It's official: Trump Is History, Says The Prediction Professor

[tassojunior]

2 neutral polls in a week now show Biden's margin in his home state of PA has sunk from 12% to 3%. Biden doesn't win without PA, IMO. And yet his national margin stays high leading me to think the Dems % in California, NY, MA, etc has shot up skewing the Electoral College odds. Hillary ended up with a 2% "win". And yet Silver is out today with what may be generous odds:

 

and here's the average of polls today and then Silver's analysis of them today:

 and a lot of this is based on Florida polls I am very doubtful about:

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by tassojunior

[tassojunior]

and speaking of independents...NYT today:

""That is largely because of his difficulties among independents. Although his favorability among Democrats appears to have climbed in the wake of the conventions — now roughly matching Mr. Trump’s overwhelmingly positive ratings among Republican voters — 53 percent of likely independent voters expressed a negative view of Mr. Biden, according to the Quinnipiac survey. Just 39 percent saw him positively.""

Election Updates: Biden Still Leads in Post-Convention Polls https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/02/us/trump-vs-biden

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, tassojunior said:

2 neutral polls in a week now show Biden's margin in his home state of PA has sunk from 12% to 3%. Biden doesn't win without PA, IMO. And yet his national margin stays high leading me to think the Dems % in California, NY, MA, etc has shot up skewing the Electoral College odds. Hillary ended up with a 2% "win". And yet Silver is out today with what may be generous odds:

To use the 538 averages, Biden is leading by 4.3 in Pennsylvania today.  His lead was as high as 7.7 in mid-July.  So all these polls show that things aren't looking quite as bad for President Toxic as six weeks ago.  The economy is maybe a bit better.  COVID-19, which was surging then, has stabilized for now at about 1000 deaths a day.  Some of it may be the RNC and a small convention bump. 

Remember.  Even McCain, in 2008,  was in the lead with his Palin convention bump for a week or two around now.  President Toxic needed a lot more than this out of his RNC. 

And the Palin fiasco might be a relevant comparison .  President Toxic doesn't have Palin, of course.  But throwing red meat at the crowd may help a little in the short run, but hurt in the long run.  Just as an anecdote, Morning Joe said today that speaking as a "law and order conservative", which he is, this isn't even close.  Biden is being thoughtful and balanced about the underlying issues.  As in condemning violence, but condoning policies to reform the police and promote racial equality and justice.  President Toxic is just presenting a one-dimensional picture.  Pure red meat.

There's not even a question anymore whether President Toxic is peddling hope or fear.  This is pure authoritarianism.  Pure fear.  To me, it feels un-American.  And is it working?  Is Biden behind in the polls?  Did Rep. Omar lose her primary?  

The whole strategy is built around ignorance, fear, and reaction.  Biden will defund the police and make America less safe.  The only problem is that a majority of Independents - let alone Democrats - just don't buy it.  Maybe ads like this will persuade them.  But I think the majority of Independents will look at that ad like Morning Joe does, and say that President Toxic is throwing fuel on the fire.  That ad says, "President Trump is making it stop."  About half of Independents flat out disagree.  They think he is making it worse.  And if he's re-elected there will be "more violence".

I think a good phrase everyone should have in their mind is "color intensifier".  That's Charlie Cook's phrase from 2018.  It ended up being an accurate description of why things went in two different directions at the same time.  Meaning areas that leaned blue got bluer, and areas that leaned red got redder. 

In 2018 his prediction came true.  It explains why Democrats like Lauren Underwood and Lucy McBath won so many suburban House seats that were trending blue.  Even Newt Gingrich's old seat!  So Gingrich right now is blathering on about how Democrats are causing lawlessness and every other type of evil known to old White men.  But his district is now in the hands of a Black woman who wants reasonable gun control laws.  This stuff appears to be toxic with suburban women of any race.

Meanwhile, in 2018, I was sending money to women like McCaskill and Heitkamp, from red states that were getting redder.  They got slaughtered in the polls in Fall 2018.  And it was White men that slaughtered them.  Who can blame old White men whose very testicles were on the chopping block - at least according to old White man President Toxic?

I'm a Lichtman boy.  Most of this is noise.  Behind the noise what I suspect is happening is that people are making a decision that President Toxic is the wrong guy for the job.

I've read polls this week that suggest that some White men have shifted back to President Toxic relative to a few months ago.  And a small portion of Blacks - maybe 5 %? - have shifted into the undecided column.  Probably black conservatives who listened to guys like Brewer and said they'd think about it some more.  Among other groups, Biden does not appear to be slipping.

In terms of everything I said above in this thread about how I don't see how Kenosha and this issue automatically hurts Biden, I stand by that.  Morning Joe said that emphatically this morning.  He thinks Biden is playing this right, and getting ahead of it with his big ad buy.  And this story provides a lot of data about the same thing:

 

Trump attacks take a toll on Black Lives Matter support

But a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows more voters favor Joe Biden to handle public safety.

Quote

Voters' favorable views of the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped by 9 percentage points since June, including a 13-point dip among Republicans, according to new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. 

Trump's recent emphasis on the protests in cities like Kenosha and Portland, Ore., isn't exactly to his political benefit. Despite Trump's attempts to cast himself as the law-and-order candidate since George Floyd's killing in May, the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows more voters trust former Vice President Joe Biden over Trump to handle public safety, 47 percent to 39 percent.

Voters also prefer Biden on race relations by a 19-point margin. Though a narrow majority of voters still view the Black Lives Matter movement favorably, bipartisan support has eroded over the past two months, as Trump has encouraged police violence against protesters, called the Black Lives Matter movement a “symbol of hate,” “discriminatory,” “Marxist” and “bad for Black people.” This week, Trump has tried to pin blame on Biden for violence in American cities.

 

“This is the direct effect of the strategy of Donald Trump and Fox News,” said veteran Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. “The movement to a certain extent, over the last month or so, had been losing ground in controlling the narrative.”

The protests were "resoundingly successful" in creating an "inflection point" around racism, Belcher said. But the drop in favorability, he continued, comes as Trump increasingly describes the protests as “violence” and “anarchy,” rather than about police brutality and racial injustice.

“That is a huge problem for Donald Trump — if he's in fact trying to be the safety and law and order candidate, and he's losing in the public mind on that front,” Belcher said.

Overall, the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows Trump with a 42 percent approval rating, unchanged from last week, before the Republican convention. 

Morning Consult's latest presidential tracking poll shows Biden 8 points ahead of Trump, equal to his lead before both conventions last month. Some other public surveys do show a slight tightening in the Biden-Trump race, though there is still a lack of direct data tying the protests or shootings of civilians in Kenosha and Portland to Biden or Trump’s standing electorally.

I think that sums it up.  The visual version of this is the picture of the fat cat McCloskeys holding an assault rifle and waving a gun at Black people.  

The poll results are slightly better for Biden than that massive YouGov poll I went on and on about.  In this one, Biden has an even bigger advantage on dealing with race relations.  In the YouGov poll, President Toxic led Biden on crime by a few points.  This one uses the word "public safety", and Biden is leading on that.  

One of the talking heads on Morning Joe said that part of what Team Toxic is desperate to do is change the subject from COVID-19, where the majority of America now believes President Toxic did a poor job. 

Biden did an excellent job of tying the crime and COVID-19 issues together, I thought.  "Do you feel safer?  Are you safer today than you were four years ago?"  Biden just needs to keeping asking the question relentlessly.  I'm a liberal Democrat.  But I look at that Trump filth above and see it as pure hate, pure fear mongering, pure authoritarianism.  Conservative Never Trumper Republican Morning Joe sees it the same way.  This is bad news for President Toxic, I think.

The other question that Biden needs to keep asking is the Reagan one:  "Are you better off than you were four years ago?"  The objective answer for most Americans is NO.

Playing off what I wrote about Ohio above, this election will test to what degree perception is reality.  Even if it is the economy, stupid, maybe people who like President Toxic will simply decide that the economy is fine.  And that COVID-19 is under control and China's fault.  The day Trump was elected a lot of Republicans decided the economy was a lot better all of a sudden.  And a lot of Democrats decided it was a lot worse.  If you go by data, like jobs, Youngstown is no better under President Toxic.  Even in January 2020, before the plague started.  And now it is actually worse.  Will that matter to White men in Youngstown?  (There are Black factory workers in Youngstown.  If they are conservative, this rhetoric may be nudging some of them too.)

Morning Consult released a bunch of state polls in the last few days.  A bunch of them are from Aug 21-23, so before the RNC.  But they were all taken the same days.  And I thought the results were interesting.  And they may have something to do with a trend.  Biden was up 9 points in Wisconsin, 10 points in Arizona, 3 points in Georgia.  President Toxic was up 1 point in Texas and 5 points in Georgia.  A different poll out today from Opinium, which seems like an outlier, says Biden was up 13 points in Wisconsin for a poll from Aug. 21-28.  It reinforces the idea that there is no evidence that Wisconsin is buying President Toxic's fear and hate.

It's one poll.  But think about that.  Biden is probably doing well in Wisconsin.  But he's doing just as well in Arizona.  He's actually doing better in Georgia - and Texas! - than he is in Ohio.  At least in this one poll.  So these may all be blips and useless noise.  But that story about Minnesota I posted nailed it, I think.  Wherever there are people of color and cities and suburbs, Biden will do better.  Wherever old White men and cows roam free, and perhaps wherever there are working class factory workers of any race, President Toxic will do better.  I'll say it again.  Some of those factory workers are Black and Hispanic.  What's just not clear is whether they will hold President Toxic accountable for the fact that he never brought the factory jobs back, as promised.

