stevenkesslar

Sorry. Messed up one of the hyperlinks above. This is the article I tried to hyperlink on Biden and trade. Biden's Record on Trade

Trump opens Wisconsin rally blasting Biden for 'disastrous global sellouts' that 'surrendered' US jobs Until today I thought "It's the economy, stupid" was the one thing Biden still needed to focus on to close the deal. Now the race has changed. I loved you, RBG. It's going to take a while to see how that plays out, and who it may help or hurt. That said, in the debates I think the above Trump attack is what Biden needs to be prepared for, and turn back on President Toxic. I think he should portray President Toxic as what he is: a great jobs destroyer. Here's a few minute segment from President Toxic and Hillary on NAFTA and trade in 2016. Not surprisingly, we already know Trump will try to revisit this, like in that quote above: I'll go to the grave thinking Hillary won the debates. And that she would have won the election, had it been in October. But when I view that clip above, I think it's a good enough explanation of why President Toxic won the Slavery Electoral College. He nailed her, I think. "Read my book" was a horrible rebuttal. And it's not that people even watched this debate. It's that Trump plastered this message all over those swing states for months. In President Toxic's defense, this should arguably work even better against Biden. He did vote for NAFTA. He was Vice President. There's two problems President Toxic has with his strategy, that already proved not to work on "law and order". First, he can't really get away with ignoring the fact that he is President. This is all happening on his watch. Second, Biden doesn't have to defend what is going on right now. He needs to point out what a miserable excuse for a President Trump is. He's in the position Trump was in four years ago. Here's one way to make the point. Hillary said in that 2016 debate that President Toxic's plan would lose us 3.5 million jobs. She was wrong. It was 4.5 million jobs. In January 2017 there were 145.6 million non-farm jobs in the US. In August 2020 there were 140.9 million jobs. President Toxic destroyed 4.5 million American jobs so far during his Pesidency. President Toxic will of course say "it is what it is" and we could do no better than 200,000 dead Americans and millions of lost jobs. But 55 % of Americans don't approve of President Toxic's handling of COVID-19. So anytime Trump wants to talk about jobs, Biden is telling people what they already believe when he says President Toxic botched dealing with the plague. That cost us hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions of jobs. While he was President. The facts on manufacturing are the same. I've posted the numbers and charts from the three key Rust Belt swing states. Here's the long term US manufacturing job chart. My premise is that 40 % or so of American voters will believe any lie President Toxic tells them. The good news about that is the 60 % of Americans who don't buy Trump's bullshit is a crushing majority. My other assumption is that if Biden just tells people the truth, he can accurately and effectively portray President Toxic as a job destroyer. In a clip I'll post below, Biden said in 2007 when he was campaigning for President that NAFTA was a net job creator in Delaware while he was Senator, until W. stopped enforcing it. That's what turned him for a free trader to a fair trader. That all sounds true. If you look at that chart you'll see that after NAFTA passed in 1994 factory jobs in the US climbed - from 16.8 million in Jan. 1994 to a peak of 17.6 million at the manufacturing peak in 1998. In Jan. 2001 when W. took office there were 17.1 million manufacturing jobs in the US. So NAFTA did not cost the US jobs in the decade it was enacted. The thing Biden can hammer on is that by the time he took office as Veep in Jan. 2009 there were only 12.5 million manufacturing jobs. Biden can't tie President Toxic directly to the loss of over 4.5 million factory jobs under W. But he can tie President Toxic to his own China policies and corporate "job creator" tax giveaways. Similar tax policies failed to produce the promised factory jobs under W. And they failed to produce the promised jobs under Trump. It's the same politically devastating argument Bill Clinton made at the 2012 DNC. Fat cat tax cuts and trickle down works great. As long as you don't understand math. Biden can add in that President Toxic doesn't understand facts, either. Speaking of facts, there were 12.4 million manufacturing jobs in the US when Obama and Biden handed the economy off to President Toxic. Now there are 12.1 million manufacturing jobs. President Toxic promised to bring back millions of factory jobs. He destroyed 300,000 of them. Who is he to talk about job creation? I spent a few hours trying to learn more about Biden and trade. What I'll post below is an article that gives a good summary of his record up until he became Vice President. And then a video from late 2007 that was helpful to me. I think it's probably a meeting with a newspaper editorial board. What I like about this clip is its less campaign rhetoric, and more of an informed discussion where Biden lays out what he probably really thinks. Biden's Record on Trade My point in posting the video is this. I think Biden can finish the job of prosecuting President Toxic's incompetence and failure on the only issue he has left: the economy and jobs. And the way I think he should do it is find the words and ideas that everyone can relate to that channel his inner Bernie. The elements of it are there in that video. Nobody really wanted to take on either the China trade practices that are unfair, or the US corporations that benefit from them. President Toxic talked a good game, maybe. But he didn't do it. He just gave huge tax cuts to corporations. Which did nothing for factory jobs, and created a $1 trillion annual debt. And that was all BEFORE Coronavirus, which Trump completely failed to manage. And which cost us many more jobs and lives. Compared to Trump's train wreck, Obama and Biden at least created close to 1 million factory jobs. Biden can legitimately argue that he can do it better and quicker again, if given a chance. And a Senate majority so McConnell can't block everything again. The line I heard that best summarized the criticism of Hillary 2016 came from Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg: "How could she not close on the economy?" He was referring to all the "sex and sleaze" anti-Trump ads Hillary ran, based on the assumption that they would disqualify President Toxic with a majority of voters. Greenberg has credibility with me because him and his wife, U.S. Rep. DeLaurio, probably did as much as any two people to work closely with Hillary to craft messages on the economy and prep for the debates. The best criticism I heard of Biden's DNC came from Axelrod and Ron Brownstein: it failed to make a simple and cutting economic case against President Toxic. My guess is that the main goal was to define Biden as "Decency Joe". Trump clearly wanted to make him "Crooked Joe" and win by a sliver again by presenting himself as the slightly lesser of two evils. Mostly, what Biden has done so far is working. People view him significantly more favorably than President Toxic. If the historians and political scientists like Lichtman are right, people will draw all these conclusions on their own. In theory, Biden can just stand at the debate silently with a sign that says "Are you better off, and safer, than you were when Donald Trump was elected?" But the debates will no doubt be livelier than that. I think Biden can nail President Toxic to the wall on the economy and jobs. What I've heard Biden say so far this year that sounded best to me was when he talks, in detail, about what he did as Veep in states like Michigan. That's when he was in charge of saving industries, and tens of thousands of jobs. It sounds real. More important, the passion comes out. All President Toxic can do is his hyperbole about "the greatest economy ever". One last line Biden argument needs to get in, about poverty. In 2017, Obama and Biden handed President Toxic an economy that had achieved the lowest Black and Hispanic poverty rates in US history. Obamacare, including help with unexpected medical bills and pre-existing conditions, was part of the reason why. While we don't have the numbers yet, we probably now have the highest Black and Hispanic poverty rates in a very long time. That's thanks to President Toxic's failure to lead with COVID-19. Plus he keeps trying to kill Obamacare, which lifted millions out of poverty. And kept others with serious medical conditions from being driven into poverty. So President Park Avenue has no business going on about poverty after what he did to America. Biden should force him to explain those failures, too.

I think that's a great video about why irreconcilable differences may continue to dominate US politics for a long time - the 2020's, and possibly beyond. And color the electoral map as well. The most interesting fact in it is a poll that 49 % of Republicans identify as "Trump supporters". Only 39 % identify as "GOP supporters". Of the Trump supporters, 99 % approve of Trump. Of the GOP supporters, only 69 % approve of Trump. That explains why many "party" Republicans have already left. It also predicts that between now and November, more may leave. That chart is from another article that gives a deeper view into the splits in the Republican Party. I'd argue that the entire 39 % who support the party are candidates to become "Biden Republicans". Most won't, of course. But if 5 % do, it's enough for a Biden landslide. The fact is that Republicans are now outnumbered by both Democrats and Independents. So it's great that President Toxic has essentially 100 % support from Trump Republicans. But if they are 60 % of the smallest of three voting blocs, that's not winning math. And if what you have to do to get that 60 % to vote alienates the other 40 %, not to mention most people in the two larger voting blocs, you have a huge problem. It does not surprise me that they are two pieces of very solid glue holding "party" Republicans to the GOP. Institutionally, they want a Republican-controlled Congress. 86 % of "party" Republicans want that. 90 % of them approve of President Toxic on the economy. Once again, it's the economy, stupid. I'm now convinced that the one thing between President Toxic and a landslide defeat is the economy. Much of what happens in the next six weeks is beyond Biden's control. If COVID-19 has a Fall spike, the economic numbers look worse, many more Americans die, and the cut-off of $600 a week support to millions of Americans really slows or stops any recovery, it's all more nails in Trump's coffin. It's possible that all those factors could get better in the next six weeks. They pretty much have to for Trump to even have a chance to win. Lichtman and Abramowitz would say the verdict is already in, and President Toxic will lose on the economy. Whatever you believe, I think there is mostly upside in Biden thrashing President Toxic on the economy and jobs for the next six weeks. The main downside to me is Biden doesn't want this to be a choice. Certainly not a choice between capitalism and socialism. But he's proving to be quite capable of talking about his ideas and plans in a way that mostly communicates this: Donald Trump has failed, and failed, and failed. Period. One of the biggest perceptions or fears about Biden is that he's weak and maybe senile. He doesn't have a lot to lose in going for Trump's jugular. Mostly I think it makes him look stronger, and focused. Outside the economy, at least one in three and in some cases over half of "party" Republicans are turned off by Trump. They don't approve of him in general. They don't approve of his handling of COVID-19 or race. They are open to voting for Biden. If they can be detached from President Toxic, their perceptions on the economy are the cords that need to be cut. I assume these Republicans, like the vast majority of Republicans, don't see climate change, or racial justice, or income equality as big priorities. So I doubt there is a lifelong marriage with Democrats on the horizon. But they could choose to separate from their party for a while, until it seeks treatment and finds a better leader. Meanwhile, if half of Republicans are now "Trump Republicans" and 99 % of them think he's swell, I think we can forget about trying to move them. If I had to gamble, I would bet these Republicans will dominate their party for at least the next few election cycles. If they lose again in 2024, that may be the end of the "Trump Republicans". To argue against myself, if they lose badly this year maybe that creates an opening for someone like Marco Rubio. But about half the party is now basically cemented into Team Toxic. The ones that are not are fleeing. And the new ones joining have been saying things like this all year: "I want to be part of the Trump Party!" If he loses, President Toxic will likely say the election was stolen. And people need to join his crusade to make this right. If he loses, I would not be shocked if he is going to run again in 2024. Or promote Don Jr. as the way to take back power. @lookin, I think this is the problem with defusing authoritarianism. The fact that half of Republicans are "Trump Republicans" and 99 % of them approve of President Toxic is a perfect example of authoritarian follower behavior. And from Dean's data, this is the culmination of a process that has been going on for decades. Obama's election in 2008 probably accelerated it. And President Toxic running in 2016 put it on steroids. Even between 2018 and now there is evidence that more Whites with colleges degrees have shifted to the Democrats, and more White Democrats without college degrees have shifted to the Republicans. I don't see how you break through that trend. I don't see how you get 99 % of these people - or even 9 % - to disapprove of President Toxic. Do you? I'm stuck on the idea that what we need to focus on for now is one thing: make sure they lose. They understand defeat. And to some degree what matters most is how they respond to defeat. Like "party" Republicans, they are certainly able to shift over to the Biden camp after they lose. Or decide they need to nominate a Kasich or a Hogan in 2024. I hope some of them do. But, again, I'd bet on them starting to talk up Don, Jr. as their perfect hero in 2024. Beating Don Jr. to it may be what guys like Pompeo and Tom Cotton have in mind. I think it's a misnomer to use the phrase "identity politics" to describe this phenomenon, for two reasons. First, saying "I'm With Trump" is not like saying, "I'm Gay" or "I'm Black" or "I'm a woman." Second, no Trumpian even likes the jargon "identity politics", I suspect. There's a funny moment in that video above where a Trump guy is asked if Trump is now part of his identity. His first reaction is to laugh. That said, the video makes a strong case that all these various layers of issues - which include the economy, views about law and order, views about race, an inclination to follow authoritarian leaders - have now had years to gel around a particular type of identity: the "Trump Republican". I have a very hard time believing they will simply change their mind, or identities, the day after President Toxic loses. The final part of that ten minute piece does provide an alternative route. It's an anecdote about a Black guy in Ohio that says every bad condition - lost jobs, closed storefronts - that led him to vote for President Toxic in 2016 is now much, much worse. And that's before you add COVID-19. That's a perfect metaphor for what Biden now needs to do for the next six weeks. President Toxic will go after Biden as the root cause of all job losses in America. The facts are clear. Whatever their flaws, Obama and Biden created jobs. President Toxic has now destroyed them. That has to be Biden's relentless message. He can tie it with COVID-19 and health. And any time Biden goes after President Toxic for failing on COVID-19 he's got at least 55 % of Americans who agree with him. If President Toxic argues "it is what it is" and 200,000 dead and millions of lost jobs are simply the very best he could do, he'll be making Biden's case that he is a weak and failed leader. But don't tell that to a Trump Republican. 99 % of them will say that's you just drank the Kool Aid.

Can't we just go on a date instead? And now i'm more confused. If it goes well, is it a second date? Or a data?

