It's official: Trump Is History, Says The Prediction Professor

[tassojunior]

The KHive is more bold and doing a lot more damage this year to the ticket than the Clintonistas were in 2016 (hard as that is to believe). Kyle's been one of their main targets. Establishment Dems are so incredibly stupid and arrogant. 

 

 

Even Biden needs to stop attacking progressive ideas in "defense":

And let’s remember: The relatively small group of people who are genuinely worried about socialism are not a large set of persuadable voters -- more typically, they are hard-core Trump supporters. 

The people who are persuadable are young voters and disillusioned voters who need to be energized and mobilized. Kicking Sanders and progressive voters doesn’t help accomplish that.

 https://www.dailyposter.com/p/biden-should-stop-dunking-on-the

 

If people are looking for scapegoats for why the Democrats lose before they attack progressives they should remember this:

 

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, tassojunior said:

Corporate Democrats lose because they take the left for granted and resist the fundamental change we need to heal this nation.

The problem is we have too many corporate Democrats like Claire McCaskill and Joe Donnelly.

If we could just get rid of them, and replace them with Republicans like Josh Hawley and Mike Braun, America could heal.  And we could stop right wing Justices from being confirmed.

What scares me is that we never seem to learn.

There are actually people in 2020 that think that electing a Black corporate Democrat like Jaime Harrison would be a good thing.  As if it would really make a difference. 

Quite honestly, I sent $50 to Harrison a few days ago.  And then when I read the tweet from the Movement For A People's Party I broke down in tears.  I now realize my $50 donation is the type of thing that keeps America from healing.

Until we have candidates like Jill Stein running in every state, the nation can not heal.  Granted, having a Black Jill Stein in South Carolina right now could help Lindsey Graham win in 2020, and 2026, and 2032.  But that is only temporary.

Only Jill Stein can produce the kind of fundamental change that will heal the nation, and make her unelectable.

Sure.  In the short run, we might lose.  But in the long run, we retained our moral purity. Isn't that all that really matters?

I commend you for urging people to think long and hard about this, @tassojunior.

Edited September 27, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

and that 's why Amy McGrath and Joel Ossoff are going down in flames while Charles Booker and Stacey Abrams would be winning. 

Losing to the most personally obnoxious person in America says you're even worse. And depending solely on the extreme repulsiveness of Trump as a policy, and as a strategy, is stupid. As obnoxious as he is, he has policies and his followers are highly motivated. But there is zero except hatred for Trump personally, the optics, to motivate people to vote for the Dems to get rid of him. (Good luck in 2022 and 2024 if that succeeds). 

People are motivated by policies. 70% need and want single-payer healthcare, UBI, an end to endless wars, ranked-choice direct elections, free speech, privacy from government and corporate surveillance, compassionate and sane immigration, an end to police brutality and police militarization, an end to cancel culture and identity politics, etc. There's really a lot more consensus on issues than politicians realize. People may not be ready for revolution, but they want sensible change.People are really over personalities and if the Dems don't offer more than the status quo, just without Trump, motivation for Dems is going to be fleeting, if it doesn't vanish before November. There's no law that says people have to vote, even though mail-in has made it extremely easy this year.  

(Having an almost-dictatorial presidency instead of a parliamentary system is bad enough without our undemocratic mess voting for it and the half of people who refuse to care about the importance of it's rigged election).    

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, tassojunior said:

People are motivated by policies.   70% need and want single-payer healthcare, UBI, an end to endless wars, ranked-choice direct elections, free speech, privacy from government and corporate surveillance, compassionate and sane immigration, an end to police brutality and police militarization, an end to cancel culture and identity politics, etc. There's really a lot more consensus on issues than politicians realize.

Like President Toxic, you flood the zone with so many specific things that are not even remotely true that it's impossible to respond.  I look at the polls all the time, and they don't say 70 % of Americans want single payer.  But if you want to believe that, you go right ahead.

Let's talk about The Green Party.  They say they are for Medicare For All.  They say they want to do something about climate change.  They say they want to pay reparations to Blacks and advance racial justice.  Good for them.

Here's the thing.  President Toxic is against all those things.  He dumped the Paris climate agreement.  He almost completely killed the ACA.  Now he will have a 6-3 conservative court, whereas with Hillary it possibly would have been a 6-3 liberal court.  This court will spend the next 10 or 20 years being where climate change goes to die, where civil rights goes to die, where economic justice goes to die, where wealth taxes go to die.  Is that The Green Party platform?  Is that what they want?  Because by getting President Toxic elected, that is what they got.

I think the statement, "I fucked up.  I need to rethink what I did.", is a good statement.  I think that way about 2016.  I think I should have gone with my heart and voted for Bernie.  Would he have lost?  Probably, I think.  I say that only because I think Lichtman is right, and it was an election Republicans were likely to win.  My point is, there's no harm in saying maybe I fucked up.

So I don't see the harm in asking Greens to think about whether they fucked up and helped President Toxic win a tiny Slavery Electoral College victory.  It undermines 100 % of what The Green Party says it wants.  Kyle seems to think it's okay to ask people like me to question why they supported Hillary, but it's off limits to ask Greens to do the same.  Kyle is cute, but stupid.

Apparently, Green Party leader Howie Hawkins is stupid, but not even cute.  A new ABC/WaPo poll says Biden is leading by 10 points, 54/44.  Add Libertarian Jorgensen and "How About More Trump?" Howie and that changes to a 6 point spread, 49/43, with Jorgensen getting 4 % and "How About More Trump?" Howie getting 3 %.  I'd guess most of "How About More Trump?" Howie's 3 % is coming out of Biden.  So as the pollster says.  

Quote

At the same time, the presence of Libertarian Jo Jorgensen and Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins could pose a challenge to Biden in close states. Biden’s 5-point decline when these candidates are included is a significant, albeit slight, shift.

So the path to reparations and climate change and Medicare For All is to make it so that maybe President Toxic wins in The Slavery Electoral College again.  I guess I'm stupid, too.  I just don't get the logic of that.

I'm mostly ignorant about Germany.  But I know that The Greens in Germany have spent decades building from the bottom up.  So now they are a coalition player in federal and state and local government.  And they have been willing to compromise to get some of what they want on energy policy and climate change and other issues.  They created a model of how you win and actually accomplish some of what you wanted to do.  The US Green Party has not done that.  Running someone for President will not achieve that goal.

The Green Party has something like 143 officeholders in the US, mostly in California.  Oh, and they have a very nice platform.  Saying they have a very nice platform is another way of saying they have not won shit.

Well, there is this.  Their biggest win is getting a Mayor elected in Richmond, CA, population of about 100,000.  It's a start.  But it probably is not a very good platform to take on the global fossil fuels industry.  Having three SCOTUS seats would be a much better platform.  But those seats are taken by right wingers, thanks in part to Jill Stein.

I have a friend you should talk to about this.  Maybe you could advise "How About More Trump?" Howie to talk to him, too.  My friend's name is Bernie Sanders.  Ever heard of him?

Bernie spent 10 years running for offices like Governor on third party platforms and got nowhere.  Then he ran for Mayor, which is a seat he could win.  Then he ran for House.  Then he ran for Senate.  Only then did he use those platforms to run for President - as a Democrat.  Some people feel strongly that even that was a decisive nail in Hillary's coffin. They may be right.  But mostly what I think is that he created a model for how you run and win and actually move the debate.  I'm not surprised a democratic socialist lost.  I am surprised he almost won the nomination.

So it is 0 % cute and 100 % stupid that the Green Party and "How About More Trump?"  Howie are saying they want Medicare For All, but they are actually undermining what Bernie "Medicare For All" Sanders is trying to do.  He is trying to help Biden win, just like he was trying to help Hillary win in 2016.  Taking votes away from them in Pennsylvania is not helpful.

It should be a big clue that in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court 5 Democrats ruled to keep "How About More Trump?" Howie off the ballot, and 2 Republicans ruled to keep him on the ballot.  Geez.  What does that tell us?

They've been at this thing running for President for decades.  On the minus side, they may have contributed to the loss of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.  On the plus side, they did elect a Mayor in Richmond, CA.  Something tells me that might need to rethink how they build power and win.

[stevenkesslar]

Since I mentioned that ABC/WaPo poll in the post above, I'll add a few more things that are good news for Biden.  overall, Biden is leading by 10 points, 54/44.

Independents in this poll say they favor Biden 59 to 37.  That is mind boggling.  Independent women say they favor Biden 77 to 20, a 57 point spread.  In 2016, Hillary won Independent women with a 4 point spread.

In the last three elections, Independents broke for Obama, then Romney, then Trump.  In each case, the winner had maybe a 5 % spread among Independents.  So I doubt Biden will win Independents by 20 %.  But anything even remotely close to that would be a major blow out.

In this poll 11 % of voters say they care about the SCOTUS appointment more than anything else.  Those voters favor Biden 54/46.  That's a reversal from 2016.  I don't remember the exact numbers.  But Trump won the voters who cared most about SCOTUS, something like 54/45.  What really matters is how this plays out in swing states, including in Senate races.  But it's not a bad sign that this may be helping Democrats at the margin, not Republicans.

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

So, trigger warning.  Even by my own standards, this is going to be be a particularly obtuse and rambling post. 

Every month or so I Google Allan Lichtman's name to see if he has anything new up.  This month he didn't.  But I found a long essay (actually a book chapter) I linked below that I found really interesting.  It's another author who admires Lichtman's theories commenting on their validity.

Reading it generated two ideas.  I'll summarize them, and then return to them in more detail in my rambling below:

1.  Lichtman's model provides an interesting way to think about how President Toxic could win.  The three keys in his system that turned this year that led Lichtman to call the election for Biden are the short-term economy (recession), the long-term economy (laggard GDP growth), and the social unrest.  In theory, those are decisive nails in President Toxic's political coffin.  That said, Trump is clearly trying to get people to ignore those three things.  If he succeeds with a majority of voters in the Electoral College states, he could win.  If he fails, he'll lose.

2.  2020 is only the third time that Lichtman has called his "social unrest" key against the party in power.  The other two times were 1932 and 1968.  I932 marked the beginning of a new political era.  Arguably, so did 1968.  Could the social tumult that ignited in 2020 be an indicator of a major political turning point?

Like I said, I'll return to those two ideas below.

Lichtman's claim to fame is that his system can predict who will win the Presidency.  What I actually find more interesting is that his system describes why they will win or lose.  Which boils down to governing effectively. 

I think it explains what is happening right now.  So far, nothing President Toxic is saying is really sticking to Joe Biden.  And Biden is mostly being Silent Joe.  Some of that is Biden's staff trying to avoid gaffes, I suspect.  But probably they agree with Lichtman's basic theory.  This election is a referendum on President Toxic that he is going to lose.  So they just don't want to get in the way of letting Trump lose it. Biden's staff has pretty much told reporters as much.

CHAPTER 5: WHAT DOESN'T WIN THE PRESIDENCY

That's 33 bold-faced pages from a 2006 book called Campaigns Don't Count from an Ohio newspaper columnist named Martin Gottlieb.  He declared in his column early in 2004 that Bush had already "won" the 2004 election.  He did that using Lichtman's model.  But this chapter goes through each of Lichtman's keys as they relate to the 1988 election.  It was interesting to read a smart journalist's take on Lichtman's own analysis.  The reason Gottlieb chose 1988 is he argues that was an election that everyone thought Dukakis would win.  Especially in May 1988, when Lichtman published his article in the Washingtonian saying George H.W. Bush would win.  Here's the Gallup polls from 1988:

You can see that in May Dukakis had a lead of 16 points.  So the prediction was as outside the box as Lichtman saying in September 2016 that Trump would win.  Here's the last paragraph of the chapter:

Quote

...we get only three, that is, only three factors counting against the incumbent party's candidate, Bush. The biggest "upset" the keys have ever called -- the prediction most in conflict with the prevailing wisdom -- wasn't even a close call for the keys.

Just to make sure it's clear, Lichtman says that if the party in power has six or more "keys" turned against them, they lose.  Right now, President Toxic has seven turned against him.  In 1988, Bush only had three.  So it was an easy call that Bush would win.  And by the end of the race, reality reflected Lichtman's prediction about the voter's imminent judgment.

The whole 33 pages is a good read.  But a brief summary is that this had nothing to do with Willie Horton or Lee Atwater's campaign gimmicks.  It had to do with a growing economy, Reagan winning The Cold War, and other "big picture" factors that led people to conclude they wanted four more years of Republican leadership.

What I learned reading this that I didn't know is that when they built the model, Lichtman and his Russian seismologist colleague tested all kinds of theories of what might drive an election.  Including, for example, campaign messages and campaign tactics.  When the tested possible algorithms, characteristics of leadership and governing always trumped campaigning as predictors pf who won. 

So many of Lichtman's keys are right most of the time.  If all you do is say any incumbent President running will win, you are right about 2 times out of 3.  The key that is the most accurate on its own is whether there is a serious contest for the nomination of the party in power.  In 2020, President Toxic had no real opposition.  So that in itself would predict that about 80 % of the time, that candidate running o behalf of the incumbent party will win.  

So the idea of the 13 keys is that it's not armchair judgment.  They went through a larger menu of possible factors that could predict the winner, and picked 13 that seemed to be the most reliable.  Another interesting point is that when this article was written, there were 14  "subsystems" - combinations of some portion of the 13 keys - that were just as good at predicting the winner.  The reason they picked 13 keys is they figured that it gave them the best chance of being consistently right every time.

That leads to this statement from the caper above:

Quote

Fourteen subsystems (of keys) omit both (economy) keys and still achieve perfect prediction for all 33 presidential contests since 1860." (The smallest subsystem involves only keys one through four, plus seven and thirteen, with the incumbent party needing four.)

i thought that was interesting in the context of the 2020 election.  Here's the list of 13 keys.  If you only pay attention to the six listed in that quote, President Toxic gets four of the six.  Meaning that in 2020 that subsystem says Trump should win.  Lichtman was saying last year that Trump had lost Keys 1 and 13.  But he had 2, 3, 4, and 7, and still does.  So this subsystem contradicts what Lichtman predicted based on the full 13 keys: that Trump would lose.

The three keys that turned against Trump this year are 5, 6, and 8.  Basically the economy went to shit, and all hell broke loose in the streets and there was suddenly mass social unrest.  Lichtman has called it the quickest turnaround in Presidential history.  Because mostly these keys are big picture items, and they don't turn in a day or month like polls do.  So Trump went for having four keys against him in 2019, which is two short of a loss, to seven turned against him, which is one more than needed to predict loss.  