Morning Joe made another point that is relevant.  Remember how Blacks would never turn out for Mr. Crime Bill Biden?  Well, President Toxic has actually turned that into an advantage for Joe Biden.  It's hard to recast Mr. Crime Bill as the guy who will unleash the fires of hate on every city in America.  And then when Chicago and New York and LA are toast, President Crime Bill and Vice President Prosecutor will lead the angry swarms of Black Marxists (one of whom was elected to Congress!) into the suburbs to pillage and destroy.  No one is safe.  Our only hope is President Toxic.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

G.I.V.E.M.E.A.F.U.C.K.I.N.G.B.R.E.A.K.

My guess is that we are watching Black turnout in the 2020 election go through the fucking roof.  President Toxic is cozying up to White vigilantes who have actually shot peaceful protesters dead.  So the symbols of Black America include Jacob Blake's Mom, who is being the voice of hope and unity and healing.  And Jocob Blake's Dad, who called on BLM protesters in Kenosha to raise a clenched fist.  I suspect both parents, and both messages, speak very powerfully to most Black Americans.  One speaks to the hurt and anger and rage that is authentic.  The other speaks to the fact that Blacks haven't forget who MLK or John Lewis were.  or what they stood for.

I can't imagine Blacks will greet this election with apathy.  It has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.  While there is a small minority of Black conservatives like Jack Brewer who may be thinking about voting for President Toxic, I imagine many more will do whatever it takes to get this horrific racist asshole out of office.

 

Edited September 2, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, tassojunior said:

and speaking of independents...NYT today:

""That is largely because of his difficulties among independents. Although his favorability among Democrats appears to have climbed in the wake of the conventions — now roughly matching Mr. Trump’s overwhelmingly positive ratings among Republican voters — 53 percent of likely independent voters expressed a negative view of Mr. Biden, according to the Quinnipiac survey. Just 39 percent saw him positively.""

Election Updates: Biden Still Leads in Post-Convention Polls https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/02/us/trump-vs-biden

Congratulations!  You got my point.

I know there was a ton of content I posted about Independents in the YouGov poll.  But what they found is entirely consistent with this poll you cite.  For a lot of Independents, this is a "hold your nose" election.  A minority view President Toxic favorably, and a minority view Biden favorably.  Add Pence and Harris and you get the same thing.  So I suspect that adds up into a majority of Independents who view either President Toxic or Biden favorably.  But there's also some who don't like either.  And while it's not clear from the poll, that probably correlates with the 20 % or so who say they care little or not at all about who wins.  Probably because they don't like either of them.

We have been here before, and done this before.  In 2016 the people who didn't respect or trust either candidate swung heavily to Trump.  And it was probably at the last minute, because their thinking is fluid.  Which would explain why Trump did better than the polls suggested.  There's almost always a late break to one or the other candidate.  In 2016 it broke to President Toxic.   

Karl Rove said on Election Night 2016 that this is why President Toxic won.  People who didn't like either candidate voted for change.  In 2016 that was Trump.

That 6 minute analysis sums up most of the important lessons of 2016.  But particularly the last few minutes is where Rove talks about how President Toxic won the "hold your nose and pick one smelly turd" vote.  South Park satirized it as the choice between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich.

My guess in 2020 is this is bad news for President Toxic.  The same people who didn't like what they saw, held their nose, and voted for change may do so again.  Of course, President Toxic could portray himself in 2016 in a way Biden can't.  He was the outsider who'd go in and flip the table and drain the swamp.  Biden is Mr. Establishment and, if Trump has his way, the poster child Swamp Thing. 

Those polls suggest that Independents are already leaning toward the idea that President Toxic isn't making things better.  And, if re-elected, he will probably just make things worse.  If I'm right, and they hold their nose for Biden/Harris, it won't be out of love and deep respect. 

I do think Biden (like Reagan) is playing to hope.  I do think President Toxic is playing to fear.  My biggest criticism of Hillary in 2016 is she played the fear card too much.  She assumed that people would be so afraid of Trump that he couldn't win.  Trippi confirms that in the 2016 piece above.  Fear did not work in 2016, if you view it that way.  I don't think President Toxic will convince voters that Joe Biden is the end of civilization as we know it.

This article below only tangents on your point.  But I think the author absolutely nailed it.  I'm putting it here because I think this applies in particular to Independents who don't believe the worst things people say about either President Toxic or Destroyer Joe.

The Democrats’ Next Challenge: Hit Trump Where He’s Strong

Quote

What would successful attacks on Trump’s positives look like? Anti-Trump Republicans who started the Lincoln Project, a political action committee, released a commercial spot this week that went after one of Trump’s most positive positives—his promise, stated in the 2016 campaign and reiterated in his acceptance speech, to keep America safe. Safe, the spot asked, when we’ve passed 178,000 dead from Covid-19? When Trump has adopted no coherent plan to defeat the contagion; and with tens of thousands more projected to fall by year’s end? Such a line of attack might persuade older voters, who tilt toward Trump and are more vulnerable to the virus than the young. “A vote for Trump is a vote for death” might overdo it, but its gist would not.

Trump has boasted endlessly about building the greatest economy in the history of the world, making it one of his most positive positives. Even if that were once true (and plenty of experts would step up to dispute it), it no longer is. Thanks to Covid-19, the economy is proceeding at a stagger. Millions remain out of work, thousands of schools remain shuttered, restaurants face extinction, thousands of small businesses have closed, and economic and social uncertainty prevails. If Biden can’t cancel this Trump positive by November, he doesn’t deserve to be president. Every time Trump dispatches economic adviser Larry Kudlow to brag about a V-shaped recovery, Biden should portray Trump as our generation’s Herbert Hoover.

It's the economy, stupid.  The polls show that if there's an area where Biden needs to close the deal, it's the economy, stupid.  I agree with Shafer.  If Biden and his team can't figure out how to sell that, Biden doesn't deserve to be President.

There's another point Shafer made that did help me to understand something.  I've said in this thread that it amazes me that only 30 % of Americans see President Toxic as a good person.  About half of America sees Joe Biden as a good person.  I don't remember the exact number, but I think about 1 in 3 Republicans say President Toxic is not a good person.  So how does that work?  How do you elect someone you see as a bad person to be POTUS?

Shafer's point is that Biden can't turn this around, and should not bother trying.  He can say, like Hillary tried to in 2016, that this guy is a bad person who doesn't deserve to win.  But he did win.  And he won despite the fact that many Republicans don't think he's a good person.  And Joe Biden, like Hillary Clinton, is not the one to make the case.  Here's what Shafer said:

Quote

How might Biden blunt this arrow in the Trump quiver? Unlike other politicians, Trump has never pretended to be a better person than he is, so rolling back this positive might be impossible. His opponents can’t do Trump any further damage by conveying to his supporters that he’s insincere, hypocritical, and contradictory because his supporters have already gleaned that.

There could be a debate zinger in that.  Biden could just read the poll data that 1 in 3 Republicans think Trump is not a good person.  So it turns out that I have a lot of things in common with Republicans, after all. 

Mostly, he should keep asking people if they are better off and feel safer than they did when President Toxic came to power.

Edited September 2, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

The way I always put that axiom is " When you have to choose one of two evils, choose the one you haven't tried before". There's a lot of good old American pragmatism in that even if it's not very hopeful.  I think a lot of people were hopeful for a life-long liberal Democrat who had opposed the genocidal war in Iraq, was gay-friendly, and promised universal healthcare being a better risk than Hillary. I doubt if many will still give Trump the benefit of the doubt for changing in a 2nd term. (But then you have to ask whether the Dems haven't been tried before either).

To me it was pretty clear (and I've seen a few polls) that the reason Biden got a personal bump after this DNC speech but no increase in poll numbers was that his choice of Kamala had increased their % in California, etc. but had equally decreased their % in the swing states, especially the midwest. Even before the final speech, the poll numbers in the midwest had fallen 2% and after Kenosha (not the RNC), midwest poll numbers plunged another 2%. Biden's average lead in his home of Pennsylvania is down to 4% from 8% before Kamala and Kenosha. The other midwest states may be worse. 

According to RCP, we're exactly where we were at this point in 2016, with the Democratic ticket having a lead of 3.3% in the battleground states on Sept. 2. And the betting markets have the race at even money for the first time. 

Doesn't get much more deja vuey than that.  

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by tassojunior

[Pete1111]

16 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

I'm not really responding to your post @Pete1111.  But the specific states you cited dovetail with something I was going to post, anyway.  I thought this was a really good analysis relating to Lichtman's ideas about fundamental drivers.  It's a counterpoint to, "it's the economy, stupid."

Why Has Minnesota Been Slow to Realign?

The author makes a great argument that, at least in the Midwest, it's the geography, stupid.

Iowa, for example, had the biggest Democratic lean of these seven Midwestern states he looks at back in 1988.  By 2016 it had the second biggest Republican lean.  (Indiana was # 1.)

Why?  Here's what the author says:

The easiest way to make his point is to just list the percentage of voters in these states that live in large cities:

Illinois:  69 %

Minnesota  63 %

Michigan 55 %

Ohio  51 %

Indiana 48 %

In the article he doesn't give a specific number for Wisconsin or Iowa.  And it's not 100 % clear how he defines "large cities".  But it is clear that he's including suburbs and exurbs.  To me, this dovetails with Rahm Emanuel's idea of "metropolitan alliances".  So you won't like this much, @tassojunior.  I'm throwing Rahm and suburban women into the melting pot together.  Watch out!

The whole article is detailed and thorough.  His point about Minnesota is that the Republicans might be waiting a while.  Because despite being called The Land Of 10,000 Lakes, Minnesota is kind of The Land Of Twin Cities And Suburbs.  Mike Pence put on a good show up in The Iron Range.  But if The Iron Range becomes redder, and the suburbs become bluer, that's not good math for Republicans. 

The 538 poll averages today show Biden with a 6 point lead in Minnesota, and President Toxic with a 2 point lead in Ohio.  As the author argues, the pattern is clear.  In 2016, Michigan was the cutting edge between winning and losing.  So far, at least, it looks like the pendulum is swinging to blue, not red.  But it's too early to tell.

