Poor Paul! Out of curiosity I Googled "California Election Fraud" and got this page from The Heritage Foundation which i'm guessing is every vote fraud case going back to the 1990's. If I'm reading that correctly there was one conviction in 2018 and three in 2019. Hardly the thing stolen elections are made of. President Toxic may whine and rant. But the value of putting out the warning now is that we all just need to be prepared for it. My bigger fear is those other issues, about the actual movement of ballots, efforts to prevent them from being cast, and efforts to invalidate them after being cast. I haven't followed it closely, but I think Biden (like President Toxic) is staffing up an army of lawyers all over the potential swing states. One worst case scenario is that it's like 2000 again. But we have five Floridas, not one. And whether mail in ballots are invalidated could impact the outcome in states where it's close. That said, Florida 2000 was all about ballots cast in person. So it's not clear that votes cast in person in 2020 could not be an issue, too. Another worst case scenario is that Team Putin hacks the actual state voter files. People who aren't real could vote in person. Or people who are real may find their registrations disappeared. My way of dealing with this is to send money to Biden and Senate candidates who can win in swing states. My assumption is that Biden and the statewide candidates are the ones who will be coordinating state-level GOTV and also ballot tracking systems based on the laws of each state to get the base out to vote. This voting environment is probably more curse than blessing for Democrats. But it could be both. My assumption is that Republicans will march through the fires of hell to vote in person for President Toxic. This article from The Nation about down-ballot voting is both good news and bad news for Democrats. The good news is that of the roughly 1000 state-level seats Democrats lost in the Obama Era, we've now won about half back. In a blue wave, we could get the rest back in 2020, just in time for redistricting. The bad news is that Democrats could be hurt more than Republicans due to the lack of human person to person contact in COVID-19 America. Like door knocking. GOTV and ballots could be a complete nightmare for Democrats this year. The article anecdotally quotes several Black women running for State Assembly seats who came surprisingly close to winning in 2018, and could win in 2020. @tassojunior should like this. Because they are intentionally targeting "low propensity" voters. Especially "low propensity" voters of color. But I think it says three different times in the article that human contact at their door or somewhere else (Bernie used picnics a lot in Nevada) is the single best way to get people who don't usually vote, or never vote, to vote. So there's volunteer efforts to phone or text people instead. But I'm not sure that does the anything close to the same thing. Meanwhile, I keep reading these articles like this one from Ohio that reinforce Michael Moore's point. Enthusiasm for President Toxic in Trumpland is through the roof. And it shows up in grassroots organizing efforts, like people going door to door despite COVID, or texting people they know or maybe who are on some target list. I think the blessing here is that Democrats with the brains and resources (money, staff, volunteers) have a built in reason to get people to vote early, if that is a legal option in their state. My experience as a volunteer doing phone or door to door GOTV on elections is that the single best excuse is always, "Stop bugging me. I'll vote on Election Day." COVID and President Toxic's antagonism to mail-in ballots changes that completely. I'm hoping lots of Blacks and Millennials, among others, get the message that if you don't vote early President Toxic's lawyers will do everything they can to make sure you can't vote. Or that your vote won't be counted. Rep. Clyburn is talking about October being "Election Month". He talked in an interview about Colorado's system for early voting as a model to adopt in other states. If I understood him right, the idea is to vote absentee, but in person. Like by having ballot drop boxes rather than mailing them back. I know I plan to vote as soon as I get my ballot in the mail. And then I'll track it or probably just drop it off in person. I have to imagine lots of people are thinking this way. If a lot of Democrats do this, it could also confound the expectation that President Toxic will be way ahead on Election Night. We've never had an election like this before. Many Californians, including me, waited until the last minute to vote in the 2020 primary to see what happened in earlier states. So while it's likely that President Toxic will be ahead in swing states on Election Night based on people who vote in person on Election Day, that's not necessarily true if a lot of Democrats vote early. I think those mail-in ballots that come in and are counted early are pretty much the first