2020 American Political Scene

[GVChamp]

I don't think this election is going to be super-hard to predict. Biden has a decisive lead and he basically has to totally bungle something huge for Trump to even be competitive. This isn't 2016. Even in 2016, Trump had an obvious chance. The only time Trump actually exceeded expectations and defied all hot takes was when he took the GOP nomination, but that was a 20-person slug-fest in which Trump managed to suck up most oxygen.

The biggest question is how big the win will be by Biden and various down-ballot effects, particularly on Senate races.

Also, America 2020 is not America 1990. The nation as a whole was substantially more conservative, particularly on crime/race issues, and the nation was substantially more bipartisan. We started breaking consensus in the Clinton years, really ramped it up starting around the 2010 mid-terms, and have essentially been in over-drive since Trump's election. The biggest stumbling block for the more extreme Dems is that they are basically ideologically driven morons and will probably run countries and cities directly into the ground: voter backlash might bite pretty hard. However, they control the press, they control social media, and it doesn't matter if you run a country directly into the ground, you can still control everything for decades as long as you control all the levers of power.
The hard political right is ultimately limited by their complete inability to expand the base and their growing loss of power in most cultural and economic spheres.

[TopHatter]

if the Democratic Party can't win against a President presiding over 150K+ deaths from a pandemic and its concurrent tanking economy, I'm not sure under what circumstances they can win.

I don't think this election is going to be super-hard to predict. Biden has a decisive lead and he basically has to totally bungle something huge for Trump to even be competitive.

If this was a "normal" election, I would agree with both of you. But nothing is normal anymore.

- Trump has shattered previously-sacred norms and his followers don't give a single shit, and he and they continue to do so, practically on a daily basis: Well wishes for the enabler/majordomo of a serial pedophile on her way to jail? No problem, because Bill Clinton, or it's just Trump being Trump, or he didn't actually mean what you clearly heard him say.

- Traditional Republican voter suppression even in the most "normal" of times will be cranked up to 11 this year. Count on it.

- A justified fear of COVID-19 will keep people away from the polls. And who wants to stand in line for hours nut-to-butt with fellow masked citizens because there's only one polling station in a hundred square miles thanks to the Republican Party?

- Mail-in ballots will either not be used due to unfamiliarity or will be discarded for any number of supposed discrepancies.
That even assumes the state voting apparatus is equipped to handle a massive increase in their use. To say nothing of Trump's interference with the USPS.

- No clear winner on Election Night and probably not for a week afterwards gives Trump all the time he needs to sow even more seeds of doubt to the outcome, just as he tried to do in 2016 and his promised he would do this years as well.

- And of course, good ol' foreign interference, which Trump has wholeheartedly, and repeatedly, welcomed and accepted. Putin has clearly seen the bountiful harvest of his efforts in 2016. He's already planting the same crop, only this time with massive experience under his belt.

- The primaries this year have been mostly disastrous and I doubt there's enough time or resources to make corrections in time for Nov. 3

Biden has to not only win, but win massively on no less than 3 different levels: The overall popular vote AND the Electoral College AND in the battleground states that give him his huge EC victory.
He has to curb stomp Trump in all three areas to ensure that even the GOP will be hesitant to support Crybaby McSnowflake's inevitable temper tantrum.

Put it all together and it's a perfect storm that could put Trump back in office for another 4 years.


I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong by an order of magnitude.

But after 2016, I don't have faith in anything anymore, certainly not the American voter.

[DOR]

surprise surprise, the Democratic Party of 30 years ago is different from the Democratic Party of today.

that's why Biden was never popular with the base of the Democratic Party, and is also why he has a completely different platform today.

as for this:



that's a truism for -any- political party. on the planet.

Amen.
And, just to keep things straight, this ain't your daddy's GOP, either.

[tbm3fan]

I'm hearing Biden didn't do too well at the Democrat debates despite being nominated and will get mauled in the debates with Trump.

I believe that Trump will want the debates more or that his ego will. He will want to show off himself once again and hope Biden looks bad. If I were Biden I would keep Trump hanging on this, just to piss him off, and then do maybe one or max of two debates. At this point Trump needs them more than Biden does so my take is that Biden is in the driver's seat.

[tbm3fan]

However, they control the press, they control social media, and it doesn't matter if you run a country directly into the ground, you can still control everything for decades as long as you control all the levers of power.
The hard political right is ultimately limited by their complete inability to expand the base and their growing loss of power in most cultural and economic spheres.

The extreme Dems control the press and they control social media and to think I gave up on marijuana back in 1974. I may need to revisit...

[Firestorm]

- A justified fear of COVID-19 will keep people away from the polls. And who wants to stand in line for hours nut-to-butt with fellow masked citizens because there's only one polling station in a hundred square miles thanks to the Republican Party?