This other article from 538 covers a lot of the same ground as the article above, and presents a somewhat more optimistic picture for Republicans who want to take Minnesota.  I'm including it because the thing it adds is one possible driver:  the concentration of non-Hispanic Whites without bachelor's degrees.  This graphic from the 538 article sums it up nicely:

Arguably, you could also say "It's the education, stupid."  Having gone to a liberal arts college in Minnesota, this all makes sense to me.  Paul Wellstone won in 1990 because he could go up to the Iron Range and preach left-wing populism, and it worked.  As long as he went easy on the gun stuff.  Now there's more guns, and fewer jobs in the Iron Range.  So where the educated people are - the cities and suburbs - that where Democrats do well.  And it's about the only place they do really well these days. 

2020 will be a test of whether, and how, economic fundamentals matter.  If Lichtman is right, President Toxic can't survive an election in which the economy and jobs have tanked.  Not to mention COVID-19 and all the other stuff.  That said, Barack Obama won re-election in 2012 on the backs of Blacks, who turned out at an even higher rate than 2008.  Despite the fact that the Black economy in particular was the slowest to recover from The Great Recession. 

So will Team Toxic not only turn out their base, but add to it with new voters that didn't vote in 2016?  Given what happened with Obama and Blacks in 2012, it's possible.  But Blacks knew that Obama did not cause The Great Recession.  So far it looks like Trump's America doesn't think he's to blame for anything going on in America in 2020.  I'll be fascinated to see how that plays out when people vote.  And to see which people vote.

Ohio county tells story of the seismic shift of working-class voters toward GOP

I'm including that article mostly for the headline.  If you read the whole story, the headline sounds better for Republicans than it is.  So in the county around Youngstown, Ohio, enthusiasm for President Toxic is high.  But the article also states that in suburban Columbus, Ohio, in 2018 a Democrat came within 4 points of tossing out a Republican in a district that was supposed to be totally safe for the GOP.  For me, it all keeps coming back to the bumper sticker "metropolitan alliances".  

One question I have that 2020 will maybe help answer is whether there is anything that "The Establishment" can do that will make things right for these places like Youngstown.  I say "The Establishment" because one way of looking at it is that whether it's Jeb! or Hillary or good ole' Destroyer Joe, some Trumpians seem to be convinced they are all at best blood sucking swamp creatures, and at worst pedophiles who eat babies.  The other question is whether President Toxic can do anything that will convince his supporters that we're not really on the fast track to Greatness in 2020.  

I'm going to close with a summary of all manufacturing jobs in Ohio and the trend going back to the 1990's.  I picked January of certain years because that's the month new Presidents were inaugurated.  So the assumption is that Presidents are somehow judged based on what actually happens while they have power.  Again, if Lichtman is right, and voters make judgments about how well incumbents governed, President Toxic should have real problems in Ohio.  And at least some polls show him behind.

All Employees: Manufacturing in Ohio

January 2001      992,900 manufacturing jobs

January 2009      671,000 manufacturing jobs

July 2009             609,700 manufacturing jobs

January 2013      655,100 manufacturing jobs

January 2017      689,900 manufacturing jobs

January 2020      697,000 manufacturing jobs

July 2020             657,200 manufacturing jobs

The best way to get the picture of factory jobs in Ohio is to look at that long-term chart.  It's bleak.  Ohio lost about 300,000 factory jobs under W.  "Recovery" didn't get close to getting back to the 1 million + factory jobs Ohio had under Bill Clinton.  They never even got back to the 767,000 jobs they had in December 2007, when the Great Recession started.

You can look at Obama/Biden a few ways.  If you start counting from July 2009, at the bottom of The Great Recession, Ohio gained about 80,000 jobs.  Again, that didn't even get them back to December 2007, let alone December 1999. If you count the 61,300 jobs lost in the first six months of Obama/Biden, that works out to a new gain of 20,000 manufacturing jobs after eight years of Obama/Biden.

I don't think Ohio factory workers look at this FRED data every month.  But I do think what the numbers speak to - stagnation, crappy paying jobs, addiction - is what we keep reading about that led them to gamble on President Toxic.

On an objective level, President Toxic has made it worse.  There's over 30,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in Ohio than when he took office.  Even if you count from January 2017 to January 2020, pre-COVID-19, the "best economy ever" produced a net gain of about 7,000 factory jobs in three years.

If the question is whether President Toxic brought jobs back, the answer is no.  If the question is whether those rich "job creators" took their tax cuts and created factory jobs, the answer is no.

President Toxic will replay 2016 and blame all this on NAFTA and Destroyer Joe.  But there is a difference.   Trump speaks as if he isn't really President.  And he never really made promises.  But he is President.  And he did makes promises.  And people are not better off. 

Biden can at least say in 7 1/2 out of 8 years the recovery created tens of thousands of jobs, without having to fill the trough of the greedy millionaires and billionaires.  Even if you count before the plague, President Toxic just couldn't do that.

Jobs and the economy are not the only issue driving this election.  But to the degree people in Ohio vote on the reality of their jobs and lives, as opposed to the Trump Reality TV Show, it's not clear to me that President Toxic can pull this off.  I don't believe he can simply make the same promises that Smartest Business Genius Ever Donald Trump did in 2016.

 

I'm not really responding to your post either other than to admit that my Miss Cleo comment is a stretch.  She wasn't really Jamaican, just played one on TV, and she left planet earth in 2016, so unless someone can reach her in the hereafter it wouldn't be prudent to compare the perfessor's predictions to her's at this juncture.  

That said, I don't see his methods taking into account inferior campaigning ability, eg the post that reminded 'tis better to protect votes from being flipped.   Hillary discovered too late that Wisconson, etc. were being flipped.  Worst of all, effects of how fake news was weaponized against Hillary on social media, and how similar initiatives are underway now, is beyond his methodology.

Back to Minnesota, CNN interviewd a blond female 2016 Trump voter from the MPLS suburbs on the news last night.  She discussed her concern that Biden has lost a few steps mentally and is not fit for the Oval Office.  Shitty unbalanced reporting, I thought.  Yet there are lots of folk like her thereabouts.  Minnesota is not a slam dunk for Biden, in my uneducated opinion.

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Pete1111
Fix

[Buddy2]

Delaware is Joe Biden's home state, not Pennsylvania.

 

The same for actor Ryan Phillippe despite being a fan of all the Philadelphia sports teams.

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, Pete1111 said:

Back to Minnesota, CNN interviewd a blond female 2016 Trump voter from the MPLS suburbs on the news last night.  She discussed her concern that Biden has lost a few steps mentally and is not fit for the Oval Office.  Shitty unbalanced reporting, I thought.  Yet there are lots of folk like her thereabouts.  Minnesota is not a slam dunk for Biden, in my uneducated opinion.

About a month ago some pollster, I think a Republican, said he'd been doing focus groups and the "Biden is a few steps behind" thing kept coming up among undecided voters.  The pollster's main point was don't underestimate President Toxic's resilience.  It comes up both in positive ways (Trump is strong.  He gets things done.) and negative ways (Biden is weak.  He's two steps behind.)  That's a good warning.  We should certainly not ever assume this is a slam dunk.

That said, some of this is that people are just repeating the scripted talking points of President Toxic.  We'll be hearing Biden is senile all through Election Day.

I'm not sure it hurts Biden.  All that poll data I posted included that the number of Independents who think Biden is not mentally fit to be President is in the low 40's (I think 42 %) whereas for Trump it's in the high 40's (I think 47 %).  And with Biden it has lowered expectations to the point where it's easy for him to look good unless he really screws it up. 

I was not a Biden fan last year, partly for this reason.  He'll never be someone I view as eloquent and smooth as silk.  But I've been impressed, both with his scripted teleprompter speeches and the impromptu stuff.  He will almost certainly make some gaffes this Fall.  The only question is when, and will it matter.  It's actually a plus that he has a history of gaffes, as well as stuttering.  Because of that, it's harder to argue that when he's less than dazzling it's a result of clear cognitive degeneration.

I agree with you that Lichtman's argument that what happens during the campaign basically doesn't matter is a stretch.  But I do agree with his fundamental point that winning is driven by governing, not campaigns.  As in, if you governed really well people are going to vote for you.  If you governed really crappy, people won't.  He has been right 9 out of 9.  So the basic concept that people are predisposed to reward competence and punish incompetence makes sense in theory, and holds up in practice.

Lichtman's claim to fame is obviously that he's been able to call elections based on how political parties have governed.  I think the greatest value of his theory is to flip it.  Instead of using it to predict who will win, use it to figure out how you govern in a way that will result in re-election.  If you forget about the prediction part and just look at Lichtman as a theory about how you govern, and what voters really care about, it makes a lot of sense to me.

I'll be really interested to see how Biden works with Congress.  There's theories that Obama was his own worst enemy.  He was condescending, he made anyone who disagreed feel like a racist, blah blah blah.  We know for sure he was not from the back slapping, poker playing, "where's the bottle of whiskey?" school of deal making.  I've also read that at least some staffers in Obamaland wanted Biden to stop cutting deals with Congress (i.e. Republicans) during crises because they thought he gave away too much.

I never felt it was worth worrying about this.  Because by the time the Republicans took back the House in 2010, I think it was a known fact the McConnell, Gingrich, and other Republicans had adopted an "obstruct everything" strategy.  So even if Obama bent over backwards, which I don't think he did, I assume he still would have been met with obstruction on any big policy - like Obamacare or climate change..

Biden better go in with the understanding that he needs some major policy achievements if he doesn't want it to all come crashing down in 2022 and/or 2024.  in theory, Biden should be better than most Presidents at getting what he wants out of Congress and cutting deals.  And if he does that, that isn't something that makes him looks senile.  Even though I voted for Bernie in the primary, one reason I'm not too disappointed in Biden as nominee is I think he has a much better shot than Bernie would at getting laws passed that people support.  And that actually make a difference in their lives.