Here's what I find very interesting about that.  I think this is a good way to think about what President Toxic is clearly trying to do, and what he in fact has to do to win.  In effect, he has to be The Wizard Of Oz saying, "Ignore that man behind the curtain."  He has to get people to pretend like the economy is fine, and the social unrest doesn't matter.  That's what his show on The White House lawn was intended to do.  Lichtman's keys say that President Toxic does not get to decide how voters judge him.  That said, if you buy the idea that Trump runs a cult, in theory he could be uniquely able to control how people judge his successes and failures.

The real question is whether President Toxic can get people outside his core base, plus Republican party stalwarts, to see the economy and the unrest that started with Black Lives Matter as he wishes them to.  So far, it looks like he simply does not have the unique ability to change the verdict of history, which Lichtman says is definitely against him.  We'll see.  Again, what interests me the most about Lichtman is not the voodoo prediction part about who will win.  It's the deeper meaning of why they win or lose.  So if Lichtman is right, it means that Trump simply can't script his own Reality TV Presidency.  He is stuck with reality.  And with voters who think like Bob Woodward.  They will conclude he's the wrong person for the job.

The second thing I mentioned above that jumped out at me reading this article is that the 8th key, social unrest, was last turned against the incumbent party by Lichtman in 1968 and 1932.  Like his other keys, Lichtman is focused on big picture things that suggest a political earthquake is coming.  Those two years were very eventful years.  So now I'm straying from anything Lichtman says.  But it struck me that 2020 could be one of those really eventful years.  When people say it's the most important election of our lifetimes, they may be right.

1932 was obviously a really big deal.  It was a landslide that shattered an old political coalition and birthed a new one of Democratic dominance that basically endured (with a pause under Ike) from 1932 to 1968.  I'm not sure 1968 fits in the same category.  If there is a conservative version of a realigning landslide like 1932, it is obviously 1980 and the Reagan Revolution.  1968 was actually a fairly close call between Nixon and Humphrey.  But the sense in which 1932 and 1968 fit together is that the social unrest did signal a political earthquake.  You can view 1968 as a signal that a coalition and liberal ideology that more or less prevailed from The New Deal to The Great Society was really starting to fall apart.  

It actually did start to fall apart in 1969, when Nixon began picking SCOTUS justices that gradually ended the Warren Court's activism.  There was also the Silent Majority, the Southern strategy to take over the White South, and then the 1972 landslide against "McGovernment".  On Election Night 1980 historian Teddy White argued that Carter lost because of the weight of history itself.  The old Democratic coalition just no longer worked, he said.  I think you can argue that a political coalition that was clearly starting to fall apart in 1968 finally just collapsed by 1980.  It took until 1992 for Clinton to start rebuilding a different coalition, in part by co-opting conservative ideas.  This is where @tassojuniormight argue that even Obama and his ilk were essentially closet corporate Republicans pretending to be liberal Democrats.  At the very least, Obama explicitly wanted to change history in the way Reagan did.  I don't think Obama quite did that.

All of this sounds very esoteric.  And this stuff about 1932 and 1968 is my thinking, not Lichtman's.  I'm not even sure why Lichtman picked only 1932 and 1968, because there were other years in US history when there were mass movements and protests.  But after thinking about it I buy the idea that 2020 and 1968 and 1932 are fairly unique Presidential elections that all have a depth of spontaneous social unrest that doesn't happen very often. 

I also buy the idea that each year may represent a fundamental turning of the tide.  1932 for sure was a massive tidal wave shift to liberalism.  1968 can accurately be described as the beginning of the end of a liberal era, that climaxed 12 years later in the Reagan Revolution.

There's a few other things about 1968 that fit to me.  Nixon was himself a transitional figure.  By today's standards he would be too liberal for Republicans.  The lowest the poverty rate ever got in the US before Bill Clinton was under Richard Nixon, in 1971.  He basically embraced most of the anti-poverty programs Reagan later used as his whipping boy.  Biden is likely to be a Nixon-like figure in that sense.  He explicitly calls himself a transitional figure.  It does make sense to me that just as Nixon lead to Reagan, history could be arcing so that Biden ultimately leads to a figure like Sanders or Warren or AOC a decade or so down the line.

The other comparison that strikes me is "The Silent Majority".  When Kenosha happened there was a lot of concern that President Toxic might be able to adopt a Nixonian "law and order" tone that would wipe out Biden's lead.  "Law and order" is the issue some Trump supporters list as their top priority.  But Biden is the candidate a majority of voters see as better at dealing with the issue.  And his lead in Wisconsin has held steady at 7 %.

What the polls seem to be saying consistently is that there actually is a Silent Majority, and Biden is the one who is building it.  The Liberate The Virus crowd with guns on State Capitol steps and the maskless MAGA rallies are the minority.  That's now 100 % clear.  Overwhelming majorities are for masks mandates.  Meanwhile, there is at least a slender majority that says there is systemic racism in America.  And that views Black Lives Matter mostly favorably, and not as a radical group out to abolish suburbs.  If 1968 can be viewed as the end of a liberal era with the Warren Court and a series of liberal Presidencies, the social unrest of today could be a signal that Trumpism has basically failed. 

John Harris of Politico wrote a nice piece last week that argued just that.  Essentially that Trumpism and McConnellism is the bastard child and dying gasp of the sunny ideal of Reagan conservatism that climaxed in the 1980's. 

Before someone points it out, I recognize that the kinds of people protesting in 1968 were the same kinds of liberals and progressives and Blacks protesting today.  The difference is that in 1968 Nixon had the support of The Silent Majority.  I can't find polls about MLK or the Viet Nam War protests in 1968.  But here's a poll about views on Nixon and the war in 1969. All adults supported Nixon's Viet Nam policies 64/25.  Even college students supported Nixon's war policies 50/44.    Today, Biden seems to have the support of 2020's Silent Majority.  54 % of Americans say they view Black Lives Matter favorably.  Only 44 % view President Toxic favorably.  Who has the majority now?

Like I said, this was just a long intellectual masturbation about Lichtmanland.  Some part of my feeling is that I would much rather choose cynicism than hope.  The cynical part of me does have to consider the possibility that President Toxic may be able to pull off his Great And Mighty Donald routine, and convince people to ignore the economy, the virus, and the social unrest.  More likely, I think hope will win in 2020, like in 2008.  I'd like to believe that like in 1932 and 1968 the tumult signals a major change in the tide.  And this time it's going to shift decisively from a waning conservatism to a rising progressive and Democratic majority.

[Suckrates]

2 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

So, trigger warning.  Even by my own standards, this is going to be be a particularly obtuse and rambling post. 

 

My dearest sis,  perhaps it might be better if you emulated Sleeping Beauty  (setting the fact that you ARENT a Beauty aside) and sleep for the next 36 days, then wake up and see the RESULTS ?   It might keep you from having hypertension and high BP... Like Edna Turnblad sang in Hairspray,  "you cant stop the beat"......and all the wishin and hopin and prayin, and hypothesizing and pontificating WONT change the end result that is most likely already destined....  Sleep my pretty, SLEEP !    (But dont forget to watch the debate Tuesday)  

[tassojunior]

On 9/26/2020 at 4:07 PM, tassojunior said:

The KHive is more bold and doing a lot more damage this year to the ticket than the Clintonistas were in 2016 (hard as that is to believe). Kyle's been one of their main targets. Establishment Dems are so incredibly stupid and arrogant. 

 

 

Even Biden needs to stop attacking progressive ideas in "defense":

And let’s remember: The relatively small group of people who are genuinely worried about socialism are not a large set of persuadable voters -- more typically, they are hard-core Trump supporters. 

The people who are persuadable are young voters and disillusioned voters who need to be energized and mobilized. Kicking Sanders and progressive voters doesn’t help accomplish that.

 https://www.dailyposter.com/p/biden-should-stop-dunking-on-the

 

If people are looking for scapegoats for why the Democrats lose before they attack progressives they should remember this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[tassojunior]

6 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

So, trigger warning.  Even by my own standards, this is going to be be a particularly obtuse and rambling post. 

Every month or so I Google Allan Lichtman's name to see if he has anything new up.  This month he didn't.  But I found a long essay (actually a book chapter) I linked below that I found really interesting.  It's another author who admires Lichtman's theories commenting on their validity.

Reading it generated two ideas.  I'll summarize them, and then return to them in more detail in my rambling below:

1.  Lichtman's model provides an interesting way to think about how President Toxic could win.  The three keys in his system that turned this year that led Lichtman to call the election for Biden are the short-term economy (recession), the long-term economy (laggard GDP growth), and the social unrest.  In theory, those are decisive nails in President Toxic's political coffin.  That said, Trump is clearly trying to get people to ignore those three things.  If he succeeds with a majority of voters in the Electoral College states, he could win.  If he fails, he'll lose.

2.  2020 is only the third time that Lichtman has called his "social unrest" key against the party in power.  The other two times were 1932 and 1968.  I932 marked the beginning of a new political era.  Arguably, so did 1968.  Could the social tumult that ignited in 2020 be an indicator of a major political turning point?

Like I said, I'll return to those two ideas below.

Lichtman's claim to fame is that his system can predict who will win the Presidency.  What I actually find more interesting is that his system describes why they will win or lose.  Which boils down to governing effectively. 

I think it explains what is happening right now.  So far, nothing President Toxic is saying is really sticking to Joe Biden.  And Biden is mostly being Silent Joe.  Some of that is Biden's staff trying to avoid gaffes, I suspect.  But probably they agree with Lichtman's basic theory.  This election is a referendum on President Toxic that he is going to lose.  So they just don't want to get in the way of letting Trump lose it. Biden's staff has pretty much told reporters as much.

CHAPTER 5: WHAT DOESN'T WIN THE PRESIDENCY

That's 33 bold-faced pages from a 2006 book called Campaigns Don't Count from an Ohio newspaper columnist named Martin Gottlieb.  He declared in his column early in 2004 that Bush had already "won" the 2004 election.  He did that using Lichtman's model.  But this chapter goes through each of Lichtman's keys as they relate to the 1988 election.  It was interesting to read a smart journalist's take on Lichtman's own analysis.  The reason Gottlieb chose 1988 is he argues that was an election that everyone thought Dukakis would win.  Especially in May 1988, when Lichtman published his article in the Washingtonian saying George H.W. Bush would win.  Here's the Gallup polls from 1988:

You can see that in May Dukakis had a lead of 16 points.  So the prediction was as outside the box as Lichtman saying in September 2016 that Trump would win.  Here's the last paragraph of the chapter:

Just to make sure it's clear, Lichtman says that if the party in power has six or more "keys" turned against them, they lose.  Right now, President Toxic has seven turned against him.  In 1988, Bush only had three.  So it was an easy call that Bush would win.  And by the end of the race, reality reflected Lichtman's prediction about the voter's imminent judgment.

The whole 33 pages is a good read.  But a brief summary is that this had nothing to do with Willie Horton or Lee Atwater's campaign gimmicks.  It had to do with a growing economy, Reagan winning The Cold War, and other "big picture" factors that led people to conclude they wanted four more years of Republican leadership.

What I learned reading this that I didn't know is that when they built the model, Lichtman and his Russian seismologist colleague tested all kinds of theories of what might drive an election.  Including, for example, campaign messages and campaign tactics.  When the tested possible algorithms, characteristics of leadership and governing always trumped campaigning as predictors pf who won. 

So many of Lichtman's keys are right most of the time.  If all you do is say any incumbent President running will win, you are right about 2 times out of 3.  The key that is the most accurate on its own is whether there is a serious contest for the nomination of the party in power.  In 2020, President Toxic had no real opposition.  So that in itself would predict that about 80 % of the time, that candidate running o behalf of the incumbent party will win.  

So the idea of the 13 keys is that it's not armchair judgment.  They went through a larger menu of possible factors that could predict the winner, and picked 13 that seemed to be the most reliable.  Another interesting point is that when this article was written, there were 14  "subsystems" - combinations of some portion of the 13 keys - that were just as good at predicting the winner.  The reason they picked 13 keys is they figured that it gave them the best chance of being consistently right every time.

That leads to this statement from the caper above:

i thought that was interesting in the context of the 2020 election.  Here's the list of 13 keys.  If you only pay attention to the six listed in that quote, President Toxic gets four of the six.  Meaning that in 2020 that subsystem says Trump should win.  Lichtman was saying last year that Trump had lost Keys 1 and 13.  But he had 2, 3, 4, and 7, and still does.  So this subsystem contradicts what Lichtman predicted based on the full 13 keys: that Trump would lose.

The three keys that turned against Trump this year are 5, 6, and 8.  Basically the economy went to shit, and all hell broke loose in the streets and there was suddenly mass social unrest.  Lichtman has called it the quickest turnaround in Presidential history.  Because mostly these keys are big picture items, and they don't turn in a day or month like polls do.  So Trump went for having four keys against him in 2019, which is two short of a loss, to seven turned against him, which is one more than needed to predict loss.  

Here's what I find very interesting about that.  I think this is a good way to think about what President Toxic is clearly trying to do, and what he in fact has to do to win.  In effect, he has to be The Wizard Of Oz saying, "Ignore that man behind the curtain."  He has to get people to pretend like the economy is fine, and the social unrest doesn't matter.  That's what his show on The White House lawn was intended to do.  Lichtman's keys say that President Toxic does not get to decide how voters judge him.  That said, if you buy the idea that Trump runs a cult, in theory he could be uniquely able to control how people judge his successes and failures.

The real question is whether President Toxic can get people outside his core base, plus Republican party stalwarts, to see the economy and the unrest that started with Black Lives Matter as he wishes them to.  So far, it looks like he simply does not have the unique ability to change the verdict of history, which Lichtman says is definitely against him.  We'll see.  Again, what interests me the most about Lichtman is not the voodoo prediction part about who will win.  It's the deeper meaning of why they win or lose.  So if Lichtman is right, it means that Trump simply can't script his own Reality TV Presidency.  He is stuck with reality.  And with voters who think like Bob Woodward.  They will conclude he's the wrong person for the job.

The second thing I mentioned above that jumped out at me reading this article is that the 8th key, social unrest, was last turned against the incumbent party by Lichtman in 1968 and 1932.  Like his other keys, Lichtman is focused on big picture things that suggest a political earthquake is coming.  Those two years were very eventful years.  So now I'm straying from anything Lichtman says.  But it struck me that 2020 could be one of those really eventful years.  When people say it's the most important election of our lifetimes, they may be right.

