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(11-09-2020, 01:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-05-2020, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I suspect that President Trump and the GOP made some highly successful ads late in the campaign, including some that blindsided Democrats. He made ads denouncing Joe Biden as a supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and those ensured that he would win Florida. The GOP made a simple ad that ran something like this:
Quote:The election? Let's look at the Democrats.
Taking away our tax cuts? That will cost us money that we can't afford to be without.
Violence in the streets? Trump says he will back our police.
Trump tax cuts for the rich? My husband is looking for a job, and we can't afford that.
That 's easy. I'm voting Republican.
Donald Trump is a master of the visceral appeal, something powerful if intellectually sleazy in the extreme. It works. The idea is that no matter how you despise him, you need him to protect yourself.
When it seemed that Trump was winning I contemplated suicide.
You still may end up killing yourself with Biden/Harris in office. The Democrats have been given they're last chance to prove themselves and if/when they fail America, it's all over for the Democrats. America will let go of the Democratic and watch as Rome burns so to speak.
Well, I didn't go buy any vodka or lie to the physician so that I could get a prescription for Valium. Sorry to disappoint you!
Every Presidential administration is an opportunity to turn its propositions into policy... Congress willing and reality going along or proving such wrong. Trump failed, as the electoral results show. Biden got almost as large a share of the popular vote in an election against an incumbent as did Reagan against Carter. Note well that Biden used Reagan-like appeals in his campaign ads.
Any Presidency can be a disaster for the Party that wins a poisoned chalice. Nothing says that the economy won't tank or that some aggressive power won't go on the march. Trump was a disaster. He effectively appeased an invader even after it has killed over 240,000 people in America. We take our chances on any President that we elect not being up to the job.
We are accustomed to Presidents getting elected and winning a second term by promising much the same successes. Trump has had to run from his failures. He sought credit for the medical research that can get us an effective vaccine for the SARS-2 virus. Sorry, Classic X'er: that credit goes to medical researchers, the businesses that fund such research, and the volunteers who take the risks of a lethal disease (even if they are most likely incarcerated prisoners with little hope of leaving prison except in a casket or urn). Nixon got re-elected; Carter fell short after an unlucky term. Reagan got re-elected. The elder Bush got defeated, but he was basically four more years of the Reagan agenda and people got tired of that. Bill Clinton, Dubya, and Obama got re-elected.
Trump has failed. We gave him a chance, and he wasted it.
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.
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Trump did win... in general, where the economic distress is.
Quote:Even with a new president and political party soon in charge of the White House, the nation’s economic standoff continues. Notwithstanding President-elect Joe Biden’s solid popular vote victory, last week’s election failed to deliver the kind of transformative reorientation of the nation’s political-economic map that Democrats (and some Republicans) had hoped for. The data confirms that the election sharpened the striking geographic divide between red and blue America, instead of dispelling it.
Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.
A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 477 counties encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 110 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)
Table 1. Candidates’ counties won and share of GDP in 2016 and 2020
2016
Candidate Counties won Total votes Aggregate share of US GDP
Hillary Clinton 472 65,853,625 64%
Donald Trump 2,584 62,985,106 36%
2020
Joe Biden 477 75,602,458 70%
Donald Trump 2,497 71,216,709 29%
Note: 2020 figures reflect unofficial results from 96% of counties (Counties remaining are in generally low-productivity communities)
Source: Brookings analysis of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, The New York Times, and Moody’s Analytics
The graphic:
![[Image: 20201109_BrookingsMetro_TwoEconomies-Chart1-final.png]](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201109_BrookingsMetro_TwoEconomies-Chart1-final.png)
The most productive counties in America that went for Trump were Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York and Collin in Texas (prosperous suburbs). Oklahoma County in Oklahoma (it looks prosperous enough) and Kern County in California. Top counties by productivity are Los Angeles, New York (basically, Manhattan) Cook IL (greater Chicago) Harris TX (Houston), and Santa Clara CA (Silicon Valley). -- my comment.
.........
Quote:So, while the election’s winner may have changed, the nation’s economic geography remains rigidly divided. Biden captured virtually all of the counties with the biggest economies in the country (depicted by the largest blue tiles in the nearby graphic), including flipping the few that Clinton did not win in 2016.
By contrast, Trump won thousands of counties in small-town and rural communities with correspondingly tiny economies (depicted by the red tiles). Biden’s counties tended to be far more diverse, educated, and white-collar professional, with their aggregate nonwhite and college-educated shares of the economy running to 35% and 36%, respectively, compared to 15% and 25% in counties that voted for Trump.
In short, 2020’s map continues to reflect a striking split between the large, dense, metropolitan counties that voted Democratic and the mostly exurban, small-town, or rural counties that voted Republican. Blue and red America reflect two very different economies: one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations, and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries.
With that said, it would be wrong to describe this as a completely static map. While the metropolitan/ nonmetropolitan dichotomy remained starkly persistent, 2020 election returns produced nontrivial movement, as Biden added modestly to the Democrats’ metropolitan base and significantly to its vote base. Most notably, Biden flipped seven of the nation’s 100 highest-output counties, strengthening the link between these core economic hubs and the Democratic Party. More specifically, Biden flipped half of the 10 most economically significant counties Trump won in 2016, including Phoenix’s Maricopa County; Dallas-Fort Worth’s Tarrant County; Jacksonville, Fla.’s Duval County; Morris County in New Jersey; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.’s Pinellas County.