I certainly hope Lichtman is more right than wrong that this is what people care about: governance, and getting things done that have a real impact in people's lives.

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[Suckrates]

 

Trump AINT history unless WE make it so... VOTE HIM OUT !!!!!!

"I'm READY, are YOU?"

[tassojunior]

18 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

About a month ago some pollster, I think a Republican, said he'd been doing focus groups and the "Biden is a few steps behind" thing kept coming up among undecided voters.  The pollster's main point was don't underestimate President Toxic's resilience.  It comes up both in positive ways (Trump is strong.  He gets things done.) and negative ways (Biden is weak.  He's two steps behind.)  That's a good warning.  We should certainly not ever assume this is a slam dunk.

That said, some of this is that people are just repeating the scripted talking points of President Toxic.  We'll be hearing Biden is senile all through Election Day.

I'm not sure it hurts Biden.  All that poll data I posted included that the number of Independents who think Biden is not mentally fit to be President is in the low 40's (I think 42 %) whereas for Trump it's in the high 40's (I think 47 %).  And with Biden it has lowered expectations to the point where it's easy for him to look good unless he really screws it up. 

I was not a Biden fan last year, partly for this reason.  He'll never be someone I view as eloquent and smooth as silk.  But I've been impressed, both with his scripted teleprompter speeches and the impromptu stuff.  He will almost certainly make some gaffes this Fall.  The only question is when, and will it matter.  It's actually a plus that he has a history of gaffes, as well as stuttering.  Because of that, it's harder to argue that when he's less than dazzling it's a result of clear cognitive degeneration.

I agree with you that Lichtman's argument that what happens during the campaign basically doesn't matter is a stretch.  But I do agree with his fundamental point that winning is driven by governing, not campaigns.  As in, if you governed really well people are going to vote for you.  If you governed really crappy, people won't.  He has been right 9 out of 9.  So the basic concept that people are predisposed to reward competence and punish incompetence makes sense in theory, and holds up in practice.

Lichtman's claim to fame is obviously that he's been able to call elections based on how political parties have governed.  I think the greatest value of his theory is to flip it.  Instead of using it to predict who will win, use it to figure out how you govern in a way that will result in re-election.  If you forget about the prediction part and just look at Lichtman as a theory about how you govern, and what voters really care about, it makes a lot of sense to me.

I'll be really interested to see how Biden works with Congress.  There's theories that Obama was his own worst enemy.  He was condescending, he made anyone who disagreed feel like a racist, blah blah blah.  We know for sure he was not from the back slapping, poker playing, "where's the bottle of whiskey?" school of deal making.  I've also read that at least some staffers in Obamaland wanted Biden to stop cutting deals with Congress (i.e. Republicans) during crises because they thought he gave away too much.

I never felt it was worth worrying about this.  Because by the time the Republicans took back the House in 2010, I think it was a known fact the McConnell, Gingrich, and other Republicans had adopted an "obstruct everything" strategy.  So even if Obama bent over backwards, which I don't think he did, I assume he still would have been met with obstruction on any big policy - like Obamacare or climate change..

Biden better go in with the understanding that he needs some major policy achievements if he doesn't want it to all come crashing down in 2022 and/or 2024.  in theory, Biden should be better than most Presidents at getting what he wants out of Congress and cutting deals.  And if he does that, that isn't something that makes him looks senile.  Even though I voted for Bernie in the primary, one reason I'm not too disappointed in Biden as nominee is I think he has a much better shot than Bernie would at getting laws passed that people support.  And that actually make a difference in their lives.

I certainly hope Lichtman is more right than wrong that this is what people care about: governance, and getting things done that have a real impact in people's lives.

 

And that's why I'm more interested in longer-term trends than the daily headline (which is usually just today's reaffirmation of the narrative). And optics and fluff seem to be all-important while substance on issues is almost meaningless. It leads to getting the best bullshitter but changes nothing (or even makes it worse.... Remember, Vote Johnson, Goldwater will take us into a full war in Vietnam!) With Trump's fall will come Nikki Haley, much further to the right than Trump but attractive and oozing personality.  We better get national consensus on issues (or at least more democracy). 

The trend of Biden dropping nationally seems to have stopped with today's (9/3) RCP polls. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/ . He had to get out to stop the rapid decline. Unfortunately, he seems to still be sliding down in his "home" of PA. Biden almost has to win PA. Personally I think he's closer to the 8% lead there one poll has him at, not the tie or 3% others do. But I also don't think Biden is out in front in Wisconsin and Minnesota (as much as polls say at least). And NC is looking worse for Dems, including the Senate seat.

Labor Day, this monday, is the traditional start of the election campaign. Odd since with polarization, early voting, and mail ballots, most votes will be decided soon after that day. But we'll have 2 more months of this vitriol to endure from the two sides of the government. Other countries limit campaigns to 2 weeks (and their's usually mean more than ours do). 

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by tassojunior

[tassojunior]

The Hill/CNBC has narrowed the swing states that will decide the election down to 6: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina. I disagree about AZ and NC being swing states since they only poll even with a national 6% +D margin. That's not swing. So it's just the 4. I'd hate to see the advertising deluge in those 4 states the next two months. 

 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/511656-biden-leads-trump-in-5-of-6-battlegrounds-poll

[stevenkesslar]

1 hour ago, tassojunior said:

The Hill/CNBC has narrowed the swing states that will decide the election down to 6: Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina. I disagree about AZ and NC being swing states since they only poll even with a national 6% +D margin. That's not swing. So it's just the 4. I'd hate to see the advertising deluge in those 4 states the next two months. 

 https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/511656-biden-leads-trump-in-5-of-6-battlegrounds-poll

I didn't take them to mean those were the only swing states.  And let's all keep repeating this: nobody should take anything for granted.   

If things swing one way, President Toxic could win Minnesota.  If things swing another way, Biden could win Georgia and maybe also pick up two Senate seats there.  There's poll data that suggests that The Divine Miss Graham could even lose her job in South Carolina.  It's turnout, turnout, turnout.  The main words in everyone's vocabulary for the next two months should be "vote, vote, and vote."

Trafalgar, the Republican outlier, has a poll out today saying it's a tied race in Minnesota.  The RCP average, which includes that poll, says Biden is leading by 5.4 points in Minnesota.

Trafalgar says that President Toxic has a 3 point lead in Florida.  That poll pulled the RCP average down, so now it shows Biden with a 1.8 % lead in Florida.

We don't even have to guess what's going on here.  In 2016 Trafalgar was right on the money.  They published the last two state polls in Pennsylvania and Michigan, a few days before the election, both showing Trump with a very small lead.  In 2018 they were way off the mark in a lot of states.  Their model of who would vote was just way off.

What I found interesting is that Trafalgar screwed up in both directions in 2018.  In states trending red, they underestimated how badly Democrats like McCaskill and Donnelly would lose by.  In states going the other way, like Arizona and Nevada, they underestimated the shift to Democrats.  They called both of those states wrong in the Senate races.

Bottom line is it all depends on who the electorate actually is.  And no one can predict that.  But we can control it.  Send money.  Volunteer.  Vote.

What happened in 2018 is likely to happen again.  The intensity on both sides will feed off each other, and lead to through the roof turnout on both sides.  That in itself is not a bad thing in a democracy. 

If that happens, it will probably help Democrats in states like Georgia.  McBath won in 2018, and Abrams came closer than any Democrat in about a generation.  If Blacks and Millennials crawl out of the woodwork to vote, 2020 could be the opposite of 2016.  Instead of the loose bricks in the Blue Wall falling, it could be the loose bricks in the Red Wall this time.  But it's all turnout, turnout, turnout.

[stevenkesslar]

22 hours ago, tassojunior said:

With Trump's fall will come Nikki Haley, much further to the right than Trump but attractive and oozing personality.  We better get national consensus on issues (or at least more democracy). 

John Dean is out with a new book that offers another lens for viewing what's driving the election.  This may help to explain some voting behavior that Lichtman's theory does not.  Particularly the "stickiness" of President Toxic's supporters.

John Dean's "Authoritarian Nightmare"

That's a 24 minute audio interview of Dean.  I listened to three interviews and read one review yesterday.  If you prefer visual to audio this is an interesting interview of Dean on Democracy Now.  The audio interview is longer and better for understanding his ideas.  Amy asked him some interesting questions about current stuff. So it's a good interview, but a bit less about his book.  

I really miss Lookin from Daddy's forum.  He was a very thoughtful poster.  And he kept bringing up authoritarianism as a theme to explain Trumpism.  As well as why so many people have been captured by the NRA.  Dean and him were obviously reading the same books.  Because everything Dean is saying echos points Lookin has made for years.

I've got a very superficial understanding of the "science" behind this.  But I'll summarize the basic theory in a paragraph, and then tell you my main takeaways from listening to about an hour of this stuff.

The science of this started after World War 2.  The initial question was: Could America fall to a Hitler or Mussolini?  The answer researchers came up with was, "yes."  Dean's co-author is one of the noted (and few) psychologists who is an expert on authoritarianism.  There are psychological tests that have been used for decades that are believed to objectively measure support for authoritarianism.  So the two key players in the nightmare are labelled Social Dominants and Authoritarian Followers.  Social Dominants are the Trumps, who are power hungry Machiavellians who are driven to dominate others.  Authoritarian followers are just that.  In one interview Dean jokingly refers to them as "Daddy will make everything alright" types.  They tend to be low information voters who are not great critical thinkers.  At the extreme, this is the world of Q Anon and Deep State conspirators and radicals in dark clothes on airplanes.

