All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

I'm not sure if anyone but Biden could have won this.

(Hot take: Maybe we should be more forgiving of Hillary too.)

Biden got saved by Covid. That is abundantly clear right now. Pretty much everything they banked on didn't pan out. Biden was supposed to be strong in Florida. He decisively lost it. Biden was supposed to be strong in Pennyslvania, it's an extremely tight race that could go either way. He was supposed to be able to build a multicultural coalition with strong black and Hispanic support. He did worse than Hillary in the minority vote and is about to give Trump the best GOP minority turnout since 1960. He didn't win the Senate. He actually lost seats in the House which nobody saw coming. He was supposed to bring in moderate Republicans and he didn't.

Basically Covid created a situation where there was enough dissatisfaction with Trump combined with a massive increase in mail in voting (which made it more accessible) that turnout across the board increased. It increased for Trump as well. Trump currently sits at 68.3 million votes. That outpaces Hillary's final total 4 years ago. Biden actually created an environment where Trump wildly overperfomed and did better than 2016. The increased turnout across the board was just enough to even out the margins in the rust belt that really killed Hillary because the low turnout allowed Trump to sneak in just over her.

That's pretty much what the data is showing. Biden's entire strategy going in actually backfired. Basically increased turnout (that also happened for Trump due to early voting) and some older white people who got scared of the Covid response is what is going to create an extremely narrow victory (I hope).

Trump was not strong candidate to suggest that he was unbeatable or should be doing this well. The data just doesn't bare that out on any level. It didn't in 2016 and it didn't this year. The tightness is because most of the bets the Biden campaign made just didn't work out. If Biden did everything that his campaign said they were aiming for, this would have been the wave election people were expecting. No the Democrats just made two very winnable elections very difficult because they bought into alot of allusions that you could be lazy and coast off Trump's negatives. You probably could have just run a generic Democrat who can give a good speech and mimic this result if they have nothing else going for them.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Unless they changed it this afternoon, the popular vote won't win you a can of chili beans(in a Presidential General Election...)

Would you prefer if the Dems lost the popular vote but won the EC? The popular vote is the major symbol of political legitimacy for the Democrats. The overwhelming symbol which gives them the high ground. It would be foolish to undervalue it or devalue it.

If anything, he set out to antagonize them while vetting Republicans for cabinet slots.

Both Warren and Sanders are senators in states with a GOP governor, should they be offered and accept a cabinet position, the GOP governors will replace Dem and Dem-caucusing senators with GOP senators and so eat into the razor thin Senate margin.

https://www.axios.com/biden-cabinet-...be3b48afe.html

Lo

Well, they loved Reagan and Bush...

I don't know about Reagan. But Dubya Bush by the end of his term was genuinely unpopular with the GOP, so much so that he didn't campaign with McCain or speak at the GOP Convention in 2008. Trump won the 2015 nomination by bashing Dubya Bush and humiliating Dubya's kid brother Jeb at the campaign trail.

Remember that Bush aside from 9/11 and the halo popularity never really enjoyed real popularity. In 2004, he won over Kerry with a very small margin. In 2000, he and Al Gore were both moderate and milquetoast candidates party-wise. Gore didn't enthuse enough people in his base, and ultimately this battle of mediocrity ended in Florida and the partisan Scotus.

I'm not sure if anyone but Biden could have won this.

That's the thing we'll never know. Trump has spent all his time since 2008 shadowboxing Obama, his true arch-nemesis, and for him losing to Biden, aka Obama's actual second-in-command is as good as Trump losing to Barack the Great himself.

(Hot take: Maybe we should be more forgiving of Hillary too.)

With Hillary, the Comey thing was the thumb on the scales against her...but at the same time she didn't campaign enough in the rust belt in the terminal stages. She did not do enough to counter the perception of her as being entitled and feeling that the Presidency was owed her. And it's irrelevant how she really felt...she should have countered that...all politicians are professional narcissists, Obama and Lincoln are no exceptions but they manage to overcome that in perceptions, but she didn't do that. She didn't do enough with the black vote in 2016, she didn't visit once the largest African-American employee union in michigan the UAW.