They were talking on Morning Joe today about how Florida may know who won by 11 PM Election Night. They're used to mail in voting, the argument went. Florida 2020 could be the opposite of 2000. Instead of being the mess, they may be the island of clarity in the middle of a mess. As I recall, Gillum and I think Nelson led in early returns in 2018. As more ballots were counted, which I assume were the ones cast in person that day, it looked better and better for De Santis and Scott. Maybe it will all be different in 2020. But I'm going with the theory that swing states that count mail-in or early voting ballots early will come out of the box with Biden in the lead. The main point on Morning Joe was that if Biden wins Florida on Election Night or early the next morning, it's game over. We might not know the results in Michigan for weeks. And in theory if President Toxic won Michigan two weeks later ............ blah blah blah. But that's only a credible argument to his base. If Trump wins Florida, it will certainly power the argument that it's his election to lose, as long as we don't let Democrats cheat. But I think anyone paying attention knows Florida is a must win state for President Toxic and a can lose state for Biden. Meanwhile, whatever trend drives Florida will be showing up in Election Night returns in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas, Arizona. There was another interesting point made by some data guy from WaPo about Pennsylvania. Joe was going off about how the polls in Pennsylvania surprise him. This is all talk inside the political hack bubble. But he keeps saying Wisconsin is the state that is supposed to be close. Why Pennsylvania? The WaPo guy said go back and check the numbers from 2008. Even back then Obama won by some margin in the teens in Michigan and Wisconsin, but by about 10 in Pennsylvania. So I checked this morning. Here's the Democrat's winning margin in each election from 2000 to 2012 2012: Obama +9.5 % Michigan, + 7 % Wisconsin, + 5.5 % Pennsylvania 2008: Obama +16.5 % Michigan, + 14 % Wisconsin, + 10 % Pennsylvania 2004 Kerry + 3.5 % Michigan, + 0.5 % Wisconsin, + 2.5 % Pennsylvania 2000 Gore + 5 % Michigan, + 0.2 % Wisconsin, + 4 % Pennsylvania And here's where Biden is right now in the state polling averages on 538: 2020 Biden +7.7 % Michigan, +6.7 % Wisconsin, + 4.9 % Pennsylvania Especially if you compare Michigan to Pennsylvania, it's clear that Pennsylvania is clearly a wobblier brick in the Blue Wall. I think the best explanation is Jim Carville's word: "Pennsyltucky". The central part of the state is more like Appalachia than technocratic Pittsburgh or urban Philadelphia. Michigan has no equivalent concept of "Michissippi", really. They do have Macomb County, and "Reagan Democrats". The thing that jumps out at me is that going from a 16 % win in 2008 in Michigan to a narrow loss in 2016 really is a devastating verdict on Obama/Biden. What it says to me is that Democrats need to get their shit together on jobs, jobs, jobs in a way they just didn't under Obama/Biden. Arguably, Biden is the worst guy to do that because he was part of it. Arguably, Biden is the best guy to do it because he was part of it. And you don't have to be a genius to figure out where they want wrong. If he gets a redo, there's reason to think he learned from the mistakes that led to 2016. I'm going to start a thread on jobs and trade and Biden and President Toxic. But let me throw one thought about it in here. President Toxic is running as if he is not really President. It didn't work on law and order. Now he's trying to do it on jobs. But I don't think it will work, either. The best thing you can say about the track record of Obama/Biden on factory jobs in these three states is that they did enormously better than President Toxic, who destroyed factory jobs. And Obama and Biden didn't have to fork over trillions in tax cuts to the corporations who destroyed the jobs in order to get them to give hollow promises that they'd bring the jobs back. Which they didn't. The potshots President Toxic took at Hillary in 2016 as an outside agitator are almost certain to fail when he takes them as President Toxic. The one other thing that surprised me about those numbers above is Wisconsin. Obama did better in Wisconsin than Pennsylvania. But for both Gore and Kerry Wisconsin was the wobbliest brick in the Blue Wall. As you can see, Gore almost lost Wisconsin in 2000. That's now two decades ago. So it's probably safe to assume that the 2020 polls are right, and Wisconsin is less wobbly than Pennsylvania but more wobbly than Michigan. Here's the equivalent poll numbers for where Hillary was in these three states as of September 18, 2016: 2016 polls (9/18/2016): Hillary +5.2 % Michigan, + 4 % Wisconsin, + 6.6 % Pennsylvania. That data doesn't fit as neatly into the picture. By Oct. 1 2016, Hillary's lead in Pennsylvania was down to 2 %. I think the takeaway is that Biden probably has a consistently larger margin than Hillary did in these states. But it's not large enough to ensure he'll actually win. I'll keep being broken record on this. For those who say the polls were wrong, the last poll in Michigan and Pennsylvania right before the election was from Republican pollster Trafalgar. Both showed a razor thin Trump lead. They simply had a set up of assumptions, like Rasmussen, that worked very well in 2016 but very badly in 2018. This is way more about turnout than persuasion at this point. Depending on which poll you believe, Independents could still go either way. So persuasion matters. But what really matters is who votes. 2 million more people voted for President Toxic in 2016 than voted for Romney in 2012. Meanwhile, Hillary's turnout went down 100,000 votes from Obama 2012. She also lost Independents, but by almost the same margin Obama did in 2012. So it's all about turnout. Biden struggles to close enthusiasm gap with Latino voters I'll throw that in this post as well. It fits in in terms of thinking of this as a problem of getting to 270 votes, until we dump the Slavery Electoral College. The article is one of many lately that quote one of Bernie's top Latino gurus about how the Democrats are just blowing it. I agree with his analysis. Whether the numbers are accurate or not, it doesn't sound good or smart to spend 500 times more to persuade Whites in the Rust Belt than to persuade Latinos in Arizona. Reading this article I just decided the easy way to think about 2020 is that we (Democrats) just fucked this up completely. We should have been doing what worked for Bernie six months ago. We didn't. It's now too late. We fucked up. That said, hopefully in 2020 it doesn't matter. Unlike 2016, I'd rather just make sure we win those three Rust Belt states. That said, it's a reason I'm sending money to Mark Kelly. If Kelly wins, Biden probably wins Arizona, too. I think part of the post mortem from 2020 for Democrats should be that we just fucked up royally with Latinos, period. And if we keep fucking up, they'll at some point be why a Republican wins. They were why W. won in 2000 and 2004. So it's happened already. If the Republicans are smart, if Biden wins they'll nominate Rubio in 2024. He may not be the single best choice. But if the idea is to focus on Latinos and do it by running a Latino who doesn't have the shit of Trump smeared all over him, Rubio is the guy. And Florida is the lab for how Republicans kill Democratic dreams. Whether that means taking out old White guys like Nelson or Biden, or blocking the rising tide of politicians like Gillum or Harris. Our immediate and most urgent problem is the Blue Wall. But even if Democrats do great in 2020 we have to have a long term strategy we don't have for Latino outreach and leadership development.

Thanks for the hot GIF. But you know you had me at "rant".

Fact check time. This first one is just a repeat from the post directly above. But it did surprise me. Jackson in his article on the Slavery Electoral College says turnout was higher in 2016 than 2008. In 2008 it was 58.2 % of voting age Americans. In 2016 it was 59.3 % of voting age Americans. So if you're saying most Americans chose not to participate in 2016, that's false. Turnout was higher than normal in 2016 by US standards. And it will be higher still in 2020 most likely. I think this makes your point about Independents, albeit in a sideways sort of way. And President Toxic gets credit for this. As a former Democrat/ maybe Republican/maybe Independent who ran as a Republican, he had Independent appeal in 2016 in two ways that mattered. First, he won the Independent vote over Hillary, 46/42 according to the CNN exit polls. Second, he got 2 million more "Republicans" to vote than Romney did. I say "Republicans" because some of them were former Democrats. And some were no doubt people attracted to his Independent spirit. The notion that Democrats "purge" Independents is absurd. Hillary lost in 2016 because she lost Independents and President Toxic got more Republicans to vote. Obama won decisively in 2008 because he won Independents and he got more Democrats to vote. Do you detect a formula there? Why would any Democrat purge Independents, since that means losing? Now let me go off on Independents for a minute. This is really more about a very smart Independent client and friend of 20 years. At some point I started telling him he's not an Independent. He's a dilettante. He can't make up his mind. He stands for nothing. He believes in nothing. He thinks one candidate is a turd sandwich. The other is a giant douche. One year he votes for the turd sandwich and feels like he ate shit. Then he votes for the giant douche and feels like he got fucked. He has no consistent goal or strategy. Other than to be a dilettante and alternate being feeling like he ate shit and feeling like he got fucked. It simply ensures that nothing gets done. Every step forward is matched by a step back when he changes his mind. That's what an "Independent" is. It's a strategy for gridlock. Obama 2012 is a good case in point to me. As I said, Obama won Independents 2008. But in 2012, Obama lost the Independent vote by 5 % to Romney. How could Obama win anyway? Because Romney's Republican turnout was inferior to Trump's. And Democratic turnout in 2012 was good. I've read several analyses that said that Blacks, who exceeded even their record 2008 turnout, really carried Obama over the top in 2012. And Obama would publicly say that in thanking them at Black events. It's the opposite of dilettante to me. Blacks were screwed by The Great Recession more than anyone else. You might argue that Obama himself and his corporate pals like Summers and Geithner screwed Black home owners by bailing banks out, but not Blacks. I might partly agree. And yet they were loyal to Obama. Part of the reason Obama couldn't get things done from 2010 to 2016 is in 2010, 2012, and 2014 the Independents who supported him in 2008 turned on him. My question is this: if Independents flip from Obama to Romney to Trump to Biden, how the fuck do you ever get anything important done? Like Obamacare? Independents I know will blame it on all kinds of things other than themselves. And I agree with some of the things they blame. But the practical impact of Independents on US politics is to create gridlock and make sure nothing can get done. And if somethings does get done, in two years everything is reversed and we just try go right back to where we started. I think 2020 is the Tea Party/Trump people's turn to get fucked by the Dilettante Party. In 2016 Independents gave Republicans what they needed to do tax cuts for the fat cats and conservative judges. In 2018, they took it back. In 2020, my guess is they'll wipe it out. Some polls say Biden is leading with Independents. Other say President Toxic is. I'd bet that Biden will win Independents narrowly, like 5 % more than what Trump gets. If I'm right, in 2022 they'll probably turn around and punish Biden for whatever he actually got done. President Toxic is another example of something else. Anybody even remotely "Independent" from the left or right has to run as a Democrat or Republican. Trump and Bernie are both perfect examples. So outside the two political parties, they can't run for office and they can't win. Of course, Bernie tried to. And failed. And failed. And failed. And failed. You can argue that all that would change if we could just elect more Independents. That was tried, too. It failed. And failed. And failed. So an "Independent" like AOC can run and win. But, to date, only in a place that is a solid Democratic powerhouse. So what they do is take some Establishment White liberal Democrat or Establishment Black Democrat out. Good for them. But that's not a strategy for building an Independent Party. It's a strategy for replacing a small number of Democrats who are left of center with "Independents" elected as Democrats who are even further left of center. Part of the reason I think Independents are dilettantes is they are all over the map. There's no evidence that Democrats would be doing better with Independents if Bernie were the nominee. In Florida, where 18 % of voters in the Democratic primary were Independents, that group voted for Biden 48/32. In North Carolina, where 27 % of primary voters were Independents, they went Bernie 34 %. Biden 29 %, Bloomberg 15 %, Warren 10 %. My read is that's an even split between centrists and left wingers. In Michigan, where 29 % of voters were Independents, Bernie won them narrowly over Biden, 46 % to 42 %. Unfortunately, there's no exit polls for Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, since that was after COVID hit I'm guessing. I don't see any of that as evidence that either Bernie or Biden give Democrats some advantage with Independents voters. What I still don't fully understand is why Biden trounced Bernie in every county in Michigan (and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). Maybe those Bernie 2016/Biden 2020 voters are mostly Democrats who didn't like Hillary. But my impression is some of those people were Independents who for some reason liked Bernie better than Hillary, but Biden better than Bernie. I've read a theory that they voted for Bernie in 2016 because they are low information voters who preferred the old White guy who talked about union stuff to the woman who talked about implicit racism. How progressive is that? Here's another little factoid. In Michigan the 29 % of primary voters from a union household voted for Biden over Bernie 56/36. The 71 % who are non-union households voted for Biden 51/38. Either way, Bernie got clobbered. But if the idea is to build a bottom up coalition of Democrats and Independents who are for the working people, shouldn't Bernie be winning the union vote? I focused here on all the things I think suck about Independents, looking at it as a loyal Democrat. I could make endless abstract arguments about the great things about Independents. They are part of the checks and balances. They are less inclined to buy into any party's orthodoxy. Whether they are centrists or not, the net effect of their going back and forth is they do tend to draw things to the center rather than the extremes. More than anything, if you don't have Independents, you just lose. My sense is that both Biden and Bernie, having survived for half a century, know that deep in their bones. It seemed clear to me that they both ran primary campaigns that would allow them to reach out to Independents in the general election. Bernie's problem was the opposite. I think one of the bigger nails in his coffin was one he drove in himself. It just didn't work well to run for Democratic nominee by attacking the Democratic Party. The biggest thing that I think killed him on Super Tuesday was that lots of Democrats just decided that Biden was the better shot at beating President Toxic than Bernie. I think Biden played every card he could with endorsements and media and the stampede of schmooze with Klo and Pete and Kamala to help that along. But that's when Bernie was saying that he was running against the Democratic Establishment. How well did that work for him? My hope is that Bernie will be a prophet. I can now look back and say that Harold Washington for Chicago Mayor in the 80's and Jesse Jackson for President in the 90's were part of the chain that led to Barack Obama in 2008. In 20 years if we have a Democratic Socialist President I hope I can look back and say Bernie 2016 and 2020 laid the groundwork to get there. That right there was why I voted for Bernie this year. It was more a vote for the future than the present. I also give Bernie this. Whatever he did to help pave the way to a more progressive Democratic Party, or a democratic socialist movement, he did it in the Democratic Party. As I said, I think his anti-party rhetoric mostly hurt him, not Biden or the party. But the big difference is with Nader and Stein. Sorry, but a vote for Nader in Florida in 2000 was a vote for President Bush. A vote for Stein in the Rust Belt in 2016 was a vote for President Toxic. Bernie did not do that to Democrats in either 2016 or 2020. Hopefully, he helped set up Biden to win, and Schumer to be Majority Leader. Which means Bernie set himself up to be a serious power broker and legislator in 2021. Maybe somewhere down the line, some strategy for a third party that can actually take power and move agenda will make sense in America. Like the Green Party has in parts of Europe, But in this last 20 years, all it does is help Republicans win. And thwart the agendas the Naders and Steins say they are running to advance.

