Campaign 2020

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Sabin
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Sabin »

Okri wrote
Sabin, I wonder if McConnell plays a longer game. A hamstrung Biden government leading to big Republican gains in 2022 and I don't think the Democrats think boldly now. Meanwhile they have the Supreme Court ready to smack down when they want.
Wed Nov 04, 2020 2:24 pm
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taki15
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by taki15 »

A black, a Jew, and a Latino get into the senate and are sworn-in by a Black/Indian woman.
Thankfully not a joke.
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by danfrank »

It was a good day today.
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OscarGuy
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by OscarGuy »

To be fair, it's not often that one economic decline follows so quickly after the last.
Wesley Lovell
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Big Magilla
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Big Magilla »

mlrg wrote:
Big Magilla wrote:From News Reports:

That streak broke a record set by President Hoover in 1928 when the S&P rallied 13.3 percent during the same interval, according to MarketWatch."
And then everybody knows what happened a year later :D
I knew someone was going to come up with that one! :P
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by mlrg »

Big Magilla wrote:From News Reports:

That streak broke a record set by President Hoover in 1928 when the S&P rallied 13.3 percent during the same interval, according to MarketWatch."
And then everybody knows what happened a year later :D
Big Magilla
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Big Magilla »

From News Reports:

"US stocks closed at record highs Wednesday as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th president — with the new commander-in-chief setting a record for stock gains between his election and his inauguration.

The benchmark S&P 500 index rallied 1.4 percent to a record close of 3,851.85, finishing 14 percent higher on Inauguration Day than it was on Election Day. That streak broke a record set by President Hoover in 1928 when the S&P rallied 13.3 percent during the same interval, according to MarketWatch."
Big Magilla
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Big Magilla »

Class has returned to the White House.
Mister Tee
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Mister Tee »

Looking at my TV screen and seeing Barack, Michelle and Bill Clinton in a conversation with JLo and ARod. The screen just about exploded from star power.

A surprisingly emotional ceremony. Like all of you, I've heard The Star-Spangled Banner thousands of times, to the point it barely registers anymore. But when Gaga looked at the flag while she sang "that our flag was still there", I had a brief flash of what Key meant when he wrote the line -- it feels like we're all survivors of a battle, and it's bracing to see the flag (and what it represents) still flying.

In that vein, Biden's speech was just right for the occasion. It won't make it into any books of inspired oratory, but it spoke to the moment, and struck the right balance: calling for unity, but also not shying away from naming the forces working to divide us. How Biden navigates that balance in action will be the story of the next four years, but, for one day, he got it right.

Big exhale.
Sabin
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Sabin »

The greatest present I could've ever asked for my birthday is coming tomorrow: an end to the Trump Presidency. I haven't looked forward to anything birthday-related in my life since the discontinuation of the Super Nintendo.

But here we are. Unless he finally decides to test out that shiny red button overnight that he's somehow managed not to push over the last four years, we're all going to make it. Except for those of us who didn't perish during COVID.

But today is also another day. It's the day I won more than one bet from people who told me for days, months, and years, "You don't understand. Trump will be removed from office. It's only a matter of time." Let it be known from this day forth: Republicans will never turn on their own.

Oh, I know. He came close. If he did x,y,z, a little earlier or what have you, everything would be different. The past month, even I thought he would be gone because it never occurred to me that I would live during a time of normalized political violence. But here we are, the end of the Trump presidency. His post-presidency is going to be a bitch but unless Mike Pence shows up to the inauguration and says "Oh yeah, we 25th-ed that bitch last week!" they didn't turn on him, it never came close, they never will, not for him, not for anyone.

