11-14-2020, 04:25 PM
(11-14-2020, 04:07 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: The Republicans got a surge of votes in the election, but it was not enough to re-elect Trump because just enough people in swing states realized who and what Trump is, something that even some Republican and a lot of independent voters could not quite stomach as being president another 4 years.
The Biden electoral vote will be 306 to Trump's 232, which exactly reverses Trump's triumph over Hillary R. Clinton in 2016.
Ohio and Iowa should be considered red states now for the foreseeable future. Unlike what Obama says, I don't think we should campaign for red states anymore. These people are hopeless. We just have to defeat them until they die off.
The big divide is typically between "urban" and "rural", with the usual in-between of "suburban" becoming increasingly "urban" in character. Urban growth in those two states has largely stalled (Iowa) or has been cannibalization of other urban areas within the state (Columbus drawing people from other cities and suburbs in Ohio). Urban growth just isn't happening on net in Iowa or Ohio.
Quote:Florida also seems hopeless, at least for a while. The Cuban young people are falling in line with the deception that rules their elders. Older people tend to vote for the old ways. Even felons with restored rights, the Parkland kids, migrations from Puerto Rico and Haiti, the rising seas, floods and storms due to climate change, and concerns over covid, social security and health care, could not move these dufus Florida beasts to do the right thing. Shame, shame on them! They will probably sink and drown in the blue sea before they ever turn blue enough to stop the tide. They have it coming to them.
Trump played upon hatred of 'socialism' in Cuba and Venezuela with the message that to defend against the mess that is in either country one must stand with the most blatant exponent of crony capitalism... and Trump is the definitive crony capitalist. Never mind that pathological capitalism makes a Fidel Castro or a Hugo Chavez attractive as a solution.
Republicans might not be able to play that theme so successfully in Florida in 2024 if the Biden administration simply 'fails' to be as bad as Trump said he would be. It was a shaky appeal in 2012 against Obama.
We need to recognize that Trump did better than we could have expected because he pushed a "You'll be sorry if you vote me out". If people are not sorry about voting for Biden, or regret voting for Trump despite having had the inclination to vote otherwise, then 2024 could be a very bleak year for Republicans.
Quote:The other 7 states probably remain in swing territory, but Texas too should probably be given up on for a while. Hispanics there too are going over to the dark side. It may turn blue someday, but I don't hold out much hope for this anytime soon. Contrary to what brower said, Texas only moved 3 points left in 2020 from 2016, from 9 points to 6 points. That's a slow turn indeed. So maybe there will be a 50-50 chance in 2028 if trends continue. Georgia and Arizona made bigger blue gains.
I wouldn't. Texas is becoming more like the USA as a whole in its politics. 40 or so electoral votes could be compensation for D weaknesses elsewhere. Texas is not in any one region and in fact straddles regions. Things must go well for Texas to swing D, but I see it closer than either Iowa or Ohio (see above).
Quote:Arizona was a lot closer than the polls indicated. So it remains a swing state, but the trend there and in Nevada remains blue. The West seems better able to rise above the fog and go with the future. I think these two states will continue to trend more blue.
Arizona could still be a one-time fluke for Democrats. To be sure, the demographic trend moving all states in the southwestern tier of the United States from R to D except Utah is in this order: California (from 1992), Colorado and New Mexico (2008), Arizona (2020) and perhaps Texas (2024?) depends heavily on the rapid growth of the Hispanic part of the electorate or on liberals moving in from elsewhere. Utah? That would depend upon heavy growth of a Hispanic electorate (not until 2050), liberals moving in (not happening), or Mormons going D (which would be a reversal of Eisenhower winning Mormons to the Republican Party about 70 years ago.
Quote:The blue wall was restored. If the Democrats choose their candidate wisely, and avoid Kamala Harris, then they may keep it from being dismantled again in the future. Pennsylvania is divided between urban and rural. But Philadelphia is no longer a declining city, so hope remains for PA to remain blue. Wisconsin remains a razor thin swing state, and Michigan will stay blue if a good Democratic candidate is nominated. But the working class in these states needs to remember who is on their side, and not get deceived by phony appeals like the ones Trump made.
The "blue wall" is now a shaky part of any D win of the Presidency. Democrats last won the Presidency without Michigan in 1976, when Jimmy Carter won every former Confederate state except Virginia. Iowa and Ohio used to be necessary parts of D victories in the electoral college; that is over. Michigan going for Trump in 2016 looks like a one-time fluke. Democrats still need Pennsylvania and Wisconsin or things get incredibly iffy; they might need Texas or Florida to offset Pennsylvania and Wisconsin together.
Quote:North Carolina has been slowly moving to the blue side, but I don't know if it will. I keep hoping and being disappointed. The polls said it would be 2% blue, but it was 1% red. But Georgia's urban areas are growing fast with lots of former northerners moving to them. I think there's a good chance it will stay blue now, if the Democrats nominate a good candidate.
