US Politics - The Conceit of Not Conceding

[Lollygag]

2 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

I'm still amused that people like you are completely overlooking the fact that part of the reason that Republicans are able to effectively weaponize shit like this is because people like you, the "reasonable" folks, are also attacking it using the same language. That sort of thing signals to moderates that this is something that is bad since both the Republicans and the Democrats are attacking it. Moderate Democrats attacking the left only legitimizes Republican attacks.

They're not listening to Democrats.

They only watch Fox News, OANN, or Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, Levin, etc. Where are they getting their frame of reference to even understand what Defund the Police means especially when they keep getting told it's just a few bad apples and see commercials about a lady calling 911 for an ambulance and no one being there? Others are just busy, don't pay attention much, whatever. Did you not just hear Cori Bush say the new Republicans don't even know who Breonna Taylor is?

There's a ton of steps between Defund the Police as a slogan and the checklist of police reforms that most people including a lot of Republicans support. But they don't have enough to make the jump that's intuitive to some Democrats who pay closer attention. That's why you need to be careful about how you frame stuff and you need to walk them through it.

 

[Kalbear]

Harris and Warren would have lost more white men, and that would probably be that. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Harris and Warren would have lost more white men, and that would probably be that. 

Yes, yes, the absurdly dumb assumption that all women are beholden to Hillary's failings in one election cycle.

[Kalbear]

Just now, DMC said:

Yes, yes, the absurdly dumb assumption that all women are beholden to Hillary's failings in one election cycle.

Ain't just Clinton's failings. Warren and Harris both polled worse against Trump than any of the men when polled at that time. So did Klobuchar. There is also a lot of studies that women aren't united in voting for other women but men very much favor men.

The US continues to shoe its sexism. More importantly given the small margins in the election it doesn't take much for it to go the other way. They'd probably still get a major popular vote win, but who cares? I think its a pretty reasonable bet to say 30k fewer white men vote for Warren in Wisconsin, or Arizona or Georgia. 

 

[Mindwalker]

Does anyone recommend to read Masha Gessen? I find this interview very interesting and am thinking of getting the book.

 

Masha Gessen: "The GOP Has Turned Into an Autocratic Party"

[DMC]

Biden and Sanders polled better than the other candidates because of name ID.  Other than that the claim the other men did better than Harris and Warren is unfounded.  Not to mention head-to-heads aren't too meaningful, let alone predictive, at that point anyway.

3 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

There is also a lot of studies that women aren't united in voting for other women but men very much favor men.

As someone who's participated and reviewed these studies not only is this an ecological fallacy but also virtually none of these studies had anything to do with a major party presidential nominee.

6 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

The US continues to shoe its sexism.

There's a huge ass distinction between eschewing US' sexism and dismissing the assertion that a woman, any woman, can't be elected president.  Tons of people thought Obama couldn't be elected until he was.  Doesn't make the US any less racist. 

As for maybe a few thousand more white men voting for Trump in key swing states, k.  What about maybe a few thousand more white women, or black women, or latina women, or latino men, or black men voting for an alternative candidate?

[The Marquis de Leech]

So far as being able to bet Trump goes, I think it's worth remembering that the current lot of swing voters are not economically right/socially left - what the media likes to think of as centrists. They're economically left/socially right - something quite different. 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Biden and Sanders polled better than the other candidates because of name ID.  Other than that the claim the other men did better than Harris and Warren is unfounded.  Not to mention head-to-heads aren't too meaningful, let alone predictive, at that point anyway.

If it was name recognition was was buttigieg polling higher? 

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As someone who's participated and reviewed these studies not only is this an ecological fallacy but also virtually none of these studies had anything to do with a major party presidential nominee.

The ones that have done that showed that it was sexism that drove some of it. 

Quote

There's a huge ass distinction between eschewing US' sexism and dismissing the assertion that a woman, any woman, can't be elected president.  Tons of people thought Obama couldn't be elected until he was.  Doesn't make the US any less racist. 

I didn't assert that it is impossible for a woman to win. I said that Harris and Warren wouldn't have won this election. Unless you are claiming that this is the last election I'd recommend reading what I wrote instead of what you think I wrote. 

 

Quote

As for maybe a few thousand more white men voting for Trump in key swing states, k.  What about maybe a few thousand more white women, or black women, or latina women, or latino men, or black men voting for an alternative candidate?

