stevenkesslar

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?

If we're comparing to LBJ, I think Biden wins that over Kamala hands down. And I say that as a California boy who voted for Kamala for Senator, respects her, and thinks she'd make a good Prez. The precedent from both The New Deal and The Great Society is that is started out more moderate and then grew more liberal. It's true that FDR got a lot of legislation passed right out of the gate. But my read of history is that he gradually lost faith in corporate America as the New Deal went along. The more incendiary anti-business comments he made were from 1936, not 1932. The Great Society was similar. That was bubbling up for years before JFK was elected, in an election in which civil rights was more background than top issue. So to get to the point where LBJ cut the deals and signed the landmark laws took maybe a decade. If I had to bet, history will repeat itself somehow. What happens in 2021, even assuming a Democratic majority, will be a first step that sets the tone and focuses more on immediate relief. If there are going to be huge landmark bills, they'll come later. What the Republicans do when President Toxics loses will be a big driver in which way this goes. The easy guess would be that the Never Trumpers who helped elect Biden will be a force of moderation in whatever happens right out of the gate. Biden will triangulate. And if he does he'll probably have the majority support President Toxic never did. The Toxic Trump Republicans can claim success in one thing. They made Democrats a lot more like them when it comes to compromise. The last time I looked at Pew's poll findings on that issue was several years ago. And as the graph shows, back then an overwhelming majority of Democrats put compromise ahead of the idea of "sticking to your principles." So when I just Googled it for this post I hadn't seen the recent big change. But I'm not surprised. Now people who favor compromise are just less than a majority in both parties. This poll tracks the timing of my change. It was around 2018 that I hit my breaking point. And the Justice Rapist fiasco was my straw that broke the camel's back. So I'm okay with where Democrats are. But this is not necessarily good news for President Biden. He is at heart a deal maker. Now Democrats are cooler on that idea. So I'm with you, @TotallyOz. That's of course obvious from my tone. I'm certainly done with the idea that the Toxic Trump Republican Party is going to work with us. Or that it even makes sense to have a conversation with them. Since the feelings of contempt (or something approaching it) seem to be mutual, that probably will help determine the direction things go. When this has played out before, long periods of "time out" (I love that phrase, which is what newly activist Moms say the national/Trump Republicans need now) have actually resulted in moderation. It took 20 years to get from Hoover's defeat to Ike's election. It took 12 years, and multiple landslides, to get from Carter's defeat to Bill Clinton's election. So as much as it sounds mean, or maybe even undemocratic, I think the best thing to do for people who like the idea of compromise and moderation is to tell the Tea Party and Toxic Trump types to just go fuck themselves. If we have the votes, we can get away with it. But that means Biden managing a circus that includes some people who would really prefer President Bernie, and others who would really prefer President Kasich. I would not want to guess what that could mean for 2024. Will Biden run again? If not, will Harris be a shoo-in to replace him? Will Berniecrats revolt? All of those challenges can happily get in line and wait a long time for the immediate and urgent calamities to be addressed. i do think @lookin is right that all these Trumpians won't go away. If they double down and we have a Toxic Trump TV station for them to watch, then they'll decide for themselves that they'd rather go off and plot revenge for a while. The more important issue to me is what happens with what I'll call the Kasich Republicans, or what Rahm called the "Biden Republicans" . Some of these Obama-Obama-Trump voters are going to be Obama-Obama-Trump-Biden voters this year. And others will vote for President Toxic, but will notice if some of the jobs and Rust Belt decline issues Trump won on, and then pretty much ignored, are actually addressed by Democrats. That's how we can build a sustainable coalition that will allow us to ignore the remnants of the Toxic Trump Party. That's where I was going with my question. Emotionally, I can't wait to look many Trump voters in the face for the next several years and say, "You people lost because you completely deserved to lose. Go the hell away."

UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE Transcript: Kim Jong Un's letters to President Trump

It's not clear to me at this point that President Toxic needs yet another nail in his political coffin. But it's hard not to imagine this won't be a huge political nail in his coffin with this somewhat amorphous group of Independent/Undecided voters. People like me who despise President Toxic don't need more reasons. We're rabidly waiting to vote him out. And the true Trumpians will react to this by yawning. Or arguing it just goes to show what a good leader he is by not wanting to panic us. So this post is mostly about where the Independent/Undecided folks are now. And partly this is going to take a dive into polling, and prognosticating. Including whether the polls were wrong in 2016. This is from an article in Rasmussen about which voters are being quiet about their support for or opposition to President Toxic: I don't take this to mean that anyone is lying to pollsters about who they support. I take it to mean they are simply being quiet because they know they'll get push back. If 21 % of Independents aren't saying much, it's probably because they don't particularly care. About 1 in 5 Independents are truly undecided, or at least still open-minded, according to the mountain of poll data about Independents I've commented on. They're not very tuned in. And they don't much like either choice. In a close election, like 2016, these are the voters that can and did determine the outcome. I won't post the video again. But on Election Night 2016 Karl Rove argued, correctly I think, that Trump won because voters who disliked both candidates broke decisively for President Toxic, who represented change. Politico has had a series of articles going for the last year where they interview four Republican political hacks who ran the campaigns or Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, and Bush in 2016. On the big questions, their consensus has been on the money: 1) Biden would be the strongest nominee for Democrats to choose, and 2) Harris would be his best pick as VP. This final article in the series is an interesting read in its entirety. The consensus is that the outcome could range from a repeat of 2016 - a popular vote loss for President Toxic coupled with a narrow win in the electoral college - to a landslide for Biden. No one thinks President Toxic can actually win the popular vote. Of the four, the most optimistic case for Trump was made by Jeff Roe, who ran Ted Cruz's campaign. The single most interesting statement he made was this one: There's probably several ways to interpret what he means. Maybe he means negativity drives getting Trumpians out to vote. Maybe he means negativity could depress Black turnout, like in 2016. Most likely, he's probably saying that President Toxic could end up winning the "hold your nose and vote" crowd like he did in 2016 by a relentlessly negative attack that smears Biden with all the shit in creation. This is where all this toxic stuff hanging in the air comes in: like COVID-19, and President Toxic's "downplaying" or "misleading" statements about it, as well as his betrayals of the military. What Roe said is consistent with the polls I've seen. The group that handed the electoral college to Trump in 2016 is back again. Like in 2016, they don't like either President Toxic or Biden. Like in 2016, they are leaning toward change being better than more of the same. Unlike me, they are not particularly tuned in. Many of them won't know how they vote pretty much until they vote. In an environment like that, it seems like having all this toxic stuff hanging in the air is just fatal to President Toxic. I think Claire McCaskill is dead right about how politics works for this slice of Independent/Undecided voters. They're not watching MSNBC or listening to Rush Limbaugh. This stuff just hangs in the air, like COVID-19 will be all Fall. As it settles in, it will likely reinforce that change is better than more of the same. I think it's worth a paragraph to review how this translated into poll data in 2016, and then an update on what it could mean in 2020. In 2016, on this date, the RCP poll averages showed Hillary had a 3.1 % lead over President Toxic. In about a week, September 16th, she had a lead of exactly 0.9 % over Trump. In other words, Hillary outperformed her mid-September polling in the final November election result, when she won the popular vote by 2.1 %. So anyone who says she had it in the bag, or that the polling was wrong, is just plain wrong. And all along the way, there were of course undecided voters. So the final poll average on Election Day was Clinton 46.8 % and Trump 43.6 %. They both outperformed. Clinton ended up with 48.2 % of the votes, or 1.4 % above what the final poll averages showed. President Toxic ended up with 46.1 % of the vote, or 2.5 % above what the final poll averages showed. All of that was within the margins of error of the polls used to create the average, anyway. But there's two factors that obviously drove these numbers. First, Independent/Undecided voters had to decide. And they voted disproportionately for Trump. Second, the turnout assumptions were slightly off. President Toxic was able to grow the tent by a few millions voters compared to what Romney got in 2012. He still lost the popular vote by 3 million. But it was the 77,774 votes in the Rust Belt that counted. Compare the trend with Clinton/Trump in 2016 to the trend with Biden/Trump in 2020. Unlike in 2016, it's not close. And it's never been close. Let's assume President Toxic does exactly the same thing as 2016. He shaves 1.1 % more off his losing popular vote margin, compared to what the poll averages showed. Based on current