1932 was obviously a really big deal.  It was a landslide that shattered an old political coalition and birthed a new one of Democratic dominance that basically endured (with a pause under Ike) from 1932 to 1968.  I'm not sure 1968 fits in the same category.  If there is a conservative version of a realigning landslide like 1932, it is obviously 1980 and the Reagan Revolution.  1968 was actually a fairly close call between Nixon and Humphrey.  But the sense in which 1932 and 1968 fit together is that the social unrest did signal a political earthquake.  You can view 1968 as a signal that a coalition and liberal ideology that more or less prevailed from The New Deal to The Great Society was really starting to fall apart.  

It actually did start to fall apart in 1969, when Nixon began picking SCOTUS justices that gradually ended the Warren Court's activism.  There was also the Silent Majority, the Southern strategy to take over the White South, and then the 1972 landslide against "McGovernment".  On Election Night 1980 historian Teddy White argued that Carter lost because of the weight of history itself.  The old Democratic coalition just no longer worked, he said.  I think you can argue that a political coalition that was clearly starting to fall apart in 1968 finally just collapsed by 1980.  It took until 1992 for Clinton to start rebuilding a different coalition, in part by co-opting conservative ideas.  This is where @tassojuniormight argue that even Obama and his ilk were essentially closet corporate Republicans pretending to be liberal Democrats.  At the very least, Obama explicitly wanted to change history in the way Reagan did.  I don't think Obama quite did that.

All of this sounds very esoteric.  And this stuff about 1932 and 1968 is my thinking, not Lichtman's.  I'm not even sure why Lichtman picked only 1932 and 1968, because there were other years in US history when there were mass movements and protests.  But after thinking about it I buy the idea that 2020 and 1968 and 1932 are fairly unique Presidential elections that all have a depth of spontaneous social unrest that doesn't happen very often. 

I also buy the idea that each year may represent a fundamental turning of the tide.  1932 for sure was a massive tidal wave shift to liberalism.  1968 can accurately be described as the beginning of the end of a liberal era, that climaxed 12 years later in the Reagan Revolution.

There's a few other things about 1968 that fit to me.  Nixon was himself a transitional figure.  By today's standards he would be too liberal for Republicans.  The lowest the poverty rate ever got in the US before Bill Clinton was under Richard Nixon, in 1971.  He basically embraced most of the anti-poverty programs Reagan later used as his whipping boy.  Biden is likely to be a Nixon-like figure in that sense.  He explicitly calls himself a transitional figure.  It does make sense to me that just as Nixon lead to Reagan, history could be arcing so that Biden ultimately leads to a figure like Sanders or Warren or AOC a decade or so down the line.

The other comparison that strikes me is "The Silent Majority".  When Kenosha happened there was a lot of concern that President Toxic might be able to adopt a Nixonian "law and order" tone that would wipe out Biden's lead.  "Law and order" is the issue some Trump supporters list as their top priority.  But Biden is the candidate a majority of voters see as better at dealing with the issue.  And his lead in Wisconsin has held steady at 7 %.

What the polls seem to be saying consistently is that there actually is a Silent Majority, and Biden is the one who is building it.  The Liberate The Virus crowd with guns on State Capitol steps and the maskless MAGA rallies are the minority.  That's now 100 % clear.  Overwhelming majorities are for masks mandates.  Meanwhile, there is at least a slender majority that says there is systemic racism in America.  And that views Black Lives Matter mostly favorably, and not as a radical group out to abolish suburbs.  If 1968 can be viewed as the end of a liberal era with the Warren Court and a series of liberal Presidencies, the social unrest of today could be a signal that Trumpism has basically failed. 

John Harris of Politico wrote a nice piece last week that argued just that.  Essentially that Trumpism and McConnellism is the bastard child and dying gasp of the sunny ideal of Reagan conservatism that climaxed in the 1980's. 

Before someone points it out, I recognize that the kinds of people protesting in 1968 were the same kinds of liberals and progressives and Blacks protesting today.  The difference is that in 1968 Nixon had the support of The Silent Majority.  I can't find polls about MLK or the Viet Nam War protests in 1968.  But here's a poll about views on Nixon and the war in 1969. All adults supported Nixon's Viet Nam policies 64/25.  Even college students supported Nixon's war policies 50/44.    Today, Biden seems to have the support of 2020's Silent Majority.  54 % of Americans say they view Black Lives Matter favorably.  Only 44 % view President Toxic favorably.  Who has the majority now?

Like I said, this was just a long intellectual masturbation about Lichtmanland.  Some part of my feeling is that I would much rather choose cynicism than hope.  The cynical part of me does have to consider the possibility that President Toxic may be able to pull off his Great And Mighty Donald routine, and convince people to ignore the economy, the virus, and the social unrest.  More likely, I think hope will win in 2020, like in 2008.  I'd like to believe that like in 1932 and 1968 the tumult signals a major change in the tide.  And this time it's going to shift decisively from a waning conservatism to a rising progressive and Democratic majority.

If you believe  in sudden about-faces in politics this new poll Kornacki just published would be believable. For me, not so much. 21% more whites in MI were for Trump in 2016 but only 2% more whites are now? I keep asking people and still have not found one person anywhere someone knows who has changed their vote preference from 2016 on either side. Hundreds of anti-Trump Republicans are paraded through the media every day as supporting the Dems this year to create this appearance. I get that campaign strategy. But in real life these seismic shifts don't happen. And this makes me suspicious of battleground state polling this year. (I've always felt Macomb County is the epicenter of the election this year).   

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

5 hours ago, Suckrates said:

 

My dearest sis,  perhaps it might be better if you emulated Sleeping Beauty  (setting the fact that you ARENT a Beauty aside) and sleep for the next 36 days, then wake up and see the RESULTS ?   It might keep you from having hypertension and high BP... Like Edna Turnblad sang in Hairspray,  "you cant stop the beat"......and all the wishin and hopin and prayin, and hypothesizing and pontificating WONT change the end result that is most likely already destined....  Sleep my pretty, SLEEP !    (But dont forget to watch the debate Tuesday)  

My Dearest and Most Darlingest Sister:

We both know that if I were as psychologically well put together as we both wish I could be, I wouldn't be the dirty little whore I am today.  Our President himself is proof that things don't go well when you aren't just yourself.  He's obviously really just a super big asshole.  And yet he acts as if he is the world's biggest power top.

Me, I'll at least be the proud and dirty little whore I am.  Try as I might to sleep, or not pay attention, you know me.  I simply can't resist watching the show as the exciting parts reveal themselves.

[Suckrates]

40 minutes ago, stevenkesslar said:

My Dearest and Most Darlingest Sister:

We both know that if I were as psychologically well put together as we both wish I could be, I wouldn't be the dirty little whore I am today.  Our President himself is proof that things don't go well when you aren't just yourself.  He's obviously really just a super big asshole.  And yet he acts as if he is the world's biggest power top.

Me, I'll at least be the proud and dirty little whore I am.  Try as I might to sleep, or not pay attention, you know me.  I simply can't resist watching the show as the exciting parts reveal themselves.

 

Well then baby, just try to RELAX and at least, have a Cannoli......

[stevenkesslar]

6 hours ago, tassojunior said:

I keep asking people and still have not found one person anywhere someone knows who has changed their vote preference from 2016 on either side.    

 

 

 

Well, maybe you're not talking with White voters without college degrees in Michigan and Wisconsin.

I sort of have a Top 10 charts and graphs that I think explain a hell of a lot about what's going on in one picture.  That's one of them.  It's stunning.  First, Hillary Clinton did worse than Obama - a Black man - among White voters.  Second, the Democrats that did best and worst during these 40 years are both named Clinton.  Bill was uniquely good at appealing to "Bubba"  Whites.  Hillary was uniquely bad at it.

It matters why you think that happened.  If you think these White voters are sexist, piggish, and deplorable, then fuck 'em.  Then the only problem you have to solve is how you actually win an election without them.  If you think Hillary was uniquely good at sounding like both the government bureaucrat and corporate lawyer everyone loves to hate, then pick someone else. 

That poll data you posted was only two states.  But it suggests that Biden is somewhere between where Obama was in 2008 and 2012.  I find that very believable, based on mountains of poll data.  It's not a great place to be.  Ideally, the goal would be to get back to where Democrats were in 1992 and 1996 with Bill Clinton. 

In theory, Bernie (and to a lesser degree Elizabeth) tried to do that in 2020.  If the Democrats are the party of the working class of every race, these voters without college degrees should be our bread and butter.  Bernie could not close the deal.  He clearly looked better than Hillary to lots of these voters in 2016.  But replace Hillary with Biden in 2020, and Bernie didn't look so good. 

And, again, it's not like Biden looks so good, either. Wisconsin and Michigan are more blue than red.  When you add all the Whites without colleges degrees in Alabama and Idaho, Biden will get clobbered by this group of Whites.  The good news is that if he "only" loses them by 20 to 25 points like Obama, as opposed to 39 like Hillary did in the chart above, he'll win.  So the polls suggest he'll win.

I think there's going to be a big sorting if he wins.  The first level of problems is this:  will you wear a mask?  Or will you go to the State Capitol with your AR-15 and complain about how America has gone socialist?  It sounds like some weird horror story no one would believe.  But it's actually a pretty good political test of how White "Bubba" men are going to react to Biden.

There is some part of me that feels like we should treat coal miners in West Virginia with the same affection that they treat us.  We've lost them, anyway.  If we can win college graduate Millennials and Hispanics in Texas, do we really need Joe Manchin?  So maybe Democrats should say this:  "Take your shitty little depressed towns and your drug addictions and sorrows and pities and whine all you want.  You voted for President Toxic, and he ignored you.  You'll be nice to Bernie at a town hall, but you won't elect people like him.  So we'll do what Trump did.  We'll ignore you." 

Am I being insensitive? That may actually be a viable political strategy, even though Biden won't be blunt about it.

How about Ohio?  Can we kiss that goodbye?  President Toxic will lose in part because their jobs picture sucks right now.  Overall unemployment fell to where it was in 1992.  I'll be shocked if they buy his Best Economy Ever Reality TV show and let him off the hook.  The factory job picture in Ohio is even worse.  They're back to the depths of The Great Recession.  They'd love to get back to 1992.  But hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have just gone away.  Trump did nothing about it, despite his promises.  In all those Rust Belt states, factory job growth was flat to down in 2019, when we supposedly had the best economy ever.  The job producers got their huge tax cuts.  But they didn't use them to build US factories and US jobs. 

All this explains why those poll numbers are probably correct, and President Toxic will lose.  As Lichtman would say, this is a referendum on him.  And it's about governing, not campaigning and texting.  President Toxic doesn't have a clue.  He thinks if he goes out to Nevada and violates state law and endangers the lives of his supporters it will make his inability to actually govern look better.  Biden is probably smart to just let President Toxic go.  It's like a big commercial that says, "Look at me!  Look at what a remarkably incompetent and selfish asshole I truly am!"

So what do we do with those 700,000 or so factory workers in Ohio?  What do we do with the roughly 5.6 million Ohio workers who want jobs?  And the roughly 500,000 or so of them who lost their jobs since this Spring?  Do we try to bring factories back to the Rust Belt - a strategy that has mostly failed for 30 years?  Do we basically say fuck the factory workers and do something else?  Or do Democrats just forget about Ohio and focus on Texas, where college graduates of every race are not going to work in factories but are building a promising future?

The Democrats have a huge amount of work to do.  The good news is that voters in the Rust Belt may have at least figured out that President Toxic and Trumpism is not the answer to any of those questions.

I do believe this.  The Establishment does not have the answers.  So Team Biden has to do a major rethink.  I actually believe that he gets that.  He knows that what worked for Clinton or even Obama won't work for him.

I'll end this with a rant about my Independent friend who I mentioned in another post I just spent four hours on the phone with last week.  There's a series of points him and I have debated for years that go to the heart of the challenge.  This is not meant to offer any actual solutions.  It's meant to suggest we are stuck, and we are nowhere near any type of national plan that might effectively turn the problems around.

He started to tell me that he was asked to give an address to Very Important People about how to do education during a pandemic.  He decided not to because he didn't want to say what he really thinks.  Which is that we're just pissing away the futures of disadvantaged kids who aren't set up for remote learning, while rich (mostly White) parents pay for their own private teachers to teach their kids. He's not wrong.  And he is an Independent, not a conservative.  But my view is that he was just doing what he does.  He was rehashing a not very thoughtful set of sound bites about how all these Democrats who want to shut down everything suck.  And are really hurting the Black kids they say they really care about.

I asked him if he knew about Dr. Birx's grandmother.  He didn't have a clue.  Dr. Birx's grandmother brought home the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed her Mom (Dr. Birx's great grandmother.)  Her grandmother spent the rest of her life feeling regret for something that was obviously not her fault.  Dr. Birx has repeated the story to basically beg people to be thoughtful and wear masks.  My friend got the point.  He agreed that given the choice between losing a year in school, and losing a mother, losing the year in school is probably the better option.

I asked him if he knew about what women leaders in Germany or Demark did to reopen schools safely.  he didn't have a clue.  The verdict is in that at least in April Denmark could reopen schools safely.  Denmark, like most of Europe, is now experiencing a second wave in cases, but not (yet) a second wave of mass death.  My point is that this is a huge challenge.  Women leaders like Merkel and Frederiksen are working hard to figure it out, with some real success so far.  Meanwhile, in the US, my friend is interested in what I view as a mostly thoughtless rant, which suggests that the way we help poor Black kids is to send them to shitty school buildings during a plague.  It would be more interesting to talk about 10 smart things that Germany and Denmark are doing to educate kids AND keep them safe, I think.

I use this as an example because to me it symbolizes a whole lots of things about our current failures.  We can't even agree as a nation about using masks in schools.

We talked about factory jobs.  My friend mentioned that there are going to be lots of factories built in the US, like where he lives.  They will have relatively few jobs.  And the people hired to fill them will need college degrees equipping them to operate advanced machinery.  It doesn't replace the 300,000 lost factory jobs in Ohio, for example.  So it's not really a viable solution to one of the things that drove Trumpism.  What's his solution?  He doesn't have one.  He gets what Andrew Yang was talking about.  I'm 99.9 % sure he would never support Yang's  solutions.

At some point in this conversation I went to the heart of it:  income inequality.  I reminded him of something he said to me maybe 3 or 4 years ago that has stuck with me.  We were probably at some luxurious resort in Mexico.  And he said this was the first generation of Americans that will be worse off than their parents.  He didn't say it as if he felt it was a good thing, or a bad thing.  Or with joy or regret.  It was just an observation of a likely fact.  But it has stuck with me. 

