The last 4T was in part an intelligence operation by the CIA

[pbrower2a]

(03-05-2021, 05:14 AM)Einzige Wrote:

(03-04-2021, 03:58 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Rachel Maddow earlier this week broke into her normal presentation to make a few announcements.  In January, hers became the #1 cable TV show, eclipsing even the entertainment programs.  Then, she did it again in February, and MSNBC became the #1 cable network for the first time ever.

Maddow is a conservative. Lmfao. And MSDNC is just Democratic Fox.

Rachel Maddow once describer herself as an Eisenhower Republican... which refers to a time in which the Republican party actually had a liberal wing.  Ike would not now recognize "his" Party  as a Party of fiscal responsibility, ethnic and religious inclusion, traditional content in education, and rule of law. Those have tended to go Democratic. Yes, some old conservative values have become part of the Democratic agenda. Surely you have seen my map in which I overlay Eisenhower and Obama results. 

  When all is said and done, I think that the Obama and Eisenhower Presidencies are going to look like good analogues. Both Presidents are chilly rationalists. Both are practically scandal-free administrations. Both started with a troublesome war that both found their way out of. Neither did much to 'grow' the strength of their Parties in either House of Congress. To compare ISIS to Fidel Castro is completely unfair to Fidel Castro, a gentleman by contrast to ISIS. 

Eisenhower and Obama

The definitive moderate Republican may have been Dwight Eisenhower, and I have heard plenty of Democrats praise the Eisenhower Presidency. He went along with Supreme Court rulings that outlawed segregationist practices, stayed clear of the McCarthy bandwagon, and let McCarthy implode.


 
gray -- did not vote in 1952 or 1956
white -- Eisenhower twice, Obama twice
deep blue -- Republican all four elections
light blue -- Republican all but 2012 (I assume that greater Omaha went for Ike twice)
light green -- Eisenhower once, Stevenson once, Obama never
dark green -- Stevenson twice, Obama never
pink -- Stevenson twice, Obama once 

No state voted Democratic all four times, so no state is in deep red. 

Aside from Obama not getting the farm-and-ranch vote, an Obama win looks more like an Eisenhower win than like any other. It is unlikely that the political culture changed in many states unless the change is demographic (rapid growth of the Mexican-American vote that has typically been strongly Democratic) in California, Colorado, and New Mexico. I could refer you to the book Albion's Seed (David Hackett Fischer) to suggest how early settlers shaped the institutions in various parts of the country. Just because the original settlers largely abandoned an area (WASP farmers largely leaving southern New England for better land "Out West" as "Out West" steadily moved from Upstate New York through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and eventually the West Coast and filling in places like Nebraska and Colorado later. The Irish Catholics basically took over the institutions that the colonial-era WASPs had established and made those institutions their own. 

For obvious reasons no President will be an obvious match for Obama, but until at least Biden, Ike is the best match. It would be tempting to believe that the political parties would be deeply entrenched in states, but the map above suggests otherwise. The context in which Eisenhower could win two landslide wins for the GOP looks like an endorsement of the temperament of both. 

If it were simply a question of partisanship, then look at the contrast between Jimmy Carter's one win and Obama's two:

  If anyone has any doubt that the Presidential Election of 1976 is ancient history for all practical purposes:

Carter 1976, Obama 2008/2012    



Carter 1976, Obama twice  red
Carter 1976, Obama once pink
Carter 1976, Obama never yellow
Ford 1976, Obama twice white
Ford 1976, Obama once light blue
Ford 1976, Obama never blue

Of the states in yellow, only one (Georgia, and barely so in 2020) has gone to any Democrat since 1996. It is imaginable that Texas could go to the Democratic nominee in 2024 but unless Biden or Harris wins an Eisenhower-style or LBJ-style blowout in 2024 you can mostly count out any reasonable chance of the Democratic nominee winning anything else in yellow in 2024.  

Basically there are four quadrants in the political spectrum going clockwise: internationalists, corporate conservatives, populists, and pro-labor liberals.  The pro-labor liberals and the corporate conservatives are incompatible; the populists and internationalists are incompatible. In the 1950's the Democrats had the populists and pro-labor liberals when the populists were unusually weak; in the 1980's the Democrats were starting to lose the populists but had not yet won over the internationalists to any extent. Such allowed the unusually-strong, but surprisingly-troubled Reagan coalition. But that fell apart in the 1990's. By now, the Democrats seem to have lost the populist sector (which is very much pro-Trump now) while gaining the highly-educated internationalist sector.

Here I make no predictions for 2024.  I can show the Carter 1976/Biden 2020 map which may be an even better relevancy because both the 1976 and 2020 maps were close in electoral votes:

 If anyone has any doubt that the Presidential Election of 1976 is ancient history for all practical purposes:

Carter 1976, Biden 2020   



Carter 1976, Biden  red
Carter 1976, Trump 2020 yellow
Ford 1976, Biden white
Ford 1976, Trump 2020 blue

Only thirteen states (and of those Indiana is the largest in electoral votes) went for both Ford and Trump. Only ten states (although those include New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia) and Dee Cee went for Carter and Biden. Predicting the result of the 2020 Presidential election from the results of 1976 would be ludicrous.