I think that's unlikely given the turnout we did get. As you said, it was a referendum on Trump. 

[Kalbear]

Also, this Twitter shade is amazing and would be funnier if it wasn't an indication of how bad the US is failing as a democracy. 

 

[DMC]

50 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

So far as being able to bet Trump goes, I think it's worth remembering that the current lot of swing voters are not economically right/socially left - what the media likes to think of as centrists. They're economically left/socially right - something quite different. 

....the current lot of swing voters?  Nearly 25 million more people are estimated to have voted this time than four years ago.  We have no idea what the swing voters within that electorate are like as of yet.  Let alone that the dispersion of their values on a two dimensional scale will even be remotely as important to their voting behavior as wanting to vote Trump out of office.

4 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

If it was name recognition was was buttigieg polling higher?

He wasn't.  Here's RCP's head-to-heads for Buttigieg, Harris, and Warren.  As I said, this assertion is entirely unfounded.

7 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

The ones that have done that showed that it was sexism that drove some of it. 

Of course sexism is a huge obstacle for female candidates.  But whether it was debilitating vis-a-vis Biden for certain candidates of a certain party in this certain election against that certain candidate for such a certain office is an entirely different question.

11 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

I think that's unlikely given the turnout we did get. As you said, it was a referendum on Trump.

If it's unlikely because it was a referendum on Trump then it's equally unlikely those female candidates - including one who was on the ticket - would have lost white male votes Biden gained.

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

 

He wasn't.  Here's RCP's head-to-heads for Buttigieg, Harris, and Warren.  As I said, this assertion is entirely unfounded.

And yet more people thought Bloomberg could make it. Weird, that. 

The Harris poll in the above is meaningless as it was 3 months before the rest. But ultimately ill stand by the overall statement because at the end of the day Biden won, and there are a whole lot of people out there who are not going to vote for a woman over a man. 

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

Of course sexism is a huge obstacle for female candidates.  But whether it was debilitating vis-a-vis Biden for certain candidates of a certain party in this certain election against that certain candidate for such a certain office is an entirely different question.

Again, we have data on this and it isnt particularly good for your hypothesis. And ultimately given the numbers the answer is clearly that higher barriers to entry would have been enough for Trump to likely win. 

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

If it's unlikely because it was a referendum on Trump then it's equally unlikely those female candidates - including one who was on the ticket - would have lost white male votes Biden gained.

You're switching the argument. I'm suggesting that turnout wouldnt have changed much. I'm also suggesting that who voted for whom would have changed. Again, the data we have indicates men will vote for men, and women will vote for whomever. (Even worse, this is true regardless of ethnicity, meaning Warren would have likely lost more aa and Hispanic men too) In every race we measure this is the standard pattern. Why would this be different? Furthermore, we know of at least one race where having a woman didn't turn out people particularly much. 

Do you have data suggesting otherwise? That turnout of other demos would have offset the sexism of men? That in a race decided in only a few states with a smaller value than 2016 (az + wi + ga would make Trump win, iirc) that sexiam would be somehow overcome?

[GrimTuesday]

1 hour ago, Lollygag said:

They're not listening to Democrats.

They only watch Fox News, OANN, or Newsmax, Rush Limbaugh, Levin, etc. Where are they getting their frame of reference to even understand what Defund the Police means especially when they keep getting told it's just a few bad apples and see commercials about a lady calling 911 for an ambulance and no one being there? Others are just busy, don't pay attention much, whatever. Did you not just hear Cori Bush say the new Republicans don't even know who Breonna Taylor is?

There's a ton of steps between Defund the Police as a slogan and the checklist of police reforms that most people including a lot of Republicans support. But they don't have enough to make the jump that's intuitive to some Democrats who pay closer attention. That's why you need to be careful about how you frame stuff and you need to walk them through it.

 

See, I'm not talking about the sickos who are listening to the Fox News and OANNs of the world, I'm sorry to say because we both have people we care about who fall into that category, but they are gone, at least for now. I'm talking about the "moderates" who people like Tywin are always talking about how we can't do significant changes for fear of alienating. These are the people who are watching CNN or MSNBC and reading the New York Time or WAPO and are hearing it when members of the establishment or media figures who are establishment adjacent go on there and trash the left and the policies they are proposing.