One takeaway is it reinforced my belief that the best way for people like me to change this is to do whatever I can to simplify defeat them.  They're not John Kasich.  They're not particularly interested in reason or compromise.  But they do understand defeat.  At one point, I think in the Amy Goodman interview, Dean says that, verbatim.  They understand defeat. 

President Toxic is no Hitler or Mussolini.  At least not yet.  But it will end the same way.  As I was listening to this I was reminded of that video Schwarzenegger made after Charlottesville about Nazis.  He said growing up in Austria he knew these people were not heroes to honor.  They were broken men who had been defeated.  I suspect many of President Toxic's most ardent followers will feel the same way.  They will understand defeat.  But their impulse will not be to reconcile. 

This would be why they could nominate Don, Jr. in 2024, I think, even if his Dad lost.  I hope I'm wrong.  But I would not rule it out.  If they nominate Nikki Haley, who I personally think is much less nuts, it would be because she succeeded in convincing the Trump base that she's basically Don in a dress.

How exactly are these people going to be defeated?  Dean says that young people don't follow President Toxic.  He didn't say why in these interviews.  But the fact that they are generally better educated and more critical thinkers probably has something to do with it, I suspect.  The Berniecrats certainly have a different analysis about what's broken, and how to fix it.  So the surest way to get rid of President Toxic is what I believe Dean called a "tsunamai" of youth voters.  I've been reading smart Republican operatives for years who have been saying that a wave is coming that is going to wipe out Republicans, and Republicans are doing nothing to stop it.  And that wave is young people.  Separately, there is research that suggests that Millennials are acting like their parents: the older they get, the more likely they are to vote.  That explains some part of Democratic wins in 2018. 

So this is just a huge unknown that could determine whether President Toxic wins Minnesota, on the one hand. Or loses Georgia, on the other hand.  Rep. Omar was supposed to be vulnerable in her primary.  But she blew her opposition away.  That is one small data point that suggests that the opposition to President Toxic (and authoritarianism) may actually get out and vote. I checked on Omar.  In 2018 she won her primary with 48 % of the vote out of about 135,000 votes cast.   In 2020 she won 58 % of the vote out of about 178,000 votes cast.  That may mean nothing.  But I'm taking it as a sign that President Toxic's followers are not the only ones who are highly motivated to vote in this environment.

One other point Dean made is that there has been a massive shift to the Republican Party of authoritarian followers.  As a Democrat, that pleases me, if true.  I don't want them in my party.  The bad news, as @tassojunior keeps warning, is that if they consolidate in what is becoming The Authoritarian Party and elect someone even worse, that could move us into Hitler or Mussolini territory. Dean keeps referring to the known poll numbers of President Toxic's approval rating - 40 to 44 %  - to describe his "base".  I'd probably have to read the whole book to understand whether Dean thinks all of President Toxic's base are the "poorly educated" authoritarian followers President Toxic loves.  Whatever Dean thinks, I think the slice he's describing is not all of them. 

My own sense is that President Toxic's followers are a minority, and this truly pro-authoritarian group is a significant minority within a minority.  It is big enough that they were able to deliver the nomination to Trump in 2016.  Which means they could do it again to someone else like him in 2024.

In his closing comment to Amy Goodman, Dean says 24 to 29 % of President Toxic's followers said in a poll they will tolerate him ignoring The Constitution if he loses.  Dean calls that "troubling".  True.  But even if we take the best case numbers for Trump, 29 % of a base that is 44 % of Americans on his best day is about 12 % of the electorate.  If President Toxic loses, I don't see that 12 % of voters will be able to keep him in  power.  At least that's what I hope.  Presumably this means 76 to 71 % of President Toxic's voters believe that if he lost the election, The Constitution says he has to go.

This is another lens to view what is happening in the polls in Pennsylvania right now.  The good news to me is that if Biden slipped back to "only" 49 % of the vote, that's consistent with the 49 % who said in both July and now they'll vote Democratic.  So Democrats are close to what seems like a stable 50 % in Pennsylvania, at least so far.  I think the best way to think about the people shifting around - who tend to be White men and under 50, and also maybe a slice of more conservative Black or Hispanic men, is this:  jobs, jobs, jobs.  It's the economy, stupid.  But it's possible you can get to the same place by thinking authoritarianism, authoritarianism, authoritarianism.

The phrase Dean used, "Daddy will take care of everything", sounds insulting and dismissive.  But it does explain some things.  It makes no sense to me, as an ideological guy who overthinks everything, that someone could say they'd vote for Bernie or Trump, but not Hillary.  It makes more sense if I think the lens is simply, "Who's your Daddy?"  Hillary isn't a very good Daddy.  She's more like a nagging bureaucrat to a lot of these guys.  Or just a bitch.  So you can call it sexism.  But seen through their eyes, it could be that they just don't see Hillary as the kind of guy that will take care of things for them.  Standing next to Bernie in 2016, maybe they thought Bernie could take care of things better than Hillary.  But then in 2020 we learned that Biden makes a better Daddy than Bernie all across states like Michigan and Wisconsin.  Now they have to decide whether they like Daddy Biden or Daddy Trump.

Viewed through this lens, it's even more clear that President Toxic's hateful tweet is aimed directly at people who Dean says are authoritarian followers.  President Toxic is strong.  All you get from Biden is a "weak response".  So who's your Daddy?  "President Trump is making it stop."    President Toxic is your Daddy.  He'll will take care of everything.

If you buy this, Biden saying he's the most empathetic guy in the world doesn't close the deal.  If anything, it confirms that Biden is no Daddy at all.  He's a wimp. 

One of the things i think Biden is doing right is calling President Toxic weak.  Biden and Harris are projecting the kind of strength that Angela Merkel and other female leaders in Europe tend to project.  Which is to say, the kind of strength that appeals to women, and I think to critical thinkers.  Biden can't be that and a mini-Mussolini at the same time.  It makes no sense for Biden to try to out-Trump President Toxic to me.

If these theories of psychology intersect with politics, I think the best way to connect the dots is jobs, jobs, jobs.  The promise that Daddy made in 2016 that cut in the Rust Belt is that Daddy would go in to these devastated areas with closed factories and struggling families and businesses and lots of addiction and hurt.  And Daddy would take care of things. 

Daddy has not only NOT taken care of things, which was true before the plague.  He's made it worse.  Before the plague, there were no new factory jobs in Pennsylvania.  After the plague, which is thanks to Daddy fucking it all up so that over 200,000 will die by Election Day, they have fewer jobs.  President Toxic isn't Daddy.  He's not even Mommy.  He's just chaos.

Part of Dean's point is that these types of people are not high information thinkers.  That's of course why they like Fox News.  And why the ratings say in the Fox Universe they'd much rather listen to Sean Hannity than Chris Wallace.

So here's some data, which is probably next to useless with true Trump followers.   Even in the "best economy ever", Pennsylvania lost 2000 factory jobs between January 2019 and January 2020.  If you start the clock from January 2017, when President Toxic promised to end American carnage, Pennsylvania has lost about 25,000 factory jobs under Trump, as of June 2020.  Daddy isn't very good at getting the job done.

There's a significant difference between Pennsylvania and Wisconsin if you look at long term trends.  Whether it has any impact on elections, who knows?  In Wisconsin, there are periods of "recovery" since 1990.  In the 1990's, Wisconsin actually gained in the ballpark of 75,000 manufacturing jobs, to a peak of about 600,000. By the end of the Great Recession, almost 1 in 3 of those jobs were gone.  From the trough of The Great Recession, they did gain back about 60,000 factory jobs - mostly under Obama/Biden.  So the sense of it is two or three steps back, one step forward.

Pennsylvania has had no "recovery" of manufacturing jobs for three decades.  Even in the Clinton heyday, they lost 20,000 or so factory jobs.  Under both Obama/Biden and President Toxic, the "recovery" of manufacturing was basically a flat line.  So Wisconsin today is at least better off than during the worst days of the Great Recession.  Pennsylvania is actually worse off.

You can make up any theory you want about how this might impact voting behavior.  It certainly explains why people who are not necessarily racist or sexist felt that eight years of Obama/Biden was enough, and they didn't need Hillary.  But President Toxic hasn't been any better.  You can make a good argument, based on factory jobs, he's been worse.  Or you can argue that this is the kind of environment that breeds authoritarian followers.  Nothing works.  Nothing gets better.  But at least we can feel and hope that Daddy is taking care of us.

Biden has done well, I think, by being disarmingly honest.  His line about "Do I look like a radical to you?" worked.  So one way to deal with this, which in most cases would be horrible political advice, would be for Biden to look President Toxic in the eye at a debate and say, "Donald, you choked.  You promised decent hard working people you'd bring back their factory jobs.  And you choked.  There are fewer factory jobs.  You choked.  You're weak.  You let people down.  You choked.  People are worse off today. You're a choke artist, Donald.  Don't you get it?  Because everybody else does."

That's going way too far.  But Biden has been effective using President Toxic's own words against him.  And if you go back to 1980, Biden has the opposite problem Reagan did.  Reagan needed to prove he wasn't a radical.  So he had to NOT be inflammatory.  The disarming, "There you go again" did the trick.  Biden needs to prove he is not weak.  So turning some of Trump's authoritarian language against him might make sense.  President Toxic is not strong.  He's a choke artist.  Something like that might help Biden.

This is where I find Lichtman helpful.  His theory is based on the idea that over a very long period of time, American voters have made sound judgments based on fundamentals.  Like, "it's the economy, stupid."  If he's right, the sound judgment in 2020 will be that President Toxic fell short, and should not be re-elected.  Dean's numbers, if I understand him right, don't contradict this.  If 15 % of Americans would choose President Toxic over The Constitution, that's probably something America can survive.

