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stevenkesslar

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

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8 hours ago, nynakedtop said:

Our long national nightmare is over!

Trump must go. Pack his bags. Clear out and take Don Jr., Eric, and Stephen Miller with him.

Expect the Trump Rage Show to go on. But it’s the flailing rage of a loser trying to deny that he’s a loser. And that’s a sweet thing to watch because it’s so well deserved.

Now the fun thing is going to be watching the state-level, and maybe even SDNY, legal prosecutions continue to play out.

I think the courts would kick this notion of ‘self-pardon’ straight into the toilet.

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Now that the drama at the top of the ticket has ended, I've been sifting through what happened down the ticket.  We now all have the memo that 2020 was definitely not an embrace of progressive ideals. 

I think the best way to read this election is that it was a repudiation of Trump and Trumpism, at least as a way of running America.  But it was hardly an endorsement of progressivism, like The Green New Deal.  That explains why Republicans lost the Presidency, but gained House seats. 

I think Biden was wise to claim a mandate yesterday.  And to define the mandate as a call to unity, cooperation, and action - as opposed to any left-of-center policy.

As far as I can tell, some of these new Republican House members are women of color, who probably think a lot like Mia Love - the Black Republican Trump basically verbally humiliated after she lost in 2018, because she did not "give me love", in Trump's gross words.  One of the 2018 Democrats that may lose is Ben McAdams of Utah, who barely beat Love in 2018.  He's now losing by a fraction to Burgess Meredith, a Black man.  But it's still too close to call.  It's a perfect symbol of how moderates in both parties are winning or losing very close elections in what are, and will remain, swing districts split right down the middle.  Just like America is right now.

Democrats have now lost a net of 4 House seats that have been called.  If every Democrat losing by a fraction right now goes on to lose their election, it looks like slightly more than one third of the 41 seats Democrats gained in 2018 will have been lost.  Joe Scarborough has already called this a "repudiation" of the Democratic Party.  I think he needs some sleep.  We just won the Presidency by maybe 5 million votes.  Trump is the one who got his sorry ass repudiated, I think.

If I forget about firing Trump and just focus on the US House, I'm going to look at this as 3 steps forward in 2018, one step back in 2020.  That in itself is not bad news.  Just from eyeballing it, every one of the seats we may lose in 2020 was a Republican stronghold we picked up in 2018.  4 are in California, all of which have Democrats I've sent money to and followed.  These are hardly radical House members.  Several of them are moderates who are former Republicans.  Like Harley Rouda, who right now is losing by about one point to an Asian American Republican woman.  Both him and his opponent are centrists.

I noted that the four Democratic women who worked in intelligence/CIA jobs and won in "Trump" House seats in 2018 and wrote the controversial op/ed calling for his impeachment all won re-election.  There was a very long and very good article written earlier this year about Elissa Slotkin, one of those female House members.  She just won her race 51/47.  That is about as good as you can probably expect in what used to be a solidly red seat in Michigan.  I mention the article because it went through in great detail all the policy and relationship work she had been doing to bind herself to her district and its voters.  So it clearly worked. 

If the question is whether Democrats can survive in these largely suburban swing districts that used to be solid red, the answer is way more "yes" than "no".  No surprise, it ain't easy.  You win by a few points, or even a few fractions of a point. 

If two of the three Democratic House members who won in Orange County in 2018 by a fraction of a point end up losing by a fraction of a point in 2020, that's disappointing.  But it is hardly a shock.  or a repudiation.  Again, I'd look at this as three steps forward (41 new seats in 2018) and one step back (maybe lose one third of them, at worst, in 2020).  

One of the House moderates has now, in effect, attacked AOC by saying that Democrats should never use words like "socialism" or "defund the police" again.  I'm glad Pelosi publicly pushed back against that.  If Biden wins in Arizona and Georgia, some big part of that victory is Blacks and young progressive voters.  The same is actually true in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.  So if we're going to trash Blacks and Berniecrats, we are essentially saying we really wanted Trump to win, instead.  I understand how AOC is now the woman Republicans like to use to make Democrats look crazy or radical.  They did the same thing to Pelosi herself in 2010.  That's politics.  We should not let Republicans decide who gets to be in the Democratic coalition.  

