Election 2020

[Mickey]

Digster, I take your point. And truly I would love to be proven wrong. But just for the record, in May of 2004 Bush was sitting at a 46% approval rating. He never got above 52% until the week of the election and hovered in the high 40s for much of the summer.

[BurtReynolds]

Personally I think "a return to normalcy" is a pretty shitty message and buzzwords like "decorum" and "dignity" aren't going to motivate anybody in a war.

But then again maybe people's appetite for chaos (real change) isn't nearly as big as they thought, and people just want to go back to sleep and just have some boring middle manager spout platitudes about hope or some shit.

[Strat]

*burts appetite for chaos

[Hatfield]

I think the thing you and others who are bullish on Biden's chances elide is that Trump was an unknown in 2016.

The fact that he was the real change agent in 2016 helped him. It clearly did not drive lots of people to vote against him out of fear, given it was a low turnout election. There really won't be a new, change candidate this time around. Part of Trump's appeal was "what could be..." and now there is no mystique behind it. And he's losing "educated" white folk. I'm not too bullish on Biden's chances, but I do think people are a bit bullish on Trump's.

edit: yea I guess I just said the same basic thing as digster, didn't see his post.

That conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence--the DNC get out the vote message was "stop Trump," so it's safe to assume a chunk of the Democratic electorate voted to do just that. I guess another way of putting this is that I don't see a big motivator for Democratic voters to show up. Trump's danger factor has been massively reduced and Biden is a candidate no one is excited about. What makes the average Dem voter--especially the youth vote that the Dems rely on--get off the couch? Meanwhile the Boomers and all the Q-Anon swine will be out in droves. I expect turnout to be lower, proportionally, than even 2016, and I think that bodes really well for Trump.

I don't know Mickey, the story from 2016 wasn't the droves of Democrats that showed up because they were trying to "stop Trump". I think it was independents and even card carrying union members voting for Trump in unexpected ways. Trump is losing independents and in the three states he won so narrowly (MI, WI and PA), Biden has a much better chance. I don't feel bullish, but I do feel Trump has a hill to climb in those states.

Circling back here, though it's kind of already been covered: I'm not sure I follow you. The fact that independents and union voters delivered the election to Trump doesn't negate the argument that the Democrats who did show up in 2016 did so to vote against Trump more than they did for Hillary, which I would say is borne out in Hillary's consistently underwater favorability rating. This was the primary message of the Hillary campaign--"Love Trumps Hate," i.e. vote for me against this big cretin. If anything, depressed turnout in 2016 is evidence that the voters that were cast were as likely to be negative as they were positive endorsements. So Trump might lose some of the independents in the rust belt areas, but if Biden also loses some of the Democrat voters who voted for HRC as a way to vote against DJT, then it's sort of a moot point, isn't it?

But something else to bring up--the Dem Primary was a real kids-gloves affair and that is not being factored in to the current polling. What drove Hillary's unfavorables? Corruption? Wait until Trump gets his hands on Biden's record. I get being wary of predicting a Trump landslide given how volatile everything is--and sure, a really bad COVID turn might changes things--but I am not optimistic that a Biden campaign is going to rally enough voters to displace the Trumpist bloc that you know is going to come out for him.

Why would Biden not get as many democratic votes as HRC did? I'm assuming he will get more because he is more palatable than HRC.

--remember all that oppositional energy in early 2017? Where'd it go?

Didn't the Republicans lose 41 house seats in 2018? I don't know what would have changed, in favor of Trump, since then. I think the op positional energy will be there.

[Fuzzy_Dunlop]

I think the thing you and others who are bullish on Biden's chances elide is that Trump was an unknown in 2016.

The fact that he was the real change agent in 2016 helped him. It clearly did not drive lots of people to vote against him out of fear, given it was a low turnout election. There really won't be a new, change candidate this time around. Part of Trump's appeal was "what could be..." and now there is no mystique behind it. And he's losing "educated" white folk. I'm not too bullish on Biden's chances, but I do think people are a bit bullish on Trump's.

edit: yea I guess I just said the same basic thing as digster, didn't see his post.

That conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence--the DNC get out the vote message was "stop Trump," so it's safe to assume a chunk of the Democratic electorate voted to do just that. I guess another way of putting this is that I don't see a big motivator for Democratic voters to show up. Trump's danger factor has been massively reduced and Biden is a candidate no one is excited about. What makes the average Dem voter--especially the youth vote that the Dems rely on--get off the couch? Meanwhile the Boomers and all the Q-Anon swine will be out in droves. I expect turnout to be lower, proportionally, than even 2016, and I think that bodes really well for Trump.

I don't know Mickey, the story from 2016 wasn't the droves of Democrats that showed up because they were trying to "stop Trump". I think it was independents and even card carrying union members voting for Trump in unexpected ways. Trump is losing independents and in the three states he won so narrowly (MI, WI and PA), Biden has a much better chance. I don't feel bullish, but I do feel Trump has a hill to climb in those states.