The most pessimistic thing I feel, especially if I really buy into Dean's ideas about authoritarianism, is that this is a big problem for America for a long time to come.  These people won't go away.  And they are not likely to change their minds.  I'd like to think George Will is right, and after Trump loses these are the people that will be purged from the Republican Party.  Or they'll just take their marbles and go home.  More likely, they will blame President Toxic's defeat on RINOs like George Will.  And they'll purge any of the RINOs that are still left in their authoritarian party.

One other thing I've said ties in here, and in reason for hope for me.  I said that I didn't think in 2020 The Bernie Show (or The Social Democratic Show) was ready for prime time.  One reason I said that is that the Berniecrats didn't vote in the droves that were hoped for.  That in itself is not a great omen for Democrats for November 2020.  But if I understand Dean, he says they are ultimately the best solution to this problem.  I certainly feel that way.  They are not attracted to authoritarian leaders.  So if any of this is in the ballpark of correct, it's only a matter of time until a minority that responds to authoritarian leaders is crushed by an ascendant electorate that rejects Trumpism root and branch.

 

Edited September 4, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

2 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

If that happens, it will probably help Democrats in states like Georgia.  McBath won in 2018, and Abrams came closer than any Democrat in about a generation.  If Blacks and Millennials crawl out of the woodwork to vote, 2020 could be the opposite of 2016.  Instead of the loose bricks in the Blue Wall falling, it could be the loose bricks in the Red Wall this time.  But it's all turnout, turnout, turnout.

I'm not getting into pollyannaish mode about Georgia or South Carolina lol. (I'll save that mode for the Popular Vote Compact). If they go blue it'll be because of a national landslide not because they swung the vote.  I know Georgia and Florida very well and both states are very divided and it's set in stone. A 1% shift now is huge. Trump won FL by 1%. Obama won by 2% (a 2008 national landslide) and .%8 in 2012. And we remember Bush v. Gore. That's why something is wrong in the polls there. Georgia doesn't budge either because of race mostly. I don't trust Trafalgar because they're too R but Minnesota makes little sense not to be a swing state after the riots there. I don't know MN much and have been told it's odd because it's a huge city with nothing else there while Wisconsin is exurb after exurb. IDK. Anyway, if the margin is within 5% , I'm pretty sure only Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan will matter much and anyone who wins all three wins, and  95% certain anyone who wins 2 of 3 wins.  

Edited September 4, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

59 minutes ago, tassojunior said:

I'm pretty sure only Pennsylvania, Florida, and Michigan will matter much and anyone who wins all three wins, and  95% certain anyone who wins 2 of 3 wins. 

That's probably the best educated guess of what will happen.  Which is to say, 2020 will be a ripple of 2018 and 2016.  In 2016, it rippled one way.  In 2018, it rippled the other way.  But it could ripple either way in 2020.

What's missing is what I cited about what historian Theodore White said in 1980, as it was first becoming clear on Election Night that a tidal wave was coming in.  It was, in fact, a tidal wave, he said.  And everything needed to be rethought. 

To keep it abstract, there is a big similarity in 2020.  I'm not sure I get this part of White's thinking.  But I read what I could find (but not his book) about what he thought happened in 1980.  Part of his view was that history crushed Carter.  Which is to say, the Democratic coalition became unglued.  Part of what was interesting about watching the coverage is these smart anchors were saying, "Reagan might even win North Carolina."  Now we're saying, "Biden might even win North Carolina."  Recall that in 1980 Georgia was one of the few parts of the Southern Democratic base Carter held, only for Mondale to lose in 1984.  Carter's victory in 1976 and 1980 were built on states that are now solid red.  I thought it was funny that when they filled in the map in 1980, red was the color they used for the states Carter was winning.

In 2020 the party that seems to be becoming unglued is the Republican Party.  Even Rick Snyder, of all people, is saying President Toxic is a bully, and he's voting for Biden.  I know you don't like the concept of "Biden Republicans".  But the fact that we're even having the discussion suggests this is not 1972 ("Nixon Democrats") or 1980 ("Reagan Democrats").

Moving from the abstract to the practical, White would of course never have argued these tides happen in a vacuum.  The essay of his that I did read about 1980 suggested that he thought it was largely the economy, stupid.  Jobs, jobs, jobs.  Inflation, inflation, inflation.  And, back then, gas lines, gas lines, gas lines.

is there a similar driver in 2020?   I'll repost this chart from another model by UVA's Alan Abramowitz I posted above and called "Lichtman Lite", or "It's only the economy, stupid."

This was published in March, just as were becoming aware that COVID-19 had hit US shores.  So the assumption was that it could slow the economy down.  And the author knew that President Toxic was an incumbent seeking re-election.  So he modeled (he says within 25 electoral votes) what will happen to Trump based on what has actually happened to every incumbent since World War 2 in the Electoral College.  The two variables are their approval rating in June and second quarter GDP.  The author said that if President Toxic could improve his approval ratings by a few points, he might get past 270.  But only if he could at least squeeze just a teeny tiny bit of growth out of the economy in the upcoming (at the time) second quarter.

In fact, President Toxic's approval rating got worse.  And 2nd quarter GDP was -9.5 %.  If we're looking for drivers of tidal waves, I'd say that qualifies.  Even if you assume Rasmussen is right, and the people who will vote actually see Trump as having 0 net disapproval.  And even if you assume that a lot of these authoritarian followers simply believe Daddy is taking care of it all, no matter what they see actually happening around them with COVID-19 and a recession.

If you go the other way, the numbers above suggest that the current "no toss up" analysis of RCP - that President Toxic will get 185 electoral votes - is wildly optimistic for Republicans.  Coincidentally, RCP just shifted North Carolina from Trump to Biden.  What matters to me is that the three states right on the edge that could tip to Biden are  North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa.  I'm assuming that 2020 will be like 2016 and 2018.  If Biden wins those three states, he more likely than not takes four more Democratic Senators to Washington with him.  We both agree, it seems.  That only happens if there is a tidal wave.  But not a ripple.

The best all-purpose rejoinder to models like this is, "This time is different."  Maybe so.  My contrarian bias is that the more people say, "This time is different," the more likely it is that this time is exactly the same.

Best to have flippers, a snorkel and a wet suit available come November.  It's at least possible that a tidal wave is headed our way.  

Edited September 4, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

@stevenkesslar

You're old enough (like me) to remember when 1 state- Ohio- always chose the president. Be happy 3 states matter now. 

[tassojunior]

If there's much doubt we're pretty much where we were on this date in 2016:

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by tassojunior

[stevenkesslar]

Dead heat: Trump erases Biden’s 8-point lead in Pennsylvania as black voters abandon Democrat

So that headline is an eye catcher.  I think it may help explain what's happening in Pennsylvania, after you dig into the numbers.  Bottom line:  I think it's a crock of shit.

Before I say why, let me just post a head shot of the White conservative who wrote this article.

 

He looks like a nice enough guy.  But this is what you can call my privileged White liberal problem with White conservatives.  I think they have a serious and deep racism problem that will be with them, personally and politically, for the rest of their days.  I don't know previously Democratic White factory workers in Scranton who lost their jobs when W. was President.  I do know and have known many affluent White conservatives.  They don't spend lots of time with Black people - at church, at sports games, or anywhere.  If anything, they know Blacks from work.  And the Blacks they know tend to be their subordinates.  Yet, somehow, they seem to think they have their finger on the pulse of the Black community - which is of course, a very diverse community. 

It's understandable enough if all they do is cite poll data.  That's actually good.  I try to learn what Blacks think by reading poll data.  But if you're doing that, it's hard to miss the fact that at least 3 in 4 Blacks are strongly against President Toxic.  And that at least 3 in  4 think he's a racist.  White conservatives never mention that.  Yet many of them do insist President Toxic is the least racist guy you'll ever meet.  And that the Black people calling Trump a racist are the true racists.   Is it unfair of me to conclude that most White conservatives don't want to hear, think about, or publicly deal with what most Blacks think about President Toxic's racism?  Or the deep racial justice problems in President Toxic's America?

What this White conservative clearly wants to believe is that 27 % of Blacks in Pennsylvania now support President Toxic.  That's based on a Rasmussen poll.  The White conservative does not offer a theory as to why he thinks this might be the case.  Which at the margin supports my belief that they don't particularly give a shit what Blacks are thinking.  Even the ones that maybe support their guy.  It also supports my belief that the real purpose of articles like this is to persuade Whites who are on the fence that President Toxic can't be a racist.  And that the Republican Party can't be racially tone deaf.  After all, 1 in 4 Blacks - more than twice as many as 2016! - think he's a swell guy.

Now back to reality.  This other article from 2016 says Hillary got 88 % of the Black vote nationally in 2016. But in some key states, including Pennsylvania, she got over 90 % of the Black vote.  That's all in the ballpark of what I've read for years.  The big problem in 2016, and the big danger for Biden in 2020, is Blacks who don't particularly care and will just stay home.

Comparing this Rasmussen poll to the Monmouth poll that showed Biden's lead in Pennsylvania shrinking from 13 points in July to 4 points now offers some insight.  First, the Rasmussen poll was done during the convention, and the Monmouth poll was right after.  That could make a small difference at the margin.  The RNC featured Black conservative men making the case for President Toxic.  That could have generated a small pro-Trump blip while it was happening.

More important, Monmouth says that "voters of color" in Pennsylvania were for Biden 76/16 in July and are now for him 72/15.  The biggest shift they noted is that undecided "voters of color" grew from 3 % in July to 9 % now.  Monmouth says,  "The Republican convention attempted to sow some seeds of doubt among core Democratic blocs, especially young and urban voters."  Makes perfect sense to me.  My guess is that in a change election, which is what I think this will be, "voters of color" who were with Biden in July and undecided right after the RNC will more likely than not break heavily for Biden when they vote.