I do not know if Donald Trump is the worst President we've ever had (actually, I do know: he wasn't) but in the modern era nobody has been a shittier fit for the job. The reverberations of his personal awfulness have sent countless people to therapy and broken up marriages, friendships, and relationships between parents and children. There were two or three days where he almost lost his job. I will never have more job security in my life than Donald J. Trump had over the last four years. Nor will you.
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Okri
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Okri »

As someone who lives in a multi-parliamentary democracy, it's not unheard of for a party with more votes to get fewer seats in Parliament - indeed, in 2019, the Conservatives lost despite winning the most votes in Canada (Liberals won more closer races, Conservatives ran up the votes). That said, it's still somewhat terrifying to realize that if 46,000 votes, or less than 1% of Biden's margin, went to Trump in a few states, Trump would be president again.
Sabin
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Sabin »

OscarGuy wrote
My final thought is this: Obama's success came down to his micro-targeting voters for turnout. Stacey Abrams did the same thing. Biden, not so much. Money can no longer buy an election, micro-targeting can.
This is a very good point. I am generally pretty despairing about the outlook of the near future, but I just hope so much that the Democratic Party cannot ignore the successes of Obama and Abrams. I have to imagine that the farther we go along, it's going to be harder and harder to run campaigns like it's 1992.
Mister Tee wrote
This is germane because, amidst all this disappointment, it’s easy to overlook that Dems have now won the popular vote in 7 of the past 8 presidential elections. (The one GOP win, Bush’s ’04 incumbent victory, was by a margin barely larger than Hillary Clinton’s “loss” in ’16.) Only the FDR-to-LBJ coalition (7 of 9 popular vote wins) had a comparable run. (1860-1912 GOP won 11 of 13 presidencies, but two of those presidents lost the popular vote.)
So... does that mean: A) they are the future, or B) that maybe this run is over? That this historic run was marred by such remarkable incompetence on the part of the leadership that they somehow managed to lose two elections that they actually won, laying the bedrock for a GOP tilting towards authoritarianism? Maybe this bug in our success is actually secretly a feature: profound weakness?
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Big Magilla
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Big Magilla »

Different strokes for different folks.

Socialism is an issue for Cuban-Americans, not other Hispanic groups.

Some Hispanics, as well as members of other ethnic groups, fell for Trump's false machismo and lies in numbers larger than anyone would have thought.

Biden won by more than 7 million popular votes and the same number of electoral votes as Trump did in 2016, which is heartening but there's another truism at play here. There is a widely held belief among independents that that the president and congress should be led by different parties to force compromise even if that hasn't been true for some time.

"You don't change horses in midstream" is a notion that last had a major impact in 2004 which helped push Bush toward a second term.
taki15
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by taki15 »

Hispanics weren't a monolithic block in 2008, 2012, or 2016 too. And yet Obama and Clinton performed extremely well among them. Congressional Democrats also posted very strong numbers in 2018 (Beto did 10 points better than Biden). So allow me to be skeptical that Latinos suddenly this year became aware of their differing ethnic backgrounds and somehow Trump benefited from it (especially when their communities are among the hardest hit by COVID). I sincerely have no idea what happened but this explanation seems too facile to me, as does the socialism one. Republicans attack every Democratic policy as socialism for more than a decade but suddenly this year southern Florida Hispanics believed them? When at the top of the ticket was Joe effing Biden, who by the way defeated a socialist in a high-profile primary?

Frankly the most plausible explanation I saw was that Latinos always gravitate towards the incumbent (hence Bush's overperformance in 2004 too). But even that doesn't explain why congressional Democrats underperformed in Hispanic-majority districts.
Last edited by taki15 on Wed Dec 09, 2020 2:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Big Magilla
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Re: Campaign 2020

Post by Big Magilla »

Nice piece, Tee, as usual.

I think I commented on the Hispanic vote here before, but if not, then let me just reiterate what Oscar Guy said.

There is no such thing as "the Hispanic vote" - first, second, and maybe even third generation Cuban-Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, and emigres from Central and South America all look at things differently from one another. And, yes, those who are third, certainly fourth generation, Americans do not think of themselves as hyphenates. The same is true of first generation Hispanics born or raised here. They think of themselves as Americans.

The pollsters got a lot wrong, chief among what they got wrong was lumping Hispanics together as one pool. Take that away, and you still have/had the problem of closet Trumpers. They've all come out of the closet now, so maybe future polls will be more accurate unless of course they lie to mislead as many did.
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