47 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Truly, that is not what I was implying. 

Well, fair enough then, I apologize for reacting in such a way.

1 hour ago, DMC said:

I must say I find this myth-making that only Biden could've beaten Trump incredibly amusing.  The pandemic certainly lent narrative structure to the legend - a return to normalcy in such uncertain times.  And there's the valid aspects concerning his strength with uneducated whites and seniors as well.  But let's not kid ourselves - the election was wholesale a referendum on Trump.  One need only to look at the countervailing winds of the congressional races to elucidate that fact.

Now there are certain candidates I would have felt squeamish about.  I don't think Sanders could ever win the presidency, and I've felt that long before Trump came on the scene.  I think Buttigieg would have encountered difficulties, particularly considering with covid people were looking for reassurance and he looks younger than me.  Klobuchar too, simply because she's a thoroughly bad candidate.  But the rest?  Warren and Harris?  Booker and Castro?  Bullock and Inslee?  Hell even Gillibrand.  All would be very likely to enjoy the support Biden received, and most if not all have more interesting ways in which to tap into other constituencies.

None of us have any idea, of course, and never really will.  But I can't help but observe that this rapidly constructing folklore on Biden's victory - when not eight months ago virtually everyone agreed Biden was one of the least desirable candidates even as he was securing the nomination - is not only highly dubious but genuinely ludicrous.

I think that with the pandemic, had the Democrats spoken with a unified voice, healthcare could have been a winning issue for the Democrats if they had really focused the fact that millions of people were losing their healthcare due to no fault of their own in a time where everyone should have healthcare. Of course, that also means that things play out differently in terms of we would have seen a lot of healthcare insurance dollars being funneled into the race against Sanders. It's actually kind of interesting to think about how things might have gone differently.

[SFDanny]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

I must say I find this myth-making that only Biden could've beaten Trump incredibly amusing.<snip/>

None of us have any idea, of course, and never really will.  But I can't help but observe that this rapidly constructing folklore on Biden's victory - when not eight months ago virtually everyone agreed Biden was one of the least desirable candidates even as he was securing the nomination - is not only highly dubious but genuinely ludicrous.

(bold emphasis added)

I whole heatedly agree with most of this, but that, of course, doesn't mean Biden didn't bring things as a candidate that others didn't have. Eight years of Vice President to a very popular President is a qualification that can't be overlooked. Experience is a good thing to most voters. Providing hope and stability amid chaos is as well. How many of the other candidates could have done what he did is, indeed, unknowable. Acknowledging he led a campaign that successfully kicked Trump's ass out of the White House looks to be a simple fact. Or I hope it is. We can build on that.

As I've said before, I supported Harris in her run for the Presidency, in my very limited way, and did so not only because of my profound San Francisco bias. I thought her capable of both uniting a broad coalition that I doubted others, including Biden, would be able to do. I saw a lot of Obama's best qualities in her. I still do. I hope to support her in her next run for President.

That being said, there are incredible obstacles to overcome on the way to electing a woman president. Too many of us, not meaning you @DMC, underestimated the depth of sexism's hold on our society. I should have known that from my own family experience. Many of my relatives are Trump supporting evangelical voters who see a woman as President as a sin against God's natural order. And there is one thing I also know about that demographic - they vote. They vote in numbers well beyond their percentage in the population. People who want to break down these discriminatory barriers have a lot of work to do.

To me, one of the central lessons of this election is that the number of people who came out to vote for Trump spells a very long struggle ahead. But the other lesson that frames the whole election is that it looks like about eighty million people stood up against Trump and for democracy. That's historic. That's truly impressive. We can build on that too.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

But ultimately ill stand by the overall statement because at the end of the day Biden won, and there are a whole lot of people out there who are not going to vote for a woman over a man. 

....Uh, your statement here was Buttigieg was polling higher than Harris and Warren.  And it was wrong.  But, ok, that doesn't matter because..Biden won.

4 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Again, we have data on this and it isnt particularly good for your hypothesis. And ultimately given the numbers the answer is clearly that higher barriers to entry would have been enough for Trump to likely win. 