polling, he'd cut a 7.5 % loss to a 6.4 % loss. Again, that's based on the people who are decided and willing to state their voter preference. A margin like that rules out a narrow electoral college win, as the current state polls clearly show. When you add in these undecided or "hold my nose and vote" voters, I think it just gets worse for President Toxic. That 7.5 % margin today is based on 50.5 % for Biden, and 43.0 % for President Toxic. So today there are 6.5 % of voters who are in the undecided/someone else/hold my nose bucket. In 2016 it was 9.5 % of all voters. Even if President Toxic won all 6.5 % of those voters, he would still be one point behind Biden today. But what the polls point to, as Roe understands, is that these undecided/someone else/hold my nose voters are already saying they lean toward Biden. There's another thing about this worth mentioning. If Biden can hold the lead he has today, and more undecideds break for Biden than Trump, Biden ends up with well over 50 % of the vote. If what we expect to happen happens, I like that number. Yeah, you can argue millions of the ballots are fake votes. But if Biden gets 52 % or 53 % of the vote, which seems possible, it's very hard to argue that the majority of America did not tell President Toxic he is fired. Like in 2016, the polls will be up and down until November. That said, it's not likely that the wide lead Biden has enjoyed since last year will just go away - unless something really huge changes things. Roe probably thinks that if a strong man like President Toxic just hammers the shit out of a weak guy like Biden every single day, he can turn the undecided/hold my nose crowd around. The only problem with this seemingly wishful thinking is there is no evidence in the real world to support it. The evidence in the real world is that President Toxic will be hammering the shit out of himself every day this Fall. And if he somehow forgets his hammer, Bob Woodward or some anonymous General or God knows who else will be kind enough to use their hammer to pound those nails in the coffin shut. President Toxic's contempt for the military and his willful misleading about a plague that killed 200,000 Americans are not small things. they are toxic. They will hang in the air every day. Especially given that the pace of COVID-19 deaths is more likely to pick up than slow down this Fall. There's a huge irony in how history will look back at these recordings. With 20/20 hindsight, I'd guess that historians will say President Toxic wasn't only talking about COVID-19 here: I'm pretty sure President Toxic was describing his own political demise. And why these people who haven't made up their mind or don't like either Biden or Trump will ultimately decide that change is better than more of this horror story.

Claire nailed several things. It's just stupidity. President Toxic was the one who gave Woodward access to his staff. The interesting question is not why some of the staff gave Woodward access to Trump. It's why they gave Woodward access to themselves. Most of them had to know better than their stupid boss. But it fills in the picture. These are not men and women of honor. They know what they have to do to be able to come to work the next day. Claire is a politician. So I think she nailed how the political reaction to this and the military betrayal works. It's not like a train wreck, in the sense of sudden and devastating impact. Although you can see that it already stopped and possibly reversed the modest recovery in Trump's approval ratings since the RNC. This is more like COVID-19. It blows around everywhere, and gradually settles in. So I think Claire is right. This will reinforce the way a lot of older voters who have been moving away from President Toxic feel. And the way a lot of active military, vets, and people who honor military service feel. It settles in and further cements the judgment people are gradually making. That said, it's more than just stupidity. Claire is not a psychiatrist. But one of the most interesting phrases in her rant was, "Who in their right mind ....?" That's a very good question. As a political hack, she was smart to leave it at stupidity. But you have to add either narcissism, or dementia, or both. Why you don't tell Woodward this stuff on tape right before an election is not difficult to figure out. So how could President Toxic have such a distorted view of reality? This would be the equivalent of Nixon never having secretly taped the conversations that destroyed him. It would be like Nixon instead calling up Woodward and Bernstein and saying, "Hey guys. Got a tape recorder? Let's talk for 18 hours." No sane President would do that. I won't drag all the stuff about authoritarianism into this thread. But I'll make one point. This gift President Toxic has given to the American political psyche is going to keep giving after he loses. The reaction already from Trumpians, and the reporters that know them best, is that this isn't really news. It's just more Deep State bullshit. We knew that this was dangerous. We're glad he didn't want us to panic. Yawn. Almost 200,000 dead Americans, and many more on the way. But, no. Their leader can do no wrong. All the TV I watched about this story focused, correctly, on what President Toxic said. But I'll end by reposting what President Toxic's enablers were saying at the time. And the impact it had on real people. Who suffered horribly. And died horribly. Claire's right. People did not know they were in a burning building. They were not protected, or told what to do to protect themselves. They were lied to and lulled into not caring. They were told it was a Democratic hoax. And being good authoritarian followers, many of them will choose not to remember that now.

