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U.S. Politics: It’s beginning to look a lot like Rescission


lokisnow

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6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

At this point, I would be very surprised if a Republican could win the popular vote without winning in a pretty large landslide across the country. California doesn't show any real signs of going more Republican, and Cali really runs up the score in popular vote. 

Indeed, the most Republican states are all either very low population (WY, WV, ND) or trending Democrat (TX, GA).  The Republicans really don't have much opportunity to run up the score in the popular vote.  In 2016, the state that Trump won the most NET votes was Texas, with +800k.  Next was Tennessee at +650k then KY with +570k. 

In contrast, Clinton won California by 4.3 million votes, New York by 1.7 million, and IL and MA by 900k each. 

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I think Wisconsin will be tight, but WI+PA+MI+Ohio were sort of correlated in 2016 (that is, if the polls were off in one there was a good chance they were off in the other three as well - as an example). I think PA and MI are returning to the D side, so I hope there is an equivalent correlation effect there too, and WI comes along for the ride. It could be it didnt work out in 2018 and will in 2020.

Edit:  I would remove Ohio from the above states, and just look at the three others for correlated effects.

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Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think Wisconsin will be tight, but WI+PA+MI+Ohio were sort of correlated in 2016 (that is, if the polls were off in one there was a good chance they were off in the other three as well - as an example). I think PA and MI are returning to the D side, so I hope there is an equivalent correlation effect there too, and WI comes along for the ride. It could be it didnt work out in 2018 and will in 2020.

I said this a few threads ago, but for all the talk about Florida every year, to me Wisconsin looks like the state most likely to decide the election in 2020.  If Democrats win there, they probably win the election.  Theoretically I suppose Trump could lose WI and still win MI or PA, but it seems unlikely.  And while there definitely are paths to victory without WI for the Democrats (as I said, winning any of AZ, FL or NC), I'm not sure I want to bet on it. 

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Fun as it is to try and game out 2020, it’s simply way way too early. The only thing I feel confident in predicting is that, absent any major changes, Trump is unlikely to win more states than he did in 2016. He might pick up states that he lost, but they won’t be enough to offset the states he’ll lose that he won last time.

 I would make a generic Democrat the favorite, but we need to wait and see who the final primary candidates are and know the relative economic conditions six to twelve months out, among many other things.

@Maithanet, I like your breakdown, but I'm not sure how well 2018 will predict 2020, mostly because I think there will be a lot of people who will come out to vote against Trump in 2020 that didn't vote in 2018. 

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Was wanting to revisit my priors on this. And yeah, it's true that PA/MI/WI are all much closer to switching to dem (and if they all do it, Dems almost certainly win), but as a percentage it's not really clear that it's true. 

For instance, while Florida swung right for Governor and Senator (under some odd circumstances) 2016 was still very close - Clinton lost by 100k votes, which is half as many votes as Johnson got. In particular, those identifying as independent (for all the value that is) swung to Trump/Johnson and away from Clinton; based on current polling, that's probably not as reliable. 

Then again, DeSantis won, so who knows.

But yeah, the 2016 states that appear to be at all close are (in order): Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida. After that, there's a big gulf, and then Arizona/North Carolina (3.5% difference), Georgia (5%), Ohio (8%), Texas! (9%), Iowa (9.5%), and that's it. Everything else is over a 10% difference.

And based on the 2018 election, which was one of the most predictable elections in recent history because the power of partisanship was essentially everything, we really can't expect a 10% swing to Dems. So, places like Missouri are just outright gone now, sadly. And Ohio went as red as Texas did, which says something about both states. 

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First bit of polling I've seen has Trump losing the shutdown battle:

Quote

More Americans blame President Donald Trump than congressional Democrats for the partial U.S. government shutdown, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday found, as lawmakers returned to Washington with no quick end to the shutdown in sight.

Forty-seven percent of adults in the U.S. hold Trump responsible, while 33 percent blame Democrats in Congress, according to the Dec. 21-25 poll, conducted mostly after the shutdown began. Seven percent of Americans blamed congressional Republicans.

