Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

So this was not at all what I was expecting. I mean, Biden's going to pull this out, but it's not exactly the repudiation of Trump and Trumpism I was hoping for.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that it seems Cocaine Mitch will retain control of the Senate, and that the Rs elected more women in the House (though I wish the Q-adjacent conspiracy theorists had lost).

I am going to wager, though, that Ds will not self reflect and realize that the country is really moderate or slightly center-right and will think that the answer is MOAR PROGRESSIVISM. I mean, if Trump had not blown the first debate by being an asshole and then got COVID, he would have pulled this thing out.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...45/713/888.jpg

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I see more of a totally pure rural/urban split. I think Trump did all he could, but he simply does not have enough voters sympathetic to him or his party.

The votes in the cities carried the day for Biden. There are not enough bodies in the suburbs and rural areas to counter the cities. And people in the cities had nothing else to do, as half of them aren’t working because of Covid. Might as well vote.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I see a lot of Democrats doing a lot of self-reflection, and painfully aware that their turnout was matched by huge conservative turnout.

There are always going to be the Sanders types who insist that if Democrats just ran candidates from farther left, they would motivate lots of new voters who would make the difference. It failed for Sanders in the primary, but they will keep saying that. OTOH, other Democrats did not buy it from Sanders in the primary, and I don't see a reason to think that will change. ETA: We just had an election where Joe Biden, for Christsakes, was the Democratic nominee. Does that not demonstrate that Democrats do not leap to the idea that the answer is more progressivism?

If you are a progressive, though, the realization that the country is to your right does not make you any less interested in solving the problems that progressives want to solve, just as the right wing doesn't stop trying to push the country to the right just because they are a minority. Has any conservative ever said, hey, wait, the country isn't as conservative as I am -- maybe the answer is not moar conservatism?

However, unlike their counterparts on the left, progressives usually are more interested in specific issues (BLM, the environment, etc.) than in their identity as progressives. So they will keep looking for ways to address those issues. In the past, progressives were willing to compromise with Republicans to pass bipartisan solutions that were not what they wanted but were better or nothing. In recent years, Republicans who were willing to be their dance partners have gotten beaten by conservatives who are more interested in pwning the libs than in compromise. Susan Collins is one of the few Republicans in that mold left, and it's not clear that she is actually willing to cross her party on anything it cares about. So any issue that becomes politicized is one where bipartisanship is impossible. There is a lot of legislation around issues that are not politicized in this way -- an hour ago I was speaking at a conference about some examples -- but that's only possible when the battle lines are not partisan.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

The urban / rural split is serious stuff. Liz Warren actually had one of the best thought out rural programs (focusing heavily on anti-trust and tying subsidies to wage increases, to deal with rural poverty more effectively) other than her trade stuff.

Trump's ag program is simple - kill the market with tariffs and then fatten the farmers with massive massive subsidies. It is the ultimate welfare model for the well-off, because the subsidies only go to folks who own land, all the wage workers get laid off.

We'll see how this plays out, but watch what dems do on ag, it will be important. I know a couple of the congressionals who will be leading from CA and Upstate NY.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Democrats like you and Warren, whom I love, need to grapple with the fact that many (most?) voters are not voting on the basis of policy proposals. Many people vote to express themselves. There are two ways to capture those voters. One is to come up with a new policy that will actually make a difference to them. That hasn't worked since Obama ran on healthcare. There is a real cynicism among a lot of voters that Democrats can implement a policy that will make a difference to them. The other is to find politicians who can appeal and motivate these voters without specific policies. We just watched Donald Trump run for re-election WITHOUT A PLATFORM and yet he spoke to an awful lot of people.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

This is insane. If margins are as thin now as they were in 2016, with turnout at the levels we saw, I don't see how you can say that he simply doesn't have enough voters. I think it is very easy to say that Trump could have won this without even doing the hypothetical "Trump could have won if he'd just acted unTrumpy." In most of the tossup states, Trump's underperformance relative to congressional Rs exceeds the margin of the Biden victory (as does the Libertarian vote, in many circumstances). It seems there was a very marginal rejection of Trump, and a fair amount of ticket splitting.

What I found most interesting was the wholesale failure by pollsters to capture the electorate, and the unforeseen by any demographic shift by Latino voters and young Black men: that certain traditionally reliable D voters seem to not be on the same page on issues like police defunding and the impact of intersectionality on the D message.

For the first time, I think there's evidence that demography does not mean that a purple or blue Texas is inevitable. I still cannot believe Trump won an 85% Latino border county that Hillary won by 30 points 4 years ago.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I dealt with a few Trump ag people. They seemed to have been all about energy. I thought that was a different department. Am I wrong?

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I think the absence of one policy proposal cost trump dearly: healthcare.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Look at almost every state and you will see that the exburbs through the rural areas are entirely red. Trump had to put together 20 or 30 counties at a time to counter the vote Biden got in one city. And a lot of the older rural voters are dying off.

ETA: But I agree with this being a repudiation of certain more extreme and lurid elements of progressivism. A lot of moderate Ds are quite happy the Rs held the senate. I personally know several Rs who voted down ballot red and then checked the box for Biden. The woke thing hurt the D senate chances pretty badly. I think the riots played a big part in that.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

I think we'll have Trump to kick around for a while, in that even if Biden wins, Trump is not to disappear from public life to write his memoirs, and he may decide he wants to run in 2024. But if he's not the GOP nominee in 2024, can the party capture his magic without him? A lot of his appeal to people is his perceived authenticity, his putative success as a businessman, his status as an outsider to politics, and his willingness to transgress norms. The people most commonly named as frontrunners for 2024 -- Nikki Haley, Tom Cotton, etc. -- are, for better or worse, not Trump.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Meanwhile, the suburbs are changing. Democrats did not do as well this year as they did in 2018, but things have changed a lot. Cobb County, Georgia, where Newt Gingrich came from, voted for Biden this time, 56-42. Four years ago, Clinton beat Trump there, 48-46. Romney beat Obama there, 55-43. In eight years, it's gone from R+12 to D+14.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Fixed that for you. Dude hasn't had a policy on anything for four years, ain't gonna start now. Just rank on people blame liberals and take as much as he can from the cash register.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

The main problem is that Trump won't give a speech like Gore did when he conceded (which I read today and almost got weepy), because it is not in his interest to do so. He cares nothing for the party or institutions, and whatever his plan is for the future (probably Trump TV) its success depends greatly on him making sure people are disaffected and will go with him to wherever that is so he can keep on grifting with his MAGA shot glasses and fake $1000 bills and 800% matches.

The chances that the nominee in 2024 will be an actual member of the Trump family (probably Jr.) are about 1000% that of a Never Trumper, or even mild critic. I was really disappointed to see Nicki Haley today effusively congratulate the new Q-Anon members of Congress. But she has made a cold calculation as to where the future lies.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

So much of Trump's appeal is personal and sui genesis. I just don't think that Don Jr. or Nikki Haley can do it the way he does.

Re: Objectively intelligent.
 

Tom Cotton is smart and pure evil. By now he'd have sent Anakin in to stop the vote-counters. https://media.tenor.com/images/3bd85...9313/tenor.gif