There was voting data in that article I posted above by Reggie Jackson that I think is a silver lining on this cloud. He chronicled voter participation going back to the beginning of popular voting for President in the US. So back when America was great, or something like that, White men who owned slaves, like Andrew Jackson, won the Presidency with the support of as little as 11.5 % of the voting age population. Too bad poor President Toxic can't figure out a way to make America that great again! It would solve all his problems. The all time high in the US was the 1960 election, when 62.8 % of all Americans of voting age voted. It fell to a low of 49 % in 1996. Obama was elected in 2008 with 58.2 % of the voting age population. Interestingly, we beat that in 2016 when 59.3 % of the voting age population voted. A lot of people think 2020 will break all turnout records. So it's possible that we could break the 1960 record of 62.8 % this year. On the face of it, that's good for democracy. On the face of it, whatever I think about the Slavery Electoral College, this deep conflict between two tribes has probably helped drive turnout up. Better to cast a ballot than pick up a musket like we did in the Civil War. So, arguably, this is all relatively good news. Democracy is alive and well. Maybe. I think for anyone who says they believe in democracy, it's interesting to compare those voting participation numbers to the chart above. It's from Pew research that tracks the percentage of Americans that trust "the government in Washington". Probably most people would agree with the idea that a healthy democracy is one in which most people vote. And in which people feel they are voting for a government they can actually trust. Not surprisingly, partisanship factors into this. This other chart which asks the question somewhat differently shows that when there's a Republican President, Republicans feel better about government. When there's a Democratic President, Democrats feel better. That's been more true in the 21st century than in the less polarized 1990's. So there's two big things that jump out at me, that are divergent trends. From about 1960 to 2000, trust in government gradually went down. And voting participation mostly tracked it. The big decline in voting, as Jackson documents in his essay, happened between 1960 and 1980. From 1980 to 2000 or so it went sideways. Same with trust in government. It makes sense that people who trusted government less might have had less motivation to even bother with voting. There's only two Presidents in my lifetime who increased trust in government during their time in office: Reagan, and then Clinton. It's not clear that people feeling better about government made them more likely to vote. 1996, at 49 % voting participation, was a low point in voting during this 60 year period. Even though it was relatively good times. Maybe people felt they didn't need to vote, because things were going well. Since 9/11, the two trends - trust in government, and voting participation - seem to have diverged. The level of public trust in government only gets worse. Again, if you look at the other chart I hyperlinked there were partisan differences. But the way I feel about it is that trust in government is about as low as it gets. Under President Toxic, we are scraping along the bottom of the barrel. The bizarre thing to me is that Republicans seem to trust President Toxic not because he's there to lead an effective government. It's more like he's there to torment government agencies Trump supporters don't trust. That said, under President Toxic the majority of Republicans do feel they trust the federal government to "handle domestic problems". Before COVID-19, at least. Meanwhile, voting participation is clearly heading back up. It broke a near-term record in 2008 with Obama, and then again in 2016. I'm pretty sure that if we break the 1960 record in 2020, that means Biden wins. Simply because there are more Democrats than Republicans. Republicans do well mostly when Democrats don't vote. It's not 100 % clear that the surge in voting participation has anything to do with government, or trust in government. But I'd argue it probably does. Blacks broke records in 2008 and then broke them again in 2012 because under Obama I think they were looking for a government that represented and worked for them. Despite their distaste for "The Deep State", it seems like that's what Trump voters wanted in 2016. And are planning to vote for again in 2020. That said, the chart above suggests that we're not doing very well at actually electing a government that most people trust. I have a theory of what a political version of "survival of the fittest" is trying to work out here, in a very messy way. My theory is no doubt colored by my liberal pro-government bias. But my theory is that we're trying to work out how to get back to feeling like people did in 1960. How do we get to a place where most Americans vote, and most Americans feel they are voting for a government they trust? Here's another way I think about the long-term problem. I don't believe Putin has been trying to destroy US democracy ever since he came to power in 2000. But just imagine for a minute that he's been at this for 20 years now. If he's trying to destroy democracy, he's not doing a very good job. We went from 49 % voting participation in 1996 to 59 % in 2016. If the goal was to make people feel like democracy and voting aren't worth it, that just hasn't happened. US democracy may be a mess. Everyone I know in Canada looks down with sympathy and says, "What the fuck is happening to you poor people?". But we are probably preparing to break voter participation records in 2020. Here's another thought I've had for years which I feel is hysterical, but also does get to the nature of our long-term challenge. Why don't we just go ahead and have World War III with China, and let them win? If American democratic capitalism now means the predatory lending meltdown, the Great Recession, and electing Donald Trump, could being a colony of China actually be worse? I've doubled down on this hysterical thought since COVID-19. Like him or not, Xi stamped out a plague (for now) and got the Chinese economy growing again. He did that with minimal deaths. Some of it was heavy handed. But most reports I've read - mostly from Western journalists - state that in Asia in general, and China in particular, there was a huge degree of civic/communal spirit and national pride that went into wearing masks and following reasonable measures to contain the virus. Meanwhile, in the US, maybe 1 in 3 Americans believe freedom means never having to say you're sorry for not wearing a mask. Even if it could kill someone. When told that 100,000 fewer Americans would have died if we wore masks, and over 100,000 won't die by year's end if we start now, many people feel that's fake news. Or socialism. Please, Chairman Xi. Just bomb the fuck out of us, okay? At least then we'll all have to wear masks and we can go to work. Again, I'm being dramatic and hysterical. But this thinking does reflect our real, huge national challenges. More than ever before, I feel like if we have either a Cold War or a hot war with China, the US is just going to lose. And the main driver is that we can't get out shit together. You can't win World War III when you don't trust your government to fight it. And if anyone thinks President Toxic could be a good Commander In Chief! Let's not even go there. I know how I hope this goes. But I don't have a clue how we get there. I hope that in 20 years we have Millennial Presidents and Governors. I hope we have a national and global consensus that we do have serious common threats, and climate change tops the list. I hope in the US we have a majority of people in both parties that trust their national government to work with industries and citizens to create technologies and jobs that deal with our problems. I hope Republicans feel that while they didn't vote for Democratic President Harris, she did a reasonably good job. I hope Democrats feel that while they didn't vote for Republican President Hogan, he did a reasonably good job. (Please, leave Tom Cotton and the entire Trump family out of my fantasy.) The goal I like is that we end up back where we were in 1960. Again, if we're saying democracy is a good thing, it seems like we should be saying that most people should vote. And most people should feel they are voting for a competent government that they trust. I read a comment by a Republican Senator a few years ago that stuck with me. I can't recall which one. But I know it was a non-Trumpian Republican I've always thought of as being a decent and smart leader. He was talking about the huge degree of polarization today. And the fact that the country is basically split in two. He said at some point something is going to happen that will force people to come back together. He didn't speculate about what it might be, or when it might happen. But he said that it's inevitable that at some point it will. I wondered when COVID-19 started if that could be the thing. You'd think the combination of a once-in-a-century pandemic and a Greater Recession - if not a Depression - would do the trick. It hasn't. We can't even agree about wearing a mask. As a Democrat, I wonder if it would have been different if Biden were President. We'll find out soon enough, I think. My guess is that the Toxic Trumpian types will double down on the idea that masks are bad, guns are good, we don't trust a vaccine if it's a Democrat vaccine, and we'll just obstruct and wait it out. In my wildest liberal dreams, I'd like to think that we're headed into a realignment election like 1932 or 1980. Lots of Democrats, and more than a few Republicans pols I respect, are using the New Deal to describe where we may be headed. And in my dreams, I'd like to think that such a thing would get us back to a point where at least half of all Americans actually felt they trusted their government, and voted on that basis. My Dad's generation went through the New Deal and World War II and the Cold War. I'm pretty sure that did build this feeling that whether you're a Democrat or Republican, we fundamentally trust our government. That's my explanation for why the polling in the late 50's and early 60's shows that something like 3 in 4 Americans trusted their government. Obama tried that "we're all Americans" stuff in 2008, at least on a rhetorical level. According to Pew, we didn't crack 1 in 4 Americans actually trusting government under Obama. "Make America Great Again" is an even bigger flop. We haven't cracked 1 in 5 Americans trusting government under President Toxic. Although some "Deep State" haters would perhaps argue that was actually the goal. Historical Timeline That's an interesting tool that lets you quickly click through the Slavery Electoral College outcome for every US Presidential election. Check out 1854 to 1900. It's a different way to think about a country divided in two. There's several things about that period that seem relevant to today. More than anything, it's a model for how a nation can remain fundamentally divided for a long time. In that period, the basic division was geographic: North and South, free states and former slave states. There were nine Republican Presidents from 1860 to 1900, with interruptions by two nonconsecutive terms of Democrat Grover Cleveland. Race, slavery, The Civil War, Reconstruction, and resistance to Reconstruction were all at the core of the conflict. Norm Brownstein's words for the two tribes in our current conflict - the "coalition of transformation" and the "coalition of restoration" - actually describe a lot of the economic, political, and racial conflicts of that period as well. Earlier in this thread I posted this article by Sean Trende about why Minnesota has stayed Democratic. It offers a theory that fits in well here. In a nutshell, it's the geography, stupid. It's a bit more complicated than the geography from 1860 to 1990, when it was almost as simple as "North and South". All you had to do then is draw one straight line to show the key geographic variable. Today, you need to know the concentration of large cities and what Trende calls "mega cities". (Rahm Emmanuel's political phrase for the same concept is "metropolitan alliances" between cities and suburbs.) That's the geography of the future for Democrats, Trende argues. Where those exist, Democrats will do well. Since so much of Minnesota's population is in The Twin Cities, it will tilt hard to Democrats, Trende argues. Iowa, where there's a much higher percentage of rural areas and small towns, and no megacity, will more likely continue its trend the other way. There are clear racial and "identity politics" elements to this formulation. Blacks, Muslims, and drag queens live in one part of America. Old White cowboys with bug gun collections live in another. One part has Silicon Valley. The other part has small towns, and many smaller cities with dead factories, and feels left behind. People in mostly White areas fear mosques and Black Lives Matter. Even though the nearest mosque or Black protester may be 100 miles away. If you buy that, which I mostly do, you can extrapolate out an electoral map something like the one from 1860 to 1900. There was no year like 1932 or 1936 or 1980 or 1984, when one coalition was so dominant it pretty much won it all. But there was a dominant party, the Republican Party, rooted in the North. Several of the Never Trump Lincoln Project types basically see a long period of Democratic nomination, rooted as it has been on the technocratic and liberal coasts. My read of what they are doing is a play for some role in what they view as the dominant coalition, at least for a while. It's very hard for me to imagine a Republican Party in the next decade or two that gets excited about the idea of a Green New Deal. Or racial justice as most Blacks would define it. Or "immigration reform" as most mainstream immigrants would define it. As I posted earlier in this thread, climate change and racial justice are at the absolute bottom of the Republican's list of priorities in 2020. They're more interested in law and order, and the right to bear arms. Black Lives Matter? They probably mostly feel like President Toxic. "You sure drank the Kool Aid, didn't you?" To go back to my point about trust in government, this does not paint a very rosy or unifying picture. If you imagine a dominant Democratic coalition that pursues a Green New Deal and racial justice, among other priorities, a future Republican Party would have to completely reject Trumpism to feel like that's a government they trusted. If anything, it would be a reason for them to double down on the idea that they don't trust government at all. Which is pretty much what eight years of Obama and Obamacare made them feel, I now think. It wasn't red America or blue America. It was socialist, radical America. They don't want anything to do with it. This is a recipe for continued division. Not unity. If Biden does in fact win, maybe after a few years of Uncle Joe Decent things will look and feel very different. But I won't be holding my breath. I'd bet on deep irreconcilable differences. And an electoral map that is something like the ones that played out for decades in the late 19th century. Not a clean line between North and South. But race, rural and small town versus urban, and transformation versus restoration would be some of the same core dynamics I would bet on. If any of this is right, I won't get my wish. As an American and a patriot, I feel like it would be a nice thing to have 3 in 4 Americans saying they trust their government again before I die. It would also be nice to have 3 in 4 Americans who are of voting age actually vote. I'm less confident than I was in the Glory Days of Fall 2008 that I will ever get my wish of the America that I thought I saw back then.

They are stunningly accurate lately. I'm being schizo. Because I do believe Lichtman is right. Polls don't matter. And barring extraordinary circumstances, President Toxic will lose base on fundamentals. And yet, I keep wetting my pants about the polls. So the one freaking me out now is Rasmussen. As of yesterday, they showed President Toxic with a + 6 % net approval rating (52/46). That's an outlier for even Rasmussen. It's about 15 points off from the 538 average Trump approval rating, which is now about - 9 % net disapproval (43/52). I'm pretty sure Rasmussen's sample is screwed up. I read somewhere Rasmussen is saying 1 in 4 or even 1 in 3 Blacks approve of President Toxic. That's wildly higher Black approval than almost any other poll. So I checked. In this Dec. 2016 article Rasmussen bragged about calling it right. Their final polling (Nov 2- 6, 2016) showed Hillary would win the popular vote by 2 %. She won by 2 %. The final RCP average showed that Hillary would win by 3 %. That was close, too. Part of the issue is these averages use polls taken usually over the last week. With state polls, which have larger margins of error, the polls may be more than a week old. In a race like 2016, where we know BEFORE Election Day that the final trend was moving in President Toxic's favor, a week can make a big difference. In 2018, on the other hand, Rasmussen did the worst of anyone. Harry Enten aka "The Wizard Of Odds" at CNN pointed out that "the President's favorite pollster was the least accurate in the midterms." They said Republicans would win the Congressional vote by 1 %. Democrats won the Congressional vote by 8.4 %. They were off by almost 10 points. Meanwhile, in 2018 the RCP Congressional average in 2018 predicted the Democrats would win by 7.3 % . So they were one point off. The 538 Congressional average was almost right on the money. Their final poll average was that Democrats would win by 8.7 %. Obviously all these pollsters are making different assumptions about who is going to vote. And obviously nobody knows for sure. In 2016, reality aligned well with Rasmussen's Republican-friendly model. In 2018, Rasmussen and Republicans blew it. In practice, it has worked out lately that the poll averages have been remarkably close to the actual results. Especially in the well polled national races. The easiest explanation is that it's the wisdom of crowds. Right now it probably helps the pollsters that the country is so polarized. The vast majority of voters are cemented on one side or the other. That's even true with Independents and Millennials who don't identify with either party. RCP has now had these poll averages going back to I believe 2004. So I checked. In the 2004, 2008, and 2016 elections the final average correctly predicted the national vote winner. And they got the winning margin right within about 1 % of the final national vote total. The only exception was 2012. The final poll average showed Obama winning by 0.7 %. He won by 3.9 %. Even that's not very remarkable. Romney had a big surge starting late September after Obama bombed the first debate. So through much of October the race was basically tied. At various points in October Romney had a slight lead. But the final average showed the race slightly for Obama at 49/48. It ended up at 51/47. Obama basically seems to have gotten most of the undecided vote. And if you look at the trend in the last seven days of polling, Obama was the one who had the trend at the end. He gained two points in the final week of the race that was polled, from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5. Romney just went sideways. 2016 was very different. And anyone who was surprised was just engaged in wishful thinking. I remember this extremely well. I was in Puerto Vallarta with a Republican. (Sadly, that will never happen again on Election Day, I suspect.) On October 28th, the day of The Second Coming Of Comey, Hillary had a lead of almost 5 % in the RCP average. To be very precise, it was 47.1/42.5. By Nov. 2, she had a 1 % lead of 46.6/45.3. If the election had been held a few days earlier, it's possible Hillary might have lost Minnesota. This was the period her staff described as being when Comey "blocked out the sun". Nothing else could get through. The thing that freaked me out was that on that linked chart for about four days - right before the election - Trump's poll numbers were a straight line going straight up. And Hillary was a straight line coming down. Anybody who knows "the trend is your friend" would know this was not good news for Hillary. If you look at those numbers above it also seemed clear that the undecided were starting to break. And they were headed in President Toxic's direction. Again, not good news for Hillary. This last part is very relevant to 2020. That post about Sean Trende above says that for Trump to be in the ballpark of winning, his approval needs to go up to 46 to 47 % by November. As I said above, there's only one time he cracked 47 % in his Presidency: in March 2020 when COVID hit hard and the approval rating of leaders all over the world were going up due to the "rally around the flag" effect. I don't think it's very likely President Toxic will crack 47 % again before November. That said, what actually happened in 2016 is he ended up with 46 % when all the votes were counted. That's the percentage he got only one time in the entire year of polling in 2016. He was at 46 % in July 2016, right at the end of his post-convention peak. So when it all was said and done, he managed to end up at exactly the highest point he'd been in the polls all year. Everyone who at any point approved of him or considered voting for him ended up voting for him. It could happen again. Trump's at 43 % in the horse race polls. The highest his horse race number has been this year is 46 %. Again, his highest approval rating was 47 %. If he did it in 2016, he can do it in 2020. President Toxic could end up at 47 %. Whether that's good for an electoral college win if Biden has a 3 or 4 or 5 % winning margin is a whole different matter. I'd rather be safe than sorry. All of this stuff I'm posting is obviously my own intellectual masturbation. But if I was working on a Democratic campaign, I'd be sounding the fire alarm and shouting, "Trump can win!" All I'm doing instead is masturbating and sending money to Democrats. Better them than porn, I figure.

Okay. I'll run with you on this one. But do we at least get to have a big old orgasm by the time it's all over? Or is this going to be one of those ghastly episodes where we basically all end up getting fucked in the end? If it is, you know me. I at least want to make sure I'm stocked up with lots of lube.