"Voters of color" includes Hispanics and Asians as well as Black.  Monmouth does not disaggregate Black voters as a distinct group.  So if 15 % of "voters of color" in Pennsylvania are for President Toxic right now, that means maybe President Toxic is getting a very low single digit - 10?  11?  12? - percent support from Blacks, whose support for Trump is substantially lower than Hispanics nationally.  That's a long way from 27 %.  Either Monmouth or Rasmussen is way off. 

The picture Monmouth paints is way more consistent with 2016 and what we know.  It suggests that Biden is in roughly the same ballpark with Blacks as Clinton was in 2016.  There are some undecided Blacks and Hispanics and Asians leaning toward him in July that he needs to solidify support from.  But probably the biggest issue is the same as 2016:  he needs to persuade many potential Black voters to actually vote.

I find it much easier to buy Monmouth's analysis of what really shifted between July and now:  men, mostly under 50, who probably tend to live in "swing districts" that used to be Democratic enclaves.  My guess is some of them are Black, more of them are Hispanic, and most of them are White.

I think Biden has a problem with both Black men and Hispanic men.  The biggest problem with Black men is getting them to vote.  The biggest problem with Hispanic men is getting them to vote for Biden.  This other article sounds right about Biden's problems with Hispanic men in Florida:

Biden lags among Florida Hispanic voters

A new poll finds the Democratic nominee is running behind Hillary Clinton’s pace in the critical swing state.

The silver lining in this cloud, as the article says, is that Biden is doing better than Hillary with other groups, like older Whites.  And he's doing better with Hispanics than Sen. Bill Nelson was in 2018.  It's not clear from what I've read how Biden is doing with Blacks in Florida, relative to Hillary.  But the polls suggest that he's doing well enough to win, so far.

Quote

The poll shows that on one of the most important issues to Hispanic voters — the coronavirus, which has disproportionately affected Latinos compared to non-Hispanic whites – Biden tops Trump by 23 points on the question of who would handle the crisis better.

But Trump marginally edges Biden by 48-45 percent on the issue of who would be better suited on the economy, which Odio chalks up to Trump’s well-cultivated TV image as a successful businessman. Still, he said, 14 percent of Hispanics who like Trump more than Biden on the economy still say they’ll vote for the Democrat.

Cuban-Americans aside, Odio said, the Trump campaign has smartly targeted men who like the president’s image of toughness and his business background.

That's just another data point that suggests to me that to close the deal Biden needs to focus on the economy, stupid. 

I have a hunch that with Hispanics in particular there's a conflict between COVID-19 and jobs.  If they are under 50, like the men who are on the fence in Pennsylvania as well, they may tip a little more toward "reopen the economy so I can work" as opposed to "if I go to work and get COVID-19 I'll be in a hospital without health insurance, or dead." 

Beyond that is all the stuff about President Toxic is strong and tough, Biden is weak, President Toxic is a good businessman, President Toxic wants to help small businesses.  I have no idea whether things like Marco Rubio's Paycheck Protection Program have helped President Toxic, hurt him, or it's just a wash.  I'm assuming that, unlike with Blacks, there's a bunch of Hispanics who didn't qualify for stimulus checks or unemployment based on their immigration status.  I suspect this cluster of issues will move Latino voters way more than riots or looting or crime.  Mostly i think Biden needs to take a sledgehammer and try to demolish President Toxic's image as strong and effective.  He's weak, mean, and incompetent.

This is a good point to mention how Bernie was a blessing and a curse.  If Biden ends up winning Florida by a point or two, and therefore the Presidency, that tells me Bernie would have lost Florida.  As the article says, the "socialism" tag is deadly there.  It's another reason I think the Bernie Sanders Show was not ready for prime time in 2020, even though I voted for him.

That said, Democrats should be eternally indebted to Tio Bernie.  He came closer than any national politician I've seen to figuring out how to organize and inspire Hispanics.  He won Nevada that way.  While he lost Texas, that was despite the fact that he got 150,000 more votes in Texas in 2020 than in 2016 - which could be more than the winning margin in statewide races there in 2020 and the future.

I agree with this article that probably the best case scenario for Democrats with Hispanics in Florida is to hold our ground in 2020.  And to have a Plan B to make up any potential decrease in Latino turnout somewhere else: like older Whites or Blacks. Ultimately, I think what the Democrats need and don't have is a  Tío Bernando.  Meaning a Latino or Latina politician who is authentically of the culture and can play a leading national role.  (I don't like the whole "x" thing.  "Tíx Bernie sounds like a breath freshener to me.  Or maybe an ice cream brand.)

Here's an old (2015) list of the "10 most influential Hispanic Americans in US politics".   It's interesting that only 5 of them are elected officials, unlike Jorge Ramos (# 1) and Justice Sotomayer (#2).  Of the elected officials, they rank Rubio/Cruz slightly higher than the Castro brothers.  Clearly, Julián Castro did not emerge as the Hispanic Obama in 2020.  The obvious name missing from the 2015 list is Tía AOC. 

My perception is that Democrats are doing a better job of dealing with their issues with Black Americans than they are with their issues with Hispanic Americans.  Julián said something to that effect recently.   The Hispanic community is in no way locked and loaded for Democratic Party moving forward.

While I was reading about Hispanics in Florida, I ran across this two minute DNC piece about a Mexican American Mom President Toxic deported.  I missed this during the DNC.  One more reason to want to dump President Toxic.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

1 hour ago, stevenkesslar said:

John Dean is out with a new book that offers another lens for viewing what's driving the election.  This may help to explain some voting behavior that Lichtman's theory does not.  Particularly the "stickiness" of President Toxic's supporters.

John Dean's "Authoritarian Nightmare"

 

The most pessimistic thing I feel, especially if I really buy into Dean's ideas about authoritarianism, is that this is a big problem for America for a long time to come.  These people won't go away.  And they are not likely to change their minds.  I'd like to think George Will is right, and after Trump loses these are the people that will be purged from the Republican Party.  Or they'll just take their marbles and go home.  More likely, they will blame President Toxic's defeat on RINOs like George Will.  And they'll purge any of the RINOs that are still left in their authoritarian party.

One other thing I've said ties in here, and in reason for hope for me.  I said that I didn't think in 2020 The Bernie Show (or The Social Democratic Show) was ready for prime time.  One reason I said that is that the Berniecrats didn't vote in the droves that were hoped for.  That in itself is not a great omen for Democrats for November 2020.  But if I understand Dean, he says they are ultimately the best solution to this problem.  I certainly feel that way.  They are not attracted to authoritarian leaders.  So if any of this is in the ballpark of correct, it's only a matter of time until a minority that responds to authoritarian leaders is crushed by an ascendant electorate that rejects Trumpism root and branch.

 

"Trumpism" is not just an American thing. Why do we always want to reinvent the wheel? World-wide it's the age of the nationalist/populists overthrowing the entrenched liberal corporate elite. They sing their own corny national anthems instead of the Marseillaise and there's no sound of guillotines going chop, chop but it's a radical transformation from the days when people trusted the educated elite corporate world to have their best interests at heart, not just their bank accounts. But crude as it is, it's populism, not authoritarianism. Playboy Donnie Trump is a weird figure to be out front as leader of this in the US for sure. The populist left reformers sometimes defeat the populist right and sometimes they ally with the liberal elite. But the liberal elite never returns to full power again.  In the US the liberal elite is the 1% with incomes over $450,000/yr, the 90% of news outlets owned by 6 corporations,  and other assorted interests serving the billionaire class. All those deplorable peasants in all those Obama-Obama-Trump districts keep trying to find a leader. If re-elected Trump will dump on them just like Obama did.    

[tassojunior]

As for Asians, at least Joe has Kamala to translate for him if he has to hop into a 7-11. 

 

Hispanics and Latinx are all over the board in Florida. There are 1 million new Puerto Rican Florida voters, many of whom are Black and some of those are Trump supporters. Ditto Black Cubans. Most Haitians aren't citizens but those who are vote Democratic. But the Central American Latinx who vote in Florida are somewhat divided. The South American and Central American wealthy enclaves around Miami are all GOP.  I've seen estimates of Trump with 40% Latinx vote in Florida.    

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, tassojunior said:

If there's much doubt we're pretty much where we were on this date in 2016:

I agree with you that those numbers about people who have made up their mind should be taken with a grain of salt.

I know I beat the YouGov poll of Independents to death.   But I found it funny that something like 93 % of them said they'd made up their mind.  And when asked who they were voting for, I think 13 % said undecided.  Of course, they could pretty much know and just not want to tell.  My conclusion from the poll is that maybe 20 % of Independents are persuadable.  At least 4 in 10 say Biden is not mentally fit and would make America less safe.  A slightly higher percentage (high 40's) say President Toxic is not mentally fit, is the cause of the chaos, and/or will make America more violent if re-elected.  So probably at least 8 in 10 Independents have ruled out at least one candidate.  The issue with some of that 80 % is simply whether they vote.

I've been reading every article I can find from the smartest political hacks in the room.  Every one says, no surprise, that BOTH GOTV and persuasion matter.  That said, more than ever, it's all about the base.  The fact that we have unprecedented issues about getting a ballot, returning a ballot, and making sure the ballot is counted only makes that more true.

There is something quite different than 2016.  It's a factor that proved decisive in 2016, according to my buddy Karl Rove and me.  I hope it proves decisive again.  A majority of voters will cast ballots in 2020, just like they did in 2016, holding an unfavorable view of President Toxic.  In 2016, a majority also had an unfavorable view of Hillary.  In 2020, however, a majority DO NOT hold an unfavorable view of Joe Biden.  He's very close to having a majority who hold a favorable view of him.  That could be decisive.

I recently posted the Rove 2016 video on a different post, so I won't repost.  But Rove said that 2016 exit polls said that people who had negative opinions of both President Toxic and Hillary threw the election to Trump.  The 15 % who said neither was qualified favored Trump 66/15.  The 18 % who said they viewed both unfavorably favored Trump 47/30.