Altogether, those losses shaved about 3 percentage points’ worth of GDP off the economic base of Trump counties. That reduced the share of the nation’s GDP produced by Republican-voting counties to a new low in recent times.
Why does this matter? This economic rift that persists in dividing the nation is a problem because it underscores the near-certainty of both continued clashes between the political parties and continued alienation and misunderstandings.
To start with, the 2020’s sharpened economic divide forecasts gridlock in Congress and between the White House and Senate on the most important issues of economic policy. The problem—as we have witnessed over the past decade and are likely to continue seeing—is not only that Democrats and Republicans disagree on issues of culture, identity, and power, but that they represent radically different swaths of the economy. Democrats represent voters who overwhelmingly reside in the nation’s diverse economic centers, and thus tend to prioritize housing affordability, an improved social safety net, transportation infrastructure, and racial justice. Jobs in blue America also disproportionately rely on national R&D investment, technology leadership, and services exports.
By contrast, Republicans represent an economic base situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas. Prosperity there remains out of reach for many, and the party sees no reason to consider the priorities and needs of the nation’s metropolitan centers. That is not a scenario for economic consensus or achievement.
At the same time, the results from last week’s election likely underscore fundamental problems of economic alienation and estrangement. Specifically, Trump’s anti-establishment appeal suggests that a sizable portion of the country continues to feel little connection to the nation’s core economic enterprises, and chose to channel that animosity into a candidate who promised not to build up all parts of the country, but rather to vilify groups who didn’t resemble his base.
If this pattern continues—with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority—it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places. In light of the desperate need for a broad, historic recovery from the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuation of the patterns we’ve seen play out over the past decade would be a particularly unsustainable situation for Americans in communities of all sizes.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/
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.
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11-10-2020, 01:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2020, 01:22 PM by Classic-Xer.)
(11-10-2020, 11:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-09-2020, 01:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-05-2020, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I suspect that President Trump and the GOP made some highly successful ads late in the campaign, including some that blindsided Democrats. He made ads denouncing Joe Biden as a supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and those ensured that he would win Florida. The GOP made a simple ad that ran something like this:
Quote:The election? Let's look at the Democrats.
Taking away our tax cuts? That will cost us money that we can't afford to be without.
Violence in the streets? Trump says he will back our police.
Trump tax cuts for the rich? My husband is looking for a job, and we can't afford that.
That 's easy. I'm voting Republican.
Donald Trump is a master of the visceral appeal, something powerful if intellectually sleazy in the extreme. It works. The idea is that no matter how you despise him, you need him to protect yourself.
When it seemed that Trump was winning I contemplated suicide.
You still may end up killing yourself with Biden/Harris in office. The Democrats have been given they're last chance to prove themselves and if/when they fail America, it's all over for the Democrats. America will let go of the Democratic and watch as Rome burns so to speak.
Well, I didn't go buy any vodka or lie to the physician so that I could get a prescription for Valium. Sorry to disappoint you!
Every Presidential administration is an opportunity to turn its propositions into policy... Congress willing and reality going along or proving such wrong. Trump failed, as the electoral results show. Biden got almost as large a share of the popular vote in an election against an incumbent as did Reagan against Carter. Note well that Biden used Reagan-like appeals in his campaign ads.
Any Presidency can be a disaster for the Party that wins a poisoned chalice. Nothing says that the economy won't tank or that some aggressive power won't go on the march. Trump was a disaster. He effectively appeased an invader even after it has killed over 240,000 people in America. We take our chances on any President that we elect not being up to the job.
We are accustomed to Presidents getting elected and winning a second term by promising much the same successes. Trump has had to run from his failures. He sought credit for the medical research that can get us an effective vaccine for the SARS-2 virus. Sorry, Classic X'er: that credit goes to medical researchers, the businesses that fund such research, and the volunteers who take the risks of a lethal disease (even if they are most likely incarcerated prisoners with little hope of leaving prison except in a casket or urn). Nixon got re-elected; Carter fell short after an unlucky term. Reagan got re-elected. The elder Bush got defeated, but he was basically four more years of the Reagan agenda and people got tired of that. Bill Clinton, Dubya, and Obama got re-elected.
Trump has failed. We gave him a chance, and he wasted it.
Yep. Trump has failed as you say and you elected a COMPLETE FAILURE to replace him. Like I said, I have more important to focus on than Biden's Presidency and your needs and I'll be content as Bumbling Biden flounders for a couple of years and a minority woman gets a cheap stint in the White House as President. I'd say that you and every other dip shit Democrat did China a big favor by placing your petty qualms above everything else. Do you know what you do with a half of a country that ain't worth a shit that has no sense of reason or importance? You separate from it and leave it to its own devices and find a way move on without them. Now, I don't really care if a real group of REAL Fascists take over the Democratic party and round you all up and exterminate you as a means to control costs and keep themselves and their tycoons in power. So, what are you going to say about Biden in 6-8 months when Biden is in office and the death toll is still raising or two years when the death toll is still rising. Like I said, Biden's not God and COVID is pretty much here to stay.
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(11-10-2020, 01:12 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 11:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-09-2020, 01:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-05-2020, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I suspect that President Trump and the GOP made some highly successful ads late in the campaign, including some that blindsided Democrats. He made ads denouncing Joe Biden as a supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and those ensured that he would win Florida. The GOP made a simple ad that ran something like this:
Quote:The election? Let's look at the Democrats.