The shutdown was triggered by Trump’s demand, largely opposed by Democrats and some Republicans, that taxpayers provide him with $5 billion to help pay for a wall he wants to build on the Mexican border. Its total estimated cost is $23 billion.

Just 35 percent of those surveyed in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they backed including money for the wall in a congressional spending bill. Only 25 percent said they supported Trump shutting down the government over the matter.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-47-americans-blame-trump-government-shutdown-n952466

 

Everyone knows we want and need the wall though, right?

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So here's the thing. 

The shutdown sucks. It sucks for real people out there, and it'll start sucking even more for them past the new year (as they haven't missed a paycheck yet, but they will on Jan 1st). It'll soon start sucking after the holiday as well, as things like parks and whatnot shutdown. 

Prior shutdowns have largely been about congress flexing its muscles against policies already signed into place - like the ACA funding issue. It was easy to back down from that with just a little bit of gain given out. But this isn't that, and I don't know how Trump compromises here without losing massive face, and one thing I think will never happen is him actually giving up on something he says he'll get. He needs a way to get out of his own way - whether it be blaming it on courts, blaming it on congress, etc. 

How does he get that? I'm quite serious. The best thing that the dems can do is stick to their guns AND figure out a way to give something to Trump that he can be happy about something and claim he got some benefit, or the dems get something big that they would not otherwise get in exchange for some funding that can be claimed for the wall but won't go there. 

I don't honestly know what that might be, though. Trump basically has doubled and tripled down on getting the wall with this, and Democrats rightly have the polls and their voters saying 'fuck that noise', and have basically no reason to negotiate on it. How do Dems give Trump something that lets him save face?

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31 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So here's the thing. 

The shutdown sucks. It sucks for real people out there, and it'll start sucking even more for them past the new year (as they haven't missed a paycheck yet, but they will on Jan 1st). It'll soon start sucking after the holiday as well, as things like parks and whatnot shutdown. 

Prior shutdowns have largely been about congress flexing its muscles against policies already signed into place - like the ACA funding issue. It was easy to back down from that with just a little bit of gain given out. But this isn't that, and I don't know how Trump compromises here without losing massive face, and one thing I think will never happen is him actually giving up on something he says he'll get. He needs a way to get out of his own way - whether it be blaming it on courts, blaming it on congress, etc. 

How does he get that? I'm quite serious. The best thing that the dems can do is stick to their guns AND figure out a way to give something to Trump that he can be happy about something and claim he got some benefit, or the dems get something big that they would not otherwise get in exchange for some funding that can be claimed for the wall but won't go there. 

I don't honestly know what that might be, though. Trump basically has doubled and tripled down on getting the wall with this, and Democrats rightly have the polls and their voters saying 'fuck that noise', and have basically no reason to negotiate on it. How do Dems give Trump something that lets him save face?

They don't. 

Democrats have offered money for border security. Trump rejected it and took ownership for the shutdown on live TV. 

If Trump is vain and dumb enough to hold the American people hostage until he can claim a "win", then Democrats should let the American people see that.

Run ads over and over of the Oval Office meeting and Trump saying that he'd take responsibility for the shutdown, and remind them how long it's been and how many deals he's refused because he cares more about what fucking Hannity says on TV than he does about hurting Americans.

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31 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So here's the thing. 

The shutdown sucks. It sucks for real people out there, and it'll start sucking even more for them past the new year (as they haven't missed a paycheck yet, but they will on Jan 1st). It'll soon start sucking after the holiday as well, as things like parks and whatnot shutdown. 

Prior shutdowns have largely been about congress flexing its muscles against policies already signed into place - like the ACA funding issue. It was easy to back down from that with just a little bit of gain given out. But this isn't that, and I don't know how Trump compromises here without losing massive face, and one thing I think will never happen is him actually giving up on something he says he'll get. He needs a way to get out of his own way - whether it be blaming it on courts, blaming it on congress, etc. 

How does he get that? I'm quite serious. The best thing that the dems can do is stick to their guns AND figure out a way to give something to Trump that he can be happy about something and claim he got some benefit, or the dems get something big that they would not otherwise get in exchange for some funding that can be claimed for the wall but won't go there. 