If I'm obsessed with something, it's not polls. It's details. I learned a long time ago not to take anything you say literally. And I'm not the kind of guy that likes to shoot fish in a barrel. But just for fun, can you hand me the gun? I think your point is that over time trust in government in general, and political parties is particular, has declined. Back in 2000, after two terms of Clintonism, about half of Americans trusted government. That was the highest it had been since the 1960's, before Viet Nam and Watergate. And as you can see above a majority of Americans viewed both political parties favorably. Now it works out that a majority of Americans view at least one political party favorably, when you add the two together. But neither party is viewed favorably by a majority of Americans on its own. And you are right. That's even more true among Millennials. That said, can you please post the poll that shows "all Americans detest both parties." I haven't seen that poll. I'm not Black, so I won't speak for Blacks. But I highly doubt they would disagree with my points - either about dumping the Slavery Electoral College, or its foundation in the support of slavery and racism. REGGIE JACKSON: THE ROLES RACISM AND SLAVERY PLAYED IN THE CREATION OF OUR ELECTORAL COLLEGE SYSTEM Jackson is Black, was born in Pennsylvania, and seems to be making his argument to voters in Wisconsin. I agree with everything he says, except this one line: "There is no way to argue cogently that these facts are not true." Unfortunately, Reggie, there is. Just ask President Toxic, and his followers. They'll figure out a way. About 75 % of Blacks see President Toxic as racist. My guess is if asked they would agree with Jackson. Meaning they would prefer to see the system that empowered slave owners and now empowers racist President Toxic removed. My guess is even the Blacks who DID NOT vote in Pennsylvania or Michigan or Wisconsin would want it removed. They obviously didn't feel it was worth the effort to vote for Hillary. But that doesn't mean they wanted a racist to be President, who likes to empower racism and defend White Supremacists and Nazis and White vigilantism. On the face of it, the Slavery Electoral College made it so that the overwhelming majority of US Blacks - including something like 90 % of Blacks in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - could not have the President they actually wanted and voted for. This is obviously not the time to have this debate. The immediate thing is I'll be curious to see how far President Toxic and his Personal Obedient Attorney Barr are willing to go in November. I'll repeat what I said above. The further they go, and the more shocking it is, the more it may facilitate pissing the majority of Americans off. And putting them in a mood to finally nail the coffin shut on this particular legacy of slavery and racism. Mostly, I hope Millennials keep doing what they are doing. In 2008 they thought electing Obama was enough. In 2008 they were a significant but minority voice in a large coalition. Add Gen Z and they are on their way to becoming a majority. If they are now in the streets in a middle of a plague, that's a pretty clear signal that they have woken up. I don't know this for a fact. But I do believe that one reason that the racial barriers have fallen and young Whites see the world more like young Blacks than ever before is that they probably grew up closer together than ever before. And they probably shared many of the same experiences. Including being successful but trapped in college debt if things went well. And including being on the losing end of a mostly "winner take all" economy if things went less well. Every month I'm increasingly convinced that the future is going to be more like all earthquake all the time. To go to Lichtman, whose goal was to develop a system that could predict political earthquakes as effectively as a system that predicted real earthquakes, I think he is right. An earthquake is coming soon to an election near you. But I don't think it's the big one. I suspect it's just the beginning. (2016 was the actual beginning. Electing President Toxic was an earthquake, too.) It may be a series of moderate earthquakes. Or it may be that the big one is coming in 2024 or 2032. Who knows? But it's coming. And the Millennials and Gen Z will drive it. Fun fact. Clinton, then W., and now President Toxic were all born in the Summer of 1946. So they were all the start of the Baby Boom. Obama was 1961 - like me, the end of the Baby Boom. Biden will break the chain, but in the wrong direction. He was born in 1942. Interestingly, Kamala as President would restore the Baby Boom hegemony. She was born in 1964 - the last Baby Boom year. When do we get a Millennial President? With the benefit of hindsight, I like Mayor Pete slightly more than I did during the primary. I liked him during the primary as a candidate. But he's basically now set up as what I think of us our first openly Gay national Democrat. I think Senator Baldwin was the first openly lesbian national Democrat. So I'm glad that he did well, and that he has a promising future. That said, I mention him because I would bet he'll never be President. As it worked out in 2020, it served his interest to kind of disavow the Bernie essay he wrote as a smart kid. It wouldn't shock me if Biden and Mayor Pete actually had a discussion - or even a vague understanding - about how Pete would be the one putting the political knife into Bernie in the run up to Super Tuesday. I may be giving Biden's ability to manipulate circumstances too much credit. Regardless, it worked out that Mayor Pete did better than most expected, by sort of being Young Gay Joe Biden. Mayor Pete won lots of things. He did not win the moral legitimacy to speak for his generation. That still belong to Bernie and AOC, among others. It's not a shocker that Young Gay Joe Biden tended to do well among older Democrats. I'll keep repeating that the Democratic Socialism Show turned out to not quite be ready for prime time in 2020. Had Bernie won the primary, Lichtman is saying he would win in November. His theory is that voters will reject President Toxic for almost any reasonable alternative. It would be interesting if we could test that out in the alternative universe President Toxic and his followers live in. They of course believe Americans would overwhelming reject radical socialism. I wouldn't want to bet either way on that one. Someday the Democratic Socialism Show will be ready for prime time, I expect. It feels to me like we are seeing the previews. It actually gives me optimism. I feel like it's a good show. And I want to be around for it, with a front row seat.

Trump's Path to Victory Sorry to brag, but brilliant minds think alike. Sean Trende is one of my favorite number crunchers. He is right far more often than he is wrong. And this is his somewhat terser and better reasoned version of what I said a few posts up. Like me, he cites the fact that W. and Obama both won re-election with a vote share that was within a point or so of their favorability rating right before the election. So for President Toxic to win, he's arguing his average approval rating would have to go to 46 or 47 %, as opposed to about 43 % today. The most likely driver of this would be an accelerating economic rebound. President Toxic's net approval rating on the economy bottomed out six weeks ago at zero. He's now at net approval of + 3.6 % on the economy. So I agree with Trende. There's not a lot of scenarios for President Toxic to win. Trende describes the circumstances that would have to happen. Importantly, Trende says not once, but twice, that elections are basically a referendum on the incumbent. His entire argument reinforces everything Lichtman believes. Voters are not stupid. In the end, they will make a judgment based on the performance of the party in power. That looks very bad for President Toxic. There's a few parts of this argument where I think Trende is probably being way too optimistic for President Toxic. If Trump gets 46 to 47 % of the vote, that means Biden gets in the low 50's in what will be a two man race. President Toxic barely won those three Blue Wall States when Hillary won the national vote by 2 %. So the idea that Trump could lose the national vote by 3 to 5 % is pretty stunning, on two levels. First, it seems implausible that he could do that and still win in Pennsylvania. Second, even if it happens, it feels wrong. How is this called a democracy when somebody who wins 52/47 is the loser? I'm also guessing that this a hypothetical that will never become real. In any other Presidency, like Obama or W., going from 43 % approval to 50 % approval was not only possible. It happened. Trende is arguing, and I agree, that that is why W. and Obama won. So it could happen with President Toxic. But the odds of that seem vanishingly small. I'm a worry wort. So in each of the last two Presidential elections there were things that worried me. In 2012 there were all sorts of stories about how early voting trends seemed to indicate that turnout for Obama was down from 2008, and turnout for the Republicans was up. I never figured that out. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was a lie planted by Obama's people to scare Blacks into going out and voting, which they did. In 2016 my worry was that at least four times during 2016 the horse race polls showed Hillary and President Toxic in a dead heat. So it seemed unlikely, but quite possible, that they could end up in a dead heat on Election Day. As Trende notes, what everybody REALLY underestimated in 2016 was the idea that one candidate could win the election by millions of votes (Gore won by about half a million votes in 2000), and yet still be the "loser". Hillary was expected to win by a 3 % margin. She won by a 2 % margin. So nobody predicted that you could win by 2 %, but lose the Slavery Electoral College anyway. 2020 is the mirror image of that. Trende is saying, correctly I think, that President Toxic needs a 47 % approval rating to have an even outside chance of getting 47 % or so of the national vote and repeating his 2016 "victory". How likely is that? It has happened exactly once in his Presidency. That was not when the economy was supposedly on fire. It was when COVID-19 hit. And for a brief moment everyone was at least hoping he would prove to be a competent national leader. At that moment in March, for only a few weeks, Trump's approval rating broke the ceiling and peaked at 47.2 %. Is this likely to happen again? No. It's hard imagine a scenario where President Toxic will be viewed as competent on handling COVID-19 by a majority of Americans. His approval rating on COVID has settled into the familiar Trump Fantasyland. Give or take 40 % will seemingly believe anything he says. Give or take 55 % say he's done a bad job on COVID-19. President Toxic clearly thinks that Fantasy Fauci will have a Fantasy Vaccine by October. One shot and you're done. And by November you're back at work and Coronavirus is a distant memory. Back in the real world, what's more likely is that by Election Day we'll be closer to the 3000 Americans dying every day than the 1000 Americans dying every day we are at now. How does it help President Toxic win when he is essentially a Viral Bin Laden whose incompetence is repeating a viral 9/11 every single fucking day in America? Like with Bin Laden, that's probably a political death sentence. If I had to bet, COVID-19 is more likely to drive Trump's approval rating lower in the next few months, not higher. If you leave off those few weeks in March, Trump's approval right now is actually about as high as it gets - even when the economy was supposedly "perfect". Even if you assume Joe Biden is senile, he should have an easy time debating on this. Before he opens his mouth, and even if he is stuttering and senseless, 55 % of Americans will agree with him when he says President Toxic did a miserable job leading on COVID-19. One reason to keep hammering that is to make sure that only about 40 % of Americans disagree with Biden on that point. The other reason to do that is it builds the bridge to the economy, which is the only thing President Toxic has left between him and something like a 1980 Carter collapse. Slightly over 40 % of Americans also believe the economy was glorious before COVID-19. And it will be again, as long as we don't elect China Joe - who is a closet socialist. Everybody else gets that we can't rebuild the economy in the middle of a plague that actually does exist. I'm very ambivalent about whether Biden should make a case about the economy. If Lichtman and Abramowitz and these other historians are right, the verdict is already in. Even though the jury has not delivered it yet. This is a referendum on President Toxic. He is going to lose. His best hope of not losing is to make this a debate about crazy socialists. I voted for Bernie knowing by the time I voted he was going to lose the primary. It was a symbolic vote about the future. If I knew my vote would give President Toxic the socialist foil he wanted, I may have voted for Warren or even Biden instead. Mostly, I think Biden's best play is to keep hammering on what a clear majority of Americans believe: 1) Trump fucked up COVID; 2) Until someone competent fixes it, the economy can't recover. President Toxic's other ace in the hole was to replay "Crooked Hillary" as "Crooked Joe" or "Senile Joe." That failed, too, He's "Decent Joe" to the people he needs to win. I think he mostly just has to wear a mask, smile, and say President Toxic is a loser who fucked up. (Not verbatim, of course.) Here's one other thing I keep throwing in, since we're all about Pennsylvania now: All Employees: Manufacturing in Pennsylvania All Employees: Total Nonfarm in Pennsylvania If you haven't done it, it's interesting to click on "states" and compare Pennsylvania to other states. It may explain some things. Pennsylvania is like every other state I've looked at in one important way. When times are good, there's lots of job growth. So in the second chart, you can see continuous job growth from 2010 to 2020. You can argue whether it grew more under Obama or President Toxic. But it was roughly the same rate of growth. One reason Biden will probably win is that the "winners" in this picture - people with colleges degrees who have good jobs and live in cities or suburbs - lean heavily to Biden. Everything Trump does that is red meat to his base pretty much alienates them. Meanwhile, if you look at manufacturing, Pennsylvania is not like any other state I looked at. In Wisconsin and Michigan, and certainly in California, "recovery" meant more factory jobs. It didn't get those states back to where they were in the 1990's with good paying factory jobs. But there were tens of thousands of new factory jobs. Biden is doing a good job of talking about exactly what him and Obama did in Michigan. And how many tens of thousands of auto factory and related jobs that saved or restored. In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, there's no basis in reality for either Biden or President Toxic to talk about how they created lots of factory jobs, They just didn't. Trump can say anything he wants. But it's just bullshit. This is where I'd rather have the election be a referendum on President Toxic. Period. Because he failed. If the question is factory jobs in Pennsylvania, he failed. He failed. He failed. End of story. Mostly that's what I want to hear from Biden. That said, I know I'm being too simplistic. That ad is mostly Trump's greatest hits. It's a negative message built on fear. Biden will raise your taxes. Biden will destroy jobs. And, of course, Biden is a socialist. Same Republican bullshit. I suspect in the debates Biden will reprise Bill Clinton's one word bumper sticker on this issue from the 2012 DNC: "arithmetic". Who knew that Republicans genetically suck at math? They keep saying tax cuts to fat cats will create millions of jobs and a surplus. Every single time, it create trillion dollar deficits and few jobs. Just look at February 2020, right before COVID. Trillion dollar deficit? Check. No new factory jobs in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin or Michigan) in the last year? Check. Same bullshit. Same lies. We've heard this recipe for failure before. President Toxic is simply better than most at figuring out how to lose. As much as I'd rather Biden's # 1 goal would be to make this a referendum rather than a choice, I like this ad. President Toxic will says it's bullshit, of course. But it is a positive message of hope. It's not just Trump bashing, which is what Biden does need to be careful about. And Biden has already proven in September in Detroit that he can ground this message in what he actually did in places like Detroit. Obama put him in charge, and he went in and saved or created lots of factory jobs. Even if Biden is lying, it sounds real and detailed in a way President Toxic never sounds real or detailed. Mostly, Biden needs to just keep talking about COVID and tie it to the economy. And say we need someone who isn't a loser who can go in and fix this mess. Just like Obama and Biden did in 2009. 40 % of America doesn't see the mess. Or they think it's a little mess and before long the most perfect President ever will get us back to normal. About 50 to 55 % of Americans just ain't buying what Joe would call ............................ wait for it .......................................... malarkey. There was a theory that "law and order" was going to hurt Biden, like in Wisconsin. There's no evidence that it is happening. The polls suggests that whether you cut it as racial justice or defusing violence or even just "crime", Biden is winning the issue. Even if he's not winning, it's not helping President Toxic claw up to anything close to winning numbers. I'll make an optimistic prediction. The "economy" is going to end up the same way. It may not help Biden. But it won't hurt him. So far, we've mostly heard one side of the story: President Toxic's. He has the megaphone. And rightly or wrongly, the message of the DNC was not "It's the economy, stupid." It was, "It's the decency, stupid." Joe made sure, apparently effectively, that he's not "Crooked Hillary" in a suit. Here's the factual bottom line. Even if you blame the Great Recession on Biden, Pennsylvania went from 5.7 million jobs in January 2009 to 5.916 million jobs in January 2017. That's a net gain of over 200,000 jobs in Pennsylvania. If you cut Biden slack and focus only on how many jobs came back after the Great Recession ended, it's more like 350,000 new jobs. Under President Toxic, Pennsylvania went from 5.916 million jobs in January 2017 to 5.525 million jobs today. That's a net loss of almost 400,000 jobs. Pennsylvania has fewer employed people today than it did at the very bottom of the Great Recession. President Toxic can and will spout all kinds of bullshit about the greatest economy ever. All Biden has to due is keep tying it back to COVID, and reality. The first thing that has to happen is we have to end the plague. Trump can't even figure out how to put a mask on. Or why others should. He's gone from Clorox treatments to his Fantasy Fauci who is saying we'll have a miracle cure in October. Even though at least about 55 % of Americans know we won't. Any way Biden asked the "four years ago" question is going to be devastating to President Toxic, and drill the message home like it did with Carter. Do you feel safer than you did four years ago? Are you better off than you were four years ago? Are there more factory jobs in Pennsylvania than there were four years ago? Are there more jobs in Pennsylvania than there were four years ago? And when this guy who promised you millions of new jobs and instead destroyed them makes a whole bunch of new empty promises, are you going to believe him? What the horse race polls have been implicitly saying all year is that Biden does not need to win on the economy in order to win The Presidency. But so far he hasn't really tried. I wouldn't be surprised if by Election Day we're back up to well over 1000 Americans dying a day. If there is no more relief for unemployed and struggling Americans, that won't help the economy recover. Whatever recovery there is could actually stall out, as more people struggle to pay mortgages or rent. So I wouldn't be surprised if by Election Day Biden is winning on the economy, too.