Taking away our tax cuts? That will cost us money that we can't afford to be without.
Violence in the streets? Trump says he will back our police.
Trump tax cuts for the rich? My husband is looking for a job, and we can't afford that.
That 's easy. I'm voting Republican.
Donald Trump is a master of the visceral appeal, something powerful if intellectually sleazy in the extreme. It works. The idea is that no matter how you despise him, you need him to protect yourself.
When it seemed that Trump was winning I contemplated suicide.
You still may end up killing yourself with Biden/Harris in office. The Democrats have been given they're last chance to prove themselves and if/when they fail America, it's all over for the Democrats. America will let go of the Democratic and watch as Rome burns so to speak.
Well, I didn't go buy any vodka or lie to the physician so that I could get a prescription for Valium. Sorry to disappoint you!
Every Presidential administration is an opportunity to turn its propositions into policy... Congress willing and reality going along or proving such wrong. Trump failed, as the electoral results show. Biden got almost as large a share of the popular vote in an election against an incumbent as did Reagan against Carter. Note well that Biden used Reagan-like appeals in his campaign ads.
Any Presidency can be a disaster for the Party that wins a poisoned chalice. Nothing says that the economy won't tank or that some aggressive power won't go on the march. Trump was a disaster. He effectively appeased an invader even after it has killed over 240,000 people in America. We take our chances on any President that we elect not being up to the job.
We are accustomed to Presidents getting elected and winning a second term by promising much the same successes. Trump has had to run from his failures. He sought credit for the medical research that can get us an effective vaccine for the SARS-2 virus. Sorry, Classic X'er: that credit goes to medical researchers, the businesses that fund such research, and the volunteers who take the risks of a lethal disease (even if they are most likely incarcerated prisoners with little hope of leaving prison except in a casket or urn). Nixon got re-elected; Carter fell short after an unlucky term. Reagan got re-elected. The elder Bush got defeated, but he was basically four more years of the Reagan agenda and people got tired of that. Bill Clinton, Dubya, and Obama got re-elected.
Trump has failed. We gave him a chance, and he wasted it.
Yep. Trump has failed as you say and you elected a COMPLETE FAILURE to replace him. Like I said, I have more important to focus on than Biden's Presidency and your needs and I'll be content as Bumbling Biden flounders for a couple of years and a minority woman gets a cheap stint in the White House as President.
We shall see.
Quote:I'd say that you and every other dip shit Democrat did China a big favor by placing your petty qualms above everything else. Do you know what you do with a half of a country that ain't worth a shit that has no sense of reason or importance?
We cast off an erratic, corrupt, cruel, incompetent, irresponsible, vindictive non-leader. Had your side nominated someone more astute and scrupulous we would be talking about a second term of a duly-elected President who had done enough things right to get elected.
I'll take a mature 78-year-old President who is very much Establishment over one who has no obvious bonds to any other person. If you want to say that Senator Kamala Harris is a token, then go ahead. Just say it.
Quote:You separate from it and leave it to its own devices and find a way move on without them. Now, I don't really care if a real group of REAL Fascists take over the Democratic party and round you all up and exterminate you as a means to control costs and keep themselves and their tycoons in power.
Real fascists? Kluxers, neo-Nazis, or Christian versions of Ba'athists or ISIS? That sounds more like your side.
Quote:So, what are you going to say about Biden in 6-8 months when Biden is in office and the death toll is still raising or two years when the death toll is still rising. Like I said, Biden's not God and COVID is pretty much here to stay.
I predict that President Joe Biden will impose a rigid lockdown soon after inauguration, one long enough to put COVID-19 into a death spiral. There will be a rigid enforcement of mask rules.
One story had it that the US Postal Service would issue a mask to everyone with some advertising in the container... one that encourages people to communicate by mail. Yes, write some letters with pen and ink, letters that will contain your distinctive handwriting.
We need to buy some time so that people are alive to receive a safe and effective vaccination. Then and only then will one of the most dangerous diseases ever known go extinct.
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.
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(11-10-2020, 03:14 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-10-2020, 01:12 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 11:12 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-09-2020, 01:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-05-2020, 03:22 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I suspect that President Trump and the GOP made some highly successful ads late in the campaign, including some that blindsided Democrats. He made ads denouncing Joe Biden as a supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, and those ensured that he would win Florida. The GOP made a simple ad that ran something like this:
Donald Trump is a master of the visceral appeal, something powerful if intellectually sleazy in the extreme. It works. The idea is that no matter how you despise him, you need him to protect yourself.
When it seemed that Trump was winning I contemplated suicide.
You still may end up killing yourself with Biden/Harris in office. The Democrats have been given they're last chance to prove themselves and if/when they fail America, it's all over for the Democrats. America will let go of the Democratic and watch as Rome burns so to speak.
Well, I didn't go buy any vodka or lie to the physician so that I could get a prescription for Valium. Sorry to disappoint you!
Every Presidential administration is an opportunity to turn its propositions into policy... Congress willing and reality going along or proving such wrong. Trump failed, as the electoral results show. Biden got almost as large a share of the popular vote in an election against an incumbent as did Reagan against Carter. Note well that Biden used Reagan-like appeals in his campaign ads.
