Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

(12-11-2020, 03:01 PM)CH86 Wrote: I Will Post my thoughts on this election here: First Biden Won the election but demanding that Trumpers disband shows that the DNC does not understand the existing situation. Dems were able to get Biden over the hurdle ONLY because of the COVID crisis started which allowed for an Anti-Trump campaign to be launched due to poor handling, well as the fact that may registered democrats and even some moderate republicans actually want Biden to govern as a moderate. However the above is Definitely NOT the goal of the DNC.

Donald Trump did get 46.83% of the vote this time, which is amazing to someone who thinks that he belongs in the Big House instead of the White House... and by "the Big House" I do not mean Michigan Stadium. In Michigan, the appropriate Big House would be where some of his acolytes in the Wolverine Watchmen are headed if convicted of the insidious plot against the state government. He actually got more votes and a larger total share of votes in 2020 than in 2016 when he won the Presidency by winning the 'right' votes. He has a strong personality cult.  

Someone like Donald Trump, who had no legacy of political service and no connections to a well-established constituency, did become President. I assume that he won in 2016 by playing up fears and resentments that have been building for decades. Many people see a system that has promised much and demanded everything... and disappointed. Figure that people used to be able to get a job on an assembly line in an auto plant or other giant manufacturer if one had a good work ethic and a strong body... and earn a middle income. The biggest private employer in America is now Wal*Mart, and the second is McDonald's. The top twenty:

  
1 U.S Federal Government   2,711,000
2 Wal-Mart Stores  1,500,000
3 McDonald's  420,000
4 Kroger  400,000
5 International Business Machines  377,757
6 The Home Depot  371,000
7 United Parcel Service  362,000
8 Target  347,000
9 Amazon.com 341,000
10  Berkshire Hathaway  316,000
11 Yum! Brands 303,405
12 Hewlett-Packard 302,000
13 FedEx 298,099
14 PepsiCo 271,000
15 Lowe's 270,000
16 Albertsons 265,000
17 Wells Fargo 264,500
18 AT&T 243,620
19 JPMorgan Chase 241,359
20 Citigroup 241,000

The US Government is probably the US Postal Service, the Armed Services, and federal Corrections above all else. Six retailers (including Amazon), two fast-food companies, a giant producer of junk foods (Pepsi), two delivery companies (although the federal government does have the Post Office),  three banks, the big player in telecommunications, two high-tech companies, a conglomerate involved in just about everything not high-tech (Berkshire Hathaway owns GEICO, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, and BNSF). No auto manufacturers. No oil companies. No mining firms. Surprisingly little agribusiness.

Quote:The DNC leaders and the DNC supporters (A strange alliance of Finance classes, 60s radical Liberal activists and their kids and Rural Southern Church Blacks) clearly don't value Biden as a president and clearly secretly see him as a obstacle to their plans. Sometime, probably in late 2022 or 2023 the DNC will betray Biden and try to Install Kamala as president, however Kamala's backers mentioned above would get into a world of hurt if they do so. Actual Moderates and Progressives only voted for Biden because they wanted an actual moderate (in the case of the moderates) or they disliked Trump (in the case of the progressives). They did NOT vote because they support the DNC goals or the DNC/SJW alliance. When Pelosi and Kamala try to 25th amendment Biden, you will see an alliance of everyone not aligned with the DNC form. It will essentially be all parties (Democrats, Republicans and independents) vs about 30% of the democrats.

I see Joe Biden as the sort who seeks to build coalitions or at least maintain what got him to the Presidency. "Radical liberal activists of the 1960's" are now largely a thing of the past as many of those are going into their eighties. They are dying off. Their kids may not be so radical, or if they are radical they have a very different style. "Model minorities" are key constituencies in the Democratic coalition because they legitimately distrust the racist, anti-intellectual, anti-minority-religion, and homophobic populism within the GOP. Well-educated people as a whole lean heavily D, and even among white people they are much more D than other whites.* I would be playing up Millennial-era activists on climate change, police reform, LGBT rights, and economic equity. I would be seeking to strengthen labor unions as one of the most reliable ways to improve life for more people; weakening of labor unions corresponds with the rise of the GOP from Reagan to the Tea Party.