The feeling it leaves me with, which may or may not be fair to him, is that the Establishment corporate and political types he pals around with are perfectly okay with this.  They know the factories will make money for stock holders, like him.  They know they won't be replacing those 300,000 jobs.  They just don't care.  It really isn't their problem.  Fill their bank accounts with millions of dollars in salaries and investments and stocks and that's good enough for them. 

They're not chomping at the bit to elect Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or even Joe Biden.  This is the guy who told me even Kamala is suspect for her liberalism.  Again, he's not a right wing conservative.  I think he's probably accurately expressing how a lot of affluent Independents who are right in the middle feel.  I don't feel that these people have real solutions.  They'll sympathize with Republicans who say that even the steps Obama and Biden were willing to take - Obamacare, marginal tax increases on the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations - were going too far.  And then when W. or President Toxic rule, they'll just enjoy the tax cuts and consulting fees to express their Very Important Thoughts.  Which will mostly not solve Actual Working Class Problems.

Back to our White ex-factory workers without college degrees, why are they NOT chomping at the bit to elect Bernie Sanders?  For now, I think it's a good thing they are probably going to elect Joe Biden.

My friend got a good line off on those ex-factory workers, too.  He went into his Very Important Thoughts riff about how the biggest problem is that the job producers are all trying so terribly hard to help those people.  But they just lack the appropriate jobs skills.  When you think about it, what's a benevolent job creating billionaire to do?  I mean, it's not really fair to go all socialisty and ask them to pay more taxes, after all.  

I used to be very polite when he said this shit, in part because he was paying me to be nice.    I know.  I know.  I'm a whore.  So this time I just ranted about what I read all the time.  Do you know how condescending and arrogant these people think that sounds?  Do you realize how sick they are of being told THEY are the problem?  Do you realize that's why they voted for Trump?  They know he probably can't just bring the factories back.  But at least he doesn't tell them they're stupid.  He tells them he loves the poorly educated. 

My friend didn't really try to disagree.  So we are mostly left with the fact that working class ignorance and Trump greed is not a very attractive combination.  And it is certainly not a solution.

My best solution expressed as a bumper sticker is this:  GO TO COLLEGE.  DEBT FREE.

My friend, who knows way more about college than me because he spent his life working on this whole college thing, has spent years telling me that lots of professors just produce crap.  And that lots of college students are wasting their time and money.  It's very easy to make Reaganesque arguments about "waste, fraud, and abuse."  And let's add this.  It's only a slight exaggeration to say that many Whites without college degrees who vote for President Toxic think that college basically is good at making you liberal, and Gay.  And now they want to say you're supposed to go piss next to some man that used to be a woman.  Fuck that shit.  I don't need that.

The reality I focus on, and my friend does not deny, is that we have more college graduates than ever before.  We have a higher rate of college completion than ever before.  And having a college degree does still mean you'll make a lot more money and build more wealth.  Even the losers - the ones who drop out with no degree but some college debt  - are no worse off than the ones who never went to college at all. 

Meanwhile, Blacks going to college is a primary driver of why Black poverty was lower than ever under both the end of Obama and pre-pandemic Trump.  There's still huge income gaps based on race, with Blacks doing the worst.  But Blacks going to college and earning above median based on higher educations are doing the best, as are the more highly educated Americans of every race. 

This doesn't solve the problem for the 50 year old Ohio ex-factory worker.  It may solve the problem for their college-educated kids.  Some part of this is the same old same old.  The kids who used to stay on the family farm because their labor was essential did what my Dad did.  He got an architecture degree so he could leave the farm.

We have to have a massive rethink.  Like in the New Deal or Great Society, we need to try different things, knowing some will fail.  But we do know from both eras that raising taxes on the well off and making the government one of the big job creators did help create middle class jobs.  That will be Biden's starting point, if he has the votes.  He probably won't do Bernie/Elizabeth on college debt relief.  But the pandemic gives him a great excuse to do something to make going to college easier, including wiping out debt for young adults who already went.

To sum up my rant, part of how I feel is that the ball is in the court of those White voters without college degrees.  If they went from Obama to President Toxic and now they are going back to Biden, that's a good start.  What happens when Biden tells them to wear a mask?  Will he - and can he - raise taxes on Jeff Bezos to do some infrastructure program that will create jobs for some of them?  Can he use previously successful tools like going to college and buying homes to create skills, higher incomes, and net worth?  Can he add new tools to the tool box?

Lichtman's theory is that the is Trump's election to lose, and he is going to lose it.  All that means is that Biden gets a chance.  And it does mean that some of those Whites without college degrees are at listen willing to listen to Biden and Democrats again.  Because they know that the President Toxic TV experience did not work so well for them. 

I believe those polls.  But if Biden and Democrats win, the challenges are massive.  And I've already decided that Independents like my friend will be the first to suck up every Mitch McConnell sound bite and repeat it.  About how whatever Biden is doing is socialism, and it sucks. 

Biden better figure out things that work.  Because like in 2009, he's not going to have a very long honeymoon.   Especially with those White voters without college degrees.  Even if Democrats do well in 2020, it can easily all be wiped out in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, Suckrates said:

 

Well then baby, just try to RELAX and at least, have a Cannoli......

With all due respect, my beloved sister, you're no help whatsoever.

I'll be watching the debate with Dane Scott tomorrow night.  He's Italian heritage.  Why aren't you at least offering to cater the fucking cannoli?

This does work both ways.  Granted, these days my brain is too active, and my cock is not active enough.  So maybe I do need to lay off the politics for a while.  I took a break for a few months a little while back.  But it didn't break my bad habits.  You know what they say.   Once a political whore, always .........................

Flip side, I remember the moment in 2008 in Dane's apartment when he still lived in New York when I asked him whether he'd be voting for Hillary or Barack.  His eyes glazed over.  Frankly, it's the kind of look you'd want to see in an escort when your cock is deep inside him and he is about to cum.  That said, it's not a good look when you're trying to have a political conversation.

Like so many others, President Toxic has politicized Dane.  Now he's all about watching the debate, sending donations to Biden, and voting against President Toxic.  We all get older, of course.  But how sad is that?

My brother who, like you, liked Bloomberg in the primary, has nearly been radicalized.  He lost his job earlier this year due to the pandemic.  We both recently agreed that the only thing we could think of that would make us seriously consider suicide is four more years of President Toxic.  Who knows.  Perhaps even Poor Brad ended up feeling that way.  Of course, Brad is in my thoughts and prayers.

So whatever it is that's going around, other than COVID-19, seems to be catching.

Not to worry.  Since you won't be making good on the promised cannoli, we'll just make do with a few bottles of cheap wine.  And wishing and hoping that Uncle Joe makes us cum ............... I mean, in a political sort of way, of course.

 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

4 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

Well, maybe you're not talking with White voters without college degrees in Michigan and Wisconsin.

I sort of have a Top 10 charts and graphs that I think explain a hell of a lot about what's going on in one picture.  That's one of them.  It's stunning.  First, Hillary Clinton did worse than Obama - a Black man - among White voters.  Second, the Democrats that did best and worst during these 40 years are both named Clinton.  Bill was uniquely good at appealing to "Bubba"  Whites.  Hillary was uniquely bad at it.

It matters why you think that happened.  If you think these White voters are sexist, piggish, and deplorable, then fuck 'em.  Then the only problem you have to solve is how you actually win an election without them.  If you think Hillary was uniquely good at sounding like both the government bureaucrat and corporate lawyer everyone loves to hate, then pick someone else. 

That poll data you posted was only two states.  But it suggests that Biden is somewhere between where Obama was in 2008 and 2012.  I find that very believable, based on mountains of poll data.  It's not a great place to be.  Ideally, the goal would be to get back to where Democrats were in 1992 and 1996 with Bill Clinton. 

In theory, Bernie (and to a lesser degree Elizabeth) tried to do that in 2020.  If the Democrats are the party of the working class of every race, these voters without college degrees should be our bread and butter.  Bernie could not close the deal.  He clearly looked better than Hillary to lots of these voters in 2016.  But replace Hillary with Biden in 2020, and Bernie didn't look so good. 

And, again, it's not like Biden looks so good, either. Wisconsin and Michigan are more blue than red.  When you add all the Whites without colleges degrees in Alabama and Idaho, Biden will get clobbered by this group of Whites.  The good news is that if he "only" loses them by 20 to 25 points like Obama, as opposed to 39 like Hillary did in the chart above, he'll win.  So the polls suggest he'll win.

I think there's going to be a big sorting if he wins.  The first level of problems is this:  will you wear a mask?  Or will you go to the State Capitol with your AR-15 and complain about how America has gone socialist?  It sounds like some weird horror story no one would believe.  But it's actually a pretty good political test of how White "Bubba" men are going to react to Biden.

There is some part of me that feels like we should treat coal miners in West Virginia with the same affection that they treat us.  We've lost them, anyway.  If we can win college graduate Millennials and Hispanics in Texas, do we really need Joe Manchin?  So maybe Democrats should say this:  "Take your shitty little depressed towns and your drug addictions and sorrows and pities and whine all you want.  You voted for President Toxic, and he ignored you.  You'll be nice to Bernie at a town hall, but you won't elect people like him.  So we'll do what Trump did.  We'll ignore you." 

Am I being insensitive? That may actually be a viable political strategy, even though Biden won't be blunt about it.

How about Ohio?  Can we kiss that goodbye?  President Toxic will lose in part because their jobs picture sucks right now.  Overall unemployment fell to where it was in 1992.  I'll be shocked if they buy his Best Economy Ever Reality TV show and let him off the hook.  The factory job picture in Ohio is even worse.  They're back to the depths of The Great Recession.  They'd love to get back to 1992.  But hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have just gone away.  Trump did nothing about it, despite his promises.  In all those Rust Belt states, factory job growth was flat to down in 2019, when we supposedly had the best economy ever.  The job producers got their huge tax cuts.  But they didn't use them to build US factories and US jobs. 

All this explains why those poll numbers are probably correct, and President Toxic will lose.  As Lichtman would say, this is a referendum on him.  And it's about governing, not campaigning and texting.  President Toxic doesn't have a clue.  He thinks if he goes out to Nevada and violates state law and endangers the lives of his supporters it will make his inability to actually govern look better.  Biden is probably smart to just let President Toxic go.  It's like a big commercial that says, "Look at me!  Look at what a remarkably incompetent and selfish asshole I truly am!"

So what do we do with those 700,000 or so factory workers in Ohio?  What do we do with the roughly 5.6 million Ohio workers who want jobs?  And the roughly 500,000 or so of them who lost their jobs since this Spring?  Do we try to bring factories back to the Rust Belt - a strategy that has mostly failed for 30 years?  Do we basically say fuck the factory workers and do something else?  Or do Democrats just forget about Ohio and focus on Texas, where college graduates of every race are not going to work in factories but are building a promising future?

The Democrats have a huge amount of work to do.  The good news is that voters in the Rust Belt may have at least figured out that President Toxic and Trumpism is not the answer to any of those questions.

I do believe this.  The Establishment does not have the answers.  So Team Biden has to do a major rethink.  I actually believe that he gets that.  He knows that what worked for Clinton or even Obama won't work for him.

I'll end this with a rant about my Independent friend who I mentioned in another post I just spent four hours on the phone with last week.  There's a series of points him and I have debated for years that go to the heart of the challenge.  This is not meant to offer any actual solutions.  It's meant to suggest we are stuck, and we are nowhere near any type of national plan that might effectively turn the problems around.

He started to tell me that he was asked to give an address to Very Important People about how to do education during a pandemic.  He decided not to because he didn't want to say what he really thinks.  Which is that we're just pissing away the futures of disadvantaged kids who aren't set up for remote learning, while rich (mostly White) parents pay for their own private teachers to teach their kids. He's not wrong.  And he is an Independent, not a conservative.  But my view is that he was just doing what he does.  He was rehashing a not very thoughtful set of sound bites about how all these Democrats who want to shut down everything suck.  And are really hurting the Black kids they say they really care about.

I asked him if he knew about Dr. Birx's grandmother.  He didn't have a clue.  Dr. Birx's grandmother brought home the Spanish Flu in 1918, which killed her Mom (Dr. Birx's great grandmother.)  Her grandmother spent the rest of her life feeling regret for something that was obviously not her fault.  Dr. Birx has repeated the story to basically beg people to be thoughtful and wear masks.  My friend got the point.  He agreed that given the choice between losing a year in school, and losing a mother, losing the year in school is probably the better option.

I asked him if he knew about what women leaders in Germany or Demark did to reopen schools safely.  he didn't have a clue.  The verdict is in that at least in April Denmark could reopen schools safely.  Denmark, like most of Europe, is now experiencing a second wave in cases, but not (yet) a second wave of mass death.  My point is that this is a huge challenge.  Women leaders like Merkel and Frederiksen are working hard to figure it out, with some real success so far.  Meanwhile, in the US, my friend is interested in what I view as a mostly thoughtless rant, which suggests that the way we help poor Black kids is to send them to shitty school buildings during a plague.  It would be more interesting to talk about 10 smart things that Germany and Denmark are doing to educate kids AND keep them safe, I think.

I use this as an example because to me it symbolizes a whole lots of things about our current failures.  We can't even agree as a nation about using masks in schools.

We talked about factory jobs.  My friend mentioned that there are going to be lots of factories built in the US, like where he lives.  They will have relatively few jobs.  And the people hired to fill them will need college degrees equipping them to operate advanced machinery.  It doesn't replace the 300,000 lost factory jobs in Ohio, for example.  So it's not really a viable solution to one of the things that drove Trumpism.  What's his solution?  He doesn't have one.  He gets what Andrew Yang was talking about.  I'm 99.9 % sure he would never support Yang's  solutions.

At some point in this conversation I went to the heart of it:  income inequality.  I reminded him of something he said to me maybe 3 or 4 years ago that has stuck with me.  We were probably at some luxurious resort in Mexico.  And he said this was the first generation of Americans that will be worse off than their parents.  He didn't say it as if he felt it was a good thing, or a bad thing.  Or with joy or regret.  It was just an observation of a likely fact.  But it has stuck with me. 

The feeling it leaves me with, which may or may not be fair to him, is that the Establishment corporate and political types he pals around with are perfectly okay with this.  They know the factories will make money for stock holders, like him.  They know they won't be replacing those 300,000 jobs.  They just don't care.  It really isn't their problem.  Fill their bank accounts with millions of dollars in salaries and investments and stocks and that's good enough for them. 