On the face of it, the election results do suggest that if Bernie or Elizabeth had been the nominee, they might have lost.  I could make a good argument that either one of them might have done better than Biden at running on a platform that would have motivated the blue base.  But there's not much evidence that happened in the 2020 primaries.  There's more evidence that Biden won in part because of a message about ending the craziness, and trying cooperation and unity and compromise instead.

Especially after yesterday I feel like the principal victory in 2020, a horrible year, is that we won the grand prize and have ended the madness.  Trump and Trumpism took its very best shot, and got 70 million votes.  But it still failed - by millions and millions of votes - as a way to run America.  That's a huge victory in my eyes.  People all over America and all over the world seem to feel that way, as we all saw yesterday.

When I was binging on Allan Lichtman earlier this year I watched several clips of past debates he has had on TV, usually with other Democrats, who argued he was wrong that we need to impeach Trump.  They made what he called the typical and wrong argument that Clinton "won" the impeachment debate.  Lichtman argued it was true that in 1998 Republicans lost a few House seats.  But in 2000 they won the Presidency, which is the grand prize in US politics.  And he cited poll data showing that concerns about Clinton sleaze and moral leadership gave W. an edge over Gore.  

This is the way Pelosi has already said we should view 2020.  She's said we lost some battles, but we won the war.  I agree with her.  That's the way I will look at this.

AOC is a good target, even within the Democratic Party.  As a progressive, I of course wish that we had just made sweeping gains, and took over the Senate.  But I get why we didn't.  I also get that if we tell young voters and Blacks who like the language about "defunding the police" or "democratic socialism" to just go fuck themselves, we can forget about winning those Georgia Senate seats.  If Democrats don't want to be a coalition, let's just not waste the time and money and give those two Senate seats to the Republicans.

Of the examples I've read about so far of what happened down ticket, Pennsylvania is a good one to frame how to think about this, I think.  While Philadelphia was celebrating putting Biden over the top, the news down ticket was not good for Democrats.  Efforts to take over the state legislature did not go well.  That was in part because of the red wave that swept over the Trump parts of the state.  So this is from an article about the failures of Pennsylvania Democrats that I find a telling anecdote about the politics of Trumpism in 2020:

Quote

Democrats also had to defend some of their most conservative members in places where white, working-class voters have shifted to Trump and Republicans in recent years. Their incumbents in Cambria, Westmoreland, and Lawrence Counties faced well-funded opposition. The conservative political action committee Commonwealth Leaders Fund ran ads linking them to [Democratic Gov.] Wolf and criticizing a vote they took this spring against loosening coronavirus restrictions on businesses.

So I think it's good to have a debate about the impact of AOC or Rep. Omar or Blacks or Muslims or progressives or whatever.  And I realize that Republicans can say even Joe Biden is a socialist, and he  just wants to ban cows and hamburgers.  That's the kind of crazy shit Trump will say.

But this is even more crazy.  There is of course a legitimate debate about how far you go in closing down business in order to stop a deadly virus that is now back to killing about 1,000 Americans a day.  But this is not radical stuff.  The polls are clear that most people put dealing with coronavirus above the economy.  Biden clearly gets this.  I'm sure he scored points with America when he said to heal the economy we first have to deal with and contain the virus.

What's remarkable is that we even have to have this debate.  This is not about banning cows or hamburgers.  This is about a pragmatic Democratic Governor taking steps to try to save American lives.  But we know that Trump did pretty well, especially in Trump America, making it sound like masks are a threat to liberty itself.  Laura Ingraham has been talking about "lockdowns versus liberty".  As if Joe Biden's goal is to destroy liberty and capitalism, as opposed to keep Grandma and Grandpa from dying.   Any by the way, Biden lost the senior vote in the end - even though he may have done better with seniors than Clinton in some of these swing states.  He won on the backs of Blacks, Latinos, and young progressive voters of every race.  That's where he ran up huge majorities, as we just saw vote by vote and day by day.

All of this makes me feel better about the fact that we picked Biden, that he won, and that he is adopting a political strategy he debuted last night.  He is clearly going to focus on unity and compromise.  In some imaginary US, if Sanders were nominated and if he won and got 55 Democratic Senators, maybe we could do it a different way.  But that has nothing to do with the reality we now face.  We will be lucky to have 50 Democratic Senators.  Ron Brownstein was on TV last night saying OF COURSE Rich Mitch will try to block almost anything Biden tries to do.  I agree with Ron. We should just assume that.