You have numbers that show how Harris or Warren would have done against Trump on November 3, after the pandemic and a full campaign that never existed?  What other hypothetical data are you drawing from Mr. Wizard?  What a fucking joke.

8 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

Do you have data suggesting otherwise? That turnout of other demos would have offset the sexism of men? That in a race decided in only a few states with a smaller value than 2016 (az + wi + ga would make Trump win, iirc) that sexiam would be somehow overcome?

No, I don't, and neither do you.  But the expectation that Warren would have increased turnout/margins with women compared to Biden, or Harris would too - as well as black men - is entirely as justified as your expectation they would have lost white male votes compared to Biden.  Stop applying your banal takeaways from decades worth of research on female office-seekers to the specifics of the 2020 presidential election.  You don't know what you're talking about.

[Lollygag]

16 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

See, I'm not talking about the sickos who are listening to the Fox News and OANNs of the world, I'm sorry to say because we both have people we care about who fall into that category, but they are gone, at least for now. I'm talking about the "moderates" who people like Tywin are always talking about how we can't do significant changes for fear of alienating. These are the people who are watching CNN or MSNBC and reading the New York Time or WAPO and are hearing it when members of the establishment or media figures who are establishment adjacent go on there and trash the left and the policies they are proposing.

I like Cori Bush's response that she was going to talk to those Republicans anyhow, but yes, manage expectations. But there's still a large swath of disengaged voters who need to be reached who also don't have the context to understand that it was never about no more police anywhere.

Maybe instead of just giving into the roadblock or just blasting through it and freaking everyone out, how's about when this sort of either/or comes up, ask if it's really an either/or and look for door #3, #4, ....

Have the motivational slogans, but make sure the weapon you're handing the Republicans is only a squirt gun. There's even opportunity to put them on defense with the right one. Think scalpel, not Hulk SMASH! 

[Ser Reptitious]

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

So far as being able to bet Trump goes, I think it's worth remembering that the current lot of swing voters are not economically right/socially left - what the media likes to think of as centrists. They're economically left/socially right - something quite different. 

These people all too often get overlooked by the media and by (to its own detriment) the Democratic party. Especially among the latter I get the sense that "spectrum thinking" is way too ingrained, whereby right wingers are both economically and socially conservative, centrists/moderates are economically conservative and socially liberal(-ish) and left wingers are liberal (in the American sense) on both. The economically left/socially right crowd simply does not fall neatly enough into that linear way of thinking.

But the Republicans are very much aware of these people, and they keep them on their side by riling them up about social issues (especially abortion). The Democrats should counter that by steering the election conversation away from social issues* and hone in on ecomonic ones instead (health care, minimum wage, pandemic relief). Kansas is proof that even in socially very conservative states Democrats can succeed when they keep the focus on economic and everyday life issues. 

For both the Georgia run-offs and beyond, the Democrats should be hammering one simple message: We want to make your life better, the Republicans will make it worse. Constantly go on the offensive about the ACA lawsuit currently before the supreme court, and mercilessly bang on about the stalled Covid-relief package being blocked by the Republican Senate. Point out to Georgians that the only way that they will get any money in their pockets to help out in this difficult time will be if Democrats control the Senate. Full stop.

 

(*to be clear, I'm not advocating ignoring social issues, but rather to keep the primary focus on economic issues that impact the working class)

[The Anti-Targ]

I'm probably slow to the realisation, but I think the greatest damage Trump will do to the USA in his entire 4 years as president will be the period after 3 Nov 2020.

[Guest]

11 hours ago, Lollygag said:

Can't embrace any policies if you get voted out of office. And like I said, it's not the attack, it's the effectiveness of the attack.

It would probably help the left with messaging if moderate Democrats didn't adopt right-wing talking points verbatim.

[Relic]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm probably slow to the realisation

Probably? 

[Fez]

3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I'm probably slow to the realisation, but I think the greatest damage Trump will do to the USA in his entire 4 years as president will be the period after 3 Nov 2020.

Depends on how you define these things. It's possible certainly, because of how bad COVID is ravaging things right now and how many unnecessary deaths that might cause. There's also the damage to democracy as a concept that he's doing.

But on the other hand, he's been damaging democracy his whole term in office. Plus the various climate regulation rollbacks he's been doing are still maybe the biggest longterm problem, and those have also been happening the whole time.