The Republican Party is heavily associated with corporate farming. elites of ownership and management within America's largest corporations, real estate owners, and now racists and those who want America to be a Christian parody of Iran. Small business? It has been squeezing small business into oblivion.    

Quote:Classic is only incorrect in that he sees a purely GOP base movement leading the struggle against the DNC. Eric, Pbrower and B Butler Saying that democrats outnumber Trumps post-election diehards is only technically correct, and barely so. It is correct only based on the current alignments of november/december 2020 that exist as we currently speak. But the Great Realignment I speak of is relevant for 2022-2023, said realignment hasn't taken place yet. Moderates, Progressives, and Anti-Trump republicans have no reason to remain allied with Liberals if Trump leaves. The Only reason Kamala is part of the ticket is because the 60s radicals and church blacks threatened not to vote for their own nominee if she wasn't on the ticket.

Realignment? What realignment? 

The 2020 election, except for the defeat of Donald Trump, looks like a complete surprise to about everyone: a status-quo election. The Trump loss reflects the failure of Trump as President. Trump needed to gain support from his freakish 2016 win of the Presidency by winning the 'right' votes. Trump would have needed to win enough votes to offset generational change, to wit that voters over 55 are about 5% more R than D and that voters under 40 are about 20% more D than R, and that voters under 40 typically replace those over 55 who leave the electorate through death or debility. That's about 1.5% over four years if I assume a 1.5% turnover of voters every year for death and debility. Trump had to cut into the 20% lead of Democrats over Republicans under 40 or make gains among voters over 55 to offset the generational trend toward Democrats. Without that, Trump was going to lose at least Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (he lost all three) and probably would lose Florida. He did not lose Florida, but he lost Arizona, Georgia, and the Second Congressional District of Nebraska instead, which is one fewer electoral vote than Florida has. Republicans made gains in the House, and although Democrats on the net have made gains in the Senate they must win two Senate seats in Georgia in a run-off election. The Democrats' record in special elections in Georgia is historically awful. 

Perhaps most importantly, Donald Trump has successfully entrenched a reactionary ideology in the Supreme Court, one that believes that no human suffering is ever excessive in the support of the will of economic elites who are the measure of America. An upcoming decision of the Supreme Court may decide whether the federal government can regulate business activities without specific legislation, and Trump's three stooges (not to be confused with the entertaining Larry, Moe, and Curly on the Supreme Court have been first choices of a political cult that believes that "he who has the gold makes the rules". That is plutocracy and not democracy.  

Know well: America may be a formal democracy but in practice it is a plutocratic society with economic inequality characteristic of a still-feudal plantation society, some kingdom in which the royal family owns the oil that is the sole source of economic revenue, or some country under a military junta. The Right is basically a coalition of people of the heritage of the plantation and the ethos of Gilded-Age tycoons with the bigots and anti-intellectual types who resent anyone successful especially if smart, non-white, non-straight, or non-Christian.

Quote:If it comes to a national plebiscite on "do you want Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden" there will be an overwhelming vote of NO, with only a string of Rural cotton belt Counties voting YES. America would be reunited and realigned at that Moment with the NO vote. We will not allow boomers to Turn the entire Country into South Carolina DNC politics in order to preserve their corrupt grip on power. Think of it Trumpers, Berners, Moderates, Independents, Latinos, Northern and western Blacks, Asians, Indians and Arabs standing together to fight for the right to be REAL men and REAL women: To stop the globalist feminization of our children by Financial tycoons, Wrinkled Boomers and Wrinkled and Fat church ladies. It will be Glorious.

That vote is nearly four years away, and nothing says that will be the vote. Besides, I trust Joe Biden to have had good reason to choose Kamala Harris. It wasn't to win over a certain constituency or to solidify a state that Biden was going to have a tough time winning. She was an effective prosecutor, so she knows the law... which is something that I can't say about Trump.  As for corruption... I still miss Obama for a scandal-free Presidency. 