Any Presidency can be a disaster for the Party that wins a poisoned chalice. Nothing says that the economy won't tank or that some aggressive power won't go on the march. Trump was a disaster. He effectively appeased an invader even after it has killed over 240,000 people in America. We take our chances on any President that we elect not being up to the job.
We are accustomed to Presidents getting elected and winning a second term by promising much the same successes. Trump has had to run from his failures. He sought credit for the medical research that can get us an effective vaccine for the SARS-2 virus. Sorry, Classic X'er: that credit goes to medical researchers, the businesses that fund such research, and the volunteers who take the risks of a lethal disease (even if they are most likely incarcerated prisoners with little hope of leaving prison except in a casket or urn). Nixon got re-elected; Carter fell short after an unlucky term. Reagan got re-elected. The elder Bush got defeated, but he was basically four more years of the Reagan agenda and people got tired of that. Bill Clinton, Dubya, and Obama got re-elected.
Trump has failed. We gave him a chance, and he wasted it.
Yep. Trump has failed as you say and you elected a COMPLETE FAILURE to replace him. Like I said, I have more important to focus on than Biden's Presidency and your needs and I'll be content as Bumbling Biden flounders for a couple of years and a minority woman gets a cheap stint in the White House as President.
We shall see.
Quote:I'd say that you and every other dip shit Democrat did China a big favor by placing your petty qualms above everything else. Do you know what you do with a half of a country that ain't worth a shit that has no sense of reason or importance?
We cast off an erratic, corrupt, cruel, incompetent, irresponsible, vindictive non-leader. Had your side nominated someone more astute and scrupulous we would be talking about a second term of a duly-elected President who had done enough things right to get elected.
I'll take a mature 78-year-old President who is very much Establishment over one who has no obvious bonds to any other person. If you want to say that Senator Kamala Harris is a token, then go ahead. Just say it.
Quote:You separate from it and leave it to its own devices and find a way move on without them. Now, I don't really care if a real group of REAL Fascists take over the Democratic party and round you all up and exterminate you as a means to control costs and keep themselves and their tycoons in power.
Real fascists? Kluxers, neo-Nazis, or Christian versions of Ba'athists or ISIS? That sounds more like your side.
Quote:So, what are you going to say about Biden in 6-8 months when Biden is in office and the death toll is still raising or two years when the death toll is still rising. Like I said, Biden's not God and COVID is pretty much here to stay.
I predict that President Joe Biden will impose a rigid lockdown soon after inauguration, one long enough to put COVID-19 into a death spiral. There will be a rigid enforcement of mask rules.
One story had it that the US Postal Service would issue a mask to everyone with some advertising in the container... one that encourages people to communicate by mail. Yes, write some letters with pen and ink, letters that will contain your distinctive handwriting.
We need to buy some time so that people are alive to receive a safe and effective vaccination. Then and only then will one of the most dangerous diseases ever known go extinct.
He probably should since that's what he promised to do and has been promising to do all along and whatever happens from there on will be his problem to solve with Trump playing the role of arm chair quarterback and criticizing him the entire time. You reap what you sow mutually applies to Biden at this point.
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All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not.
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.
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(11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
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(11-10-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
Ford was an untended continuation of Nixon because (1) Spiro T. Agnew proved himself a crook, and (2) Nixon resigned.
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.
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(11-10-2020, 12:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Trump did win... in general, where the economic distress is.
Quote:Even with a new president and political party soon in charge of the White House, the nation’s economic standoff continues. Notwithstanding President-elect Joe Biden’s solid popular vote victory, last week’s election failed to deliver the kind of transformative reorientation of the nation’s political-economic map that Democrats (and some Republicans) had hoped for. The data confirms that the election sharpened the striking geographic divide between red and blue America, instead of dispelling it.
Most notably, the stark economic rift that Brookings Metro documented after Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 victory has grown even wider. In 2016, we wrote that the 2,584 counties that Trump won generated just 36% of the country’s economic output, whereas the 472 counties Hillary Clinton carried equated to almost two-thirds of the nation’s aggregate economy.
A similar analysis for last week’s election shows these trends continuing, albeit with a different political outcome. This time, Biden’s winning base in 477 counties encompasses fully 70% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,497 counties represents just 29% of the economy. (Votes are still outstanding in 110 mostly low-output counties, and this piece will be updated as new data is reported.)
Table 1. Candidates’ counties won and share of GDP in 2016 and 2020
2016
Candidate Counties won Total votes Aggregate share of US GDP
Hillary Clinton 472 65,853,625 64%
Donald Trump 2,584 62,985,106 36%
2020
Joe Biden 477 75,602,458 70%
Donald Trump 2,497 71,216,709 29%
Note: 2020 figures reflect unofficial results from 96% of counties (Counties remaining are in generally low-productivity communities)
Source: Brookings analysis of data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, The New York Times, and Moody’s Analytics
The graphic:
The most productive counties in America that went for Trump were Suffolk and Nassau counties in New York and Collin in Texas (prosperous suburbs). Oklahoma County in Oklahoma (it looks prosperous enough) and Kern County in California. Top counties by productivity are Los Angeles, New York (basically, Manhattan) Cook IL (greater Chicago) Harris TX (Houston), and Santa Clara CA (Silicon Valley). -- my comment.
.........