Trump and Barr are creating a perfect storm for post-election violence: British journalist So Ed Luce from Financial Times went there this morning in an article and interview on Morning Joe, which is embedded in that story above. I didn't link Luce's article itself, because it's behind a Financial Times paywall. But the article above quotes from it extensively and gives you the core of his thinking. I'm glad we're talking about this. Because talking about the "red mirage" to some degree inoculates us against it. President Toxic and his Personal Obedient Attorney Bill Barr can do whatever they want. I'd rather err on the side of a little too much conspiracy thinking, rather than too little. But as Luce points out, states runs elections - not Trump or Barr. It's not exactly clear how Barr and Republican attorneys tell a nation, "Let's all just stop counting the votes." I'm also wondering whether people like Luce who are painting pictures of nightmares have thought this through at the 1,000 foot level, as opposed to the 30,000 foot level. The broad picture, which is true in all three Rust Belt/Blue Wall states, is that President Toxic could open up a wide lead on election night, based on ballots cast in person. So it makes sense that Luce is warning us that Barr may say, "Throw all the other ballots away." It's much harder to do that if Biden is leading in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina. Those are states where all these early voting ballots and mail-in ballots are counted first based on state and local laws and practices. Unless I'm missing something basic, it seems like Biden is likely to take an early lead in some swing states he may end up actually losing. Like Texas, and Georgia if most Blacks there vote by mail. To some degree Luce is confirming what I said above. I'm assuming there will be mano a mano fighting between Republican lawyers and Democratic lawyers all over the US. That will go on for days, maybe weeks, even possibly months. We have been here before, like in 2000. As long as it stays at that level, I'm not that worried. Like in 2000, as a legal matter it could come down to things like hanging chads. Or whether there is one more Democrat or one more Republican on SCOTUS. We'll know what it's going to be when we get there. But it's hard for me to imagine how Barr says we need to stop counting votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but keep counting them in Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. It rips the face off any pretense of decency or fairness in a way that even President Toxic usually understands will backfire. There's a few other things involving age that I'm not sure anyone has thought through. One will play out in November, and the other is a longer term hypothetical. The premise of Luce's article is that President Toxic could actually win narrowly in the Slavery Electoral College, just like in 2016, based on massive Election Day turnout by his base. And somehow the mail-in ballots may be manipulated by lawyers. And somehow COVID-19 may suppress voting. Another premise built into this picture is that there more likely than not will be a big second Coronavirus wave smack dab in the middle of this. One of the variables I worry about is that President Toxic presumably has a massive ground game based on person-to-person contact. On Election Day, it will be a massive in person GOTV operation. And Biden has none of that. So take Axelrod, who says that a superior ground game can win you a few points in a close election. That could be a factor. The Biden people say they are accomplishing the same goal by phone calls and texts. We also know all year Biden has had the benefit of a tidal wave moving him along. Like on Super Tuesday. He did no organizing, had no money, and he still won Minnesota and Massachusetts. Despite local Senators from both states being on the ballot. So all of this is just sort of "crazy shit" that no one can predict. I buy the idea that there could be a second wave. It is starting in Europe now. France and Austria have more cases than they did this Spring. They have fewer deaths, because it's much younger people who are getting the virus. Meanwhile, in the US, we're on a down slope from a second wave this Summer. And we're still at 1,000 deaths a day. So if we have a third Fall wave, like many predict, we could be back to thousands of Americans dying every day by November. Translate that to Election Day, where there's massive turnout and a shortage of older poll workers and long lines. Whose votes does this suppress? Maybe I'm missing something. But it seems like it suppresses the votes of President Toxic's supporters. There will of course be Biden voters on Election Day. And in states like Georgia they will do what they always do, and make it harder for Blacks to vote in person. And in Florida I'm assuming that in polling places where they know President Toxic will run up huge margins the Trump campaign will make damn sure there are enough poll workers. But even when I factor in things like that, it just seems like the Republicans are building a trap for themselves. Which is to say, Stupidest President Ever Toxic is building a trap for himself. If we're back to 3,000 deaths a day by Election Day, and Trump needs 70 and 80 year olds in Florida to go stand in line for hours, how does that work? I posted the picture of some youngish Mexican family in Nevada standing in line to go to a Trump rally. They'll stand in line to vote. The core of the Trump base will vote. And in rural Montana where few people have COVID-19 they'll all feel safe. But in Florida? We're already seeing how older White people who tend to vote Republican and didn't quite like voting for Obama are moving into what may be known next year as the "Biden coalition". So as a Democrat I'm worried, like Luce is, about Trump and Barr playing games as the votes are counted. But before we even get to that point, it could be that COVID-19 is simply going to be toxic to the re-election prospects of President Toxic. And one of the ways that could play out is that younger people who are less worried about COVID-19 will either vote by mail, or be willing to stand in long lines on Election Day. Older voters who are 70 or 80 and are at best lukewarm about President Toxic anyway may decide voting in person isn't really a priority during a plague. All of this is a whole bucket of unknowns and "never happened before" stuff. I am glad Luce is sounding an alarm. I hope Democrat lawyers are omnipresent in every swing state. But if I had to guess, I'd say COVID-19 is more likely to suppress "soft" Trump votes on Election Day than Biden votes. The longer term hypothetical is what impact this has on younger people. I have nieces and nephews who will vote, but would much rather be voting for Bernie or Elizabeth. These are the young people who were against the Iraq War and are for Black Lives Matter. One way I view this is through the "banana republic" lens. So my Dad, who served in WW II, helped build a world where America can and did do lots of shit in "banana republics". We assassinated leaders, plotted insurgencies, and messed up elections. Iraq isn't a banana republic, exactly. But it was a version of that. And it blew up very badly in our face. So one way I see what is happening now is it's turning the US itself into a quasi- banana republic for my Dad's grandkids. President Toxic is pulling the kind of shit we used to do in other countries. But never to ourselves. And lots of people don't like it. My Dad didn't like it. In his last Presidential election before his death he refused to vote for either Trump or Hillary, even though he mostly voted Republican. His grandkids don't like it, for sure. It seems like a majority of Americans don't like it. And a vast majority of young Americans don't like it. There's some part of me that actually hopes President Toxic and his Personal Obedient Attorney Barr pull the craziest shit you can imagine on Election Night. Because what they're essentially saying is lets count the votes of older people who voted in person, but not younger people or Black people who voted by mail. Tell that to every young Democrat or Berniecrat in America. Let's see whether it helps convince them to vote Republican for the rest of their lives. What are President Toxic and Barr going to do? Send in the National Guard to kill young Americans who are protesting because they think that their vote should be counted? Is that the Banana Republic of America that President Toxic and Personal Obedient Attorney Barr want? Like Luce, I'm taking a scenario and going to extremes. But at the core of what I'm saying is truth. These very smart Never Trump Republicans behind the Lincoln Project are saying that a lot of Americans may be disinclined to vote Republican for a very long time. Especially younger Americans, who are gradually becoming the electoral majority. I can project some things that will happen, somehow, in the next decade or so. First, we'll just get rid of the Slavery Electoral College. And the history books will teach people that we created this Slavery Electoral College in large part so that sadistic White men could own and kill Blacks who were slaves. That's why it was built. That is the purpose it served. It ensured that countless numbers of Blacks were owned, tortured, and murdered in the United States of America. Second, we'll do something like Brazil does, but better. They have some electronic voting system that I think now uses digital fingerprint recognition for fraud-free voting. It massively speeds up vote counting. People may not have liked that Bolsonaro won. But nobody challenged the validity of the election. And voting is compulsory. So there is no nonsense about whether some dirty trick was used to discourage some partisans of one side or the other from voting. So it could be that in 10 or 20 years you wake up on Election Day, pick up your phone, open an app, and securely vote. Or, if you are old fashioned, you can still have a ballot mailed to you or vote in person. My point is that young tech-savvy Millennials and Gen Z people who go through this shit in 2020 are not going to forget about it. They are not going to be keen on being treated like citizens in a banana republic. Some young voters are, of course, cheerleaders for Team Toxic. But most aren't. So once again it seems like President Toxic is just doing really stupid shit that may well backfire. Both on Election Day with older voters, and in the future with younger voters.

Me being me, I had about 5 different points I wanted to make. I made all but one of them above in my prior post So in this post, I'll focus only on the specific question you asked. This article is worth worth reading and saving. I view it as a guide to surviving the likely hysterics on Election Night. On balance, I see it as good news. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin decided the 2016 election. We’ll have to wait on them in 2020. Huge surges in mail voting will change how and when votes are counted in 2020. Here's our guide to the rules. Let's start with the bad news, which you nailed. The three states that put President Toxic over the top in 2016 likely will have little or no results on mail-in ballots on Election Night, I'm assuming. This article says they can't start processing them early. In Michigan it spells out that they can do signature verification as soon as the ballot is returned. So maybe one or all three of these states will be able to actually count and report some mail-in ballots on Election Night. But most will be counted in the days (or weeks?) that follow, it sounds like. Meanwhile, I'm assuming the votes that are going to be counted first in these three states are the ones cast in person on Election Day. Presumably, President Toxic will be in the lead in all three states based on ballots cast in person on Election Day and reported on Election Night. Let's assume President Toxic will argue he is winning, and the election is over. He will argue if given time Xi will use the China virus to corrupt all the mail-in ballots so that Xi's puppet and sex doll, Joe Biden, wins the election fraudulently. And if the China virus doesn't do the job, rampaging Black Marxists will bust into election headquarters and finish the job of ending both the suburbs and vote counting in America - forever. It's a pretty grim picture, actually. Which is why we should probably just agree that President Toxic won. Which frees him up to save us all from the China virus and suburb-destroying Blacks. In a situation like this, here is my sarcastic version of how Democrats should respond: "There is only one true genius in America. His name is Donald J. Trump. Our great genius leader has been warning us for months that mail-in ballots are subject to fraud (except in Florida). So we have to be grateful to our great genius leader, and do exactly what he says. We have to count all these ballots slowly, and carefully. And assure that every single ballot is counted accurately. That is what the only true genius in America, Donald J. Trump, has been warning us about for months. We need to listen to him and take the time to make sure there is no fraud." I'm guessing there will be a massive army of lawyers in every swing state on both sides. So this is potentially Florida 2000 on steroids all over the country. That's okay. The very fact that Team Toxic has gazillions of lawyers simply proves, on the ground, that the only real genius in America is Donald J. Trump. Being the most genius man ever, he of course made sure there were lawyers everywhere to make sure there was no fraud. So that's great. Let's get to work. I'd rather see lawyers in suits hovering over ballots than riots in the streets. Now, what about other states? This article says that in Arizona, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas the ballots can be almost completely processed by Election Day. I know from watching election returns that in a number of primaries there was a huge dump of tabulated votes reported by networks as soon as the polls closed. And that dump was of all the early mail-in ballots cast. In this instance, those ballots of very likely to favor Democrats. In Texas, the ballots in large counties can be tallied after early voting ends, which I think is before Election Day. So the early votes in big Texas counties are the ones most likely to be skewed toward Biden. And, unless I'm missing something, they will be the first ones reported. So maybe I'm missing something here. If anyone notices a flaw in my logic, please post and correct me. But it seems like in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, where Biden is now leading in the polls, he is likely to come out of the gate leading on Election Night. Perhaps by a large margin. It doesn't mean he will actually win any of those states. But it does mean he's winning the early mail-in vote, which has already been processed and tabulated. Let's just assume that Biden is going to lose Texas, where he is currently behind in the polls. In other words, let's assume that Joe Biden is in the position Bernie Sanders was in in Texas earlier this year. Super Tuesday 2020 You should scroll down CNN's coverage on that link, which is time stamped, to recall how this played out hour by hour in Texas on Election Night and the days that followed. That report in the photo above was time stamped 9:52 PM EST, which is I think two hours after most Texas polls were supposed to close. So at that point, about one third of the vote was counted. And Bernie had a 6 point lead over Biden. By 12:14 PM EST CNN was reporting a "virtual tie" between Biden and Sanders in Texas, both at 28.6 %, with 56 % of the votes counted. By the time a final tally was reported, I think maybe days later, Biden had won by 4.5 %, 34.5 % to 30. Unless I'm missing something, this is very similar to what may happen in Texas on Election Night in November. If it's true that the early votes and mail-in ballots from large (Democratic) cities are counted before in person voting even ends, and that President Toxic's voters skew heavily to in-person voting on Election Day, I think that pretty much ensures that Biden comes out of the gate with a substantial lead in Texas. Then as the votes cast in person are counted, the lead dwindles. Just like Bernie's lead did. The drama in Election Night in Texas, if things go really well for Biden, is whether he is still in the lead when 80 % and 90 % of the ballots are counted. Meanwhile, if things stay like they are right now, Biden has an early lead in Arizona, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina - all of which will narrow as more votes are counted. I think in Arizona, where most people vote by mail, it may not work out the same way. McSally has a lead in early votes in 2018, I think. But Sinema ended up winning. But, in general, if the mail-in and early ballots are counted first, Biden is more likely than not to be leading in those states on Election Night. Now, here's the thing. We all know that Blacks that will destroy suburbs and terrorize poll workers and commit ballot fraud of all types if we let them will all scream, "Biden won! Biden won!" It will be like a very ugly riot. But we won't fall for that, will we? No, Sir. We all know that Blacks want to destroy suburbs, let Biden turn America into a socialist hell, and probably punish Republicans by putting the China virus in their mail boxes. So we're not going to let them declare that Biden won Texas or Arizona or North Carolina just because he was ahead in the polls and he lead in the initial tabulations on Election Night. We're going to calmly remind America that Donald J. Trump is the one and only perfect genius in America. And this is exactly why he warned us months ago that we can't stand for election fraud. So even though it looks like he lost in these really important states like Texas and Ohio and Florida, we're going to wait until all the votes are counted. Again, somebody correct me if I'm missing something. The only thing wrong with what I said is that it sounds racist as hell, because I mirrored President Toxic's own racist slurs about Blacks and suburbs. If I'm even half right, and Biden has an early lead in these states he can afford to lose, like Texas and North Carolina and Florida, it will be very hard for President Toxic to go on TV and argue he won. What he likely will argue is this, "See, I was right. Fraud! It's all fraud." Which just allows us to reinforce our main point. He is the only true genius in America. So we're all going to have to listen to our # 1 genius and count every ballot carefully to make extra sure we avoid fraud. Like with everything else, this sorry and racist son of a bitch has already probably nailed his coffin shut with his own stupid words. He deserves it!