Below are two articles that I view as two sides of the Make America Great Again coin. I agree with the prognosis of the first article, from The American Conservative. As I read it, it's the voice of pre-Tea Party Ronald Reagan/George Will "principled" conservatism. The article predicts that the MAGA effort is doomed to end in failure. The second article talks about the challenge facing Democrats and Biden if we win, as seems likely. If the Republicans couldn't make America great again, can Democrats? And is there any hope that some of the people who voted for President Toxic can be nudged into the Democratic Party - if not in 2020 then further down the line? Or will they view Democrats as a permanent existential threat, as the conservative author of the first article portrays them? After Trump Loss, ‘Deplorables’ Will Be The Democrats’ First Target Blame the president for leaving his core supporters at the mercy of the opposition's cultural and economic revolution. Two reactions before I cite the second article. First, I agree with the prognosis that triangulation could have saved President Toxic. That said, it is far easier said than done for President Toxic. Let's forget that he seems to completely lack Bill Clinton's skills in governing and political deal making .... ironically. Even if he was a master at the art of political deals, the kind of bipartisan immigration reform the Senate passed 2-1 in 2013, only to be killed by the House Freedom Caucus, surely would have been seen as a worse betrayal than H.W. Bush's "no new taxes" pledge. I always figured the reason President Toxic got away with trashing McCain's war heroism is that many Trumpians saw McCain as a RINO. And while it's true that lots of Trump supporters say they don't like the tweets, it's also true that President Toxic basically ran against everything that makes Washington work at its best. Like compromise on good public policy. The most flattering thing I can say about President Toxic is he does have reptilian survival instincts. He probably feels, not incorrectly, that if he betrayed his base they would eat him alive. Second, this article deeply resonates with what I've heard from "principled" conservatives for years and years. Like the author, they don't have much regard for the Tea Party/MAGA types. They view them as an unstable and potentially corrupting influence on the Grand Old Party they've been loyal members of for life. Yet going back to the W. years, as I listened to the "principled" conservatives' arguments, it sounded pretty much just like the Tea Party's arguments to me. This author seems to almost completely agree with the Tea Party/MAGA definition of the problem: Democrats who are out to destroy America. He just doesn't agree that President Toxic was the proper solution to the problem. Regardless, the dreaded Democratic "cultural and economic revolution" is proceeding apace. Like the plague, it's apparently coming soon to a bucolic rural hamlet near you. In light of Bob Woodward's hardly shocking tapes of President Toxic, there's mountains of tragic irony here. Trump played down an existential threat because he didn't want to create panic. Which resulted in a deep recession/depression that has killed 200,000 Americans so far. And yet the bigger existential threat is the Democrats? Huh? It's not exactly news that as far back as the 1980's, Reagan won by appealing to blue collar union families who were conservative on issues like guns and abortion and law and order. But how exactly is the so-called Democratic economic revolution worse than COVID-19 and a recession? Are unions more deadly than COVID-19? In fact, there's plenty of evidence that Democratic successes in the midterms and state races weren't simply driven by affluent suburbanites. Polls suggest that lots of working class voters abandoned President Toxic over bread and butter economic issues. Like the high cost of health insurance. Or unexpected medical expenses that are one of the leading contributors to poverty. Even with a recession and COVID-19, Trump's highest disapproval rating this year (56 % in July) hasn't reached his 58 % disapproval rating in 2017 when he tried to kill Obamacare, breaking his "repeal and replace" vow. ‘A tale of 2 recessions’: As rich Americans get richer, the bottom half struggles We've now had two election cycle in a row where income inequality, Bernie and democratic socialism, Medicare For All, and Elizabeth and wealth taxes on Jeff Bezos are a major driver. The fact that income inequality only got worse under President Toxic's government is hardly a surprise. What is a surprise is the pandemic made income inequality worse still. Those unemployment numbers really are surprising to me. Home values in parts of California and Portland are spiking, even as we read that Portland is ablaze. So somebody out there isn't poor. Meanwhile, what's not stated in the first article I posted is that a lot of President Toxic's supporters are feeling the