At the end of the day...election does come down to luck. And it's impossible to argue that an election as close as 2016 was decided by one thing here and there. It was a lot of things or it was probably nothing. Someone else could have run the exact same campaign against Trump and still won. HRC did better with the Latino vote in 2016 than Biden has in 2020, even Cuban Americans, and yet Biden is on track to victory and not her. Does that mean Biden's a genius? Or that he's a dude? Or that he's lucky?

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

A lot of black voters are socially conservative. Unfortunately, the media tends to forget just how religious a lot of black people are and how a lot of black people vote Republican.

As a black person man (from a fairly multiracial background), I grew up socially conservative being quite religious and all that.It was until a little later that I started to understand the issues better. This isn’t an unusual position in the community and the media should really understand try to understand this. Yes, most black people vote Democrat but a huge number of black people arent “liberal”.

Trump getting a large number of black votes isn’t “totally” unusual. What needs questioning is why black Democrat support dropped.

This is pretty much it. It's a very conservative demographic overall (obviously you are speaking in generalities when discussing these) and in my experience it's mostly historical issues with the Republican Party that makes the black vote swing Democratic. If Republicans ever actually tried to cater to African Americans and made a real outreach by shifting around some policies, it would be pretty winnable for them after some time had past.

[numberthirty]

Would you prefer if the Dems lost the popular vote but won the EC? The popular vote is the major symbol of political legitimacy for the Democrats. The overwhelming symbol which gives them the high ground. It would be foolish to undervalue it or devalue it.

I give it the value that it actually has. Namely...

"Still Will Not Win You A Presidential General Election As Of November 2020..."

...

Both Warren and Sanders are senators in states with a GOP governor, should they be offered and accept a cabinet position, the GOP governors will replace Dem and Dem-caucusing senators with GOP senators and so eat into the razor thin Senate margin.

https://www.axios.com/biden-cabinet-...be3b48afe.html

Politely, this has nothing to do with anything that happened in actual reality.

He antagonized their base pretty intentionally(in the exact same way on more than one occasion...) and went on to vet Republicans for cabinet positions.

There is no scenario where you pull that nonsense and do well with their collective base.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

This is pretty much it. It's a very conservative demographic overall (obviously you are speaking in generalities when discussing these) and in my experience it's mostly historical issues with the Republican Party that makes the black vote swing Democratic. If Republicans ever actually tried to cater to African Americans and made a real outreach by shifting around some policies, it would be pretty winnable for them after some time had past.

This sounds pretty condescending I gotta say.

Biden got saved by Covid. That is abundantly clear right now.

Thor is it though meme.jpg

Pretty much everything they banked on didn't pan out.

Arizona panned out. The Blue Shift panned out, and Georgia is neck-and-neck.

He did worse than Hillary in the minority vote and is about to give Trump the best GOP minority turnout since 1960.

I've seen this repeated here and I ask again, where's the citation for this? Literally nowhere else am I seeing this.

He actually lost seats in the House which nobody saw coming.

The seats lost in the house were Blue Wave 2018 Dems who won in conservative areas, so the Republicans broke back. It's a setback but unsurprising in outcome.

He was supposed to bring in moderate Republicans and he didn't.

Again...I have a shiny Arizona I'd like to sell to you.

Biden actually created an environment where Trump wildly overperfomed and did better than 2016.

So Biden is responsible for Covid and for mail-in ballots which you claim in this paragraph allowed him to "do better".

You know when I talk about scapegoating it works both ways. If the left lost and Sanders lost he and his cause would have been scapegoated and banished for good...but Biden gets a victory in, one which falls short of the spectacular reckoning everyone wanted, and now we see people scapegoating minority voters. There's no real difference just to be clear. You are exactly the same as neoliberal third-wayers in this kind of attitude.

Let the votes come in and then let's have the knives out.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Again, Trump did better with the black community this time:

https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/215379...ers-exit-polls

When you do not challenge someone like Trump on economic populism, you cede half the battle to him.