Here's a fun fact that I figured out yesterday that tangents on your question. My assumption all year has been that the most obvious thing Democrats needs to do is rebuild the Blue Wall and win Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania to get to 270. That said, Biden could lose Pennsylvania and still get to 270. He just has to win Arizona. Here's RCP's current "no toss up" Slavery Electoral College map. So if the polls are exactly right (spoiler: they're not) as of today Biden wins 353 electoral votes. If you take out Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida that still leaves Biden with 291. Pennsylvania has 20, which is more than Michigan (16) or Wisconsin (10). So he could lose Pennsylvania and win with 271 electoral votes. The key state he has to carry is Arizona, with 11 electoral votes. Right now, Biden's margin on the 538 averages is 7+ points ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin. It's 5+ give or take in Arizona, and a fraction of a percent lower in Pennsylvania. There was talk about Wisconsin being the best Trump target due to Kenosha. That's stopped now. So as long as Biden keeps doing well in Arizona, he has some wiggle room to lose one of those three Blue Wall states in a close election. Pennsylvania with 20 votes would be the most painful to lose. But Biden could survive it. To me this electoral math mirrors what Biden needs to do as President. Priority # 1 has to be to rebuild the Blue Wall. And to me that means some combination of infrastructure and industrial policy so that Biden and Democrats can say in 2024 they brought jobs back in a big way. My assumption is that Arizona and Georgia and Texas are all three Sun Belt states that are on their way to being Democratic, anyway. That's due to both demography (Blacks and Hispanics and suburbs, oh my!) and being on the winning side of the new economy. So to me Biden, being the political hack he is, has to really focus on those three Rust Belt Blue Wall states, which all have variations of the same post-industrial problem. It is amazing to me that President Toxic didn't figure this out. Even before COVID, in February 2020, the factory jobs picture in those states was at best stagnant. And there were bad narratives about huge tax breaks to the Foxconns and other job creators that never resulted in the promised jobs. I have to believe Republicans like Paul Ryan really did believe their tax cut ideology. That forking millions over to "job creators" would do the trick. It sets up Biden nicely to say whenever we do it that way (W. and now President Toxic) it grows the deficit but does not create the promised jobs. Better for government to raise corporate taxes and spend the money wisely. Since I posted that map, and this is the prediction thread, let me post this again. That's from an article this Spring that modeled the likely Slavery Electoral College outcome based on two variables we didn't know yet: President Toxic's approval rating in June, and second quarter GDP. We now know GDP was - 9.5 % in the second quarter. That was off the charts compared to every real election campaign of every incumbent President since WW II. And Trump's net approval rating was - 10 % or lower. So if this election is the same as every other, President Toxic will be lucky to get 144 electoral votes. This model accurately predicted the winner of every election since WW II with an incumbent, looking backward, within an average of about 20 electoral votes. The furthest it was off could put Trump at maybe 200 electoral votes. But what it suggests is that that RCP Slavery Electoral College map I posted above, where Biden gets over 350 and President Toxic gets 185, is probably a very realistic scenario. I posted and commented extensively on a new Ron Brownstein article in another thread. But here's one part that fits in here. This is the same guy that developed the model above: I think that's right. If things were less polarized, a Biden landslide would probably be more likely - simply based on objective variables. Like the economy and the Coronavirus deaths and the social unrest. And the fact that President Toxic is viewed as toxic by a majority of Americans. But he's basically convinced lots of people to buy his version of reality. Even though there's no evidence that he has their back. They may be unemployed or hurting financially. And he is exposing them to the risk of COVID-19 at his rallies. So if President Toxic ekes out a win, or even if he manages to avoid a landslide, that would be why. The ultimate reality TV guy became a reality TV President. And just enough people bought it. How unpopular is Donald Trump In terms of prediction, I think those comparisons to other Presidents further down that 538 page are worth taking a lot at. It's fair for you to say I'm obsessed with polls, @tassojunior. But I'm not. The snapshot polls have very little value, since they change constantly. The approval ratings are far stickier and reliable for predicting. So I think we can now make some guesses. We're now at Day 1336 of Trump's Presidency. If you go back to earlier this year, his average approval rating was very close to Obama's and W.'s. Around Day 1000 Obama and Trump were both at about 43 %. Around Day 1200 W.'s approval rating was only about 44 % - about one point over Trump's. For both Obama and W., those were THE low points of their first term. So by Election Day, they both recovered to right around 50/50 approval/disapproval. And they both won. Although it wasn't a blowout for either. By this point in 2004 and 2012, both Obama and W. were both at about 50 % approval. President Toxic is stuck at 43 %. That's not a good sign. If you look at the other charts comparing Trump's approval trend to other Presidents, there are two patterns, neither of which fit Trump. In 1972 and 1984 and 1996, Nixon and Reagan and Clinton both had strong net approval. They both won in blowouts. In 1976 and 1992, Carter and "Poppy" Bush both had approval ratings about 5 % below where President Toxic is right now. They both lost badly. So if you just go by approval ratings, President Toxic could lose in a blowout like Carter. But probably his approval rating would have to go down to the high 30's, like Carter's was. Bronwstein's article nailed it. President Toxic built himself a floor Carter didn't have, perhaps, by being a Reality TV President that throws red meat to conservatives and "poorly educated" followers. But it also built him a really low ceiling, since he alienates everybody else. The one Presidency that actually looks a lot like President Toxic is Gerald Ford's. Neither man had a honeymoon. And neither man ever had over 50 % of Americans who approved of them in any sustained way. Ford's approval rating was right around where Trump's is right now this close to the election. So I don't base a lot on horse race polls. Other than the fact that Biden has had a lead of 5 % or more every day since last year. It's 7 % now. For it to go down to a 3 % lead would take something President Toxic hasn't figured out so far. Or a massive fuck up on Biden's part. Meanwhile, my read of the "stickier" approval ratings is that one extreme is President Toxic ekes out a narrow win, like W. did in 2004. But he's nowhere near where W. was (50 % approval) at this time in 2004. Or Trump could lose in a Carter-like 1980 blowout. Although I think that would require that things in the next two months would have to be super rocky, like they were for Carter with Iranian hostages. With COVID-19, that's actually quite possible. The middle scenario that seems most likely is like Carter/Ford. Like in 1976, we'll go into it thinking Biden will win. And he will win, handily enough. If, like Ford, President Toxic does better than expected, it will be because of his massive turnout machine working. By every account I've read, Trump has people knocking on doors like crazy in Trumpland. So he has convinced a significant minority that he is the first, and therefore best, Reality TV President in the entire galaxy - ever! A last thing about polls. In 2016, the final RCP poll average said Hillary was three points ahead. When the votes were counted, she ended up 2 points ahead. So the polls were close. Had she won nationally by 3 %, my guess is she would have eked out the narrowest of victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Some people say Biden would need as big as a 5 % margin in the national vote - which is a very solid win in any election - to be assured a Slavery Electoral College win. My point is that it's possible that this will narrow to a 2 to 3 % margin, which could set up another very narrow Slavery Electoral College win for President Biden. But such a 2 to 3 % margin has not happened in the real world of Biden/Trump poling in the last year. So as long as Democrats keep the frenzy to vote, vote, vote up, there's no obvious reason to think Biden will go from a 7 % lead to a 2 % lead, like where Hillary ended up. On September 16, 2016, Hillary had a lead over Trump of exactly 1 %: 44.9 % to 43.9 %. To get the race that close, President Toxic would have to nail the debates, which he's more likely to blow, I think. If Biden beats him at the debates like Hillary did, it's not unrealistic that he could build a double digit lead by October. We'll see.

So this final post in a series (I saved them up over several days because of the log in problems) is looking right at you, @lookin. I'll make some comments on Adenauer. And then invite you to meet some Trump supporters and comment on how you would persuade them to see Trump as the problem, rather than the solution. Konrad Adenauer Thanks for giving me a reason to learn just enough about Konrad to be mostly ignorant. That long Wikipedia piece did leave me feeling that my snap judgment when I read your post is correct. Which is to say, Adenauer was a lot more like President Toxic than like Biden. At least if we are talking about authoritarian traits. First, Adenauer was an authoritarian leader. You can make a good argument that Nazi Germany was so extreme that the only way to get from an evil authoritarian like Hitler to a Social Democrat like Willy Brandt was through a long period of benevolent authoritarian rule by a leader like Adenauer. President Toxic, fortunately, is no Hitler. At least not yet. I'm all for skipping the Adenauer phase and going directly to Brandt. Wikipedia says this about Adenauer: "As chancellor, Adenauer tended to make most major decisions himself, treating his ministers as mere extensions of his authority." Sounds more like President Toxic than Biden to me. Important to your basic point, Adenauer's political success was based on directing people's fear to an outsider. As Wikipedia explained, at one point Adenauer tried to label Willy Brandt as the outsider. As a sort of pre-Trump birther, Adenauer said Brandt was not fit for office due to his "illegitimate birth". That didn't work out well for Konnie. What did work much better, and was grounded in Stalin's reality, was fear of Marxism. That was what Adenauer used to unify post-WWII Germany. Marxism was the bogeyman. He also used it to tether West Germany to the West. It's fair to say that given a choice between demonizing Nazis or Marxists, Adenauer chose Marxists. I can see why. By the 1950's, the Soviet Union and it's satellite power of East Germany were the real threat. The Nazis may have been worse, but they were yesterday's bogeyman. So Adenauer granted amnesty to hundreds of thousands of Nazis, thousands of whom sounded like truly murderous sadists. Not even President Toxic has done that. Again, it does make sense to me that Adenauer was being shrewd. Had he sounded like a pawn of the UK or the US, it may have been harder for him to unify Germany and ally it with the US and the UK. There is one similarity here that may apply to a President Biden. If there is an outsider for Biden to focus authoritarian followers on, it's China. And to some degree Putin and Russia. President Toxic will of course try, and fail, to portray Biden as "China Joe". Biden seems to already be offering hints about "Made In America" initiatives that show he understands that the days of shipping factories to China are over. And the days of building new factories based on new technologies in the US may be here. Until he wins, it's all rhetoric. So what he tries to do, and whether it works, is for us to learn in the next four years. My worst fear is that Biden could be the new FDR, in the sense that we are headed to World War, whether we like it or not. I'm not arguing that Biden would do that. Or that China wants it. The more realistic scary idea to me is four more years of President Toxic. To paraphrase Jared Kushner, quoting the Cheshire Cat, if you don't have any clue where you're going, any path will get you there. Meaning President Toxic is the kind of bad leader who could take us down the path to war with China. Not because it is his goal. But because he doesn't have any goal. So war with China could just be where he ended up. Apparently Gen. Tillis was so worried about President Toxic inadvertently starting a war with Krazy Kim that he slept with his pants on. My picture of how Biden could use China as his scapegoat would be like JFK and the Space Race with the USSR. It's a better comparison, because the looming threats with China do mostly have to do with technologies. As Vice President, it's a fact that Biden presided over a period that restored at least several hundred thousand factory jobs to states like Michigan and Wisconsin. (Again, for whatever reason, Pennsylvania has done nothing but lose factory jobs for 30 years.) President Toxic has not done that. So there is some basis in reality for Biden saying he's going to double down what he did as Vice President and focus on creating middle class jobs. That's a good transition to the final thing I will say about Adenauer. It's the one way in which I hope Biden is a lot like him: the German "Wirtschaftswunder". Like Adenauer, Biden will have to rebuild a country after a national nightmare. For Biden, it will be the second time around on that. I'm going to keep insisting that these discussions about authoritarianism, identity politics, and the economy are all part of the same complex picture, looked at from different perspectives. It worked for Adenauer to direct factory workers who were good followers to go to work and rebuild an economy, always with a fearful eye on the Marxists and Soviets. So it could work for Biden to direct factory workers who are good followers to go rebuild the US economy - which President Toxic did not do. President Toxic did tell people to fear China, on the days of the week that he wasn't slathering praise on Xi. So Biden, who is at least a more talented and competent politician than President Toxic, ought to be able to do better than Trump. And maybe as good as Adenauer. We'll see. Trump Rally Goers On Why They Took The Risk To Attend Nevada Campaign Events So that is a nice profile piece about a handful of President Toxic's supporters who attended the Nevada rallies. @lookin. The things they say about why they are there, and why they support Trump, ring true to me. That's based on what I read in polls. And what I have hear talking to individuals who support President Toxic. I'll make one caveat. I've heard some really racist thinking from Republicans I'd known for over a decade. Especially after Trump legitimized saying those kinds of things. Like about how the Obamas are the biggest racists in America. Especially Michelle, who really does look like a horse. So this is not the type of event where people are going to say those kinds of things - at least to a reporter. So I take this article as a legitimate and accurate expression of the sunny side of Trumpism. There's a dark side, that this piece does not really talk about. So here's my question, @lookin You're saying we should consider persuading Trump followers that "Trump is leading them day-after-day toward death and destruction." What part of what they are saying suggests they are even remotely open to believing such a thing? How would you take in what they are saying and turn it around to convince them that President Toxic is, as I have called him, The Angel Of Death? Clearly, 200,000 dead Americans hasn't persuaded them. So what will? I'll tell you some thoughts I have from reading this article. I look forward to hearing yours. First, I think the reporters did a good job just letting people speak. Whether intentional or not, they started off by profiling a Black, a Hispanic family, and a drag queen. Maybe they are pro-Trump reporters and they wanted to implicitly say that these Trump people are not racists or bigots. Or maybe they are just profiling the different types of people that were there. My point, which I think you'll agree with, is these are not obviously bad people with obviously bad motivations. Second, one of their motivations probably is that they tend to be authoritarian followers. There's little snippets of that throughout. The Hispanic guy pictured above says he likes President Toxic because he will "speak out loud" and stand up to the "status quo". Third, there is this almost surreal sense of threat about how America will be lost forever if Joe Biden wins. These are interesting words coming out of the mouth of a Mexican American Dad: ""If Joe Biden wins this election, this country, no one's going to come here no more. No one's going to sacrifice and go through great lengths to be here anymore." So let me just make sure. We're talking about President Toxic, who puts kids that look exactly like your kids in cages? And you're saying that if Joe Biden is elected, Mexicans won't want to come to the US any more? Huh? Fourth, the sense of living in some other reality is pervasive. I've had conversations with Trump supporters who speak like this. If I want to be polite, I say things like, "Well, I'm glad you feel that way." They are not stupid, and they take it for what it is: a subtle dig. Because I don't trust them enough to try actual debate with actual facts. Here's a perfect example, relating to the key factual issue right now: the fact that 200,000 people died after President Toxic completely botched leading us through an ongoing national crisis. Again, I'd tend to be polite and say, "I'm glad you feel that way." Then again, I might say, "Really? Have you heard of a country called Canada? They hadddd zero deaths one day this week. And we have like 1,000 deaths a day. What do you make of that?" Again, all of that rests on the flimsy assumption that actual debate, based on actual facts, means something. It's not clear to me that it does. There's also the argument that just because Trump is the President of the United States doesn't mean he has to do anything. Because, actually, when you think about it, he can't do anything. This is what Governors do. Trump made that clear right away. Which is what makes him such a great President. So you have "idiots" like Governor Sisolak who do do these stupid things, like tell us we shouldn't have thousands gathered in a tight crowd indoors just because it's a great way to catch or spread Coronavirus. What a fucking idiot! So you can see how great leaders like President Trump have to tolerate the real idiots like Sisolak. Why blame that on President Toxic? I wish I could say I'm making this shit up. But that is what these people are saying. Fifth, this type of Trump supporter is not the George Will or Ronald Reagan principled conservative. Those people don't come to these rallies. They may tolerate President Toxic, and vote for him, because they like the tax cuts and don't like government regulations. But this is not a crowd of free market conservatives. If there's anything free market about them, it's red meat conservatism. Nobody can tell me how many guns I can own. Or that I have to wear a god damn mask. To go back to my themes, here's the way I see it. 95 % of these people, if not more, will stick with President Toxic and his remnant of a party after he loses. If you think you can persuade them differently, I'd like to hear how. The Hispanic Dad pictured above actually said he lost his job due to COVID-19. He voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. But he doesn't blame President Toxic, because he says the unemployment rate was going down before COVID-19 hit. (As it was under Obama/Biden once the Great Recession ended, of course.) So if Biden gets the economy back on track and this guy has a new job and is doing better than ever in 2024, will he then vote for Biden? My view is that if there is a way to win guys like him back, that's the way. Debating the facts about COVID-19, or whether there is a country called Canada. just ain't gonna cut it with these folks, I think. You and I agree that President Toxic has already led them to death and destruction and economic pain. But they don't see it that way.

All true. But part of my point is exactly the opposite. If most people thought Thomas Piketty was right (Jimmy Carter does!) Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee, poised to win in a landslide. And many of President Toxic's supporters, who are not economically better off even though they feel they are, would not be President Toxic supporters. Piketty's research explains a lot about what Brownstein labels "the coalition of transformation". It explains why for a while it looked like Bernie Sanders, of all people, might be the Democratic nominee. It does not explain why people who are no better off, and are actually probably measurably worse off under President Toxic, still view him as the defender of their economic interests. And the guy that fuels their resentments. But never in a way that produces panic, of course!