Quote:So, while the election’s winner may have changed, the nation’s economic geography remains rigidly divided. Biden captured virtually all of the counties with the biggest economies in the country (depicted by the largest blue tiles in the nearby graphic), including flipping the few that Clinton did not win in 2016.
By contrast, Trump won thousands of counties in small-town and rural communities with correspondingly tiny economies (depicted by the red tiles). Biden’s counties tended to be far more diverse, educated, and white-collar professional, with their aggregate nonwhite and college-educated shares of the economy running to 35% and 36%, respectively, compared to 15% and 25% in counties that voted for Trump.
In short, 2020’s map continues to reflect a striking split between the large, dense, metropolitan counties that voted Democratic and the mostly exurban, small-town, or rural counties that voted Republican. Blue and red America reflect two very different economies: one oriented to diverse, often college-educated workers in professional and digital services occupations, and the other whiter, less-educated, and more dependent on “traditional” industries.
With that said, it would be wrong to describe this as a completely static map. While the metropolitan/ nonmetropolitan dichotomy remained starkly persistent, 2020 election returns produced nontrivial movement, as Biden added modestly to the Democrats’ metropolitan base and significantly to its vote base. Most notably, Biden flipped seven of the nation’s 100 highest-output counties, strengthening the link between these core economic hubs and the Democratic Party. More specifically, Biden flipped half of the 10 most economically significant counties Trump won in 2016, including Phoenix’s Maricopa County; Dallas-Fort Worth’s Tarrant County; Jacksonville, Fla.’s Duval County; Morris County in New Jersey; and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla.’s Pinellas County.
Altogether, those losses shaved about 3 percentage points’ worth of GDP off the economic base of Trump counties. That reduced the share of the nation’s GDP produced by Republican-voting counties to a new low in recent times.
Why does this matter? This economic rift that persists in dividing the nation is a problem because it underscores the near-certainty of both continued clashes between the political parties and continued alienation and misunderstandings.
To start with, the 2020’s sharpened economic divide forecasts gridlock in Congress and between the White House and Senate on the most important issues of economic policy. The problem—as we have witnessed over the past decade and are likely to continue seeing—is not only that Democrats and Republicans disagree on issues of culture, identity, and power, but that they represent radically different swaths of the economy. Democrats represent voters who overwhelmingly reside in the nation’s diverse economic centers, and thus tend to prioritize housing affordability, an improved social safety net, transportation infrastructure, and racial justice. Jobs in blue America also disproportionately rely on national R&D investment, technology leadership, and services exports.
By contrast, Republicans represent an economic base situated in the nation’s struggling small towns and rural areas. Prosperity there remains out of reach for many, and the party sees no reason to consider the priorities and needs of the nation’s metropolitan centers. That is not a scenario for economic consensus or achievement.
At the same time, the results from last week’s election likely underscore fundamental problems of economic alienation and estrangement. Specifically, Trump’s anti-establishment appeal suggests that a sizable portion of the country continues to feel little connection to the nation’s core economic enterprises, and chose to channel that animosity into a candidate who promised not to build up all parts of the country, but rather to vilify groups who didn’t resemble his base.
If this pattern continues—with one party aiming to confront the challenges at top of mind for a majority of Americans, and the other continuing to stoke the hostility and indignation held by a significant minority—it will be a recipe not only for more gridlock and ineffective governance, but also for economic harm to nearly all people and places. In light of the desperate need for a broad, historic recovery from the economic damage of the COVID-19 pandemic, a continuation of the patterns we’ve seen play out over the past decade would be a particularly unsustainable situation for Americans in communities of all sizes.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/11/09/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/
I'm glad that you found some proof that supports my view of the position that you and Biden are actually in right now.
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(11-11-2020, 12:11 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm glad that you found some proof that supports my view of the position that you and Biden are actually in right now.
Simply stated, the problem we and Biden face right now is, you guys and your ignorance.
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(11-10-2020, 10:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
Ford was an untended continuation of Nixon because (1) Spiro T. Agnew proved himself a crook, and (2) Nixon resigned.
Biden pretty ran as a continuation of the Obama Administration. Other than COVID, there's nothing new that distinguishes him from the Obama Administration. So, we are pretty much in for a repeat of the Obama years which America is going to get tired of pretty quick and cut short. Like I said, I don't see Biden making it through full term. As far I'm concerned, the Democrats pulled off a classic bait and switch that should please a bunch of giddy Liberal women who view a woman as President as being more important than anything else these days.
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(11-11-2020, 01:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
Ford was an untended continuation of Nixon because (1) Spiro T. Agnew proved himself a crook, and (2) Nixon resigned.
Biden pretty ran as a continuation of the Obama Administration. Other than COVID, there's nothing new that distinguishes him from the Obama Administration. So, we are pretty much in for a repeat of the Obama years which America is going to get tired of pretty quick and cut short. Like I said, I don't see Biden making it through full term. As far I'm concerned, the Democrats pulled off a classic bait and switch that should please a bunch of giddy Liberal women who view a woman as President as being more important than anything else these days.
YOU don't see Biden making it through a term. That is only your opinion. My opinion, informed by Harris' horoscope score, is that Harris will never be president. We'll see.
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It is strange that Nassau County NY should be listed as Republican. New York is only 80% counted, and its vote is well below what the polls said it should be. Probably a lot of mail-in votes are outstanding, and they are likely strongly Democratic and from NY and it suburbs. NY is counting those votes at a glacial speed, if at all. CA is not much faster; it is up to 92% today. But it's trend has been steady at 64%+ Biden. The uncounted votes here in CA are mostly drop-offs, so they may not be as lopsidedly Democratic. Mail-in voting started a month or so before election day and have been counted all along.