This is the single biggest data point, the impact of which which is nearly impossible to predict for anyone. People who are answering polls right now and giving Biden a comfortable lead will not be all coming out to vote. Answering a simple question on the phone is easy. Going out to vote is not, and the Republicans will be up to their usual shenanigans to make it even harder, especially if you are a minority. And this will affect the Dems disproportionately since Trump's base already believes covid is a hoax created to make him lose. They will be coming out in droves come election day. Meanwhile Dems should remember they had a GOTV problem back in 2016 even without covid.

[TopHatter]

This is the single biggest data point, the impact of which which is nearly impossible to predict for anyone. People who are answering polls right now and giving Biden a comfortable lead will not be all coming out to vote. Answering a simple question on the phone is easy. Going out to vote is not, and the Republicans will be up to their usual shenanigans to make it even harder, especially if you are a minority. And this will affect the Dems disproportionately since Trump's base already believes covid is a hoax created to make him lose. They will be coming out in droves come election day. Meanwhile Dems should remember they had a GOTV problem back in 2016 even without covid.

Agreed. If anything puts Trump in office for another 4 years, it will be this.

[astralis]

GVChamp,

I don't think this election is going to be super-hard to predict. Biden has a decisive lead and he basically has to totally bungle something huge for Trump to even be competitive. This isn't 2016. Even in 2016, Trump had an obvious chance. The only time Trump actually exceeded expectations and defied all hot takes was when he took the GOP nomination, but that was a 20-person slug-fest in which Trump managed to suck up most oxygen.

The biggest question is how big the win will be by Biden and various down-ballot effects, particularly on Senate races.

that is the most likely scenario. of course, to take another black-swan scenario in a year full of shitty black-swan scenarios, if RBG doesn't make it until January 20, 2021...my god.

Also, America 2020 is not America 1990. The nation as a whole was substantially more conservative, particularly on crime/race issues, and the nation was substantially more bipartisan. We started breaking consensus in the Clinton years, really ramped it up starting around the 2010 mid-terms, and have essentially been in over-drive since Trump's election. The biggest stumbling block for the more extreme Dems is that they are basically ideologically driven morons and will probably run countries and cities directly into the ground: voter backlash might bite pretty hard. However, they control the press, they control social media, and it doesn't matter if you run a country directly into the ground, you can still control everything for decades as long as you control all the levers of power.
The hard political right is ultimately limited by their complete inability to expand the base and their growing loss of power in most cultural and economic spheres.

ironically I think the GOP is the best demonstration of this.

the GOP has been going downhill as a party since the 1990s, as the loudmouths and morons grew in power starting with Newt Gingrich. it's also the time they started to lose their popular political power. but that still didn't prevent them from leveraging their structural advantages to politically dominate throughout most of the last decade. in 2016, the Democratic Party was a pile of smoking rubble.

so much for "control of the press and social media".

let's put it in another way.

say Biden and the Democrats win -yuge- in November. a blue tsunami. in the House, they pick up another 20 seats (which would mean winning every single toss-up House seat plus another, oh, 12 or so Republican-leaning seats).

in the Senate, they pick up 8 seats, which means taking every single toss-up Senate seat, several lean-R seats, and defending Doug Jones in Alabama.

this would -still- mean, after two wave elections, that the Democrats are just shy of the majorities they had on January 20, 2009.

which means if the Democrats don't break the legislative filibuster, the GOP can easily do what it did to Obama after the Dems lost their 60th Senate seat with the death of Ted Kennedy.

if you want to talk about "control everything for decades" via control of the levers of power...well, there you have it.

[DOR]

GOP going downhill since the 1990s? How about since the 1930?

Opposition to economic stimulus under FDR, then the second (late) 1930s depression because GOPers forced a too-fast return to tight money.

1940s and 1950s: McCarthyism, MacArthurism, and opposition to serious civil rights reform.

1960s: Nixon's interference in foreign affairs before taking office.

1970s: Watergate and Reagan's interference in foreign affairs before taking office.

1980s: Iran-Contra, deliberately hiding the inability of the POTUS to do his job because of dementia, and massive, unnecessary budget deficits.

1990s: Gingrichism and the politics of thwarting democratic institutions for the sole purpose of seizing power.

2000s: A return to massive, unnecessary budget deficits, economic mismanagement of the first order, voter suppression on a scale not seen since Reformation, and yet another unnecessary war of aggression.

The Trumpet may be an extreme case of GOPeritis, but the root causes were always with us.

[astralis]

DOR,

GOP going downhill since the 1990s? How about since the 1930?

no point going that far back; the Dems had the racist southern Democrat faction then as well.

the Dems began purging their party of those racists in the 1960s, and to its credit did it knowing full well that they were going to be shooting themselves in the political foot to do so.

the GOP, to its utter discredit, welcomed those racists through their door.

then Gingrich melded that with scorched-earth political tactics perfected from the Nixon years.

my issue with the GOP is not its policy positions, that can be debated. my issue is with their use of increasingly anti-democratic means to secure political power. they KNOW their positions are unpopular, and instead of trying to reform to compete on a better basis, they are OK with breaking institutions for short-term political advantage.

that is why I think the Democrats, once in power, should give the GOP a taste of their own medicine. I want to see them howl when the legislative filibuster is broken, and I want to see them howl again when DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico are put in as states. for that matter, the Democrats can start now. frankly, if Nancy Pelosi wanted to screw over Trump, she could pull a McConnell and watch Trump and the GOP burn in November by refusing to negotiate on the stimulus. let the GOP eat the Democratic House bill, or let them watch Trump pay the political price.