They're not chomping at the bit to elect Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, or even Joe Biden.  This is the guy who told me even Kamala is suspect for her liberalism.  Again, he's not a right wing conservative.  I think he's probably accurately expressing how a lot of affluent Independents who are right in the middle feel.  I don't feel that these people have real solutions.  They'll sympathize with Republicans who say that even the steps Obama and Biden were willing to take - Obamacare, marginal tax increases on the wealthiest and the most profitable corporations - were going too far.  And then when W. or President Toxic rule, they'll just enjoy the tax cuts and consulting fees to express their Very Important Thoughts.  Which will mostly not solve Actual Working Class Problems.

Back to our White ex-factory workers without college degrees, why are they NOT chomping at the bit to elect Bernie Sanders?  For now, I think it's a good thing they are probably going to elect Joe Biden.

My friend got a good line off on those ex-factory workers, too.  He went into his Very Important Thoughts riff about how the biggest problem is that the job producers are all trying so terribly hard to help those people.  But they just lack the appropriate jobs skills.  When you think about it, what's a benevolent job creating billionaire to do?  I mean, it's not really fair to go all socialisty and ask them to pay more taxes, after all.  

I used to be very polite when he said this shit, in part because he was paying me to be nice.    I know.  I know.  I'm a whore.  So this time I just ranted about what I read all the time.  Do you know how condescending and arrogant these people think that sounds?  Do you realize how sick they are of being told THEY are the problem?  Do you realize that's why they voted for Trump?  They know he probably can't just bring the factories back.  But at least he doesn't tell them they're stupid.  He tells them he loves the poorly educated. 

My friend didn't really try to disagree.  So we are mostly left with the fact that working class ignorance and Trump greed is not a very attractive combination.  And it is certainly not a solution.

My best solution expressed as a bumper sticker is this:  GO TO COLLEGE.  DEBT FREE.

My friend, who knows way more about college than me because he spent his life working on this whole college thing, has spent years telling me that lots of professors just produce crap.  And that lots of college students are wasting their time and money.  It's very easy to make Reaganesque arguments about "waste, fraud, and abuse."  And let's add this.  It's only a slight exaggeration to say that many Whites without college degrees who vote for President Toxic think that college basically is good at making you liberal, and Gay.  And now they want to say you're supposed to go piss next to some man that used to be a woman.  Fuck that shit.  I don't need that.

The reality I focus on, and my friend does not deny, is that we have more college graduates than ever before.  We have a higher rate of college completion than ever before.  And having a college degree does still mean you'll make a lot more money and build more wealth.  Even the losers - the ones who drop out with no degree but some college debt  - are no worse off than the ones who never went to college at all. 

Meanwhile, Blacks going to college is a primary driver of why Black poverty was lower than ever under both the end of Obama and pre-pandemic Trump.  There's still huge income gaps based on race, with Blacks doing the worst.  But Blacks going to college and earning above median based on higher educations are doing the best, as are the more highly educated Americans of every race. 

This doesn't solve the problem for the 50 year old Ohio ex-factory worker.  It may solve the problem for their college-educated kids.  Some part of this is the same old same old.  The kids who used to stay on the family farm because their labor was essential did what my Dad did.  He got an architecture degree so he could leave the farm.

We have to have a massive rethink.  Like in the New Deal or Great Society, we need to try different things, knowing some will fail.  But we do know from both eras that raising taxes on the well off and making the government one of the big job creators did help create middle class jobs.  That will be Biden's starting point, if he has the votes.  He probably won't do Bernie/Elizabeth on college debt relief.  But the pandemic gives him a great excuse to do something to make going to college easier, including wiping out debt for young adults who already went.

To sum up my rant, part of how I feel is that the ball is in the court of those White voters without college degrees.  If they went from Obama to President Toxic and now they are going back to Biden, that's a good start.  What happens when Biden tells them to wear a mask?  Will he - and can he - raise taxes on Jeff Bezos to do some infrastructure program that will create jobs for some of them?  Can he use previously successful tools like going to college and buying homes to create skills, higher incomes, and net worth?  Can he add new tools to the tool box?

Lichtman's theory is that the is Trump's election to lose, and he is going to lose it.  All that means is that Biden gets a chance.  And it does mean that some of those Whites without college degrees are at listen willing to listen to Biden and Democrats again.  Because they know that the President Toxic TV experience did not work so well for them. 

I believe those polls.  But if Biden and Democrats win, the challenges are massive.  And I've already decided that Independents like my friend will be the first to suck up every Mitch McConnell sound bite and repeat it.  About how whatever Biden is doing is socialism, and it sucks. 

Biden better figure out things that work.  Because like in 2009, he's not going to have a very long honeymoon.   Especially with those White voters without college degrees.  Even if Democrats do well in 2020, it can easily all be wiped out in 2022.

 

 

 

 

 

I can't believe you seem to have missed today's most talked-about poll put out by the Fed, of all people. Not sure what augmented means but the bottom 50% of Americans are dirt poor. The next 40%, the "great middle class" has seen their wealth drop by 1/4 since 1992, while the next 9% and the top 1% are doing outstanding under globalization. There's a reason people in the top 10% love our economy while the rest want change. 

 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by tassojunior

[tassojunior]

These are Democrats but I don't know if it's Pennsylvania again. I'm really concerned there are going to be hundreds of reports like this in new mail-in ballot states and it's going to undermine any Democratic "victory" (or maybe the other way round even). We need to get the voting system overhauled with a federal mandate; paper ballot trail, same-day registration, vote by mail or online, no ballot harvesting, etc. etc, or we're going to have a loss of confidence in the election process. 3rd world countries do better. 

 

 

[Pete1111]

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, tassojunior said:

I can't believe you seem to have missed today's most talked-about poll put out by the Fed, of all people. Not sure what augmented means but the bottom 50% of Americans are dirt poor. The next 40%, the "great middle class" has seen their wealth drop by 1/4 since 1992, while the next 9% and the top 1% are doing outstanding under globalization. There's a reason people in the top 10% view love our economy while the rest want change. 

 

 

 

Thanks for posting that.   Wow.  Income inequality.  Why am I not surprised?

It is a complicated study.  Obviously the Fed's goal is not to stoke class war.  But all the stuff about the  "SCF Augmented Next 9" model versus the "WID Next 9" model makes it seem like they went out of their way to blunt the message by making it incomprehensible.

The thing that jumped out at me is the education correlation.  Which is not surprising.  87 % of those in the Top 1 % are college grads.  72 % of the Next 9 % are.  45 % of the Next 40 % are.  And only 22 % of the Bottom 50 % are.  Another argument for free college as a path to income equality. 

And, no surprise, the Top 1 % is almost entirely White and has 0 % Blacks.  The Bottom 50 % is 53 % White, 20 % Black, 14 % Hispanic, and 13 % Other.  But, no.  There's no systemic racism in America.  Just Black Marxists who want to abolish suburbs.  

I was going to post this anyway, so I'll fit it in here.  The themes revolve around income.

Biden: Skilled at Debate, Awful at Economic Results

That's a good preview of what President Toxic will say tomorrow night, albeit not as intelligently as his adviser Steve Cortes does. I give them credit for basing their arguments on the points Democrats would make:  Black net worth, child poverty, rising incomes for the middle class.

Before I get to the part of what Cortes says I genuinely like, let me first pick a few of the really stupid low hanging fruit. 

First, I read this as an acknowledgement that they think Biden will win the debate.  Their point is even if he is a good debater, he still sucks with the economy.

Second, I hope President Toxic tries to portray Biden as the guy who organized our "abusive" relationship with China and handed them 60,000 factories and over 3.2 million manufacturing jobs.  I guess Biden must have done that before he was senile, since it sounds pretty complicated.  It sets Biden up to respond that President Toxic played up Xi as a great guy who was handling the virus earlier this year.  Even as he downplayed a deadly threat to Americans, which has now killed over 200,000 of us.  It's hard to imagine President Toxic is stupid enough to hand this to Biden on a silver platter.  Then again, maybe not.

Biden is debating Trump, not W.  But I'll be interested to see whether and how Biden points out that all those factory jobs were lost under W. and Republican tax and trade policies.  Which boiled down to let the rich stockholders and corporations do whatever they want.  There's more than a bit of that with President Toxic, too.

Biden will say that he was for NAFTA in the 90's, when Clinton was President and it did create hundreds of thousands of factory jobs in the US.  Including Delaware.  He voted against most of W.'s trade deals, which at the time he said did not meet "fair trade" and union standards.  Then he'll talk about how part of his job as Veep was to save and restore jobs in states like Michigan after him and Obama got left holding the bag for the Republican's disastrous follies. 

Finally, he can point out that President Toxic failed to bring those factory jobs back.  In 2019 Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all lost a few thousand factory jobs.  Even without COVID-19, Biden would have had a decent argument to make that Trump just broke his promises to communities decimated when the jobs went overseas by the millions under W.

Now let me say what I like about this article.  It is one of the best summaries I've read of why President Toxic continues to poll well on "the economy", even though we are in a recession.  As the article argues, the economy was in fact growing pretty well in 2019.  If Biden is having a hard time pounding the final nail in Trump's coffin, it's because the economy actually was working well enough for many.

By the end of Obama's second term, median US household income was slightly higher than ever before ($62,898) and Black and Hispanic poverty were lower than ever before.  As that Fed chart shows, there is no question that median incomes rose more under President Toxic ($68,703 by the end of 2019) and poverty went lower still.  In 2019 median incomes, in adjusted dollars, were close to 10 % higher than they've ever been.

Mostly the way I view that is that Trump inherited a growing economy, which he managed to keep growing.  Now he's  fucked it up worse than most other countries by completely mismanaging COVID-19.  But the economy was definitely growing.  Had COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter not hit, I'm pretty sure Lichtman would have been calling this election for President Toxic.  And he more likely than not would have won.

That new study the Fed just put out about income inequality stated that median household income rose 5 % between 2016 and 2019.  That slightly contradicts the Fed numbers above, which are closer to a 10 % increase over three years.  Either way, it does help me to understand why Mexican American families can look at Trump and feel like before COVID-19 he was good for the economy.  On most metrics, the rate of growth between 2010 to 2016 under Obama and from 2016 to 2019 under President Toxic was pretty much the same. Trump can and will take credit for a good economy.

The other thing I like about that article is Cortes made me think about what the debate SHOULD be about, but won't be:  income inequality, poverty, racial injustice, and all the other reasons that what the Fed calls "The Bottom 50 %" is suffering.

If President Toxic loses, I think the right way to view it is that for two elections in a row, the party in power failed the referendum.  And the biggest reason why is "it's the economy stupid".  At least for the bottom half of America.

Even the Top 50 % who has done well, or at least okay, includes lots of people who are just sick of the turmoil.  Many might agree to pay higher taxes if it means being able to get off the Toxic Rollercoaster and have peace and calm and a growing economy.  If we don't address these core economic issues, there is every reason to think the next President and the one after will fail the referendum, too.

Just as Cortes tries to blame Biden for the factory jobs shredded under W., he also tries to blame him for the Black net worth shredded by the subprime lending the Republicans allowed when they ran everything.  It's fair enough to say Black net worth declined under Obama.  But that's only because of all the foreclosures that were headed into the slow foreclosure pipeline by January 2009.  Cortes doesn't mention that one reason Obama may not have pushed for a more aggressive bailout for home owners is that Rich Mitch would have obstructed it.  That said, this is where Elizabeth Warren would say she was there.  And Obama's folks like Summers and Geithner were no help.

So we are left with this horror show, which now takes on more urgency since Black Lives Matter has called the question:

I suspect that the 50 % + of Americans who sympathize with the goals of Black Lives Matter and agree there is systemic racism in America also agree that until we deal with wealth and poverty, the problems won't get any better and may get worse.  I think going back to Clinton's home ownership initiatives and ring-fencing it with anti-predator laws is one idea to debate once Biden wins.  If Warren is Treasury Secretary, that will help.

Cortes wants to give President Toxic credit for reducing child poverty.  That's fair.  From 2010 to 2020 it reduced continuously under both Obama and President Toxic.  That said, it's still a huge problem:

It's the same core debate as what I said above with Black Lives Matter.  If we really want to address the roots of the unrest in America this Summer, child poverty is where we need to go.  The sad news, as you can see from that chart, is we've just been going sideways since the end of the 60's War On Poverty.  In most Western European nations, child poverty is a single digit number.  We ought to be able to do better.  

That chart surprised me.  My understanding of US poverty is this.  It reached an all time low in 1971, as The War On Poverty programs mostly continued into Nixon's Presidency.  It hit a new low in the latter years of Bill Clinton's Presidency.  And then it hit a new low again at the end of Obama's Presidency, and continued to decline under Trump.

All that is true for total poverty.  It's not true for child poverty.  Here's why:

Medicare, Social Security, and wealth creation have been remarkably successful in eliminating poverty among seniors.  With children, not so much.  While the government interventions involved are different, there's no reason 1 in 3 seniors had to be poor, or that 1 in 5 children still have to be poor.  COVID-19 has raised the stakes, simply by making it harder for children to learn.  But the reality we ought to be debating is that most rich kids will be fine, anyway.  Whereas many poor kids would not have been fine, anyway.

The other issue that Cortes didn't even mention that is the most important one to debate is income inequality.  Why am I not surprised?  That Fed report is good timing.  But I like this chart better, since it is just easier to understand:

It also covers the rough timeframe in which President Toxic and Biden have been active in real estate and politics.  So they won't be debating this.  Trump could argue Biden was in power the whole time, and he just let it happen.  Biden could argue that President Toxic is the poster child of the sleazy fat cat who wins by cheating and not paying taxes.

I actually like that chart from a Pew report better, because I think it is more useful for understanding why this is proving to be difficult to change.  The median income of what they call upper income is $207,400.  The median income of what they call middle income is $86,600.  So neither of those groups are hurting.  And as Cortes argues, they almost all probably got a good size bump in income from 2017 to 2019.  One reason there may not be overwhelming political opposition to the rich getting richer is that the people in the middle don't necessarily feel poorer.  

In some other universe, if we didn't have a Slavery Electoral College and Hillary had won in 2016, we'd have a 6-3 liberal Court,  And Bernie and Warren could be planning in 2021 to legislate a Jeff Bezos wealth tax.  That would be my ideal solution, which most Americans - including a majority of Republicans - support.  Biden has ruled that idea out.  Which is probably just as well, since it would never survive a 6 - 3 conservative court, anyway.  If I'm right that we're seeing a major change in tide toward a dominant progressive majority, then just as Nixon in 1968 led to Reagan in 1980, Biden in 2020 may lead to [...................] in 20[..].  Even if I'm right, it's gonna take a while for that to play out.