What Biden has going for him, and is clearly going to use, is that we have multiple crises.  And that Americans just gave him a mandate to try to get people to cooperate on dealing with this huge set of messes that we all share.  That gets him to health care, to income, and even to income inequality.  It gets him to the fact that people at the bottom, including Blacks and Latinos, are hurting the most.  So he has plenty of ways to put pressure on Republicans to vote for progressive things that deal with the immediate health and economic problems of most Americans.  It may not be a mandate for The Green New Deal.  But for me it's a whole let better than the craziness and non-leadership of Trump.

I'm quite sure Rich Mitch's strategy will be to blame Biden for everything that happens as of January 2021.  Just like he blamed Obama for everything bad he inherited in January 2009.  I'm sure Rich Mitch will try to use that to prevent Biden from winning a Senate majority in the 2022 midterms, when Republicans have to defend seats in blue states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, as opposed to purple states like Arizona or Georgia or North Carolina. 

I'm actually confident that Biden can prevail this time.  In part because we now know Mitch is likely to try to do the same thing again.  And in part because Mitch will be trying to beat Biden at a game Mitch himself knows Biden is very good at - in a way that Obama simply wasn't.  In my mind, this explains why Mitch himself is now saying we need a coronavirus relied deal.  Rich Mitch won't make it easy for Biden to paint him as the reason things Americans want and need are not getting done.  The burden will be on Biden to lead by trying to unify and compromise.  He clearly gets that.

Somehow Biden is going to have to do this in a way that gets progressives and Blacks and Latinos to support him, but doesn't alienate those unreliable suburban swing voters who were not exactly sold on Democrats in the election that just happened.  There's many good reasons to think that Biden will fail to do it.  But this week definitely created a clear direction that Biden obviously sees - he actually called it a "vision" - and that I think could work.  

I've had a personal epiphany about Susan Collins.  Two of the milestones of my own emotional turmoil about Trumpism involve Collins.  In 2017 I spontaneously went nuts defending Collins in a restaurant with two former Republican friends, one of whom attacked her as a "RINO" for having just voted - along with Murkowski and McCain - to not kill Obamacare.  Then in 2018 I went rabid when she did her thing defending Justice Rapist.  I will always view that as one of the worst and most dishonest moments of Collins (aka Senator Susan Coverup).  Had anyone but Trump been President, they would have replaced Kavanaugh with a better person - like Barrett.  

I have to imagine that Collins survived an election she should have lost because enough voters in Maine cut her some slack because she was having to deal with an asshole like Trump.  And they helped solve the real problem by voting Trump out, even as they cut Collins some slack.  So I can get my mind around and respect what voters in Maine just did.

My point is that this does create an opportunity for Biden.  There are at least a handful of moderates in both parties - Tester and Manchin on the D side, Collins and Murkowski on the R side, who actually have won elections that can be taken to be a mandate for bipartisanship.  They are Democrats who survived elections in red states, or Republicans who survived elections in blue states.  So if this came down to something like SCOTUS throwing out Obamacare, or an inability to agree on a relief package that would prevent states from having to fire cops and teachers and public health nurses, Biden may have room to outmaneuver Rich Mitch.

I've now gotten the memo that this is not like 1992 or 2008.  Those were the only two elections in my adult lifetime when Democratic Presidents got to do what they wanted because they had the House and Senate.  Both times it ended badly for Democrats, even though Clinton and Obama - not to mention Obamacare - survived and had successful Presidencies.  Even if we win both Georgia run-offs and have 50 seats, this is going to be an unrelenting uphill climb for Biden.  I do think that, like Reagan in 1981, one of his weapons is he could have Americans (including voters in swing states and swing districts that have Republican Senators, like Pennsylvania) on his side.

I'm going to hope this is like 1960 and JFK - which is hardly what Joe Biden is, superficially.  That election swept in new ideas and a new direction.  But it took years, and LBJ, to both define the real agenda, and then enact it.  The agenda itself - Medicare, The Great Society, civil rights - was very powerful.  And it has mostly stuck.

We actually are at a similar place today.  Nobody really knows what The Green New Deal is.  Whatever it is, it is nowhere near becoming law.  And yet all these polls show that maybe as many as 2 in 3 voters support some kind of law that addresses climate change, which they see as a real and serious problem.