I don't understand what this "real men" and "real women" rhetoric is about. The financial tycoons are decidedly on the Right. Boomers are clearly on the fade as a share of the electorate, with retirement age passing through their generation by 2025. As machismo ordinarily serves extremist causes (which explains why the victorious Allies insisted that women get the vote in Italy and Japan, and that the British and Americans could impress much the same upon its ally France), it might be better that people be sissies instead of fascists and Commies.  

Quote:After the Defeat and political elimination of the DNC/Kamala Cult, Moderates, Conservatives, Progressives and Independents will have long and heated discussions over sensible policy options. With the Boomers and SJWs defeated, these discussions while heated will result in sensible compromise as all parties would be keenly aware of each others interests. The Synthesis of these discussions would be implemented as policy. The Military would be rebuilt, Industry would be rebuilt, Native and nationalized tech capacity would be rebuilt. We will move against Iran (depending on what their countries leaders do then it will either be Peace or War) without having our hands tied by Boomers and NGOs. Will will Contain China, while building our Nuke Arsenal to 100,000 warheads.

In a two-party, first-past-the-post system, electoral politics is basically coalition politics. Trump developed a coalition able to launch him into the Presidency if all went right -- barely -- but that was a fluke. He needed a larger coalition just to offset generational change. The rest? You basically rehash Trump promises that he could not win the first time, promises that rung hollow to just over 51% of the electorate and that won only 232 electoral votes It takes 269 electoral votes and an arcane process in the House, or 270 to win the President. Biden won 306. 

Donald Trump isn't good at synthesizing ideas from diverse sources, especially those not with him the first time.

Do I see compromise possible? Yes. It is possible to stand for strict law enforcement that targets criminals (and most of the crime comes from either gangs or from one-man crime waves) while having cops act more responsibly among black people. Black Lives Matter does not mean any carte-blanche for criminals. I want criminals put away so that people who must live in America's slums at least have the safety that comes from effective, but fair law and order. Don't get me wrong on this: law and order is the most basic of civil rights, and without law and order all the enumerated rights that we have by law are mere cant. 

I see technological change that puts us in a new and often scary era, one in which easy money by meeting scarcity is no longer so easy. Figure that much of what we have is going into storage, which usually indicates that one has more than one needs.  Ask yourself this: do you really need two refrigerators? Two stoves? A third car for the two-income, no kids family? Does clutter make you feel better or does it stress you out? We have a problem, one that we will not solve by simply making more stuff that we really do not need.
  

*People better-educated than the average used to be strongly R in their vote. Ike typically got about 80% of voters with college degrees, although this may reflect that a college degree was an elite characteristic heavily associated with Northeastern WASPS. The GI Bill started getting non-WASPs into college, but there were few non-WASPs older than about 40 with college degrees. In Ike's time, even graduating from high school was above-average education, and such made one have more of a stake in the system than otherwise. Factory workers and miners typically had less than high-school diplomas, and they were highly unionized and unlikely to vote R. As late as 1964, a majority  of college grads voted for Barry Goldwater. 

This said, I cannot say that the typical college grad of 2008 and 2012 was any dumber than the typical college grad of 1952 and 1956. Many of the WASPs who had college degrees could fake their way through college, which is harder with the greater rigor of college education now. Obama won the college-educated in 2008 and 2012, and I am tempted to say that Obama was more similar in temperament to Eisenhower than to any other President. He has to be more similar to someone, and 

(1) both are Reactive types
(2) both refuse to use the power of the Presidency to punish those who dissent with them
(3) neither is a populist
(4) they both respect legal precedent and diplomatic protocol even when such are inconvenient
(5) neither was effective in building a congress to fit their agendas
(6) both had bland, scandal-free administrations
(7) they will both be known for one big change in American life (Interstate Highways, Obamacare)
(8) even their electoral maps largely overlap. Obama got 332 electoral votes in 2012, and except for Hawaii and the District of Columbia, Obama won nothing that Ike didn't win twice. Another telling sign: both won Virginia, a state that had generally been reliable for the other Party and would be generally reliable for the Party who won the Presidency in 1952 and 2008 (or at least, so it looks for Obama) for a long time.