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(11-11-2020, 12:39 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-11-2020, 12:11 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: I'm glad that you found some proof that supports my view of the position that you and Biden are actually in right now.
Simply stated, the problem we and Biden face right now is, you guys and your ignorance.
Biden wouldn't have been elected without millions of ignorant people supporting him. Shit, you spend the bulk of your time marketing ignorance and recruiting ignorant for Christ's sake. You are one of the most ignorant people that I've ever met.
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(11-11-2020, 02:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: (11-11-2020, 01:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
Ford was an untended continuation of Nixon because (1) Spiro T. Agnew proved himself a crook, and (2) Nixon resigned.
Biden pretty ran as a continuation of the Obama Administration. Other than COVID, there's nothing new that distinguishes him from the Obama Administration. So, we are pretty much in for a repeat of the Obama years which America is going to get tired of pretty quick and cut short. Like I said, I don't see Biden making it through full term. As far I'm concerned, the Democrats pulled off a classic bait and switch that should please a bunch of giddy Liberal women who view a woman as President as being more important than anything else these days.
YOU don't see Biden making it through a term. That is only your opinion. My opinion, informed by Harris' horoscope score, is that Harris will never be president. We'll see.
It's not just my opinion, it's the opinion of half the country right now.
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(11-11-2020, 03:27 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: It's not just my opinion, it's the opinion of half the country right now.
The Republicans during much of the unravelling were an alliance of several issues.
There were the Neo cons, who thought to use US status as sole superpower to use military force to reintroduce a disguised colonialism. They ran into an insurgent proxy war and managed to drive the US public of both wings war adverse. They destabilized the Middle East rather than opening up war profits. They are not a major factor today.
There are the elites. They increased profits by shifting jobs abroad. They shared little interest in the cause of improving the state of the working man. The Tea Party originally was intended to get rid of the elite influence in the Republicans, but they eventually fell in love with Trump which brought the establishment back into the fold. Right now Trump and the establishment are both in their ways poison.
There are the racists. They have much to do with the idea of a small government, cutting taxes, cutting domestic spending. If you make life miserable for the working poor, you make life miserable for minorities, which is considered a good thing. Except, the younger generations have become the working power, and Black Lives Matter brought another round of racial equality. While in Nixon’s and Reagan’s times it was a win to hurt the working man, to shun minority votes in order to gain racist votes, it is not clear that this is a win today.
Then there are the religious elements, trying to use the government to force practice of their religious motivation on those who do not share their culture.
Then there are the true conservatives. They would desire things like small government, cut spending, balance the budget, and the idea that what is good for General Motors is good for America. I have some sympathy. They have seen their rightful road usurped by the influences above, have seen their party usurped.
All together, this alliance was stronger for a time than the progressive for the worker movement which came out of the New Deal. It is not clear that this alliance is dominant anymore. Trump tried to run with it a little longer, but he only discredited the elite and racist elements. The younger generations have borne the brunt of small government, of trying to hurt minorities by hurting the working poor.
Now I have been thinking on Pbower’s posting that Biden’s much fewer but I assume more populous and more urban counties are responsible for 70% of the GDP. I suspect Trump’s many more less populous rural counties are a result of the Republican alliances more culture wars oriented motivations. Ship the jobs overseas to increase elite profit. Attack minorities by attacking the working man. I can sympathize a good deal with the rural population. The wealth moved to more urban areas. The rural population got schrod. I would be angry too. The original Tea Party motivation of distancing from the elites was sound. But to a great degree they did it to themselves. The elitist, racist and religious motivations did not serve them well. If they strove to minimize domestic spending, well, they got what they voted for. 29% of the GDP.
This makes me interested in the upcoming fight for the Republican Party. The elites, racist and conservative wings have got to fight it out. In the meanwhile, the Democrats are left striving as ever for the working man and the minorities. While the Republicans are going after each other, they will leave the Democrats room.
I am also wondering about Georgia. It is looking clear that the Republicans are continuing with obstructionism. They are striving to ignore the election results. Do you think the voters of Georgia will notice? The elections there are turning into a referendum on whether the unraveling conflict and obstruction will continue. Do the people want a functioning government, or do they want it crippled? I don’t see what they are doing now as helping their chances in Georgia.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
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(11-11-2020, 01:19 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:18 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: (11-10-2020, 10:04 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: (11-10-2020, 07:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: All Presidencies are pigs in the poke. About 51% of the electorate saw Donald Trump as a failure.
50.71% (as of the current count) of the electorate voted for Joe Biden.
Reagan got 50.75% in 1980.
Biden and Reagan ran similar campaigns in trying to make people feel good about themselves despite some ugly realities of the time. The last two Presidents to defeat a one-term President after one term for that Party's hold of the White House are Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden.
Amazing coincidence? I hope not
You forgot about Ford. Ford was a half term President like Biden and Harris. I don't see Biden making it a full term.
Ford was an untended continuation of Nixon because (1) Spiro T. Agnew proved himself a crook, and (2) Nixon resigned.