That long post above was mostly meant to focus on where voters are at. And whether, as Brownstein and many others assert, we have a deeply divided electorate that is going to remain deeply divided. I agree with Brownstein, obviously. It's the "coalition of transformation" versus the "coalition of restoration". I would not advise holding your breath for a truce. Let alone peace treaties. Like they did for much of the 20th century before Reagan, mostly White Republicans will soon lament how they are losing the noble war to save America. That said, part of the point of my posts today is this. Is there any reason to think that anything the Democrats can do will win any of these people over? Is it even worth trying? And if it is worth trying, how? I find it interesting that @lookin and I more or less agree about 95 % of the way down the road on this discussion on authoritarianism. I'm arguing tendencies to follow authoritarian leaders like President Toxic are layered right in with this discussion about identity politics and the economy. We agree about many of the causes, the fear mongering, and the fact that these followers won't go away. Then at the end of the road, @lookin and I take sharp turns and I think go in exactly opposite directions. @lookin, ever the optimist, keeps looking for ways to win them over. I now feel more strongly than ever that Trumpism simply needs to be crushed. Now, in 2020. To quote John Dean, "they understand defeat". Period. That doesn't mean they go away. But it does mean they have to be defeated. Even if you take my more pessimistic view, in the post above I mentioned that Pew says about 5 % of 2016 President Toxic supporters voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. We know that was one factor in making Nancy Pelosi House Speaker. It could also be a factor in 2020 in making Joe Biden President. So even if it is just at the margin, this is not entirely set in concerete. I think what's most important to me is that authoritarianism seems to rear its ugly head the most in periods of economic tumult - like in Hitler's Germany. So even if we can't stop authoritarian followers from being authoritarian followers, history suggests that we can tone them down. And a lot of toning it down has to do with the economy, stupid. I think we all have the picture that if blue-collar communities in Bucks County, PA feel resentment about their "decades-long decline", that resentment has a basis in reality. Maybe if they weren't in decline, they wouldn't be as worried as they are about immigrants. Maybe they'd be less likely to be seduced by the fact-free, immigrant-bashing, and panic-stricken alternative reality offered to them by President Toxic. Right now, the only thing I feel certain about regarding 2021 is one number: 50. Even if Biden wins, which I think is likely, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can be counted to throw the country under the bus and focus on obstruction. Just like he did in 2009. He's already promised to be The Grim Reaper. And I'm sure he'll deliver on that - if he's able. So we need at least 50 Senators. And they need to get rid of the filibuster. If we're being honest, I'd rather just say that the Republicans spent a decade obstructing and fear mongering. It eventually resulted in its logical conclusion: President Toxic's America. So let's just cut all the bullshit about compromise, okay? The Tea Party/Trump Republicans have zero interest in it. Now Democrats have gotten the memo, and are in exactly the same place. We need 50 votes. The question I feel functionally schizophrenic about is whether a President Joe Biden is exactly the right man for the moment, exactly the wrong man for the moment, or somewhere in between? The theory of Biden being the right man is that he's Joe Unity and Joe Decency. And, in addition, he's Working Class Joe. If there's anyone who can pull these older and White working class Trumpians back, it's that Joe. And there is some evidence - both from the actual results in 2020 primaries and the general election polling - that Working Class Joe is doing his magic. I still feel his victory on Super Tuesday in states where he had zero money and zero organization is inexplicable. Working class voters and disgruntled Republicans were a part of that. Now that he actually has more money than President Toxic, can he pound more nails in President Toxic's coffin and seduce more of Obama's lost coalition back? Joe Biden Has a Long History of Giving Republicans Exactly What They Want That lefty article from Jacobin was written back in the early days of 2020 B.C. (Before COVID). At the time, it looked like there was a good chance that Bernie could be the Democratic nominee. It's one of the best articles I've read that documents in detail after detail everything that has been wrong about Joe Biden for the last half century, as both Senator and Vice President. The article is very long and very well written. To oversimplify, it makes a pretty good case that Biden has been a sort of Republican lap dog. Many of his biggest legislative victories were ones that advanced core Republican goals - law and order, Clarence Thomas, the Iraq War - and not Democratic ones. His particular skill as Vice President was being the pawn Mitch McConnell could use to thwart the will of a much tougher Harry Reid. Mostly when I just reread this article, it reminded me why I wanted Warren to be nominated. And why I voted for Bernie in the primary. Either Bernie or Elizabeth would have brought deep convictions about a new course for America to The Presidency. Bernie's problem, to me, is that he does view democratic socialism as better than capitalism. That may work in 20 years. It didn't work in 2020. What I particularly liked about Warren is that she started as a Main Street capitalist Republican. And then she simply noticed how it chewed up and spit out millions of decent, hardworking Americans. I thought someone grounded in a reality like that, and with her brains and will, could be a particularly effective President in charting a new course. My head and heart are split right down the middle on this. I want to think that some of President Toxic's followers really are decent people, who mostly believe it's the economy, stupid. So a President Warren could have been the person that refocused the economy (and tax code) away from predatory lenders. And from capitalists who really do want cheaper labor somewhere else, and really don't give a shit about factory workers in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, I find it easy to believe that after 4 years of daily tweets, almost all Trumpians are so rock solid now that they would view President Warren as, at best, a shrill bitch with bad ideas. And at worst a perpetually lying, cheating Pocahontas. The polls, and my personal experience with Trumpians, is that the latter is probably closer to the truth. Part of what is interesting about the article above is this. You could give it to Steve Bannon. He could throw out most of the facts, and add in some right-wing buzz words and red meat. And it would make a great article in Breitbart, as well. This is where the left wing and the right wing meet. You can easily portray Biden as the pawn of the bureaucratic Deep State, or the Silicon Valley Establishment (thus, Vice President Harris) or any number of other conspiracies. (But not Q Anon. Trump has a lock on that.) So as much as part of me really wishes that Biden could bring a big chunk of Trumpians back to the Democratic tent, or get them interested in unity and compromise, I just don't believe that's an option. In my mind, this is a recipe for a mostly unsuccessful Biden Presidency. His instinct, even as of today, may be to negotiate and compromise with the McConnells of the Senate. Which mostly means he'll be thwarted, just like in 2009. I think he gets much of the credit for flipping Arlen Spector into being a Democratic, at least nominally. But the idea that Vice President Biden would schmooze deals out of a bipartisan Senate never held up. Is there any reason to think President Biden will do better? ‘They made a really big mistake’: Biden confronts a regret of the Obama years The former vice president surrounds himself with a cadre of left-leaning economic advisers, a reflection of a policy approach seen as more progressive than during the last recession. This recent Politico article is an excellent rebuttal to the Jacobin article above. And I'm torn. These articles, to liberal me, accurately paint versions of the worst case scenario for a Biden Presidency, and the best case scenario. Which one will it be? Who knows. At this point, like probably everyone who thinks of President Toxic as a massive failure, I mostly care about just having a President Biden, period. After watching what Biden has done this year, I'm a little less persuaded by the first article I posted, and a little more hopeful that Politico is right in their reporting. A big chunk of Biden's success so far in 2020 is simply that he had the wind at his back. But there is a political skill in knowing you have the wind at your back. And knowing how to use it to move you along. I think that is part of the story of Super Tuesday. In other words, I think Biden is in his own way as good a manipulator as McConnell is. That's part of what I feel I've watched in 2020. What I also feel I've watched is that Biden is like most effective and enduring politicians. The # 2 most important rule is he likes to win. The # 1 most important rule is he likes to win in ways that get him re-elected. He is not the worst coalition builder in America, for sure. So the best case scenario for a Biden Presidency and beyond is that Biden is fully aware that this is not 2009. His buddy John McCain is no longer in the Senate. And Republicans like McCain that compromised and made pals with Democrats like Biden have long been viewed as "losers" or RINOs. The best case scenario is that Biden also knows how he survived politically from about 1970 to 2020. So he ought to be able to project out to 2030 or 2040. Meaning, unlike President Toxic, realize that the majority politics of the coming era is not what worked when he was a young man racing into what we now know to be the Reagan Era. Perhaps the Chinese fortune somebody left on my desk as a prank in my 20's is right: "In youth and beauty, wisdom is rare." Sorry, Joe. You're neither young, nor beautiful. Hopefully that means you've gained some wisdom. Part of my point in posting these articles is that I think this will be the framework in which we learn whether a President Biden can build a majority coalition that includes at least some people who once voted for Donald Trump. Like Alan Lichtman, I fundamentally believe what matters to most voters is governing. Not campaign tricks or political rhetoric. If there's a way Biden can win over former Trump voters, it will probably be much like Reagan solidified his coalition with "Reagan Democrats" after he won in 1980. A lot of Reagan's appeal was the "culture war" stuff: abortion, guns, race, and (say it ain't so!) just below the surface racism. Even the Never Trump Republicans will now admit to the racism that was always there. For Biden to do the same thing as Reagan, it will have to be on the economy. And he will have to produce results for the have nots and working class - on fundamentals like jobs and health care and a fairer economy. Biden will also have to make America safer and less racist for Blacks and Hispanics and Asians and LGBTQ folks, and any other minority. We know from the Pew poll I posted above that older Whites who lean toward Trump don't particularly give a shit about Black Lives Matter or gender identity. Biden may be able to ride COVID to The White House by getting some of President Toxic's older voters from 2016 to vote for him in 2020. But even if he manages to do that, he'll have to cement it when he wins. Again, hopefully he has learned a lesson from 2009 and no longer views Mitch McConnell as anything but an obstructionist who will try to stop Biden from succeeding. The reality is that the vast majority of Republicans will never vote for Biden, Harris, or almost any Democrat. They may be a free market conservative who doesn't even like Trump. But they do know President Toxic is the path to free markets, tax cuts, less regulation, and more conservative judges. They may be racists or gun nuts that do feel like the America they love (not to mention the Second Amendment) is gradually slipping away. Even if they lose President Toxic, they will always have their AR-15s and endless rounds of ammo. They deserve at least that, right? Biden won't win any of those voters, no matter how moderate he is. My sense is he doesn't even seem to be trying right now. The encouraging thing Politico is saying is that Biden, for his own political survival and success, is now likely to surround himself with a lot of the people a President Warren would have surrounded herself with. Including Elizabeth Warren herself. As a liberal and Warren fanboy, I'm biased. But if we're going to get a small but meaningful chunk of former President Toxic supporters - especially the Obama/Obama/Trump ones - to jump from the Trump trench to the Biden one, I think this is going to be the way to do it. Biden is going to have to prove that he can deliver some kind of economic transformation that makes a meaningful difference in their lives. If they are ever going to join the coalition of transformation, it will have to be because it's the economy, stupid. And Biden will have to produce things that they see as meaningful economic results.

So, back on topic. Great article by Ron Brownstein that zeroes in as culture wars and racism, sexism, and "identity politics" as the deepest dividing line in American politics today. Why the stability of the 2020 race promises more volatility ahead A lot of this is the same old, same old that we've been debating since Hillary lost. Was it the economy, stupid? Or was it the racism, stupid? Or was it the authoritarianism, stupid? I like Brownstein because his data and political judgment do a better job than most integrating how all these factors meld together. It's not a shocker that the states that President Toxic barely won the "Slavery Matters" Electoral College with were Rust Belt states that suffered from the deindustrialization of America. Even if it's racism and ranting about immigrants, it also mdoes have something to do with the economy, stupid. There was a good article recently about Bucks County, PA as a suburban bellwether. Here's a line that jumped out at me: As I've said several times, for whatever reason Pennsylvania has been worse off than Michigan or Wisconsin in terms of the loss of manufacturing jobs. When Biden was in Detroit and interviewed by Jake Tapper I thought he did a very good job of hammering on the specific numbers of factory jobs that were created in Michigan by Obama/Biden. And the auto bailout, which was an effort that Biden led. Meanwhile, all three states have LOST tens of thousands of factory jobs since President Toxic was inaugurated. I suspect Biden will be all over numbers like that during the debates, when President Toxic tries to pin NAFTA on him like he pinned it on Hillary. President Toxic is, in fact, President. What has he done? He failed. That's what I suspect Biden will say. But that said, Pennsylvania is for some reason the worst of the three. During the good times, they simply don't lose more factory jobs. During the bad times, factory jobs evaporate. Unlike both Michigan and Wisconsin, there have never been these recoveries where tens of thousands of factory jobs come back. That's true going back to Clinton and the 90's. So the phrase "decades-long decline" captures the economic reality. And it's understandable that you can throw in lots of theories now. This explains why they blame it on immigrants. This explains why they want to go back to the glory days of the White working class. Even if they don't think they are racist, and some of the Trumpians are in fact Black and Hispanic. The really interesting question, I think, is why do they STILL feel President Toxic is "a defender of their economic interests"? Even if you stop the clock at February 2020, Obama/Biden simply did a better job of restoring factory jobs than President Toxic has in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. If you stop the clock at August 2020, there's no comparison. Trump has shredded factory jobs. And, yes, you can say some of that is not President Toxic's fault. But you have to suspend a hell of a lot of disbelief and ignore a hell of a lot of facts to really buy that. So I think Brownstein is right. All of this has gelled together into a new form of civil war. There were an estimated 215,000 combat casualties in the Civil War. By election day, we will clearly top that with COVID-19 deaths. So we don't have a Confederate Army carrying muskets around. But we do have President Toxic rallies that may have killed Herman Cain. And lots of Trumpians who define "freedom" as "not having to wear a damn mask". So we're deep into a culture war which is not tethered to fact or logic all that tightly. And it is turning out to be quite deadly, as well. Here's an interesting Pew survey that confirms how far apart the bases of the two political parties are. For Republicans, these are the issues that over 70 % think are "most important": 1) the economy (88 %), and 2) violent crime (74 %). Meanwhile, income inequality, race inequality, and climate changes are priorities to very few of them. And I'm quite sure that just because they don't care about race inequality, and they buy President Toxic's message of panic about Blacks invading suburbs and violent crime, that doesn't make them a racist. Here's the issues at least 70 % of Democrats see as most important: 1) health care (84%), 2) coronavirus (82 %), 3) race and ethnic inequality (76 %), 4) the economy (72 %). Other than the economy, stupid, Democrats and Republicans are not even on the same page. And I think these "identity politics" and economic issues are layered on top of each other. Racism is a health issue for Blacks dying of Coronavirus. And it's an economic issue because they are disproportionately on the losing end of the economy. Mostly White Trump supporters just don't see it that way. I think all of this makes Brownstein's prediction sound right: no matter who wins, the divide is more likely to get worse. It is interesting that both Democrats and Republicans seem to be saying that. The side that loses is just going to be angry, and bitter, and dig in more. The data about why Democrats seem to be gradually overcoming the obstruction of the Tea Party/Trump decade is also telling. This New York Times article on voter preferences is encouraging. Based on mountains of polling, Biden seems to be doing measurably better than Hillary and better than 2018 preferences with two of three key groups in what Brownstein calls the coalition of transformation: suburban voters, and young voters. Young voters may not like Biden. But most despise President Toxic. The article doesn't focus on Blacks. I assume that's because for the most part they are not a swing group. There's no evidence so far that Blacks plan to sleep through this election. I won't be surprised if Black turnout beats what it was for Obama. And is one of the nails in President Toxic's coffin - not only in states like Michigan, but also states like North Carolina and possibly even Georgia. Where Biden is weakest is with the third group, Hispanics. Although that depends a lot. There's a good chance he may blow President Toxic away in Arizona, partly thanks to mostly Mexican American Hispanics. In Florida, it's a whole different story. Some of it, I think, is that Biden is as bad as Sen. Bill Nelson was in 2018. Rick Scott is saying he has won repeatedly with Hispanics in Florida because he "shows up". I think that's a fair assessment. That said, it's pretty clear that Biden is hurting in Democratic Dade County because the President Toxic hate and panic machine is trashing Biden with lies and lies and lies and lies about how The Deep State will probably put somebody worse than Castro and Chavez in charge if Puppet Biden wins. The goal has to be to just get Demoratic-leaning Hispanics to not vote. But, no, the hateful and racist and evil President Toxic would never want to actually panic Americans, would he? This leads me to a final point about why I think Brownstein is right, and the divides are more likely to deepen after the election. Bernie Sanders had a great opportunity in 2016 and 2020 to redefine America around class. In 2016 his messages about income inequality resonated more than even he expected. So there was every reason to think that 2020 could be the year when Sanders (or Warren, or Sanders/Warren) became the Democratic nominee. It just didn't happen. Those people in Michigan that voted for Bernie rather than Hillary in 2016 and were supposed to respond to messages about the working glass and jobs and a rigged economic system just didn't vote as Berniecrats hoped. They voted for Biden. And a lot of those working class White former Democrats were, and will remain, the base of Trumpism. In fact, the part of Bernie's base that seems most rock solid is built around identity politics. It's the Millennials, stupid. Again, I'll argue that all these issues - identity politics, the economy, racism, and also authoritarianism - are intertwined. The signs people are carrying say "Black Lives Matter". But what the polls and interviews all say is that the young Black, Hispanic, and White protesters carrying those signs all grew up sharing the experience of an America riddled with income inequality. So their movement is about police and the safety of Blacks, for sure. But as we move forward I suspect it will become clearer and clearer that it's a whole bunch of stuff all bundled together. Just like for the Trumpists, it's a whole bunch of identity and economics bundled together, too. The thing that is surprising about Bernie 2020 is there is one area I think he can accurately be described as having overachieved: outreach to Hispanics. That is why he won Nevada. It helped Bernie in Iowa and also Texas, even though Biden ultimately rode an organic wave that helped him win Texas. The very smart national Hispanic organizers that worked with Bernie to do what he did are all pushing the panic buttons about Biden right now. They're essentially saying the same thing Rick Scott is. If you want to turn this constituency into loyal and stable voters, you have to show up. And not just once. You have to show up consistently. Hopefully, Bernie 2020 will in part be remembered as an example of how it helps you on Election Day if you do that. Again, it wasn't enough for Bernie. But his success as "Tio Bernie" also suggests that he made more inroads in states like Nevada with identity politics aimed at Latinos than he did in states like Michigan with class rhetoric aimed at White working class voters. Here's one other Pew analysis of the 2018 midterms that just adds more weight to the idea that the two sides of this "culture war" are digging their trenches deeper. Only 3 % of 2016 Hillary voters voted for a Republican House candidate in 2018. Only 5 % of 2016 Trump voters voted for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. The biggest shift was people who DID NOT vote in 2016: they voted for Democrats by an over 2 to 1 margin. Another table shows 2018 voting preferences based on ideology. 2016 Trump voters who are Republican conservatives were even MORE likely to vote Republican in 2018: it was 94/3 in 2016 and 96/2 in 2018. That's President Toxic's rabid base politics at work. Sadly, the verdict is in that in 2018 it HURT President Toxic with everyone else. Moderate to liberal Republicans and moderate to conservative Democrats were all more likely to vote Democratic in 2018 than 2016. President Toxic has his rabid base. But he's losing everyone else. So there is a group of people in the middle who leaned Democratic in 2018 and for much of 2020 have looked like they may be getting ready to lean Democratic again. And if 2020 is like 2018, there is also a group of people who didn't vote in 2016 or 2018 who will vote overwhelmingly Democratic. My guess is the Lincoln Project's goal is probably to replicate 2018. At the end of the day, if 5 % of President Toxic's 2016 voters vote for Biden, and every other trend I've described here holds, that is probably more than enough for Biden to win. Possibly in a landslide. But it also means the other 95 % of Trump Republicans will have doubled down. They are not going to come out of their trenches, I don't think. They'll feel bitter, and start digging deeper.