I think most progressives and most Blacks get where we are at.  They understand that if we want to have a majority to actually enact some version of a Green New Deal, or John Lewis's new Voting Rights Act, we're going to have to build a majority.  This week made me feel a lot better, not a lot worse, about having Joe Biden lead that effort for the next four years.

 

 

 

Edited by stevenkesslar
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23 hours ago, nynakedtop said:

If you are in the need of some comic relief, take a trip over to the daddy site, do a search for postings by some moron named augustus and get ready for either an endless belly laugh..... or performing an intervention to put this senile old fool out of his misery!

 

At this time, poor @augustus is Hysterical, and on the verge of INSANITY.... You would almost think that HE is DJT ?  

Someone needs to tell him Biden WON and he should just "get over it" just like he has been telling US since Trump won in 2016....  Americans made a BIG mistake in 2016.  Yes, Trump won then, but WE wont make that mistake again ! 

" Hey Rudy, maybe we can BUY the Election ? "

67E75ECE4254622448418D587C376813ED6751F4

 

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1 hour ago, Suckrates said:

 

At this time, poor @augustus is Hysterical, and on the verge of INSANITY.... You would almost think that HE is DJT ?  

Someone needs to tell him Biden WON and he should just "get over it" just like he has been telling US since Trump won in 2016....  Americans made a BIG mistake in 2016.  Yes, Trump won then, but WE wont make that mistake again ! 

" Hey Rudy, maybe we can BUY the Election ? "

67E75ECE4254622448418D587C376813ED6751F4

 

augustus is in the final stages of total mental collapse..... someone needs to put him (and us!) out of his agony

 

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21 hours ago, Pete1111 said:

Augustus is an example of why I quit that forum.  He cites as fact widespread voter fraud in NV, yet does not cite a news source.  False claims about the election are supposed to be removed, yet Daddy does nothing, while he punishes other members, usually on the Blue side of the arguments.  I don't have time for Daddy's inconsistent and often questionable standards.

At one point this summer, probably because of the mental/emotional distortions brought about by the lockdown, I had considered seeking re-entry into "that" wretched place.... after all, i do have experiences with guys that should be shared in the deli/spa sections

but - then i took a look at what is going on over there, and decided (thankfully) that waters populated by augustus and his fellow travelers are far too polluted for me to ever enter!

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3 hours ago, nynakedtop said:

At one point this summer, probably because of the mental/emotional distortions brought about by the lockdown, I had considered seeking re-entry into "that" wretched place.... after all, i do have experiences with guys that should be shared in the deli/spa sections

but - then i took a look at what is going on over there, and decided (thankfully) that waters populated by augustus and his fellow travelers are far too polluted for me to ever enter!

Staying out of that joint after being kicked out was possibly the best thing I ever did for my mental & emotional health, second only to 4 years of psychoanalysis 4 days/week on the couch in my mid-30s. ^_^

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3 hours ago, nynakedtop said:

augustus is in the final stages of total mental collapse..... someone needs to put him (and us!) out of his agony

 

Read my snarky message to him over there.  I meant what I said.  I think we should thank him and encourage him to continue, loudly, on the path he is on.

I won't repeat everything I said.  But I will repeat the key Saul Alinsky idea:  The action is in the reaction.  

Here's the way I'm going to view it.  The problem Biden had is that Trump is the kind of guy who can actually get 70 million + Americans to vote for him, as we just saw.  So the Democrats needed someone who could get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  The beauty of Biden is he realized only one candidate could get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  And that candidate is Donald J. Trump.  To state it slightly differently, everything Trump did to agitate and divide and conquer to get 70 million votes helped Biden get 75 million votes.  

Augustus exemplifies the kind of rabid Trumpist thinking (sometimes it is not even thinking, really) that helped get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  So he helped elect Biden, I think.

We also know Biden will make plenty of mistakes and gaffes that will cause people to question his leadership.  So I think it's helpful to have Trump himself, or fans like Augustus, popping up to remind us that while Biden might not be perfect, he is such a better alternative.

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10 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

Read my snarky message to him over there.  I meant what I said.  I think we should thank him and encourage him to continue, loudly, on the path he is on.

I won't repeat everything I said.  But I will repeat the key Saul Alinsky idea:  The action is in the reaction.  