Biden pretty ran as a continuation of the Obama Administration. Other than COVID, there's nothing new that distinguishes him from the Obama Administration. So, we are pretty much in for a repeat of the Obama years which America is going to get tired of pretty quick and cut short. Like I said, I don't see Biden making it through full term. As far I'm concerned, the Democrats pulled off a classic bait and switch that should please a bunch of giddy Liberal women who view a woman as President as being more important than anything else these days.
Trump makes Obama look better every day. I prefer virtuous leaders, and Obama has his virtues. He trusts protocol and precedent more than the craze of the day as the appropriate wisdom for a leader. We have a Constitution in effect for 231 years already despite changes in culture, demographics, population size, and technology. Our Constitution arises from a pre-industrial time and stands the test of time. I'm not saying that age itself proves something right, but one can still learn much from the classical Greek philosophers, Confucius, the Buddha, the Hebrew prophets, and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. If you don't think that one can't derive a solid set of moral values from such ancient sources, then consider the viability of Judaism. A hint: between 1933 and 1945 there was nothing wrong with the German people that Judaism would not have solved.
Well-established truth or some craze appealing to the intellectual or moral gutter? The gutter can always pay well (with the delights of depravity as well as the usual reward of economic gain as if from honest entrepreneurship and work) to its exemplary exponents. Some Trashy, Ruthless, Unscrupulous, Malignant Poltroon can serve that depravity well. Maybe economic distress and the perception of neglect by intellectual elites makes someone like a trashy, ruthless, malignant poltroon able to express the resentments by people who think that technological, demographic, and economic realities have left them behind.
We have big problems. One is oppression, and one can be white and oppressed in America -- as if they were on the Reservation. or in the ghetto or barrio. There are lily-white parts of America, like much of Appalachia and the Ozarks as well as the industrial wreck of parts of the Rust Belt are becoming places of grinding poverty. The descendants of people who may have gotten away with limited formal education but a solid work ethic cannot get away with that anymore. We will need some sort of technical training to do the job -- and liberal education so that people will know what to do with more leisure time. If it took forty hours of work a week to meet basic human needs in 1935, much of which was industrial output, then it might take much less. The old saying that the idle hand is the Devil's playground is a bit wrong: the idle mind is the real playground of the Devil. I have better things to do with my time and funds than to visit a strip club. (Primal delights are intense, easy and swift to achieve, and predictable; over-indulgence in those is costly in funds, health, reputation, development as a person, and perhaps freedom. Ask about Bill Cosby's sex drive as an illustration or the liver of an uncle by marriage*. In contrast, the opera and symphony, the nature hike, the great book, the great theatrical or cinematic performance, or the great collection of art that one enjoys without owning take time and knowledge to know about but they can offer more repeatable ecstasy without damaging one's blessings. Will
Oppression does not discriminate. At the least middle-class Mexican-Americans seem to care about the not-so-well-off Mexican-Americans who are their brethren... and such is the same about the Talented Tenth among African-Americans whom the American Dream has left behind. What do we middle-class and upper-class whites do for poor whites in what used to be coal country but is now an economic wreck? Not enough!
Trump may have caught onto something, but only superficially. He has appealed at times to righteous anger, but he has offered no solutions. I am tempted to compare him to "Professor Henry Hill" in The Music Man , a con man who unlike the others in his scam (who took the money as deposits for band instruments and uniforms, only to abscond with them and leave the communities without the money, instruments, band uniforms, and children learning music) found that he really could teach music and be happy doing it. Except that Trump has sold people lots of expensive caps and banners with his name or the vapid slogan "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" at what (at least in the last six months) have become super-spreader events for COVID-19.
In case you wonder what to do with those TRUMP banners that aren't going to have any use as such:
1. Give them to an animal shelter. Puppy-dogs and kitty-cats won't care about the politics of Trump.
2. Cut them up into masks. Masks save lives, and those banners can be useful for people who can't afford masks or who get caught without one.
Any others?
To solve the problems of the large mass of poor white people (and poor white people need exactly the same things that poor blacks and Hispanics need) we are going to need a New Deal-style program that outdoes the original. Can Biden do that? Perhaps. He will be the last President to ever be able to draw upon the experience of political figures who participated in the original New Deal. Trump had his chance but failed because he failed to learn anything other than how to indulge himself. Perhaps Biden gets us on a wholesome start, as there are young adults with predictable similarities of attitudes to the GI Generation so receptive to the New Deal.
*As he lay dying of cirrhosis and unconscious, medical students were getting a mocking lesson about him. He had one of the most cirrhotic livers that the instructor had ever seen, and that instructor told the medical students that such is the result of alcoholism. I had heard his stories, and if they talked about his travels to a place they might begin "I went to Chicago... and oh, did I get drunk". If I have anything to brag about a trip to Chicago, it is about seeing some museum... and the story might end "I figured out the Chicago transit system". Get drunk in a strange city? Me? No way!
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.
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(11-11-2020, 02:11 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is strange that Nassau County NY should be listed as Republican. New York is only 80% counted, and its vote is well below what the polls said it should be. Probably a lot of mail-in votes are outstanding, and they are likely strongly Democratic and from NY and it suburbs. NY is counting those votes at a glacial speed, if at all. CA is not much faster; it is up to 92% today. But it's trend has been steady at 64%+ Biden. The uncounted votes here in CA are mostly drop-offs, so they may not be as lopsidedly Democratic. Mail-in voting started a month or so before election day and have been counted all along.