pain. I get that many, maybe even most of them blame it on Democrats who want to close your Main Street, slap a mask on you, and take whatever livelihood you have left away. That's the Trumpian rant, at least. But the polls also suggest that the majority of Americans fear COVID-19 more than they fear the temporary damage to the economy of protecting the health of ourselves and our loved ones. I'm relatively confident that the people who judge the flow of history like Lichtman and Jon Meaham and now Bob Woodward are right. President Toxic was not the man for the job. The American people will agree and fire him, I think. He has not made America great again. So the question is: are Democrats, if empowered, up to the task? Is there any possibility of pulling some of these Trump supporters back our way - on these bread and butter issues like jobs and health care? Or are Democrats, as defined in the first article, simply going to be viewed as a permanent existential threat to the cultures and economic well being of those who voted for President Toxic? I'll add one other point that spoke to me about this question. Michael Moore has been loudly warning that 2016 could happen all over again, because the intensity of Trump supporters is through the roof. But he's also saying something very different than 2016. When reminded how he portrayed Biden in 2019, as an overly moderate political hack, Moore pointed out that it almost doesn't matter anymore. Maybe some of it was Moore having to find a way to spin Biden, now that he's the nominee. But his points made sense. Remember all those people opposed to Medicare For All because they liked their employer health insurance? They're unemployed and without health insurance now, Moore said. Remember all those people saying that Andrew Yang's $1000 freedom benefit was unaffordable and un-American? They survived COVID-19 because of Nancy Pelosi insisting on $600 a week unemployment payments. Of course, not everyone did. We don't have an accurate picture of who the losers in this recession are yet. But we know its tens of millions of Americans. And I'm pretty sure lots of those tens of millions who are hurting have been President Toxic supporters. My premise in posting this thread is that Biden and Democrats are going to take power. If we do, given how the entire deck has been reshuffled by the plague, is there a way to co-opt some of the Make America Great Again message and coalition? Or are they going to circle the wagons around their vanquished savior, and harden their minds around the idea that Democrats are now going to destroy America for good?

Biden as President May Mean More Black Governors An interesting story. On the good news side, there are 15,000 local Black elected officials today - a more than tenfold increase from 1970. On the good news/bad news side, the good news is that President Biden is in a position to "create" more Black Governors in one month than the US has had in a century. That's also the bad news. The US has had almost no Black Governors. In theory, appointing the Democratic Governors are four states - Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Jersey - to Cabinet posts would result in the immediate elevation of four Black Lieutenant Governors. In theory, the 2020 election could also result in four new Black Senators, all Democrats. Jaime Harrison (South Carolina) and Rev. Warnock (Georgia) could win through election. Gov. Newsom could appoint someone like Rep. Karen Bass to replace VP Harris. And if Warren becomes Treasury Secretary, she could be replaced by Senator Pressley. Although that would require a special election, before which a Republican Governor would no doubt temporarily appoint a Republican placeholder. I like this scenario a lot. I also like the scenario that South Carolina would improbably have the honor of being the first US state to elect concurrent African American Senators of two different political parties. That right there makes a very positive statement. I tend to agree with Republican Sen. Tim Scott that more than anything else what enabled his election is, to quote him, "the evolution of the Southern heart". If he were not speaking at the RNC, my guess is he would agree that Obama's election counts, too. And it's really about the evolution of the American heart. So I don't discount the importance of gradual changes that can not be seen or measured in concrete results - until something big like Obama's or Scott's election happens. That said, so far the concrete achievements of Black Lives Matter have been minimal. That's okay. If we're talking about police reform, it's going to take years. And the incremental changes are probably the ones that will make the most significant difference in the long run. The swift elevation of four Black Governors and four Black Senators would make a very clear statement about something Blacks have made clear they feel strongly about. I'm all for this kind of racial justice math. 4 + 4 = GREAT.