I don't honestly know what that might be, though. Trump basically has doubled and tripled down on getting the wall with this, and Democrats rightly have the polls and their voters saying 'fuck that noise', and have basically no reason to negotiate on it. How do Dems give Trump something that lets him save face?

Should they let him save face?  A couple things stick out in my mind here.  First, Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall according to Trump and now the great negotiatior is asking for 5 billion of US taxpayer money to pay for it.  Second, Trump himself said he would own the shutdown before reversing himself and blaming it on Democrats.  Not to mention that Rs control the White House and both chambers of Congress when the shutdown happened.  How can they not own it?

Maybe there’s an opportunity to hammer home just how incompetent the Trump admin is.  The Dems only need to hold out long enough to get Fox and Friends griping about how it was bungled and Trump should end it.  Trump created this mess, I think the Dems should let him squirm for a while.  

Also what @The Great Unwashed Said.

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1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

They don't. 

Democrats have offered money for border security. Trump rejected it and took ownership for the shutdown on live TV. 

If Trump is vain and dumb enough to hold the American people hostage until he can claim a "win", then Democrats should let the American people see that.

Run ads over and over of the Oval Office meeting and Trump saying that he'd take responsibility for the shutdown, and remind them how long it's been and how many deals he's refused because he cares more about what fucking Hannity says on TV than he does about hurting Americans.

Again, I get that, but that's almost a million people who are suffering or are going to suffer. I know the likely most 'right' possibility is to simply not give in no matter what, but that's going to cause a lot of pain to a lot of people who don't in any way deserve it. 

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Just now, S John said:

Should they let him save face?  A couple things stick out in my mind here.  First, Mexico was supposed to pay for the wall according to Trump and now the great negotiatior is asking for 5 billion of US taxpayer money to pay for it.  Second, Trump himself said he would own the shutdown before reversing himself and blaming it on Democrats.  Not to mention that Rs control the White House and both chambers of Congress when the shutdown happened.  How can they not own it?

Maybe there’s an opportunity to hammer home just how incompetent the Trump admin is.  The Dems only need to hold out long enough to get Fox and Friends griping about how it was bungled and Trump should end it.  Trump created this mess, I think the Dems should let him squirm for a while.  

Also what @The Great Unwashed Said.

If you can hammer home how incompetent Trump is, great. Are you willing to have 800,000 people out of work because of it? Are you willing to cause places like the TSA to go with longer lines and waiting, national parks to be unstaffed, the coast guard not get paid? 

I'm not sure Fox and Friends are going to gripe about the bungling. They're the ones who told Trump he has to stay firm. Fox and Friends only gains viewers and ratings with a manufactured crisis. Same with Rush Limbaugh. Why do you think they'll start griping any time soon? They're making money on this. They'll continue to do so. 

And I don't want to give Trump any kind of win at all on this. I hate that it might come across that way. But I don't see how Trump will give in normally. Maybe that's it - you appeal to Trump personally - you start an investigation or two and then say it'll go away if he funds the government, at least for a while. 

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revolution brewing in the ranks of the Southern Baptists.  It takes off, a major conservative power center could become...something else.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/southern-baptists-call-off-the-culture-war/563000/?utm_content=edit-promo&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_term=2018-12-21T15%3A54%3A50&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR3VMwM2epry9gfi6zAN6l2rFIwNZoTfx8aeZJbCAhiaeNyTsM65m7X0PJg

 

It was immediately clear that change was afoot in Dallas. I’ve attended the annual gatherings of the Southern Baptist Convention dozens of times, but walking around the convention center this week, I was struck by how unfamiliar it all felt. When I was a child, the convention hall was a sea of silver combovers and smelled of denture paste. While the older, more traditionalist crowd was still present in Dallas, the younger, fresh-faced attendees now predominated.

 

“The generational shift happening in the SBC has thrust the group into the middle of an identity crisis,” says Barry Hankins, the chair of the department of history at Baylor University and co-author of Baptists in America: A History. “The younger generation thinks differently than the old-guard Christian right about culture and politics, and they are demanding change.”