Here's the way I'm going to view it.  The problem Biden had is that Trump is the kind of guy who can actually get 70 million + Americans to vote for him, as we just saw.  So the Democrats needed someone who could get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  The beauty of Biden is he realized only one candidate could get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  And that candidate is Donald J. Trump.  To state it slightly differently, everything Trump did to agitate and divide and conquer to get 70 million votes helped Biden get 75 million votes.  

Augustus exemplifies the kind of rabid Trumpist thinking (sometimes it is not even thinking, really) that helped get 75 million people to vote for Biden.  So he helped elect Biden, I think.

We also know Biden will make plenty of mistakes and gaffes that will cause people to question his leadership.  So I think it's helpful to have Trump himself, or fans like Augustus, popping up to remind us that while Biden might not be perfect, he is such a better alternative.

Its quite interesting "over there" that there is a political forum in which you really are not allowed to discuss politics IF the comments are not to Daddy's liking.  Looks like HE has been quite busy "Locking threads" that have to do with Trump and the election.  Isnt the election the "topic du jour" ?   However, he has allowed that maniac @augustus to expound his crazy conspiracy theories and anti-democracy rhetoric about election theft, yet if others want to have a civil discourse about election related issues, the thread is LOCKED.   I guess we HAVE seen there are alot of crazy mutherfuckers in this world. THIS election has proven that to me... well at least 70+ mil of them !   :mad:

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It is pretty Amazing how QUIET some people get when they are not able to Brag, Boast, Taunt and Provoke.  For 4 long years Bozo,Kippy, BSR, Bna and Corporate Shill bombarded us with pro-Trump rhetoric and hateful talking points, signing off with "Bless you President Trump,  Trump 2020, MAGA", and NOW, deadly SILENCE from them in the Daddy camp...

Not a peep, except for @augustus, who continues to rant and rave and proclaim Trump the Winner....  So I guess HE must be the Rudy Giuliani of the Group ?   :frantics:

For 4 long years they told US  "Trump WON, suck it up"........  but seems THEY are not able to do the same.  Just another shit stain on the Presidency of Dotard Jerk Trump.... 

Donald Trump Memes on Twitter: "A masterpiece! Trump is the stain on  America's underpants. #trumpstained… "

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"I am your President of........."

TeemingPowerfulEasteuropeanshepherd-size

 

Sure you motherfucking piece of Shit.... You cant even concede an election when you clearly LOST !

Thusly, you are throwing this country into turmoil, leaving it confused and vulnerable, just so YOU can stay in the spotlight.

You cant comprehend future life as a "hasbeen".... That's YOUR problem, not OURS.....

However, none of this is a surprise.  THIS was your plan all along, to contest the election THAT YOU LOST, and you told us you were gonna do it.

The only thing this is accomplishing is humiliating you and your supporters even more that the past 4 years has.

My suggestion is that we IGNORE Trump in the press and on social media, and focus on Biden, giving HIM all the airtime.

Not only will this enrage Trump, but he will begin to wither away... Its the ATTENTION that keeps him going !

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10 hours ago, stevenkesslar said:

 

 

Perhaps I give the Rebubs too much credit, but it seems they've successfully focused on how to gain control during the last 30 years, granted not always using noble means.   

Democrats ought to focus on whatever worked for the Blue side and do more of that rather than pointing fingers at their perceived fuck ups.  This is the approach followed by private sector gurus, that investing more resources in what works versus investing everything in solving the fuck ups will bring the best outcome and help beat the competition.

Certainly doesn't hurt to listen to the perfesser, but what about winning more Senate and gubernatorial elections, holding onto the House, and gaining control of the state legislatures? 

Reading the tea leaves for the next presidential cycle does less to help the Dems with the bigger picture.  If the Blue side doesn't wake up and focus on what works for winning elections, then aren't their expectation that the good guys will win a flawed worldview?    Remember how the pundits rang the death knell of the Rebubs after Obama was first elected?  As Trump likes to remind,  WRONG!

We ought not be too willing to sit back and cross our fingers that the political stars will align in the way the Lichtman describes, and not focus on the bigger picture.  Dems need to get busy, like Stacy Abrams did in Georgia. 

In the words of Chris Cuomo, let's get after it.  

acc96d018d0b78e16cf9be501f2d08e1.jpg

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