Election 2016 Favorability Ratings

Election 2020 Favorability Ratings

You can check out the difference in favorability ratings yourself.

I read statements earlier this year that Biden has about as wide a lead on favorability with Trump in 2020 as Clinton did in 2016.  So, really, he has no advantage.  That makes no sense to me.  The key thing about Hillary is that the Republican Death Star was fully loaded with really stinky shit way back in 2014.  And they spent two very shit-filled years smearing shit all over America.  When it was done they done a really shitty job.  Meaning they covered Hillary, and America, with shit.  So there was never a day in Fall 2016 - NOT ONE DAY - when anything close to a majority of voters viewed Hillary favorably.  In fact, EVERY DAY in Fall 2016 somewhere from 50 to 60 % of voters viewed Clinton  unfavorably.  The final average on Election Day was Clinton 54.4 % unfavorable, President Toxic 58.5 % unfavorable.  Oddly, according to the exit polls, the fact that she was only slightly less disliked than President Toxic cost her the election, because that subset held their nose and voted for change.  The massive shit operation probably also was intended to, and did, discourage Blacks and progressives who weren't wild about Hillary anyway to just not vote.

We know that Sweet Rudy and Poor Brad tried the same thing in 2018 and 2019.  They had an even bigger Death Star, loaded with even more and higher quality Grade A Stinky Shit. Hell, they were even importing superb, really exceptionally rare shit from Ukraine.  Somehow, President Toxic got impeached over it.  Alan Lichtman will tell you that now that's the extra seventh nail in Trump's coffin, just in case history fucks up and the sixth one - the shitty economy - isn't enough.

So right now Biden has 48.3 % favorable and 46.6 % unfavorable in the RCP averages.  President Toxic has 41.9 % favorable and 55.6 % unfavorable.  It's a given that some people who don't think President Toxic is a good person will vote for him anyway.  But this is different than 2016.  Maybe the public will sour on Biden over the next few months.  But we know President Toxic has thrown everything his racist, hateful, poor little mind can think of at Biden.

There's another great line I love from Karl Rove that applies here.  He said something like this about his strategy to get W. elected in re-elected:  "In 2000, we had to convince people that it was the best of times.  So it was time for a change.  In 2004 we had to convince people that we're going through a rough patch.  So it's a bad time to switch horses."

You could reformulate what Rove said into something like this:

In 2016 a lot of people didn't like Trump, or Clinton, or the way things were.  So they voted for Trump, because they got change.

In 2020 a lot of people like Biden.  But they don't like Trump, or the way things are.  So they'll vote for Trump, so things stay the same.

The last sentence doesn't make much sense to me.  But that is what President Toxic has to do.  He tried to make it so that at least a majority of Americans viewed Biden unfavorably.  But it hasn't worked, at least so far.

If this is another change election, and the candidate who is offering change is one people actually like more, it's just bad news for President Toxic.  Even if people change their mind, which they will, Biden has a better chance of benefiting from it.

One more set of numbers that aligns, and seem like bad news for President Toxic.  This year, there's very tight alignment between the RCP average favorability ratings, and who people say they'll vote for.  As of today, 48.3 % view Biden favorably, and 49.6 % plan to vote for him.   41.9 % see President Toxic favorably, and 42.6 % plan to vote for him.  

It people who view each candidate favorably stick with that candidate, President Toxic is fucked.  If this is like 2016, and the remaining 8 % who presumably don't view either candidate favorably break to Biden, President Toxic is even more fucked.

 

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[stevenkesslar]

3 hours ago, tassojunior said:

"Trumpism" is not just an American thing. Why do we always want to reinvent the wheel? World-wide it's the age of the nationalist/populists overthrowing the entrenched liberal corporate elite. They sing their own corny national anthems instead of the Marseillaise and there's no sound of guillotines going chop, chop but it's a radical transformation from the days when people trusted the educated elite corporate world to have their best interests at heart, not just their bank accounts. But crude as it is, it's populism, not authoritarianism. Playboy Donnie Trump is a weird figure to be out front as leader of this in the US for sure. The populist left reformers sometimes defeat the populist right and sometimes they ally with the liberal elite. But the liberal elite never returns to full power again.  In the US the liberal elite is the 1% with incomes over $450,000/yr, the 90% of news outlets owned by 6 corporations,  and other assorted interests serving the billionaire class. All those deplorable peasants in all those Obama-Obama-Trump districts keep trying to find a leader. If re-elected Trump will dump on them just like Obama did.    

I don't disagree.  When I Googled it, I got this definition.  It works well enough for me.

pop·u·lism

 

 

noun

 

1. a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

 

I'd split the difference and say President Toxic's political success has elements of both populism and authoritarianism.  And whichever one you call it, the US is hardly unique.

It's also probably true that certain historical periods favor these types of movements and governments, since they are reactions to the established order and elites.

I wouldn't say Hitler and Mussolini were simply populists.  I would say they were classic authoritarians.  We could have a debate about where populism stops, and authoritarianism begin.  But let's not.

Most of the politicians I've been closest to were populists.  They based their appeal on being against elites and for ordinary people - "the little guy".  They were not authoritarian.  The opposite.   Populists like Paul Wellstone were all about people power and organizing and empowerment of community leaders. 

You can argue there are elements of that in what President Toxic did to get elected.  But I wouldn't compare the two in a million years.  Paul would never say that his power was based on people that would still support him if he took someone out to the barn in Minnesota and shot him.  I guess that's the Farmer Labor "prairie populism" equivalent of Trump and 5th Ave.

The value in Dean's ideas to me are they explain why some people of both parties or no party were attracted to President Toxic.  And will seemingly follow him blindly.  2020 will be a test of this.  In 2016 you can explain a lot of it away by saying people were hurting.  And it was precisely those people that decided to roll the dice, hoping he would make things better.  Since 2016 the economy mostly improved.  It didn't help most Republicans in the midterms.  But at least President Toxic had that. 

If he wins in a recession after bungling COVID-19, it suggests that America is in far worse shape than I thought.  I don't like to go there in my mind.  But what it suggests is that we're moving into Hitler and Mussolini territory.  You have a huge group of people who are so captured by an authoritarian figure that they'll follow him blindly, regardless of the consequences.  I didn't feel that way in 2016.  I will if he wins in 2020.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

That article is somewhat off topic.  I'm posting it because as I was reading it some sentences jumped off the page.  Because they were exact matches with what I was reading yesterday about President Toxic's supposed "Social Dominant" leadership style.  In addition to the words "suckers" and "losers", these are perfect examples:

Quote

When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. 

Quote

Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

Quote

Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces.

Quote

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

There's other psychological words you can use to describe this.  Like narcissism, or lack of empathy.  But the authoritarianism Dean talks about fits in perfectly. Socially dominant types like President Toxic see the world as a dog eat dog place where you either win and dominate, or you are a loser.  So if your are a dead soldier, you didn't dominate, and you didn't win.  So you're a loser.  There's really just no other category.  Smart people want to dominate.  And that means making lots of lots of money. But, no.  You wouldn't go into the military.  You certainly wouldn't be willing to sacrifice your life.

(Sorry.  After I added the quotes it's double spacing everything).

This also might explain the mystery about why President Toxic at least used to have a hard-on for generals.  I've always thought the logical (or hopeful) explanation is that even a narcissist like Trump knows he needs experts around him, especially on things like national defense.  And generals tend to be hawks.  Implicit in that is that President Toxic respected these people.

But if these statements are true, the explanation that Trump is surrounding himself with very smart and hawkish people he respects doesn't fit all that well.  He doesn't respect these people.  Because if they were smart, they should be out making fortunes.  Not serving their country.  Let alone getting killed for their country.  So an alternative logical explanation is that President Toxic is a classic authoritarian.  He expects obedience.  Period.  That's probably what he expected from his Generals.  They are supposed to be good at following orders.  If you buy what the author says, which is easy to believe, like Bob Barr and other Cabinet members they were supposed to be personally loyal to Trump.  Not the United States of America.

 

This would explain why President Toxic had a love affair with Generals, and then a falling out.  If you buy this, which I do, it really is very scary stuff.

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by stevenkesslar

[tassojunior]

Im not impressed with the humanity of many politicians especially, but for two more months these type of "someone anonymous thinks they heard" are going to flow like a damn bursting. 

[Suckrates]

I pay NO attention to polls.  Most people dont speak honestly when taking a poll.... They give the response they feel will be most palletable.   And Trump is a Very divisive and controversial figure.  Although his rabid supporters will speak freely and honestly,  believe there are many "in-the-closet" Trump supporters, most of whom will help HIM is a private, secluded voting booth.   

And lets not forget all those 2016 polls that said Trump would NEVER win, and Hillary had the thing in the bag.   And I dont give a flying fuck about the "popular vote" wins....  Its the archaic "electoral college" bullshit that decides, and Trump may still have a lock on that ?

So no matter how many FACTS, CHARTS, POLLS, ARTICLES and common sense arguments my dearest sister @stevenkesslar  presents here,  I am NOT comfortable with any of it...

Trump is running a nasty, dirty, and destructive campaign against Biden  that may really resonate with alot of people.  The VERDICT will be spoken on ELECTION DAY , although it may have been tampered with.... GOD HELP US if we end up with another 4 years with the Crazy Orange Buffoon... and PUTIN !  

[AdamSmith]

The site function is again fucked up.

Or it is Putin. 

@stevenkesslar

his GOTV point cannot be too much emphasized. In the two-week run up to both of Obama’s wins, my house here in N.C. was assuaded with (very welcomed) in-person stop-bys from these carloads of elderly black ladies emphasizing we must vote for BO.

By contrast, late in Hillary’s campaign, I got just a 2-minute in-person visit from this campaign person (very beautiful, and beautifully dressed, I think Vietnamese) kid, simply asking, Are you going to vote for Hillary?’