To enact this change, young Baptists nominated 45-year-old pastor J.D. Greear from North Carolina to be president of the denomination. In a campaign video, Greear called for “a new culture and a new posture in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

Refusing to cede power without a fight, fundamentalist Baptists nominated Ken Hemphill as an opposition candidate. But Greear won with nearly 70 percent of the vote, becoming the youngest SBC president in 37 years.

Greear has promised to lead the denomination down a different path, which, he has said, must include efforts both to repent of a “failure to listen to and honor women and racial minorities” and “to include them in proportionate measures in top leadership roles.” If the meeting in Dallas is any indication, his vision is resonating with a large number of the next wave of Baptist leaders.

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1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

If you can hammer home how incompetent Trump is, great. Are you willing to have 800,000 people out of work because of it? Are you willing to cause places like the TSA to go with longer lines and waiting, national parks to be unstaffed, the coast guard not get paid? 

I'm not sure Fox and Friends are going to gripe about the bungling. They're the ones who told Trump he has to stay firm. Fox and Friends only gains viewers and ratings with a manufactured crisis. Same with Rush Limbaugh. Why do you think they'll start griping any time soon? They're making money on this. They'll continue to do so. 

And I don't want to give Trump any kind of win at all on this. I hate that it might come across that way. But I don't see how Trump will give in normally. Maybe that's it - you appeal to Trump personally - you start an investigation or two and then say it'll go away if he funds the government, at least for a while. 

Maybe you could convince him to back down on the demand for a physical wall.  Have that money, or a portion of it allocated to border security, ie technology and more / higher paid border patrol.

The truth of the matter is that a wall spanning from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific is still only going to be as effective as we have guards and surveillance to monitor it.   In my opinion the wall isn’t necessary at all because of the above fact.  A wall spanning an unwatched portion of desert is in no way an impenetrable obstacle.  He may not take the deal, but I think he is capable of spinning any increase in border security as a win, and from here on out the Dems will have the house so he can blame future failures on them.

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55 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

So here's the thing. 

The shutdown sucks. It sucks for real people out there, and it'll start sucking even more for them past the new year (as they haven't missed a paycheck yet, but they will on Jan 1st). It'll soon start sucking after the holiday as well, as things like parks and whatnot shutdown. 

Prior shutdowns have largely been about congress flexing its muscles against policies already signed into place - like the ACA funding issue. It was easy to back down from that with just a little bit of gain given out. But this isn't that, and I don't know how Trump compromises here without losing massive face, and one thing I think will never happen is him actually giving up on something he says he'll get. He needs a way to get out of his own way - whether it be blaming it on courts, blaming it on congress, etc. 

How does he get that? I'm quite serious. The best thing that the dems can do is stick to their guns AND figure out a way to give something to Trump that he can be happy about something and claim he got some benefit, or the dems get something big that they would not otherwise get in exchange for some funding that can be claimed for the wall but won't go there. 

I don't honestly know what that might be, though. Trump basically has doubled and tripled down on getting the wall with this, and Democrats rightly have the polls and their voters saying 'fuck that noise', and have basically no reason to negotiate on it. How do Dems give Trump something that lets him save face?

He's already said if it's a picket fence they pretend to fund he'll go with that.

But, nobody's talking to each other.  In past shut-downs there were negotiations going on between Dems and thugs.  Not now.  Nobody cares about those suffering. It's purely political.

IOW, that Constitutional Crisis people kept worrying about? Here it is.

 

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I'd like to think he would take that, but my suspicion is that he won't. His entire thing is about actually building a physical wall, as stupid and ineffective as it'll be in most of the places - especially without all the support and tech required to actually utilize it. No one thinks it's smart - and while Republicans are willing to spin it as the above, Trump continues to not. 

But this gets to the heart of it - someone as candidate promises something that is ludicrously stupid and obviously will not work. But he makes it a central promise, a central saying of his candidacy. Now they're holding the government hostage for it. How can you let them save face while still making sure that they don't actually get this stupid-ass thing?

