US Politics - Poll Position

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

College friends on Facebook are starting to share bullshit rumors about 100,000 votes being “found” in Wisconsin that are all in favor of Biden.  

Trump is rilling up his cohorts for extra-judicial action...

Please tell me than none of this is a surprise to you.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Just now, Luzifer's right hand said:

Please tell me than none of this is a surprise to you.

It’s not but it always makes me very sad.

[Week]

15 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Ugh, thanks for catching that. Healey is the current Mass AG. Their names are too similar.

Ugh, Coakley. What a complete disappointment. That race was a shit show and now she's a lobbyist for Juul. Gross.

[Maithanet]

FYI, Nate Cohn at NYT still considers Biden a slight favorite in Georgia based on the returns we've seen since last night when "the needle" was shut down.  There haven't been a lot of updates from GA, I'm hoping those come in soon. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yeah, I am not as confident as many of you about Biden having this in the bag. The Arizona and Nevada numbers would really help. PA looks to be quite tight - it may be that Biden underperforms Clinton in Philadelphia (another place I lived in!) which is either surprising or shenanigans. Postmarked ballots may become important too.

[Luzifer's right hand]

2 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It’s not but it always makes me very sad.

There is no way to compromise with the right unless you have the upper hand. If you have the upper hand you an idiot if you agree to a compromise because they will never do the same in return. 

[DanteGabriel]

2 minutes ago, Week said:

Ugh, Coakley. What a complete disappointment. That race was a shit show and now she's a lobbyist for Juul. Gross.

Yeah, one of the problems with single-party domination of a state is that turds like Coakley float to the top. Rhode Island is even worse.

[Kalbear]

Thought this was a good summary and echoed @Relic's 'no matter who wins, we all lose'. Except it's more that we already lost.

 

 

[Maithanet]

Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

Yeah, I am not as confident as many of you about Biden having this in the bag. The Arizona and Nevada numbers would really help. PA looks to be quite tight - it may be that Biden underperforms Clinton in Philadelphia (another place I lived in!) which is either surprising or shenanigans. Postmarked ballots may become important too.

Definitely hoping that we don't have to rely on PA.  AZ is still worrisome, and they'll drop a lot more votes (not all of them, but probably enough to know if Biden is in trouble) at 9pm ET.  I'm not super concerned about NV, I think he increases his lead significantly with those remaining ballots. 

[The Anti-Targ]

I'm guessing if Trump loses there will be recount petitions in all of the states Biden flipped, except for Arizona, which Biden won by a big enough margin to not consider a recount.

[IheartIheartTesla]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

FYI, Nate Cohn at NYT still considers Biden a slight favorite in Georgia based on the returns we've seen since last night when "the needle" was shut down.  There haven't been a lot of updates from GA, I'm hoping those come in soon. 

Per Nate Cohn: The needle accounts for this, and expects... Chatham: 75-26 Fulton: 85-16 DeKalb: 93-7 among remaining mail absentees

That's some mighty heavy lifting for Dekalb county......

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

I was thinking less about the dem POTUS and more about the Dem system as a whole, and how to elect more senators.

Ah, well in that case definitely agree.  That's essentially the axiom that you find the candidate that best fits their constituency when it comes to congressional races (albeit there's obviously a breaking point here).  Why Conor Lamb works for his district and Barbara Lee works for hers.

[GrimTuesday]

23 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

The people voting for Trump are choosing to not wear masks, not social distance and are catching covid at record levels. How, precisely, do you think they're going to be reached by telling them Medicare for All works?

Furthermore, one of the things that Trump campaigned on heavily was the boogeyman of socialism. Tell me, how does campaigning on socialized medicine help there?

As I said, I'm not talking about running on full socialism, I was using the Democrats success in 2018, which was at the height of Medicare 4 All's popularity (before most of the Democratic presidential candidates spent months knifing it with Republican talking points), to illustrate how running on an issue that resonates with voters leads to electoral gains.