ones to be reported, at least in some states. So it's clear, the top chart is midterm elections. The second chart is the last three Presidential elections. What I worry about the most in terms of GOTV is that because of COVID-19 it's just going to be particularly hard to get the people Democrats need to vote to do so. On the face of it, the fact that you can't go door to door or have community or church picnics or voter registration tables is going to hurt. What might help the most is the environment of panic and frenzy we are already in. The message is already out that if you don't vote, it's the end of democracy. And maybe civilization. Or, your suburbs will be cancelled. I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from it. But in the Wisconsin election and with the members of The Squad, like Rep. Omar, people turned out in droves the Democrats did well. Including Democrats who were supposed to be vulnerable. Unlike 2016, this already feels like an "all hands on deck" election. If I had to guess, we're not headed to a repeat of 2016 in terms of turnout. Rule # 1 for Democrats seems to be DO NOT REPEAT 2016. So while there will be huge challenges with the nitty gritty work of GOTV and ballots at the grassroots level, my guess is that 2020 will be most like 2008 and 2018. Turnout for both parties were at record highs. Note that Republicans turned out at higher rates in 2008 than in 2012 and 2016. My subjective sense is that the intensity we're feeling now is felt by vote sides. And it plays off each other. If anything like this actually happens, President Toxic will be toast. Republicans even beat Democrats on turnout in 2008, narrowly. But Obama and Democrats romped simply because there are so many more of us. Obama also won more Independents than McCain 52/44, according to Wikipedia. As I argued above, Biden ought to be able to do that in 2020. Obama 2012 might be the textbook example of the relative importance of turning out the base, compared to persuading Independents. Wikipedia says that Romney won the Independent vote over Obama by five points in 2012, 50/45. Obama won handily regardless, and Democrats carried pretty much every close Senate race in states like Missouri and Indiana and North Dakota - which set up losing those ones in 2018.

I never said Independents were "Republican Lite". I think you actually just agreed with me. Some Indepedents are "Republican Lite". But other are young Independents who are progressives and increasingly don't identify themselves with either political party. Even though if they vote they tend to vote Democratic. So it is all over the map. In my posts about Independents relating to the YouGov poll, I did say about 40 % of Independents appear to basically be conservatives Republicans. They don't think Biden is mentally fit, and they think he'll make America less safe ... blah blah blah. Since we know that many Republicans have shifted to Independent precisely because of their antipathy to President Toxic, it makes sense that there's a big chunk of Independents - maybe larger than before President Toxic - who basically think like Republicans. Because for much of their life they have been Republicans. My read of both conventions is that they mostly played to the base and mobilization - not persuasion. Biden had Kasich. President Toxic had Black conservatives. But mostly it was ginning up the known base. I've written a lot about Independents the last few days. Obviously, I believe that persuading Independents matters. But mostly I think this election will be determined by who gets their base to vote. Relating to Independents and persuasion, I'll restate what I think are the most important things I see in the polls. If anybody is going to benefit from persuasion, given where we are right now, I think it's Biden. In the poll I kept citing, President Toxic has 44 % of the Independents. That's more than percentage of Independents who think he'd do a better job than Biden on anything. Or that identify him as a good leader in any number of questions. Again, this is right after the RNC. Other polls I cited from July showed Biden in the lead with Independents then. But now he has 34 % of Independents in this one poll. So I think we can conclude two things that seem like facts. One, there are some Independents changing their mind. So persuasion does matter. Two, right now Biden has the most to gain, and President Toxic the most to lose, by persuading Independents. When you look at where Independents are at both on policies and the personal leadership qualities, it favors Biden a lot more than President Toxic. If it's true that they've been sliding toward President Toxic in the last month, that also means they can slide back to Biden. There's two extremes I cited above that may define the range either candidate can go with Independents. Only 28 % of voters in the poll I cited say Biden would be better than President Toxic on the economy. This is a reversal from another poll I cited from mid-July that showed Biden leading