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

I'd like to think he would take that, but my suspicion is that he won't. His entire thing is about actually building a physical wall, as stupid and ineffective as it'll be in most of the places - especially without all the support and tech required to actually utilize it. No one thinks it's smart - and while Republicans are willing to spin it as the above, Trump continues to not. 

But this gets to the heart of it - someone as candidate promises something that is ludicrously stupid and obviously will not work. But he makes it a central promise, a central saying of his candidacy. Now they're holding the government hostage for it. How can you let them save face while still making sure that they don't actually get this stupid-ass thing?

By shouting over and over and over that the money won't build even a gddmed picket fence but go into the pockets of the nazi's corporate overlords as 'contracts' to build a wall.  Like he builds shyte that literally either doesn't get built by him, or falls apart and never gets finished.  Well, that's one thing to do.

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3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

How can you let them save face while still making sure that they don't actually get this stupid-ass thing?

The Dems don't really have to.  As @Zorral said Trump's already started changing the goalposts on what would constitute "winning."  Now he just has to whittle that down to basically nothing.  The Dems have no reason to budge because you didn't need a poll to know this was going to go bad for Trump - even before he claimed responsibility in the Oval Office meeting.  Last (this?) January a clear majority did not support shutting down the government for DACA, which is popular.  Obviously even a stronger majority is going to be against shutting down the government for wall funding, which is unpopular - especially considering it's very likely there's more economic anxiety now than then. 

Trump did this to cater to the base because the Coulter/Limbaugh crowd goaded him into it.  And to be fair, that's perfectly logical - Trump is a base politician and those voices, when they all get together, are just about as strong as him to the base.  Of course, judging by his approval nadir thus far, this is a purely 35/37% base move, which gives the Dems every reason not to budge.  But, eventually, the Coulter/Limbaugh crowd will just go back to demonizing the Dems.  Same thing happened in 2013.  Ted Cruz and the proto-House Freedom Caucus shut down the government for 17 days to make a point.  The only "face saving" gesture was stricter income verification rules for the ACA.  How long will Trump last before he comes to this inevitable conclusion?  I ain't predicting that.

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I do find myself wondering...

In the not so distant future, the democratic house is going to be in a position to unleash all kinds of grief on Trump through various investigations.  Probably not enough to get impeachment going, but still enough to hurt him bad, possibly even in the eyes of his base.

 

So...suppose the leading Dem's strike a sort of devils bargain:

Trump will sign certain pieces of meaningful  legislation or the Dem's ramp the investigations up a couple notches. Trump cooperates, and the investigations go on the back burner.  Trump can spout off all he wants on other things, even complain or steal credit for the bills in question, but if he doesn't go along, the investigations take a highly uncomfortable (for Trump and family) turn. 

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2 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I do find myself wondering...

In the not so distant future, the democratic house is going to be in a position to unleash all kinds of grief on Trump through various investigations.  Probably not enough to get impeachment going, but still enough to hurt him bad, possibly even in the eyes of his base.

 

So...suppose the leading Dem's strike a sort of devils bargain:

Trump will sign certain pieces of meaningful  legislation or the Dem's ramp the investigations up a couple notches. Trump cooperates, and the investigations go on the back burner.  Trump can spout off all he wants on other things, even complain or steal credit for the bills in question, but if he doesn't go along, the investigations take a highly uncomfortable (for Trump and family) turn. 

That would be dumb. The emails and Benghazi(!) were only successful because they provided a steady drip drip drip of stories for years and year and years on end. With investigating trump, democrats don’t need to turn on the tap of investigations and turn off the tap, they just need a drip drip drip of reportage upon the investigations. The constant repetition of the investigations is far more valuable than the content of the investigations, as republicans have repeatedly proven when deploying this tactic.

thisnisneven true of watergate, thenconstant drip drip of a new watergate story made the whole thing vastly more damaging than it ever would have been otherwise.

giving up investigations would be one of the best things democrats could do to improve trumps reelection prospects.

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