17 minutes ago, DMC said:

I don't mean to single you out GT, this was just the most recent example, but this really encapsulates the differences between the GOP-leaning and Dem-leaning voter.  If a Republican challenger beat a Democratic incumbent for president, every single last damn one of the GOP voters would be spiking the football, pounding brews, and "owning the libs."  Here we are, Biden's almost assuredly won, and all of our's first inclination is to wonder "what did we do wrong?"  I don't really have a point here, but it's simultaneously head-shaking and amusing.

All good, I am kind of the one tearing my hair out over this at the moment. I think it is because we all know that they only way to achieve anything that we want, and I would argue need, to do is through a complete victory because the other side wins by doing nothing. I'm also doing this because I'm worried that Dems are going to take the wrong lessons from this election.

As for your point about Dems needing a candidate that excites a significant part of its base, I think that is a good argument against moving right. The momentum and energy is currently on the left wing of the party, and I think that a more left wing candidate could get strong support if they don't have a bunch of Democratic establishment types attacking them using the same talking points the Republicans are using.

[Kalbear]

These people would definitely have been swayed by a campaign of medicare for all

 

 

[Kalbear]

Just now, GrimTuesday said:

As I said, I'm not talking about running on full socialism, I was using the Democrats success in 2018, which was at the height of Medicare 4 All's popularity (before most of the Democratic presidential candidates spent months knifing it with Republican talking points), to illustrate how running on an issue that resonates with voters leads to electoral gains.

None of the people who won in swing districts ran on M4A. not a single one.

Just now, GrimTuesday said:

As for your point about Dems needing a candidate that excites a significant part of its base, I think that is a good argument against moving right. The momentum and energy is currently on the left wing of the party, and I think that a more left wing candidate could get strong support if they don't have a bunch of Democratic establishment types attacking them using the same talking points the Republicans are using.

I don't think it matters what that message is. I think you need to find someone exciting, period. Sanders clearly wasn't it, not by a long shot, if he couldn't beat Biden. Maybe AOC, but she's not exactly battle-tested. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

AOC is needed in NY to run in the primary against Chuck.

[Altherion]

31 minutes ago, Trebla said:

So with the Democrats looking like they might squeak out a win for the White House, fail to win the Senate, and lose some House seats...will this cause them to re-think their priorities? Does it make sense to keep drifting left when blue collar workers in battleground states appear to be VERY middle of the road or even leaning right?

I doubt it because narrow victory is still a victory. The good news here is that without a substantial margin in the Senate, there is no need to even discuss extreme actions such as court packing so Biden will be mostly be forced to focus on bipartisan issues such as the stimulus.

37 minutes ago, Trebla said:

That leads into another thing: The Coronavirus hasn't hurt Trump nearly as much as it should have. 

I think it did -- without it, Trump would almost surely have won.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

The momentum and energy is currently on the left wing of the party, and I think that a more left wing candidate could get strong support

I think this is a fair point and hard to argue with in theory.  However, it's a two-way street.  The left needs to stop cannibalizing any compelling candidate that does not tightly fit their orthodoxy - like Harris, Buttigieg, and Booker in the primary and even Warren at the end.

2 minutes ago, Altherion said:

I think it did -- without it, Trump would almost surely have won.

This is crap.  No way anyone could know what would've happened without covid.

[Luzifer's right hand]

5 minutes ago, Killjoybear said:

These people would definitely have been swayed by a campaign of medicare for all

 

 

Do people really think that people in relevant numbers who voted for Trump and the Republicans this time will vote Democratic again?

We have a completely different system here but our main conservative party has now adopted many of the values our main far right party had 20 years ago(still to the left of the Republicans I guess) and that was the only way to attract voters that moved to the right. This caused the far right party to move even further right.

[Quijote Light]

27 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

College friends on Facebook are starting to share bullshit rumors about 100,000 votes being “found” in Wisconsin that are all in favor of Biden.  

Trump is rilling up his cohorts for extra-judicial action...

I live in south Alabama. While waiting to clock in this morning I overheard two coworkers discussing the “fact” that the delays in declaring certain states were the result of Democrats trying to find the right number of votes. I later overheard one of these two talking to two others about how Biden would turn the US into a socialist country. It’s a wonder I haven’t gone postal.