In the meantime, Biden wants to raise taxes on corporations and people who make over $400,000.  That should be doable with a Senate majority, just like it was under Clinton and Obama.  But just like under Clinton and Obama, there's no reason to think that alone will reverse, or even slow down, the further concentration of income and wealth.

All this is what I wish the debate tomorrow would be about.  It's going to be weird, after being used to Bernie and Biden and Warren slugging it out over a bunch of good ideas.  That's definitely not what is going to happen in this debate.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

4 hours ago, tassojunior said:

These are Democrats but I don't know if it's Pennsylvania again. I'm really concerned there are going to be hundreds of reports like this in new mail-in ballot states and it's going to undermine any Democratic "victory" (or maybe the other way round even). We need to get the voting system overhauled with a federal mandate; paper ballot trail, same-day registration, vote by mail or online, no ballot harvesting, etc. etc, or we're going to have a loss of confidence in the election process. 3rd world countries do better. 

 

 

It's always a good time to worry about election integrity.

That said, it's not like absentee voting or mail-in ballots are the only way to fuck things up.  It happens with in-person voting, too.  Did you ever hear of a thing called Bush v. Gore?

Florida now maintains they have learned from their mistakes, and after years of trial and error they have an excellent system for voting either way.  With no sense of irony whatsoever, President Toxic agrees.

One of the silver linings in the cloud of COVID-19 for me is it is advancing what we needed to do anyway at warp speed.  Will there be mistakes?  Of course.  But this should be a sprint both before and after the election to dramatically increase voter participation.  I'd be happy if the debate about mandatory voting starts in January.  If only to hear the Liberate The Virus crowd argue that the best thing about democracy is that no one can force you to vote.

Democrats Bail on Their Mail-Voting Experiment

That's a right-wing hit piece.  I'm posting it because there's data in there about the large number of ballots that are not counted - people don't sign them, signatures don't match, etc.  I'm not even 100 % sure I understand the guy's point.  But I think it's to mock AOC types who are all "vote in your pajamas!"  The implication is that maybe Democrats won't like mail-in voting so well if it means largely Democratic mail-in ballots with flaws are not counted.

My strong hunch is that this is a big net gain for Democrats.  The number of additional votes cast through mail-in voting will likely vastly exceed the additional number of ballots not counted due to errors.  There is always a learning curve.  Just like there was a learning curve in Florida in 2000. 

I'm hoping that Biden wins decisively, and gets a Senate majority.  Then in 2021 Congress passes legislation that moves states along, in any way we legally can, to let as many people as want to vote do so in any way they want to.

This is an issue where it could make sense to pick fights with a right wing Court.  In one week I've made the transition from thinking of SCOTUS as an institution I really want to respect, to thinking of it as an institution that I will systematically demonize for the rest of my life.  It is now a wounded bird.  And the sense that I think will develop is that every progressive in America will want to put the cute little right wing bird out of its misery.

So one fight that probably just makes SCOTUS look bad is any fight where they say voting is bad.  They won't say it that way, of course.  But the message of Democrats should be that democracy is based on voting being easy, safe, and a civic duty.  Let SCOTUS make it hard.  Every time they try to disenfranchise voters, we can use it to say we need Democratic Senators to pass progressive laws and eventually get rid of a bunch of SCOTUS justices that suck up to elites and despise the very idea of democracy.

Maybe it won't go that far.  But that's the idea I already have in my mind.  We do have a checks and balances system, and I think most Americans want checks and balances.  So if we are going to have a right wing SCOTUS, it can be used as an opportunity to build progressive power in the two other branches of government  to balance it out.

Edited September 29, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[JKane]

• trump dodged the draft 5 times by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spurs

• No trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service

• trump knew since March 2020 that Russia paid bounties to kill American troops, yet he has done nothing

• May 2020, the White House attempted to end National Guard deployments one day before they could claim benefits

• The trump admin seized 5 million masks intended for VA hospitals. Kushner distributes these masks to private entities for a fee, who then sells the masks to the government

• trump fired the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after he warned superiors that COVID19 was spreading among his crew. The virus subsequently spread amongst the crew

• After Iran's retaliatory strike, 109 US troops suffered brain injuries. trump dismissed these as "headaches"

• 20/7/2017, in room 2E924 of the Pentagon, trump told a room full of Generals, "You’re a bunch of dopes and babies"

• Pardoned multiple war criminals, which stomped on long standing military values, discipline, and command. Trump has no military experience (May&Nov, 2019)

• Trump mocked Lt. Col. Vindman for his rank and uniform. He threatened said purple heart officer, resulting in the Army providing him protection

• Trump’s Chief of Staff worked—in secret—to deny comprehensive health coverage to Vietnam Vets who suffered from Agent Orange

• There is a facility in Tijuana for US veterans that Trump deported. Wounded war vet, Sen Duckworth (D) marked Veterans Day 2019 by visiting this facility

• Russia took control of the main U.S. military facility in Syria abandoned on Trump’s orders. Russia now owns the airstrip we built

• 10/7/2019, Trump abruptly withdrew support from America's allies in Syria after a phone call with Turkey's president (Erdogan). Turkey subsequently bombed US Special Forces

• Trump sent thousands of American troops to defend the oil assets of the country that perpetrated 9/11

• Sept 2019, he made an Air Force cargo crew, flying from the U.S. to Kuwait stop in Scotland (where there's no U.S. base) to refuel at a commercial airport (where it costs more), so they could stay overnight at a Trump property (which isn't close to the airport). Trump’s golf courses are losing money, so he's forcing the military to pay for 5-star nights there

• Sept 2019, Pentagon pulled funds for military schools, military housing funds, and daycare to pay for Trump's border wall

• Aug 2019, emails revealed that three of Trump's Mar-a-Lago pals, who are now running Veterans Affairs, are rampant with meddling. "They had no experience in veterans affairs (none of them even served in the military) nor underwent any kind of approval process to serve as de facto managers. Yet, with Trump’s approval, they directed actions and criticized operations without any oversight. They wasted valuable staff time in hundreds of pages of communications and meetings, emails show. Emails reveal disdainful attitudes within the department to the trio’s meddling."

• Veterans graves will be "dug up" for the border wall, after Trump instructed aides to seize private property. Trump told officials he would pardon them if they break the law by illegally seizing property

• Children of deployed US troops are no longer guaranteed citizenship. This includes US troops posted abroad for years at a time (August 28, 2019)

• 2/8/2019, Trump requisitioned military retirement funds towards border wall

• 31/7/2019, Trump ordered the Navy rescind medals to prosecutors who were prosecuted war criminals

• Trump denied a U.S. Marine of 6 years entry into the United States for his citizenship interview (Reported 17/7/2019)

• Trump made the U.S. Navy Blue Angels violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign event (4/7/2019)

• Trump demanded US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported 2/7/2019)

• June 2019, Trump sent troops to the border to paint the fence for a better "aesthetic appearance"

• Trump used his D-Day interview at a cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack a Vietnam veteran (6/6/2019)

• Trump started his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported 4/6/2019)

• Trump made his 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported 4/6/2019)

• 27/5/2019, Trump turned away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain

• Trump ordered the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (15/5/2019). The ship's name was subsequently covered. (27/5/2019)

• Trump purged 200,000 vets' healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment system) (reported on 13/5/2019)

• Trump deported a spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless (16/4/2019)

• 20/3/2019, Trump complained that a deceased war hero didn't thank him for his funeral

• Between 12/22/2018, and 1/25/2019, Trump refused to sign his party's funding bill, which shut down the government, forcing the Coast Guard to go without pay, which made service members rely on food pantries. However, his appointees got a $10,000 pay raise

• He banned service members from serving based on gender identity (1/22/2019)

• He denied female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published 18/1/2019)

• He tried to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (16/1/2019)

• When a man was caught swindling veterans pensions for high-interest “cash advances," Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1 (Jan 26, 2019)

• He called a retired general a 'dog' with a 'big, dumb mouth' (Jan 1, 2019)

• He increased privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)

• He finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)

• He revealed a covert Seal Team 5 deployment, including names and faces, on Twitter during his visit to Iraq (Dec 26, 2018)

• Trump lied to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise (12/26/2018). He tried giving the military a raise that was lower than the standard living adjustment. Congress told him that idea wasn't going to work. Then after giving them the raise that Congress made him, he lied about it pretending that it was larger than Obama's. It wasn't

• He fired service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays

• He tried to slash disability and unemployment benefits for Veterans to $0, and eliminate the unemployability extrascheduler rating (Dec 17, 2018)

• He called troops on Thanksgiving and told them he's most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)

• He urged Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)

• He canceled an Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to light rain (Nov 12, 2018)

• While in Europe commemorating the end of WWI, he didn't attend the ceremony at a US cemetery due to the rain -- other world leaders went anyway (Nov 10, 2018)

• He used troops as a political prop by sending them on a phantom mission to the border and made them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018)

• He stopped using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, the troops remained in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018)

• Trump changed the GI Bill through his Forever GI Act, causing the VA to miss veteran benefits, including housing allowances. This caused many vets to run out of food and rent. (reported October 7, 2018)

• Trump doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)

• Trump deported active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018)

• He forgot a fallen soldier's name (below) during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacked her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)

• He sent commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn't have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)

• He blocked a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)

• He ordered the discharge of active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)

• He deported veterans (2017-present)

• He said he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)

• Oct 3, 2016, Trump said vets get PTSD because they aren't strong (note: yes, he said it's 'because they aren't strong.' He didn't say it's 'because they're weak.' This distinction is important because of Snopes)

• Trump accepted a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and said: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)

• Trump attacks Gold Star families: Myeshia Johnson (gold star widow), Khan family (gold star parents) etc. (2016-present)

• Trump sent funds raised from a Jan 2016 veterans benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veterans charities (the foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud) (Jan, 2016)

• Trump said he has "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military" because he went to a military-style academy (2015 biography)

• Trump said he doesn't consider POWs heroes because they were caught. He said he prefers people who were not caught (July 18, 2015)

• Trump said having unprotected sex was his own personal Vietnam (1998)

• For a decade, Trump sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. 1991

[JKane]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[stevenkesslar]

2 hours ago, JKane said:

• trump dodged the draft 5 times by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spurs

• No trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service

• trump knew since March 2020 that Russia paid bounties to kill American troops, yet he has done nothing

• May 2020, the White House attempted to end National Guard deployments one day before they could claim benefits

• The trump admin seized 5 million masks intended for VA hospitals. Kushner distributes these masks to private entities for a fee, who then sells the masks to the government

• trump fired the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt after he warned superiors that COVID19 was spreading among his crew. The virus subsequently spread amongst the crew

• After Iran's retaliatory strike, 109 US troops suffered brain injuries. trump dismissed these as "headaches"

• 20/7/2017, in room 2E924 of the Pentagon, trump told a room full of Generals, "You’re a bunch of dopes and babies"

• Pardoned multiple war criminals, which stomped on long standing military values, discipline, and command. Trump has no military experience (May&Nov, 2019)

• Trump mocked Lt. Col. Vindman for his rank and uniform. He threatened said purple heart officer, resulting in the Army providing him protection

• Trump’s Chief of Staff worked—in secret—to deny comprehensive health coverage to Vietnam Vets who suffered from Agent Orange

• There is a facility in Tijuana for US veterans that Trump deported. Wounded war vet, Sen Duckworth (D) marked Veterans Day 2019 by visiting this facility

• Russia took control of the main U.S. military facility in Syria abandoned on Trump’s orders. Russia now owns the airstrip we built

• 10/7/2019, Trump abruptly withdrew support from America's allies in Syria after a phone call with Turkey's president (Erdogan). Turkey subsequently bombed US Special Forces

• Trump sent thousands of American troops to defend the oil assets of the country that perpetrated 9/11

• Sept 2019, he made an Air Force cargo crew, flying from the U.S. to Kuwait stop in Scotland (where there's no U.S. base) to refuel at a commercial airport (where it costs more), so they could stay overnight at a Trump property (which isn't close to the airport). Trump’s golf courses are losing money, so he's forcing the military to pay for 5-star nights there

• Sept 2019, Pentagon pulled funds for military schools, military housing funds, and daycare to pay for Trump's border wall

• Aug 2019, emails revealed that three of Trump's Mar-a-Lago pals, who are now running Veterans Affairs, are rampant with meddling. "They had no experience in veterans affairs (none of them even served in the military) nor underwent any kind of approval process to serve as de facto managers. Yet, with Trump’s approval, they directed actions and criticized operations without any oversight. They wasted valuable staff time in hundreds of pages of communications and meetings, emails show. Emails reveal disdainful attitudes within the department to the trio’s meddling."