Minnesota’s myth-making met stark reality. Where does Gov. Tim Walz go from here? This post is anecdotal, and pushes more around the margins of understanding what's driving authoritarian behavior in the US today. It's an interesting interview with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. I'll cite the parts I found most interesting and relevant. Translation: @lookin is speaking more like Gov. Walz, and I'm speaking more like Mrs. Walz. (Are we married? Who knew!) That said, I agree with what Walz said. As a Governor, he has to try to be publicly bipartisan. Even if he privately thinks his wife is right. I'll repeat what I said above. The Republicans Democrats can most fruitfully work with are the "Kasich Republicans" or "Hogan Republicans", I think. They are the ones turned off by President Toxic's ignorance and authoritarianism. That's a fascinating comment coming from a guy like Walz. The first paragraph acknowledges that at the core of what we're calling authoritarianism is real economic anxiety and, more important, real economic pain. That said, how do you get from that to what Walz describes in the second paragraph? Its definitely authoritarian thinking. And scapegoating. The most ardent members of Team Toxic will not be easily persuaded that The Socialists or The Deep State or whatever is not out to destroy them. If anyone can talk with people who feel this way, it's somebody like Walz. And implicit in his statement is an acknowledgement that he can't. I'd say Kasich has reached pretty much the same conclusions. I'll reiterate Dean's point. They do understand defeat? Is it possible there will be more receptivity to moderates like Walz or conservatives like Kasich after President Toxic is defeated? I at least hope so. That the public education divide is THAT stark in Minnesota surprises me. But it fills out the picture. It's a coin toss whether Trumpist authoritarianism is more about real economic anxiety and pain, or about racism and scapegoating. I've always felt it's both/and. A lot of MAGA conservatives seem to have reached the conclusion that there is no real point in conversations about racism. Let alone self examination about what could be their own racism. Rather, they now just want to throw the word "racist" back at Obama, or Blacks, or woke White liberals. President Toxic modeled how to do it, and legitimized it. That is why I single out Daddy. He doesn't need to endorse "Black Lives Matter". Arguably, in the position he's in running a social media website he should NOT take sides. But by taking sides and labeling Black Lives Matter as racist, he has revealed his own racism. It's a free country, so he has every right to. But he also made his website permanently into Daddy's "Racism Is Okay" website. It's not exactly a shocker to me that this is where President Toxic has moved many people who have always been conservatives. Trump just made them feel their racism is not only perfectly okay, because it's not racism. It's righteous. I'm not holding my breath for them to suddenly or even slowly move to some other more tolerant space. Bottom line: I applaud Gov. Walz and his open-hearted and tolerant impulses. I wish him luck. My prognosis is that his wife is wise. And he'll need all the luck he can get.

I'm going to post a few other things that push around the margins of this issue. First, just to prove I can tolerate ambiguity, here's a little something that pushes back against some of my own thinking: ‘What do we do?’: Trump gains rattle Miami Dems The president is running ahead of his 2016 pace in Florida’s most populous county. That article allows you to make the authoritarian argument either way. And both arguments would be correct. On the one hand, some of President Toxic's support in Florida is NOT because people want to be authoritarian followers. It's because they don't want to be. If they left Cuba or Venezuela, it was to get away from oppressive and authoritarian regimes. I don't have a hard time understanding why these voters would be attracted to Trump as a symbol of a self-made business success and American prosperity. Even if they cut him some slack because Daddy made everything good for Baby Donald, who cares? On the other hand, authoritarian followers are exactly the kind of people Dean is saying would buy this bullshit about socialism. Biden is so NOT SOCIALIST that I frankly find it hard to believe Team Toxic is stupid enough to make such arguments. I'm glad they are. Because if they weren't screaming "Socialist witch!" at people like Harris, they could be making arguments that actually gain traction. That said, it makes sense that if you left Cuba or Venezuela, this nightmare resonates in a way it just doesn't for White suburban women in Wisconsin. The good news in this is that the articles about Biden and Florida, and Biden and Hispanics, may be more a localized issue than a national one. There's probably multiple causes of whatever is happening in Florida. But it does not appear to be happening in Arizona, where there are also lots of Hispanics. I checked, and here is a comparison of the 538 polling average in four states from Aug. 28th to today. I arbitrarily picked Aug. 28th because that's when the polling gap in Florida noticeably started to close: Florida: Biden leads + 2.8 today versus + 5.6 lead on 8/28, net loss of - 2.8 to Biden Pennsylvania: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 5.8 lead on 8/28, net loss of -0.7 to Biden Wisconsin: Biden leads + 7.0 today versus + 6.2 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden (so much for racist ranting helping President Toxic) Arizona: Biden leads + 5.1 today versus + 4.3 lead 8/28, net gain of +0.8 to Biden I'm tempted to say that whatever is going on in Florida is more likely local factors than national ones. That said, he's got issues with Hispanics. That's no surprise. It's also noteworthy that he is doing as well in Arizona as in Pennsylvania.