Yeah. Since late last week every time I sign I have to reset my password. What I tried today is just using my original password as the reset, which is a six character password. When I go through the reset process there's a little popup box that says 8 to 72 characters, use caps, special characters, etc. It does not indicate that you need to follow all these rules in order for the password to work, however. So the first reset I did several days ago I entered an 8 character password that did not include a special character, and it logged me in. But it clearly did not remember that password, because the next day the new password did not log me in. Today I just reset to my old six character password, and it logged me in. I assume after I log out I will have to reset again tomorrow. So for now I'll just plan that I have to reset my password every time I log in. And I'll just keep using the same old password and see if it works. At least the reset process itself id relatively simple. As Oz said it seems like the issue is the system does not automatically remember my password. Although the odd thing as I said above is that my old password does log me in to Boytoy itself, and I can see my user profile. But then when I click on the Forum I'm not logged in. And when I try to login again in the Forum it's not recognizing the password. It's just fucked up. Good luck, Oz.

I had the same thing happen a few days ago. Reset my password and could log in again. What was weird is I could log in to Boytoy and see profile and messages, but could not log into the forum. I kept trying, and it eventually locked me out for 15 minutes. My old passwords was six characters and when I set up a new one there are different requirements - like at least 8 characters, caps, etc. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm posting this as an addendum to what I posted directly above. Presumably Gottlieb knows as much about the 30,000 foot view as anyone. And I'm in sync with what he says here. It would be nice to think that past exposure to other Coronaviruses has built up some type of immunity in lots of people. But we don't know that, as he says. Month's ago on Daddy's I was setting my hair on fire whenever anyone spoke up about the idea that we could go for herd immunity and magically put the vulnerable - particularly people in nursing homes - in bubble wrap for a year or so. My argument was what Gottlieb is saying here. If you have broad community spread, it's only a matter of time until it seeps into places like nursing homes and jails. That certainly describes what happened in the real world - all across Europe and the US - this Spring. It's not quite working out that way in Europe now. Some part of it has to be that in the Spring it crept in before anyone knew what was happening, or was prepared to prevent it from creeping in. So now maybe Europe is better prepared. Or maybe there is more natural immunity. But Gottlieb could also be right that it just will take a few months, as opposed to a few weeks. That is sort of what happened in the Sunbelt. At one point everybody breathed a sigh of relief that caseloads weren't spiking in Georgia or Florida or Texas. And then they spiked. They spiked pretty much the same in California, which did have a more sober public health message and was more cautious about reopening.. My sense is that part of it is simply human nature. People don't take it seriously until it really hits home. Once it hit home in these Sun Belt states, it seems like a lot of people changed their tune and were just more cautious. If young people are being less cautious, it's obviously because they just aren't seeing the direct health consequences to them or their peers. If they go home for Thanksgiving and their Granny is dead by Christmas, that will be a game changer. Hopefully, we don't need to kill Granny to learn our lessons.

What's particularly interesting is that the second wave spreading across Europe is a lot less deadly. Nobody seems to know why, for sure. I've read articles that speculate about different strains of virus and virus mutations that may make it less fatal. My take away so far is it is mostly about the demographics of who gets sick. This CNN article sums up what appear to be the facts pretty well. Young people are driving a second, less-deadly surge of Covid-19 cases in Europe That article is about a month old. So we know more now about the fatality rates of this second wave. The contrast in Spain is particularly striking. The pattern is the same across Europe, but I picked Spain because their second wave looks a lot like their first in terms of case loads. They peaked at about 10,000 cases a day, with the two peaks roughly five months apart. When you look at the fatalities, there's no comparison. With the March caseload peak in Spain, fatalities peaked a few weeks later, as would be expected. Spain had just under 1000 deaths a day at the peak. The second wave in Spain appears to have peaked in late August. So the maximum deaths should be hitting right about now. The recent one week moving average in Spain is about 60 deaths a day. On the face of it, the virus appears to be about 90 % less deadly. You can look at France or Italy or Germany and the basic pattern - lower fatality - is the same. France already has blown past it's Spring peak on number of cases. In the Spring, they had up to 1500 deaths a day. Now it's more like 30. I'm assuming a big part of this is that they're catching a lot more of the asymptomatic or minor cases now than they were in the Spring, due to mass testing. And some of it may be due to knowing more about treatments. Even so, the contrast in fatalities is striking. This article is only a few days old and gives anecdotal pictures of what's causing the surge in various European countries: 'Not a game': Europe pleads with young people to halt Covid-19 spread While it's not a game, it's also obviously not really bad news for Europe. And for any country that can get its shit together on a national strategy for managing the risk. Part of what's surprising to me is that young Europeans who are getting COVID-19 don't appear to be spreading it to older Europeans - so far. Other than a few articles, I haven't bothered to try to learn what may be driving this. But I suspect mask wearing and social distancing protocols are probably a big part of it. Meaning the Spanish 20-somethings may be partying without masks in bars, or in college dorms now that they are going back to school. But older adults aren't going into those bars. And they are wearing masks when they are around the 20-somethings. Whatever is driving it, this has been going on for well over a month. And the fatality rates are not spiking like they did in the Spring. I think we know already that colleges that are open for in-person classes in the US are already seeing spikes. The thing that I keep reading that makes sense to me is that young adults on college campuses should stay there. If they bring COVID-19 home for Thanksgiving or Christmas it could be a huge national shit show. When a vaccine does appear, it's going to be very interesting to see how it plays out. I'll leave politics out of this, other than to say that trust in the efficacy of any vaccine has already been compromised in the US. And we don't really know what natural immunity means for people who had COVID-19, or some exposure to COVID-19, or past exposure to some other type of Coronavirus. We certainly don't know what artificial immunity means for people once we get a vaccine. Nor do we know what herd immunity means due to some combination of the two. I'm with Fauci and his common sense approach. He keeps saying that the good news is that we know when we actually try to manage a spike by following certain protocols - like masks and social distancing - we can drive it down. So what Europe is showing, even if it is haphazardly, is that there is a way to manage this so that young adults can do what they want to do without killing thousands of older adults every day. I'm in no way encouraging it. Spain is obviously correct to be telling young adults this is not a game. But it is a fact that, at least so far, what's playing out in Spain and France right now is nowhere near as awful as what played out this Spring. The silver lining in the cloud of this pandemic is that it is not the Spanish flu. The second wave of that one was by far the deadliest. And it was particularly deadly to young adults. I think most people could really care less about the scientific nuances of this. Including me. They just want to know whether they are going to live or die. Or go broke from hospital bills, or losing their job. So the good news is that while this is not a game, we ought to be able to figure out better how to manage it so that it is also not a death sentence like it was for lots of older people in the Spring.

Democrats build big edge in early voting Far more Democrats than Republicans are requesting mail ballots in key battleground states, including voters who didn't participate in 2016. There's been several articles recently about how Republicans have done a better job than Democrats of registering new voters under President Toxic. In particular, a recent Politico article said in Pennsylvania it appears that Republicans may have registered something like 170,000 more new voters than Democrats. That said, Democrats still outnumber Republicans by 750,000 voters in Pennsylvania. So if Democrats turn out at the same rate as Republicans, Democrats will win. Another unknown is that Republicans have been doing door-to-door and face-to-face voter organizing in a way that Democrats have not, due to the different perceptions about COVID-19. I have to imagine that door to door contact is going to help Republicans at the margin. That said, the very fact that COVID-19 is running rampant may deliver two Democratic votes for every Republican who votes because a Trump volunteer spoke to her at her door. We just don't know. This is a good summary by 538 of Republican efforts to make it harder to vote. It sounds like states and counties are all over the map in terms of how and when mail-in or absentee ballots get counted. And this is an area of huge legal skirmishes right now. Republicans in at least some places are trying to prevent any vote counting from happening before Election Day. Including, for example, verification of signatures on the outside envelope of mail-in ballots, which is one of the most time-consuming and important steps to prevent fraud. My contempt for the Toxic Trump Republicans just deepens by the day. These people, including President Toxic himself, have used absentee ballots in Florida to increase GOP turnout and win elections for a long time. That's fair, because they have the right to vote. But now they are bitching and moaning that this is fraud. But only in states where it may help Democrats. And right now they are actively taking steps to make it harder to catch any possible fraud by making it harder to carefully verify the signatures on mail-in ballots. Regardless, in some of these states it appears likely that the "red mirage" everyone is worried about could be offset by a flood of mail-in ballots, many of them cast early by Democrats. I've been guessing, or at least hoping, that all the noise about fraud and mail-in voting is a great B'rer Rabbit strategy. By making a big deal about Republicans not allowing Democrats to vote by mail, we're just ensuring that more Democrats will insist on their right to vote by mail. Maybe that is what is happening. It's too early to tell. But this is very encouraging. So encouraging that I have to go take a shower. I had an orgasm when I read this article.

And now that I've advocated for more Black Governors, let me argue against one. To me, this is a Justice Rapist moment for the Democratic Party. Democrat Fairfax announces bid for Virginia governor Of course, I don't live and vote in Virginia, and I'll have nothing to do with this race. But I do think this is a good opportunity for Democrats to set a clearer standard for our own versions of Justice Rapist. As a clarification, I get that Kavanaugh was never accused of rape. Let alone convicted of it. My use of the word refers to two forms of rape. The rape of the FBI investigation process, which did not take multiple credible allegations about a pattern of sexual misconduct seriously. We can thank President Toxic, Don McGahn, and Rich Mitch for that. And rape of the legislative process, which pushed the confirmation through even as President Toxic focused on humiliating pretty much any woman who was ever raped. I'm happily sending $100 a month to Sara Gideon. If Senator Susan Coverup - who I used to respect - loses, I'll be sure to send her a "Goodbye And Good Riddance" note in appreciation. I think there was an obvious solution with Justice Rapist, which was employed multiple times by Reagan and W. Nominate somebody else. President Toxic thought it was better to attack the alleged victims. There's no evidence that strategy paid off. They filled a vacancy with a conservative Justice, which they were sure to get anyway. And the voters threw in House Speaker Pelosi as a bonus. Trump isn't a genius, is he? I haven't followed Virginia closely since the initial craziness of the racism/sexual assault trifecta. But in a lot of ways it is like Justice Rapist. On the one hand you have a man accused of sexual assault who is fiercely defensive of his innocence. On the other hand you have multiple women making allegations that appear to be credible. Even more credible, in that they're clearly not trying to tear a Black man down just because he's a Democrat. There's enough ambiguity that you can go either way and no one can prove you wrong. Unlike with Justice Rapist, all the parties were adults and agree that something happened. The conflict is whether what happened is consensual. It's that last part that goes to the heart of Me Too. Define "consensual". I regret being one of the ones who called for Al Franken's resignation. I regret it in part because Republicans like Senator Susan Coverup, who called for his resignation, ended up being a total hypocrite, I think. More importantly, Franken was accused of being a slightly gross man that did gross things in public. Being gross is forgivable. In retrospect, his unforgivable sin was being gross exactly when the questions Me Too raises were right in front of the nation. For a comedian, it ended up being the shittiest timing ever. That "boob" photo said it all. You don't pose for a camera when you're trying to cover up rape. Some Democratic Senators have as much as said that they now feel they overreacted. The happy outcome perhaps would have been that Senator Franken became the poster child for why it's good to take a time out and get some training. Putting your hand on a female constituent's butt during a photo at the State Fair is tacky and offensive. But not criminal. At Franken's expense, his forced resignation prior to any investigation did have the virtue of giving a lot of people who have political aspirations a warning they'll never forget. The problem with Fairfax is that, like with Justice Rapist, there is no middle ground. I think it's even worse with Fairfax. With Justice Rapist, the argument that made complete sense to me is that he had the most to gain by a thorough investigation. In theory, they could have cleared him of all the new allegations that were coming out of the woodwork. My guess is it would have gone the other way, and the FBI would have at least further documented a consistent pattern or sexual assault allegations. A Virginia legislative "hearing" that resulted in a police or private investigation perceived as credible was being debated at one point. I'm not sure that's an option anymore. I think the standard that Democrats proposed for Justice Rapist makes sense for Fairfax. It is in his interest to clear his name. And I don't have a problem with putting the obligation on him to do so - whatever that means. The alternative is telling two credible Black women that the burden is on them to prove what they allege is true. That seems like Anita Hill times two to me. That's not progress. Besides, they have been trying to prove it, by calling for a hearing. Anita Hill at least got that. Given the ambiguity of the situation, the standard I like is that guys like Fairfax just need to step aside. In this case, part of the context that matters is there are several Black women (not the alleged victims) who have already declared they are running for Governor, too. The story directly above did state that regardless of what President Biden may do in terms of Cabinet appointments involving Democratic White Governors and Black Lieutenant Governors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey, he is very unlikely to touch Virginia with a ten foot poll. That makes sense to me. Northam and Fairfax both have lots of options for successful careers, other than politics. I wish they went that route. Since Fairfax apparently sees it differently, perhaps the best option is for Democrats in the Virginia primary to just choose somebody else. If he wins the primary, and two Black women say they are being ignored, that's not a good look for the post-President Toxic Democratic Party. Where would others draw the line in what is clearly an ambiguous situation like this?