• Veterans graves will be "dug up" for the border wall, after Trump instructed aides to seize private property. Trump told officials he would pardon them if they break the law by illegally seizing property

• Children of deployed US troops are no longer guaranteed citizenship. This includes US troops posted abroad for years at a time (August 28, 2019)

• 2/8/2019, Trump requisitioned military retirement funds towards border wall

• 31/7/2019, Trump ordered the Navy rescind medals to prosecutors who were prosecuted war criminals

• Trump denied a U.S. Marine of 6 years entry into the United States for his citizenship interview (Reported 17/7/2019)

• Trump made the U.S. Navy Blue Angels violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign event (4/7/2019)

• Trump demanded US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported 2/7/2019)

• June 2019, Trump sent troops to the border to paint the fence for a better "aesthetic appearance"

• Trump used his D-Day interview at a cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack a Vietnam veteran (6/6/2019)

• Trump started his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported 4/6/2019)

• Trump made his 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported 4/6/2019)

• 27/5/2019, Trump turned away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain

• Trump ordered the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (15/5/2019). The ship's name was subsequently covered. (27/5/2019)

• Trump purged 200,000 vets' healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment system) (reported on 13/5/2019)

• Trump deported a spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless (16/4/2019)

• 20/3/2019, Trump complained that a deceased war hero didn't thank him for his funeral

• Between 12/22/2018, and 1/25/2019, Trump refused to sign his party's funding bill, which shut down the government, forcing the Coast Guard to go without pay, which made service members rely on food pantries. However, his appointees got a $10,000 pay raise

• He banned service members from serving based on gender identity (1/22/2019)

• He denied female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published 18/1/2019)

• He tried to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (16/1/2019)

• When a man was caught swindling veterans pensions for high-interest “cash advances," Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1 (Jan 26, 2019)

• He called a retired general a 'dog' with a 'big, dumb mouth' (Jan 1, 2019)

• He increased privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)

• He finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)

• He revealed a covert Seal Team 5 deployment, including names and faces, on Twitter during his visit to Iraq (Dec 26, 2018)

• Trump lied to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise (12/26/2018). He tried giving the military a raise that was lower than the standard living adjustment. Congress told him that idea wasn't going to work. Then after giving them the raise that Congress made him, he lied about it pretending that it was larger than Obama's. It wasn't

• He fired service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays

• He tried to slash disability and unemployment benefits for Veterans to $0, and eliminate the unemployability extrascheduler rating (Dec 17, 2018)

• He called troops on Thanksgiving and told them he's most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)

• He urged Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)

• He canceled an Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to light rain (Nov 12, 2018)

• While in Europe commemorating the end of WWI, he didn't attend the ceremony at a US cemetery due to the rain -- other world leaders went anyway (Nov 10, 2018)

• He used troops as a political prop by sending them on a phantom mission to the border and made them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018)

• He stopped using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, the troops remained in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018)

• Trump changed the GI Bill through his Forever GI Act, causing the VA to miss veteran benefits, including housing allowances. This caused many vets to run out of food and rent. (reported October 7, 2018)

• Trump doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)

• Trump deported active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018)

• He forgot a fallen soldier's name (below) during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacked her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)

• He sent commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn't have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)

• He blocked a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)

• He ordered the discharge of active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)

• He deported veterans (2017-present)

• He said he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)

• Oct 3, 2016, Trump said vets get PTSD because they aren't strong (note: yes, he said it's 'because they aren't strong.' He didn't say it's 'because they're weak.' This distinction is important because of Snopes)

• Trump accepted a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and said: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)

• Trump attacks Gold Star families: Myeshia Johnson (gold star widow), Khan family (gold star parents) etc. (2016-present)

• Trump sent funds raised from a Jan 2016 veterans benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veterans charities (the foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud) (Jan, 2016)

• Trump said he has "more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military" because he went to a military-style academy (2015 biography)

• Trump said he doesn't consider POWs heroes because they were caught. He said he prefers people who were not caught (July 18, 2015)

• Trump said having unprotected sex was his own personal Vietnam (1998)

• For a decade, Trump sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. 1991

I saw some poll that said Biden and President Toxic are now tied with active military and vets.  That would be extraordinary, and another reason for a decisive Biden win.

[tassojunior]

11 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

Thanks for posting that.   Wow.  Income inequality.  Why am I not surprised?

It is a complicated study.  Obviously the Fed's goal is not to stoke class war.  But all the stuff about the  "SCF Augmented Next 9" model versus the "WID Next 9" model makes it seem like they went out of their way to blunt the message by making it incomprehensible.

The thing that jumped out at me is the education correlation.  Which is not surprising.  87 % of those in the Top 1 % are college grads.  72 % of the Next 9 % are.  45 % of the Next 40 % are.  And only 22 % of the Bottom 50 % are.  Another argument for free college as a path to income equality. 

And, no surprise, the Top 1 % is almost entirely White and has 0 % Blacks.  The Bottom 50 % is 53 % White, 20 % Black, 14 % Hispanic, and 13 % Other.  But, no.  There's no systemic racism in America.  Just Black Marxists who want to abolish suburbs.  

I was going to post this anyway, so I'll fit it in here.  The themes revolve around income.

Biden: Skilled at Debate, Awful at Economic Results

That's a good preview of what President Toxic will say tomorrow night, albeit not as intelligently as his adviser Steve Cortes does. I give them credit for basing their arguments on the points Democrats would make:  Black net worth, child poverty, rising incomes for the middle class.

Before I get to the part of what Cortes says I genuinely like, let me first pick a few of the really stupid low hanging fruit. 

First, I read this as an acknowledgement that they think Biden will win the debate.  Their point is even if he is a good debater, he still sucks with the economy.

Second, I hope President Toxic tries to portray Biden as the guy who organized our "abusive" relationship with China and handed them 60,000 factories and over 3.2 million manufacturing jobs.  I guess Biden must have done that before he was senile, since it sounds pretty complicated.  It sets Biden up to respond that President Toxic played up Xi as a great guy who was handling the virus earlier this year.  Even as he downplayed a deadly threat to Americans, which has now killed over 200,000 of us.  It's hard to imagine President Toxic is stupid enough to hand this to Biden on a silver platter.  Then again, maybe not.

Biden is debating Trump, not W.  But I'll be interested to see whether and how Biden points out that all those factory jobs were lost under W. and Republican tax and trade policies.  Which boiled down to let the rich stockholders and corporations do whatever they want.  There's more than a bit of that with President Toxic, too.

Biden will say that he was for NAFTA in the 90's, when Clinton was President and it did create hundreds of thousands of factory jobs in the US.  Including Delaware.  He voted against most of W.'s trade deals, which at the time he said did not meet "fair trade" and union standards.  Then he'll talk about how part of his job as Veep was to save and restore jobs in states like Michigan after him and Obama got left holding the bag for the Republican's disastrous follies. 

Finally, he can point out that President Toxic failed to bring those factory jobs back.  In 2019 Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all lost a few thousand factory jobs.  Even without COVID-19, Biden would have had a decent argument to make that Trump just broke his promises to communities decimated when the jobs went overseas by the millions under W.

Now let me say what I like about this article.  It is one of the best summaries I've read of why President Toxic continues to poll well on "the economy", even though we are in a recession.  As the article argues, the economy was in fact growing pretty well in 2019.  If Biden is having a hard time pounding the final nail in Trump's coffin, it's because the economy actually was working well enough for many.

By the end of Obama's second term, median US household income was slightly higher than ever before ($62,898) and Black and Hispanic poverty were lower than ever before.  As that Fed chart shows, there is no question that median incomes rose more under President Toxic ($68,703 by the end of 2019) and poverty went lower still.  In 2019 median incomes, in adjusted dollars, were close to 10 % higher than they've ever been.

Mostly the way I view that is that Trump inherited a growing economy, which he managed to keep growing.  Now he's  fucked it up worse than most other countries by completely mismanaging COVID-19.  But the economy was definitely growing.  Had COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter not hit, I'm pretty sure Lichtman would have been calling this election for President Toxic.  And he more likely than not would have won.

That new study the Fed just put out about income inequality stated that median household income rose 5 % between 2016 and 2019.  That slightly contradicts the Fed numbers above, which are closer to a 10 % increase over three years.  Either way, it does help me to understand why Mexican American families can look at Trump and feel like before COVID-19 he was good for the economy.  On most metrics, the rate of growth between 2010 to 2016 under Obama and from 2016 to 2019 under President Toxic was pretty much the same. Trump can and will take credit for a good economy.

The other thing I like about that article is Cortes made me think about what the debate SHOULD be about, but won't be:  income inequality, poverty, racial injustice, and all the other reasons that what the Fed calls "The Bottom 50 %" is suffering.

If President Toxic loses, I think the right way to view it is that for two elections in a row, the party in power failed the referendum.  And the biggest reason why is "it's the economy stupid".  At least for the bottom half of America.

Even the Top 50 % who has done well, or at least okay, includes lots of people who are just sick of the turmoil.  Many might agree to pay higher taxes if it means being able to get off the Toxic Rollercoaster and have peace and calm and a growing economy.  If we don't address these core economic issues, there is every reason to think the next President and the one after will fail the referendum, too.

Just as Cortes tries to blame Biden for the factory jobs shredded under W., he also tries to blame him for the Black net worth shredded by the subprime lending the Republicans allowed when they ran everything.  It's fair enough to say Black net worth declined under Obama.  But that's only because of all the foreclosures that were headed into the slow foreclosure pipeline by January 2009.  Cortes doesn't mention that one reason Obama may not have pushed for a more aggressive bailout for home owners is that Rich Mitch would have obstructed it.  That said, this is where Elizabeth Warren would say she was there.  And Obama's folks like Summers and Geithner were no help.

So we are left with this horror show, which now takes on more urgency since Black Lives Matter has called the question:

I suspect that the 50 % + of Americans who sympathize with the goals of Black Lives Matter and agree there is systemic racism in America also agree that until we deal with wealth and poverty, the problems won't get any better and may get worse.  I think going back to Clinton's home ownership initiatives and ring-fencing it with anti-predator laws is one idea to debate once Biden wins.  If Warren is Treasury Secretary, that will help.

Cortes wants to give President Toxic credit for reducing child poverty.  That's fair.  From 2010 to 2020 it reduced continuously under both Obama and President Toxic.  That said, it's still a huge problem:

It's the same core debate as what I said above with Black Lives Matter.  If we really want to address the roots of the unrest in America this Summer, child poverty is where we need to go.  The sad news, as you can see from that chart, is we've just been going sideways since the end of the 60's War On Poverty.  In most Western European nations, child poverty is a single digit number.  We ought to be able to do better.  

That chart surprised me.  My understanding of US poverty is this.  It reached an all time low in 1971, as The War On Poverty programs mostly continued into Nixon's Presidency.  It hit a new low in the latter years of Bill Clinton's Presidency.  And then it hit a new low again at the end of Obama's Presidency, and continued to decline under Trump.

All that is true for total poverty.  It's not true for child poverty.  Here's why:

Medicare, Social Security, and wealth creation have been remarkably successful in eliminating poverty among seniors.  With children, not so much.  While the government interventions involved are different, there's no reason 1 in 3 seniors had to be poor, or that 1 in 5 children still have to be poor.  COVID-19 has raised the stakes, simply by making it harder for children to learn.  But the reality we ought to be debating is that most rich kids will be fine, anyway.  Whereas many poor kids would not have been fine, anyway.

The other issue that Cortes didn't even mention that is the most important one to debate is income inequality.  Why am I not surprised?  That Fed report is good timing.  But I like this chart better, since it is just easier to understand:

It also covers the rough timeframe in which President Toxic and Biden have been active in real estate and politics.  So they won't be debating this.  Trump could argue Biden was in power the whole time, and he just let it happen.  Biden could argue that President Toxic is the poster child of the sleazy fat cat who wins by cheating and not paying taxes.

 

 

I think the importance is that people still have this impression that the "middle class" is most of Americans and that their incomes are getting better or staying the same. In fact it's only 40% and shrinking while the majority of Americans are dirt poor and getting poorer.

We see the 10% constantly in media, restaurants, hotels etc and they seem to be much bigger a share. Our society is built around them and the upper middle class and it's only when that Mother Theresa urge strikes us that we think of the bottom 50% (not mingle with them, p-l-e-e-z-e!) and sometimes that lasts until dinner. We see the white ones doing drugs and getting out of pickups with Trump bumper stickers, the Black ones on the corner hustling, and the Latino ones working like slaves. If we venture into a WalMart, a Dollar Tree, or an Aldi we might come within 10 feet of one but we mostly social-distanced them way before any pandemic. (Ironically, many criticisms of Trumpists are that they are poor uneducated trash). Classism is strong and growing in the US (largely because it's pushed by the elitist corporate media) while our trademark egalitarianism is the victim. That leads to a decline in support for democracy. If Trumpists were to always win elections we'd be against elections and democracy. 

Anyway, the elitist corporate media (Democrat and Republican) is always going to subliminally persuade the masses that they live in the 10% because that's all they see or hear about. (and NBC is owned by GE which mostly makes weapons and bombs to kill people in the wars NBC promotes). Maybe that's why Tiger King was such a successful novelty but The Crown and Succession is what we mostly get; mostly stuff about the 1% in entertainment and news, with some 9% and a little upper middle class stuff. From our media you would never know the majority of Americans are poor.   

Of course there are inconvenient truths that we must face to change. One is that "childhood poverty" has a lot to do with who is having children. For a long time we have given extra money (as we should) for extra children to the poorest Americans on welfare while having children has become too expensive for the middle class (or even the 9%) which has to work. We need to take care of all children equally and philosophically that should be funded by inheritance taxes on the rich to more level the playing field. And by take-care-of I mean medical (which CHIPS does) , free daycare, free good education through college, and the security of knowing equal UBI payments are ahead to take otherwise financially-risky self-improvement or entrepreneurial ventures that eventually come back to improve society. 

Another inconvenient truth is that indeed, the richest few, the Musks and Bezos even, do improve our lives with invention and innovation while much of the middle class work is being done best by AI and robots. Who wants a car made by humans anymore instead of robots? Who would want to wait 4 years for a corvid vaccine developed without AI which shortens it to under 1 year? In industry after industry human (middle-class) workers are becoming a luxury, if not usually unnecessary. But the knowledge and invention the richest make their huge fortunes off are usually government-sponsored and very often government inventions. Insulin was invented by the government but costs $1000/month from the company sold the patent for $1. Creation of wealth and a better life does usually come from the top of society but it's usually made possible by the government. So it's fair that society says that a certain portion, maybe 50%, be divided equally among all members of the society......UBI. We can continue committing our overseas genocide with low-cost robots and drones now and we can divert that huge military make-work economy into just giving that money directly to the people instead of trickling-down through those obsolete and expensive weapons. 

Which brings up another inconvenient truth. America is changing ethnically, racially and religiously faster than ever and the near future is clear. We hear about the millions of illegal immigrants from Central America and that's true. But immigration to America now has changed to Asian and most-especially South-Asian (Indian) dramatically. As the world's biggest country (almost 1.5 billion) India along with Bangladesh (1/2 billion), the Philippines, etc are the source of the new immigration. (African immigration chiefly from Ethiopia and Somalia is also huge now and Nigeria-soon to be the world's 3rd largest country-is exploding). Most detainees in California immigration prisons are Indian and rapidly the largest immigration source, legal and illegal both, is India. In the past couple decades Indians have grown from under .5% of the US population to approaching 2% and the trend with H1 visas and family connections is that number is going to explode. Republicans generally favor massive Asian immigration over Latino and African refugee immigration and the income level of Indians, and most other Asians, in the US is well above average. Without African immigration the US Black population is static at best at 10-13%, while the Hispanic population is now well over 15% (and this is the first election that more Hispanics are eligible to vote than Blacks). Whites are just barely reproducing at all and the % is in freefall. There are almost as many Muslims (1.5%), Buddhists (1.5%) (and Mormons 1.5%) as Jews (1.8%) already and that tribe is headed way down (except for Orthodox). So America is becoming an equally Hispanic/Indian/Other Asian/White/Black (including African) country just as our place as #1 power in the world is slipping rapidly to China (just as the UK did to the US in the early 20th century). It's telling that our future president is probably going to be either 1/2 Indian or full Indian just as the future leader of the UK, if Boris steps down or is deposed, will probably be one of 2 or 3 Tory east-Africa Indians. We talk about multi-racial/multi-cultural society but the US is about to experience it and I'm not sure the commitment to egalitarianism, or even democracy, will hold as ethnic and racial rivalries multiply. And unfortunately, without a homogeneous population (like China's), the commitment to egalitarianism and equality loses out. That's the downside of globalization and multiculturalism and why populist nationalists come to power.