[astralis]

in item #934534534 of how Trump weaponizes everything:

https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...overnment.html

use of Border Patrol tactical units in Portland, complete with unidentifiable agents stuffing people into unmarked vans. this is freaking PRC shit.

[hboGYT]

He usually does a good job explaining the law in plain English, but I'm still a bit unclear whether federal officers can arrest people without probable cause because Portland is within 100 miles of an external boundary.

[Double Edge]

so I don't get your point.

circumstances have changed, in terms of crime, in terms of national mood, in terms of Black political power within the Democratic Party, and most importantly, within the overall base of the Democratic Party.

why shouldn't the Party and its Presidential nominee change accordingly?

Crime is still crime. There Biden is talking big on it. What tune are the Dems singing now.

BLM wil play into Trump's hands. Poorer communities are going to bear the brunt of riots, less policing and defund.

Trump has a chance of getting the black vote when he says 'Law & order'

This fiction, carefully cultivated that Trump is racist will be questioned.

Biden thinks he owns the black vote. Does not think he has to earn it.

If you need to decide whether to vote for him or Trump it means you're not black he said a month ago.

HRC destroyed Trump in the debates repeatedly and she still lost.

Biden didn't do well...or poorly...in the primary debates and he won.

if the Democratic Party can't win against a President presiding over 150K+ deaths from a pandemic and its concurrent tanking economy, I'm not sure under what circumstances they can win.

See that's what the MSM said but I didn't get that impression at all when i watched the debates.

The man made out to be positively just evil did not come across that way.

This is the point i realised it was essential to listen or read what he said as opposed to reporting of what he said.

As for 150k+ deaths he'll play up China gate. Get the Dems back for Russia gate.

If the Dems remain quiet they look complicit of being soft on China. If they counter then they will look like they are defending with China. China defo wants a Dems win.

Blame China for the pandemic, blame China for the state of the economy.

How hard is it to make that case anywhere in the world right now : )

China lied, people died, WHO was tongue tied.

I don't know who wins in a contest of two never befores but i'm starting to think Trump has a chance.

The X factor with this man is significant. Can anyone guess which way Trump is going to go, lol.

Trump is like a rick driver that signals with his right hand, has the left indicator flashing and then ends up going straight : D

He does not play by DC rules because he's not establishment, more like his own rules.

[Double Edge]

I don't think this election is going to be super-hard to predict. Biden has a decisive lead and he basically has to totally bungle something huge for Trump to even be competitive. This isn't 2016. Even in 2016, Trump had an obvious chance. The only time Trump actually exceeded expectations and defied all hot takes was when he took the GOP nomination, but that was a 20-person slug-fest in which Trump managed to suck up most oxygen.

Total approve in the mid to high 40s. That is right now. Whether it rises or drops come Nov remains to be seen.

Approval index all over the place in the last month.

Reagan was 77 when he finished his second term.

Biden will be 78 when he begins his first. Maybe not too big a difference with 74 yr Trump

The biggest stumbling block for the more extreme Dems is that they are basically ideologically driven morons and will probably run countries and cities directly into the ground: voter backlash might bite pretty hard.

Right, these are the ones that will scare people into voting elsewhere.

How much Biden panders to them remains to be seen, he'll lose the rust belt if he goes too far.

However, they control the press, they control social media, and it doesn't matter if you run a country directly into the ground, you can still control everything for decades as long as you control all the levers of power.

Woke controlled media like Twitter & youtube on a Salem witch hunt. Bypass the law and create a mobocracy.

The hard political right is ultimately limited by their complete inability to expand the base and their growing loss of power in most cultural and economic spheres.

Swing voters

[Double Edge]

This is the single biggest data point, the impact of which which is nearly impossible to predict for anyone. People who are answering polls right now and giving Biden a comfortable lead will not be all coming out to vote. Answering a simple question on the phone is easy. Going out to vote is not, and the Republicans will be up to their usual shenanigans to make it even harder, especially if you are a minority. And this will affect the Dems disproportionately since Trump's base already believes covid is a hoax created to make him lose. They will be coming out in droves come election day. Meanwhile Dems should remember they had a GOTV problem back in 2016 even without covid.

That's another point in favour. They might think that now, whether the increased number of cases by Nov changes their mind remains to be seen. He's got the anti-mask thing of his back now.

Will this cause the opposition to double up though. If Trump winning was because last time they did not show up in enough numbers around the country.

Has to be around the country not just in one state.

Electoral college is where its at not popular vote.