This is moving the goal posts, Bernie lost the Black vote to Biden. Not a single word is addressing what I said, implying that of we had a candidate that did the above he'd have gotten superior results. For someone who couldn't be bothered going to an anniversary for Bloody Sunday. Bernie tried economical populism for the left, he failed in the presidential primaries. A leftist candidate being the right choice because they're leftist isn't a compelling argument. The elections bare this out.

[numberthirty]

...

Again...I have a shiny Arizona I'd like to sell to you.

No one is buying.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I give it the value that it actually has.

Yoda That is why you fail.jpg

There is no scenario where you pull that nonsense and do well with their collective base.

Vermont's gone for Biden as has MA. As has Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and of course CA and NYS. I think the Sanders-Warren turned up well for him.

Unless of course you think Cuban-Americans are Bernie's base or Warren's for that matter?

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Since everyone already knows that it is most likely going to be the base that backed Sanders that actually put that win together?

Maricopa County has gone blue for a while and that's the votes counting down right now late but Biden had a lead in AZ that stayed up and never dropped and that happened across the board there.

[numberthirty]

Yoda That is why you fail.jpg



Vermont's gone for Biden as has MA. As has Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and of course CA and NYS. I think the Sanders-Warren turned up well for him.

Unless of course you think Cuban-Americans are Bernie's base or Warren's for that matter?

The dude just barely scraped the exact same wins together that HRC did in 2016.

While it's your call as far as what you want to think?

It's not really like the only base that Warren/Sanders have is in the states that you listed. That is just goofy to even get withing a mile of.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

The dude just barely scraped the exact same wins together that HRC did in 2016.

How is winning back states HRC lost, holding on to the states she did win, and flipping a red state (AZ) "barely scraped the exact same wins together"? That's outperforming HRC, my dude.

[numberthirty]

How is winning back states HRC lost, holding on to the states she did win, and flipping a red state (AZ) "barely scraped the exact same wins together"? That's outperforming HRC, my dude.

If you've got two or three percent that points to that he actually pulled in some of the "Actual Left..." vote that HRC didn't have in those states?

There's something to discuss about that it could be that he did halfway decent with the Warren/Sanders base in those states.

When you look at what those actual wins look like?

He happened to win coin flips that HRC lost.

[JCAll]

Again, Trump did better with the black community this time:

https://www.vox.com/2020/11/4/215379...ers-exit-polls

When you do not challenge someone like Trump on economic populism, you cede half the battle to him.

I can't find it now, but what I was seeing reported last night was that Trump did basically nothing with young people among Black voters. Meaning his bump would have come from people who are generally more conservative or perhaps financially well off. I think the bump is mostly down to Taxes and the Supreme Court. RGB's seat might be the biggest get Conservatives have gotten in decades.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

This sounds pretty condescending I gotta say.



Thor is it though meme.jpg



Arizona panned out. The Blue Shift panned out, and Georgia is neck-and-neck.



I've seen this repeated here and I ask again, where's the citation for this? Literally nowhere else am I seeing this.



The seats lost in the house were Blue Wave 2018 Dems who won in conservative areas, so the Republicans broke back. It's a setback but unsurprising in outcome.



Again...I have a shiny Arizona I'd like to sell to you.



So Biden is responsible for Covid and for mail-in ballots which you claim in this paragraph allowed him to "do better".

You know when I talk about scapegoating it works both ways. If the left lost and Sanders lost he and his cause would have been scapegoated and banished for good...but Biden gets a victory in, one which falls short of the spectacular reckoning everyone wanted, and now we see people scapegoating minority voters. There's no real difference just to be clear. You are exactly the same as neoliberal third-wayers in this kind of attitude.

Let the votes come in and then let's have the knives out.