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by tassojunior

[tassojunior]

3 hours ago, JKane said:

• trump dodged the draft 5 times by having a doctor diagnose him with bone spur

That's true (and everyone has heard it 1000 times) and it shows he's an elitist hypocrite but if you're unaware that Biden did the same thing at the exact same time then it shows you're living in a propagandized society where 99% only know what the establishment wants them to know and most think and repeat what the establishment wants them to think.

That's even more scary than Trump's pigishness.  

Edited September 29, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, tassojunior said:

I think the importance is that people still have this impression that the "middle class" is most of Americans and that their incomes are getting better or staying the same. In fact it's only 40% and shrinking while the majority of Americans are dirt poor and getting poorer.

Anyway, the elitist corporate media (Democrat and Republican) is always going to subliminally persuade the masses that they live in the 10% because that's all they see or hear about.

I agree with most of what you said.  The part I disagree with, strongly, is what I quoted. 

I don't think that Americans are being fooled by the corporate media.  The polls show the media is less trusted than ever.  I think people are responding to what is actually happening in their lives.  More than anything, it's the economy, stupid.  Which was probably good enough in 2019  for President Toxic to win.  We'll never know.  But it is almost certainly bad enough in 2020 for him to lose.  And we will know that soon.

I think the project for Democrats for the next decade is to relentlessly pound on a progressive economic message the way the conservative trickle downers did before, during, and after the election of Reagan. 

My view is that we have the facts mostly on our side.  I'll concede the point that Reagan can be viewed as the guy who grew the economy, and won the Cold War.  And that was enough to get George H.W. Bush four years.  Lichtman would argue that voters saw it that way, which is why they went for 12 continuous years of Republican rule.  Even if you stipulate that, George W. Bush and now Trump have proven that the supply side ideology of tax cuts for the rich mostly leads to huge budget deficits and the rich getting richer. 

Branding it as "trickle down" was effective enough to get Bill Clinton and Obama in power for eight years.  "Trumped up trickle down" did not work for Hillary.  So what Democrats and progressives need to now do is figure out how to push that message further.  You can blame 2016 on Hillary.  Or you can blame it on the fact that by 2016 too many people were left behind, even by Democratic policies.

There's something else that Lichtman's theories have changed my mind about.  I used to think Reagan won because his ideas won, right or wrong.  Or that after a few decades of conservatism's failures, starting with Goldwater and Reagan in 1964, the time for his ideas had finally come.  I've changed my mind.  I now believe that Lichtman is right, and Reagan won mostly because Carter lost.  It's as simple as, "A isn't working, so let's try B."  That's a vast oversimplification.  But I think it's mostly right.  The polls show that conservatism became more popular AFTER Reagan was elected, not before.  He offered in simple and sunny words a theory for why things were getting better.  So a lot of people said, "Yup.  Things are getting better.  We buy the theory."

I read a long essay by Teddy White about the 1980 race.  He pointed out that Carter spent Fall 1980 going on boat rides on the Mississippi and staging these photo ops about how everything was fine.  Meanwhile, America had long gas lines, high inflation, bad feelings, and a hostage crisis in Iran.  It's not unlike Fall 2020.  President Toxic can try to paint a sunny picture all he wants.  But it's pretty clear that most Americans see a pandemic, wildfires, and an economic mess.  While 2020 may not be a 1980 landslide, the key similarity is this:  "Not A, therefore B."  It's up to B to make it work better.  And to explain to the American people why it is working better. Reagan was able to do that.  Trump wasn't.

There is a huge downside for Biden, even if he wins.  We don't even need to create a hypothetical because it already happened in 2009.  Axelrod said he knew by Spring 2009 that Democrats would have to carry the baggage of an economic nightmare they inherited into the 2010 midterms.  This is why I think we need a 50+ vote majority in the Senate.  And we need to end the filibuster.  Having made it work in 2009, Mitch - if capable - will play the obstruction card again.  One upside to his right wing Court packing is that it is now obvious to Americans that he is way more interested in raw power to attain conservative ends than he is in bipartisanship or compromise for the good of America.

Here's a hypothetical.  The closest analogy to 2020 is 1918/1919.  There was a sharp but short V-shaped recession that coincided with the pandemic.  Then the economy recovered.  Then in 2020 there was a post-war, post-pandemic depression.  If Biden inherits something like that, 2022 could be really ugly for Democrats. 

Again, I think Democrats need a majority, they need a clear plan, and they need some success to be able to persuade people in 2022 that the plan is working.  Reagan managed to do that.  He also managed to gradually persuade Americans that his conservative ideas were working, based on what they perceived as success.  In 1982 Democrats won 1 Senate seat, and 26 House seats.  If Democrats win big in 2020 and can hold their losses in 2022 to something like that, four years is enough time to set up a strong recovery and another Democratic victory in 2024.

The part of what you wrote that I quoted above is the part I disagree with.  I'll restate some of what I said above that I found persuasive about Steve Cortes' argument.  And this time I'll overstate it, so that it sounds like I agree with Cortes.

What part of "lowest poverty rate ever" do you not get?  True, about 1 in 6 children are poor.  Guess what?  It was 1 in 5 under Obama and Biden.  Whether it is 1 in 5 or 1 in 6, most Americans know that it's just wrong to say "the majority of Americans are dirt poor and getting poorer", as you claim.  They know it because their iPhone and laptop, which enables them to telecommute, tells them so.  No, they and their kids are not poor.

Cortes uses Fed data to claim median incomes went up $4,379 dollars in 2019.  I'm sure we'll hear something like that from President Toxic tonight.  Comparing 2019 to 2018, median incomes went up $4,889 in Pennsylvania, $3,591 in Wisconsin, and $5,292 in Michigan.  Does that sound like the rich got richer at the expense of the middle class to you?  It doesn't to me.  It sounds like the middle class got richer, and the rich got richer, too.  Cue up Margaret Thatcher, who would argue Democrats hate the rich so much they'd rather punish wealth and work and have the poor be poorer.

My view of reality is that people don't read these Fed numbers.  But it actually does describe the reality they live and vote in.  Here's an interesting factoid.  In Pennsylvania, median incomes are higher than ever.  In Wisconsin, in 2019 they went back to their prior peak, in 1999.  In Michigan, median income is still way below their 1999 peak.  That may explain why Biden is doing better in Michigan than Pennsylvania.  It may be that voters in Pennsylvania do feel like President Toxic has made it better than ever for them. 

This brief report from Steve Kornacki shows that in 2016 Trump had leads with White voters with no college degrees of + 32 % in Pennsylvania and + 31 % in Michigan.  Now he has poll leads with the same group of + 18 % in Pennsylvania and + 6 % in Michigan.  In both cases, the margin has shrunk and he's losing the state overall.  But it may be that part of the difference is that incomes in Pennsylvania in 2019 were higher than they've ever been, unlike Michigan.  I'll keep repeating.  I like Lichtman's idea that most voters are smart.  And that his system tells you not just who will win, but why they will win.  If Democrats want to win Pennsylvania, they have to offer voters some theory of why they'll do better.

The way I look at these numbers is that President Toxic got lucky, and unlucky.  He got lucky to inherit an economy that was growing from Obama and Biden.  He got unlucky that a pandemic fucked it all up for him, and us.  Beyond that, Biden can and should argue that Obama and him inherited a Republican economic mess and figured out how to make it good.  Trump inherited a good economy and has figured out how to again create another Republican economic mess.  In large part by lying to Americans about a deadly virus and completely bungling the economic response.

Those same three states lost thousands of manufacturing jobs in 2019.  That's a drop in the bucket compared to the big picture in each state, which was a rising tide in 2019.  That said, even without COVID-19 Biden had a pretty good argument that President Toxic promised to help those ailing factory towns.  And he utterly failed.  Lichtman would have argued that Trump would have won regardless, I suspect.

Lichtman now argues, and I agree, that what has happened in 2020 is enough to win Biden one election.  But what happens after the election determines whether Democrats can win again in 2022 and 2024.  It also determines whether Democrats can persuade voters that "progressive" or even "democratic socialist" ideas make sense.

I think it would help to just be sober about the fact that Sanders and Warren failed.  Period.  If the idea is to convince people that some class-oriented ideology is better, progressive Democrats have a lot of rethinking to do.  And the first thing that would help is to agree that people - especially Independents - will pay more attention to what really happens, as opposed to how any ideology tells them to think about it.  In 2020 terms, Biden is having a hard time closing the deal on "the economy" because at least in 2019 "the economy" was actually better for the average voter in swing states.

It is stunningly clear that Bernie's 2020 experiment in "democratic socialism" failed.  What I saw led me to think that a similar experiment in 2030 or 2040 could succeed.  Because at some point young Berniecrats who were his base will be an older majority - maybe.  But if the idea was that White voters without college degrees (or even Black voters without college degrees) in Michigan or Wisconsin were really closet social democrats, that theory just didn't pan out.  It wasn't even close.  If anything, those are the people that will increasingly form the base of the post-Trump/toxic/"truck driver" Republican Party.

Same with Warren.  The theory of the case for me in 2019 was that she had the best argument that fit with people's actual experience.  Yeah, I'm a born capitalist.  But then when you look at what happens, capitalism sure crushes a lot of people.  Like factory workers.  Like big chunks of the middle class that get screwed by predatory lenders or greedy drug companies.  She did have a plan.  And it looked for a while like it might work.

There is your theory that she was an evil snake all along.  All that tells me is that progressives are 100 % certain to fail.  Because we are too stupid or purist to actually build coalitions. 

My theory is that Warren's failure tells us a lot about exactly where we are.  In retrospect, many say it was a strategic mistake for her to embrace Medicare For All.  It was a bridge too far for most Democrats, as the primary results show.  So if Biden wins and there is a Senate majority, Bernie and Warren will live to fight another day.  I think what is most important now is that Biden wins, and wins a Senate majority.  Like in 1932 and 1960, I think the right progressive mindset is that the best progressive legislation is yet to come.

In a nutshell, Reagan succeeded by convincing the middle class it was better to tie its fate to the rich.  The economy worked well enough that the country moved gradually to the right.  The same thing happened under Clinton in reverse.  His economy worked well enough that it nudged the country to the left.  So what Democrats need to do is figure out how to nudge the country further to the left.

Thomas Picketty is a scholar, and he would likely have a hard time winning an election for dog catcher.  But his ideas are the best ones for gradually moving the country into an economy that works better for the middle class, based on ideas that make sense.  They make sense because they fit with what is actually happening in most people's lives.

To me, those two charts summarize the winning arguments Democrats (or "democratic socialists") need to make relentlessly.  And part of the problem is that charts and theories are useless.  Part of what progressive Democrats need is a Ronald Reagan, who can make it simple and sunny.  Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were not quite it.  Not is Joe Biden.  Nor, as it turns out, was Barack Obama.  Americans always get it wrong before they finally get it right, I guess.

Any factory town in the Rust Belt can tell you the bottom chart is right.  Productivity has grown, but at the expense of the people who produce the goods that productivity is based on.  Yang argues, correctly, that more of that is on the way.  Biden actually does have an inner Bernie, which we may see glimpses of tonight.  I posted a YouTube clip a few weeks ago I can't find today, but in 2007 in New Hampshire he was saying he voted against all Bush's trade deals because free trade was not fair trade.  He pointed out that millions of factory jobs were going to China.  Partly because W. would not enforce the trade deals.  But partly because corporations and US stock holders were making fortunes shipping factory jobs to where they could get really cheap labor.  

The first chart explains the Democrats' opportunity, and problem.  The opportunity is that Democrats can argue that concentrating wealth at the top, among "job creators" who actually suck at creating well paying jobs, has not paid off.  Yeah, we have productivity growth.  But it is lagging behind what it was when the pie was shared more evenly.  Back then the middle class could grow, rather than just paddle dead in the water. 

This argument should sell in Michigan and Wisconsin.  Because it is true.  President Toxic can say median incomes in both states were higher in 2019 than in 2018.  Biden can say that's because of the economic recovery Barack and him created.  He can also say those incomes are actually still below what they were when Bill Clinton was President.  And he can say that's because every time Republicans fool Americans into voting for them we go right back into this failed economic theory that bankrupts America.  If it worked for Clinton and Obama, the argument can work for Biden.

If Biden is the political animal he seems to be, he knows in his bones that he actually has to nudge America to the left in order to succeed.  He has to enact more progressive laws.  He has to have the votes.  And he has to tax Jeff Bezos to help people in the middle and the bottom.  He also has a modern version of the Civil Rights Movement.  So BLM will have a much bigger soapbox, just like MLK did, from which to argue there is no good reason 1 in 6 American children grow up poor.  That ties right into the idea that we'll have more racism, more crime, and more jails if we just keep ignoring the pain we inflict on our children.  Like in 1960, there does seem to be a growing will now to actually do something about it.

If central casting is sending an FDR or an LBJ our way, I don't think Joe Biden is it.  I think he knows that.  He says he is a transitional figure.  At the very least, he gives progressives a platform to win some victories that help them make the case that these policies actually do improve the lives and digital wallets of the majority of Americans.  Figuring that out is the political and ideological project of the decade for Democrats and progressives when Biden wins.

One way to think about both 2016 and 2020 is that Lictman would argue history closes one door and opens another.  Maybe the door is slammed shut, like in 1980.  Or maybe the breeze blows it barely shut, like in 2016.  It's up to the winner to walk through the new door and claim the prize.  Lichtman's argument, which I buy, is that voters will reject President Toxic because he failed to make things better.  Democrats have to make things better, an have a good theory for how they will do it, if we're going to claim the prize long enough to transform the economy.  Let alone deal with climate change.

Quite honestly, I don't think we need a charismatic Thomas Picketty.  I think we could probably make do with a progressive Indiana Jones.