Election 2020

[Eric the Green]

(10-29-2020, 05:40 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-28-2020, 04:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: What To Make Of That New Wisconsin Poll That Has Biden Way Ahead
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wha...way-ahead/

That lead is a gigantic outlier, consistent with about a 57-40 win by Biden in Wisconsin. Oddly the same pollster showed Biden up "only" 7% (which itself would be lethal to any chance of a Trump win of Michigan, and when other pollsters had margins of 8%, 9%, and 10% for Biden in Michigan.  I could imagine the states switched, with unusually high turnout for Democrats in Michigan. Trump badly mangled the response to the nefarious plot against Governor Whitmer.

All of a sudden I see a 4% lead for Joe Biden in Iowa, something that I had never seen (the Hawkeye State had typically shown that Trump's 9% win in Iowa in 2016 was no fluke).

To put it tamely, we are going to see some strange things on Tuesday night. We are accustomed to close elections and to incumbent Presidents getting re-elected. But this is a Crisis Era, and attitudes can change swiftly. I see a new political consensus forming, but I can't quite define it. One obvious difference is that the leader that we now have is about as far from the leaders of the Continental Congress, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt as is possible in competence and integrity. Obama may have been more the sort of leader that America tends to get after a Crisis is over, more like Grover Cleveland or Dwight Eisenhower... someone more likely to negotiate than to read the Riot Act toward opponents. Trump is swift to read the Riot Act, so to speak, especially when the opponents are anything but rioters. 

I see America tiring of confrontation. This election is not the end of the Republican Party; when Joe Biden is getting much support in the election from people who have typically voted for conservative Republicans one knows that he at best can hope for a shaky alliance soon after he is inaugurated. This said, Americans seem to want placid politics and not apocalyptic speeches. We have had our experience with the Hard Right getting power and sticking it to everyone else instead of efforts to find workable compromises.

Although I agree generally here, I see things a bit differently. I don't think the era of confrontation is over. The country is more polarized than ever, with increasing passion on both sides. What is necessary to redress and change direction after the Trump mess will be confrontational, and anything less will just be another bland disappointment like Bill Clinton and Obama were. The court must be reformed and packed now, or nothing much will change from the way things have been for 40 years. That kind of stagnation and drift is just not acceptable to the Left anymore, such as it is. Barrett is an unacceptable coup, it is like the Dred Scott decision; it must be overturned. Schumer seems ready. And making that and other changes won't be acceptable to the Right either. Our 4T is half over, and as such, people being tired of confrontation won't change that fact. The right wing is not going to accept Biden, any more than they accepted earlier moderate Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. "Workable compromises" cannot be made with them; only within the Democratic Party. To the Right-wing, all Democrats are socialists, except for someone like Joe Manchin. Our crisis will continue for another 8 or 9 years. Turnings are not usually only 12 years long. And I don't agree with the civil war anomaly. We are still 1850s redux, as I have said already very often.

Grover Cleveland is not the example you want, at least not his second term (maybe his first, which was still 1T at least until half-way through; his second was 2T). He read the riot act to the 1894 strikers and brutally crushed them, thus sealing his non-renomination and Bryan took over and changed the Democratic Party forever. The equivalent of Ike was U.S. Grant. The winning general, like Washington. All three were nomad types. As he took office in 1869, he called for calm. All three were very popular and won election easily tor 2 terms.