Long Island, essentially Nassau and Suffolk Counties, are or have been reliably Republican for decades. LI is where the Republicans go to pout, after working in the City in cushy jobs. The degree of cynicism isn't even lost on them. They know they're being feckless.
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.
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11-11-2020, 10:58 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-11-2020, 11:02 AM by pbrower2a.)
Something that I posted elsewhere:
Quote:Trump lost. Maybe he did better with the economy than one could have expected despite the effects of COVID-19. For many, how well the economy works (creating jobs) matters far more than does his fascistic antics. Trump would have come close to winning even had he started pogroms, which says much about the concerns that people have for jobs and 'food on the table'. Remember: Adolf Hitler, who did far worse things than Trump, was popular among German gentiles and would have probably won free elections even he let the Centre, Nationalists, and Social Democrats challenge him in 1936 or so.
Note well: In case you have any lingering delusion of the reliable superiority of the common man over other parts of humanity, especially of segments of humanity by sect or ethnic group within the common man, the 2020 election should disabuse you of that. Donald Trump got more support from white working people than from among the well-educated Model Minorities and perhaps even well-educated white people. Donald Trump is a thoroughly-horrid person, and his personal vices are well known. This is not a partisan statement. The last two Republican nominees who lost to Barack Obama, Barack Obama, and of course Joe Biden himself, are far better persons than Donald Trump. People extremely self-righteous about their religious devotion often voted for Trump despite his sexual misconduct that makes Bill Clinton look like the ideal of a Mormon missionary by contrast. Trump's business dealings and his personal conduct, as well as that of his campaign (a fish stinks from the head, folks) also demonstrate the moral rot that Donald Trump is.
If you want illustration of how capable the common man is of evil, then remember that the most dangerous people of time, political leaders who spurred genocide were able to find common people to be perpetrators. Stalin's gulags and Hitler's murder camps relied upon the common people to do the worst possible, including firing machine guns at helpless people whom those people had just herded to a shooting pit, introducing Zyklon-B into a fake shower, or having trained dogs dispatch emaciated prisoners. Brutal guards under the Japanese in World War II? The barely-learned people who killed in the name of creating a new and glorious Kampuchea under the Khmer Rouge? Genocides in Rwanda and Turkey? Likewise. The people attending the sick spectacle of an auto-da-fe or the execution of an alleged sorcerer in which someone was literally burned at the stake were not largely physicians, attorneys, poets, and university professors. Add to this, the process of dragooning slave laborers for the nightmarish plantations and keeping slaves in bondage involved the common man as captors of new slaves and catchers of escaped slaves.
I have no illusion that we Americans are any better than the Spaniards who celebrated the immolation of some converso who lapsed by refusing to eat pork or out of sentimentality did some elements of celebrating Passover, the Turks who butchered Armenians or Greeks during or soon after World War II, citizens of the Third Reich or the Soviet Union, or Rwanda not so long ago. Human goodness requires reinforcement within the educational system and the mass culture, and when that reinforcement disappears or is short-circuited, then all Hell can break loose. We are just lucky that Donald Trump was not as adept a despot as he dreamed of being.
End of rant.
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.ph...msg7761830
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.
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11-11-2020, 11:12 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-11-2020, 11:32 AM by pbrower2a.)
(11-11-2020, 10:41 AM)David Horn Wrote: (11-11-2020, 02:11 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: It is strange that Nassau County NY should be listed as Republican. New York is only 80% counted, and its vote is well below what the polls said it should be. Probably a lot of mail-in votes are outstanding, and they are likely strongly Democratic and from NY and it suburbs. NY is counting those votes at a glacial speed, if at all. CA is not much faster; it is up to 92% today. But it's trend has been steady at 64%+ Biden. The uncounted votes here in CA are mostly drop-offs, so they may not be as lopsidedly Democratic. Mail-in voting started a month or so before election day and have been counted all along.
Long Island, essentially Nassau and Suffolk Counties, are or have been reliably Republican for decades. LI is where the Republicans go to pout, after working in the City in cushy jobs. The degree of cynicism isn't even lost on them. They know they're being feckless.
I noticed that Biden's margin in New York State was almost 10% lower (so far) than Hillary Clinton's margin of victory in New York State in 2016. Not that it makes any practical significance, slow votes coming in from absentee voters throughout New York State (I can imagine Trump doing much better in such economically-nuked places as the Trails of Tears along I-86 and I-90). Figuring that late-counted votes could make the New York state margin (and the national margin) much larger than what we have so far, maybe we will end up with a national margin closer to perhaps Obama in 2008 than Obama in 2012. Votes are still being counted, and not only in New York.
Update : I checked the numbers for incomplete voting, and the two states least close to counting their votes are Alaska (75%) and New York State (80%). States less than 97% away from fully counting their votes are California (92%), Colorado (95%), Illinois (92%), Maryland (93%), New Jersey (93%), Ohio (96%), Louisiana (95%), South Dakota (94%), and Utah (95%). Except for perhaps Utah the outstanding votes are likely to raise Democratic margins or cut Republican margins nationwide. (South Dakota isn't going to make a difference, and the outstanding votes in Trump wins Louisiana and Ohio are likely to come from D-leaning voters (big cities, and Democrats have tended to vote heavily in early or absentee voting even in counties that all in all went Republican.
Biden's margin in the popular vote could easily look like a landslide number after all is said and done.
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.
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