Trump surprised us in a lot of states, making a late charge in the polls. He made the nastiest appeal possible short of smearing Democrats as friends of Castro and Maduro (which would not have worked outside of Florida) basically he said what an abusive spouse says to his victim:
"You'll be sorry if you leave me!"
You may hate the abuse, but you are really helpless. You need a pure plutocracy to create the wealth that allows you to hold or get a job. The tax cuts that go to shareholders, executives, and landlords may not go to you, but they make investment possible. Harsh management makes things tick. That is the dare, and some times it works. With enough people it can cause people to vote for a politician that one loathes. That explains why Donald Trump did better than my favorite predictor, 100-disapproval, suggests. It worked well for Obama, which is why I used it for Trump.
Donald Trump is an abusive person, someone who would have gotten a long prison term except for being filthy rich. America will be much better with him off the scene.
Quote:The Democrats, if the millennials vote, have a chance to turn senate seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and North Carolina blue in 2022. The idea that red states would vote for a blue senator turned out to be way wrong. I would give up on that project for the foreseeable future. So it depends on whether the millennials have become true civics and will vote, and whether they vote Democratic in these 3 swing states in 2022. If the Democrats ever win the Senate, they will have to take down the filibuster because the Republicans remain a stone wall. Otherwise, the government and politics are no longer viable instruments to solve problems, and we have to rely on blue states and on the market to bring change. Democratic presidents may be able to decree some things if they can get past the Trump/Bush Court. Negotiating with cretin dinosaurs like McConnell may prove a fool's errand. If the Democrats can remove the filibuster, then they could cement their victory by seating 2 Democratic senators from DC and two from PR, and maybe two more from Guam/Pacific Islands.
Marco Rubio is almost as much an empty suit as Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). He will need to exploit the Commie-baiting rhetoric of Trump to save him, and that might be neither available or relevant in 2022. This said, midterm elections usually go badly for the Party in the White House. I see no reason to believe otherwise. Plutocrats flush with cash will fund any empty suit pol who believes as they do that no human suffering can ever be in excess in the name of elite power, indulgence, and gain. That is how the Tea Party came into existence, and that will rely heavily upon Trump supporters staying in the electorate in large numbers while Trump-despisers retreat from the electorate.
On the other hand, Millennial participation in the electorate is likely to increase as other generations shrink in the electorate. Millennial pols did not make much headway in 2020, but figure that the oldest of them will be 41 just as the Silent and early-wave Boomers either retire or go into that good night. (This applies to an 89-year-old Chuck Grassley, R-IA).
Quote:I think separation is a good idea between red and blue, but if it ever happens, it may take the use of force by blue state governments to keep their own red areas within their jurisdiction. Otherwise, blues are urban islands with no agriculture to support them. Well, maybe they can still import everything they need. To me though, the contiguous red states have proven in this election that they are hopeless boobs from which nothing can ever be expected. They voted overwhelmingly for a conman narcissist incompetent tyrant, just to uphold their wrong values of guns, anti-abortion, self-reliance and xenophobia. I hope I am wrong, and that they wake up. I pray that they do. But I myself would focus my energy and donations on the 6 swing states from now on.
Sorry, Eric: this would set up a situation in which large minorities, especially of Southern blacks, would be at the mercy of racist white people who would be delighted to either re-establish Jim Crow practice or Apartheid. The best defense of the federal system is that it protects the rights of vulnerable minorities against the worst tendencies in human nature. We all know what life was like in Kukluxistan, and that could be how things go again in some states.
Quote:The national popular vote, which will remain irrelevant for the foreseeable future, is now up to Biden +3.5%, gradually moving toward a 6 million vote margin. New York still refuses to count its remaining ballots, and CA counting is glacial. So his lead may end up bigger. I remember that the polls never had Biden up much higher than 50-51%. Trump's support was usually put at about 43%. But that always left a large undecided vote of about 4-5%, which remained until election day, and so most late deciders evidently went to Trump, or they were too ashamed to say that they were going to vote for him, but were wavering or didn't want to admit it.
Trump is a one-off demagogue. There have been people similar to him in dishonesty, recklessness, and cruelty in America (I think of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, infamous for Red-baiting of imaginary Communists). Joe McCarthy was never going to be President of the United States. He lacked the funding behind him, and had he lived to challenge John F. Kennedy by winning the Republican nomination... Kennedy had the more ebullient personality and a more coherent domestic policy. Southern racist Democrats of the Old South had no appeal outside the South.
Democrats will be vindicated, and Trump won't, when the vaccine for COVID-19 comes out and the economy strengthens. People with COVID-19 die in silence and often without any ceremony... the death toll resembles that of a bad war, and people have yet to feel the impact. There are no Gold Stars or Purple Hearts in this bungled, costly stalemate of a war. Yes, it is a war. There will be no armistice or truce, and there will be no victory parades.
Things could go badly for the Republican Party in Florida should Cuba or Venezuela abandon socialism and anti-American rhetoric.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.