1. It's not condescending, it's just pointing out that literally no data shows that Trump was some monster unbeatable candidate or that Biden was particularly strong. It's ABC logic. It's easy to take outcomes in a vacuum and make a ranking. However it relies on a huge assumption that the baseline of strength you made up is actually accurate with no data behind. It like taking a 2 seperate races that the same person qualified for and saying oh Sam beat Bob that must mean Sam is incredible, oh Mike barely beat Sam, he must be the only person on the planet who could beat Sam. I mean your assumption that Sam is very fast because he won race and then just barely lost another lacks context. They could all just be really slow or they could all be the Flash. The actual outcome in a vacuum means nothing. There is really no data that suggests that any of these candides were strong whatsoever. If anything if you go by performance and typical population increases, Hillary was just a weak candidate who performed below 8 years of population growth from what she should have and Trump just barely won off a technicality because he got about 100k votes in the right 3 states to get an electoral win. So no it's just one hypothesis lacked data and one didn't.

2. Yeah it's kinda clear. Turnout increased. Not just for Biden, also Trump. That was tied to Covid. Biden won (hopefully) basically because of that and older white people in the rust belt slightly shifting for him.

3. It didn't though. Biden went down in African Americans and Hispanics in both men and women. This is a fact. Biden lost pretty much the entire South. Georgia is the only state there he actually can possibly win and it's reporting at 95% and has a 23k Trump lead. That last 5% has to break big for Biden to even have a shot. And again, that's the only southern state Biden can possibly win. Otherwise he got wiped out. Florida was supposed to be a Biden win going back to the summer of 2019. He lost a huge lead there. In fact he basically won by triple the margin 376k vs 112k in 2016. SC was supposed to be on the line. He got crushed. Even going to the midwest, Ohio was winnable and he lost by half a million. PA was never supposed to be as tight as it was. Arizona is the one big state that broke for Biden. That's the one bright spot he has so far. Hopefully we can add Georgia to it, but that's going to be tight. Any path he has absolutely required the midwest states Hillary lost and those were always by slight margins anyways that she lost by. So basically you

4. Well this is pretty indicative of the problem. Some of us are actually analyzing the vote as it comes in and comparing the data and then there's people just saying things based off how states are called. It would be very easy for you to find some readily accessible data. Here's just one demographic. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/...-show-n1246447

If you also followed trends going in, it's pretty indicative of what is going on across the board. When you aggregate his increase in Hispanics and African Americans, you get something around a 25% share of the minority vote as of this morning. 21 is the highest prior until you get to 1960.

You could just do the research.

5. Not it was actually not predictable whatsoever that Dems would lose ground in the house. It wasn't even much of thought. And that actually is going to be the most damaging longterm effect of this election as it effects gerrymandering and district drawing. Republicans won pretty much every toss up house race and Democrats are likely to go in with one of the slimest house majorities in two years. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/demo...ry?id=73981078

6. Okay, I got Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, Texas and currently PA being much tighter than it was projected to be at anypoint since this thing started. Those all tightened in the lst couple weeks. If you want to make that trade off to provepoints.

7. No... follow along. Biden by underperforming with minorities and losing or having tight races in states he was supposed to be strong in and not bringing in moderate Republicans made it easy for Trump do better.

Again you can just look at the data. It's not really rocket science what happened. I guess it's easier to just say things, but that's just not how it's being layed out.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

If you've got two or three percent that points to that he actually pulled in some of the "Actual Left..." vote that HRC didn't have in those states?

There's something to discuss about that it could be that he did halfway decent with the Warren/Sanders base in those states.

When you look at what those actual wins look like?

He happened to win coin flips that HRC lost.

Exactly. Aside from Arizona he basically just won back that states that Hillary lost by super slim margins. The one he was supposed to be strongest in is currently the one they can't call right now because it's close. Also, those were such tight margins than an increase in turnout and slight deviations like "a small trend of white people in the midwest getting scared over the Covid response" is enough to flip the trajectory.

He actually lost some traditionally swing states like Florida and Ohio by larger margins than Hillary Clinton. He performed worse in the minority vote than Hillary Clinton.

I don't know why he's trying to act like this is some dominating performance than only Biden could have pulled off.