with Independents on the economy. Meanwhile, Biden is perceived as way better than President Toxic on race. So while this "law and order" stuff could hurt Biden in theory, there's no evidence of that in reality as of now. Including in Wisconsin, where a Morning Consult poll out today give Biden a 9 % lead. The 538 average of polls shows Biden up 6 % in Wisconsin. That 28 % figure strongly suggests to me that Biden closing the deal is all about the economy, stupid. Flip side, 60 % of Independents say the nation is worse off than four years ago. If past patterns hold, that suggests Biden has a huge number of Independent voters he should be capable of closing the deal with, grounded around the reality that the economy is not in good shape - in general, or for them personally. Some of these polls suggest before either convention Biden was on the way to doing just that. My own view is sort of "Lichtman Lite". His key insights are that historical forces matter. And that voters judge based on the fundamentals of governing, not political games. So I do really think that President Toxic is predisposed to lose in 2020 because of all these voters who feel worse off. Then add the corruption, and COVID, and racial chaos. But I think Biden does need to close the deal, which he hasn't. That is the part Lichtman seems to dismiss. He's basically saying Biden, Bernie, Elizabeth, Tulsi ..... any of them would have won if nominated. That said, he did put in the caveat in 2016 that even though Trump should win, he is so far outside the box that he may manage to lose. So Lichtman is not a purist. I think we are in agreement that the phrase "Independent" covers people who are all over the ideological map. In addition, ideology may not be the most important factor, or even an important factor, to many of them. about 20 % of them says they care very little, or not at all, who wins. So it could be that what matters most are these questions about whether they are better or worse off. Or whether they believe this or that candidate will really make them less safe. If this is an accurate picture, it also may matter who the last person to speak with them before they vote is. They are very fluid, and may not know themselves who they'll vote for until they vote. I checked the last three elections that seem most similar to what Lichtman thinks will happen. Meaning elections where the incumbent or incumbent party lost, and it seemed to be in large part because of the economy, stupid. They are 1980, 1992, and 2016. In none of those cases was the winner clear around Labor Day. If there's an example where a candidate had to close the deal to win, and did, 1980 is it. The sole debate was about a week before the election. There were polls in mid-October that showed Carter with a healthy lead. Then again, Reagan had opened up a lead over Carter in the Summer. So it was fluid. The one thing that is clear is that Carter's final polling slide started right after that debate, and could not be stopped. It's relevant to 2020 that the question that cut is: are you better off than you were four years ago? I'd argue the last person Independents listened to in that election was Reagan. And it was decisive. In 1992 Clinton had a healthy lead through most of the Fall. It's another one where you can argue he closed the deal in the second, town-hall style debate. That's the one where he felt your pain, and Poppy looked at his watch. Clinton opened up a 20 point lead in mid-October. That said, there's a few Gallup polls in late October where Clinton only had a one or two point lead. There's zero consensus on whether any of these debates really matter, with the possible exception of that 1980 debate. We all know what happened in 2016. There's two points I'll reinforce. First, Hillary's loss is not a great example of its the economy stupid. Slightly more people said they were better of (31 %) than worse off (27 %) than four years ago. But the overwhelming vote against Hillary by the 27 % who felt worse off was probably the single biggest nail in her coffin. And I'd argue that the last person a lot of voters listened to was Jim Comey, which of course didn't help. My "Lichtman Lite" interpretation of this is that in all three cases the incumbent party was predisposed to lose. And in all three cases they did lose. But that wasn't clear until they actually won. That's what I'd bet on in 2020. Biden is more likely to win than not. But if it happens, we won't know it until Election Day. Part of the reason is these Independents who may be predisposed to fire President Toxic but won't do that - if they do it - until the last minute. And given the mail-in ballot situation, in 2020 we may not know until well after Election Day. Which is a perfect lead in to yet another long rant, This post was all about persuading and Independents. The follow-up on is about getting the base to vote.

And that, of course, is an irresistible set up. I hope you all cut me some slack. For a long time, as an escort, my motto was even simpler: Fuck 'em.