Circling back here, though it's kind of already been covered: I'm not sure I follow you. The fact that independents and union voters delivered the election to Trump doesn't negate the argument that the Democrats who did show up in 2016 did so to vote against Trump more than they did for Hillary, which I would say is borne out in Hillary's consistently underwater favorability rating. This was the primary message of the Hillary campaign--"Love Trumps Hate," i.e. vote for me against this big cretin. If anything, depressed turnout in 2016 is evidence that the voters that were cast were as likely to be negative as they were positive endorsements. So Trump might lose some of the independents in the rust belt areas, but if Biden also loses some of the Democrat voters who voted for HRC as a way to vote against DJT, then it's sort of a moot point, isn't it?

But something else to bring up--the Dem Primary was a real kids-gloves affair and that is not being factored in to the current polling. What drove Hillary's unfavorables? Corruption? Wait until Trump gets his hands on Biden's record. I get being wary of predicting a Trump landslide given how volatile everything is--and sure, a really bad COVID turn might changes things--but I am not optimistic that a Biden campaign is going to rally enough voters to displace the Trumpist bloc that you know is going to come out for him.

Why would Biden not get as many democratic votes as HRC did? I'm assuming he will get more because he is more palatable than HRC.

Sounds like he's saying people who showed up to vote against Trump aren't going to be motivated to do the same this time. Which I guess makes sense if you think Biden and Trump are equally bad.

[96583UP]

i wonder how the social distancing and lack of internet access by low income voters will impact things

can't hold rallies to drum up support

can't target them with internet stuff because they don't do the internet

maybe Bloomy's TV ad money machine will become extra important

[wease]

i wonder how the social distancing and lack of internet access by low income voters will impact things

can't hold rallies to drum up support

can't target them with internet stuff because they don't do the internet

maybe Bloomy's TV ad money machine will become extra important

Only if he buys ad time on FoxNews

[96583UP]

i wonder how the social distancing and lack of internet access by low income voters will impact things

can't hold rallies to drum up support

can't target them with internet stuff because they don't do the internet

maybe Bloomy's TV ad money machine will become extra important

Only if he buys ad time on FoxNews

i dunno, you'd be horrified how many people watch

<gasp>

Network TV

[Let's all laugh at Rangers]

What's the latest on Biden's views on medicare? Considering how the US is the only developed country in the world where you can be made homeless for medical bills (which caused the global recession), I think it's quite an important point. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm not willing to sell Biden, it's just that he needs to give me something to sell.

[Bi_3]

I think the thing you and others who are bullish on Biden's chances elide is that Trump was an unknown in 2016.

The fact that he was the real change agent in 2016 helped him. It clearly did not drive lots of people to vote against him out of fear, given it was a low turnout election. There really won't be a new, change candidate this time around. Part of Trump's appeal was "what could be..." and now there is no mystique behind it. And he's losing "educated" white folk. I'm not too bullish on Biden's chances, but I do think people are a bit bullish on Trump's.

edit: yea I guess I just said the same basic thing as digster, didn't see his post.

That conclusion doesn't follow from the evidence--the DNC get out the vote message was "stop Trump," so it's safe to assume a chunk of the Democratic electorate voted to do just that. I guess another way of putting this is that I don't see a big motivator for Democratic voters to show up. Trump's danger factor has been massively reduced and Biden is a candidate no one is excited about. What makes the average Dem voter--especially the youth vote that the Dems rely on--get off the couch? Meanwhile the Boomers and all the Q-Anon swine will be out in droves. I expect turnout to be lower, proportionally, than even 2016, and I think that bodes really well for Trump.

I don't know Mickey, the story from 2016 wasn't the droves of Democrats that showed up because they were trying to "stop Trump". I think it was independents and even card carrying union members voting for Trump in unexpected ways. Trump is losing independents and in the three states he won so narrowly (MI, WI and PA), Biden has a much better chance. I don't feel bullish, but I do feel Trump has a hill to climb in those states.

Circling back here, though it's kind of already been covered: I'm not sure I follow you. The fact that independents and union voters delivered the election to Trump doesn't negate the argument that the Democrats who did show up in 2016 did so to vote against Trump more than they did for Hillary, which I would say is borne out in Hillary's consistently underwater favorability rating. This was the primary message of the Hillary campaign--"Love Trumps Hate," i.e. vote for me against this big cretin. If anything, depressed turnout in 2016 is evidence that the voters that were cast were as likely to be negative as they were positive endorsements. So Trump might lose some of the independents in the rust belt areas, but if Biden also loses some of the Democrat voters who voted for HRC as a way to vote against DJT, then it's sort of a moot point, isn't it?

But something else to bring up--the Dem Primary was a real kids-gloves affair and that is not being factored in to the current polling. What drove Hillary's unfavorables? Corruption? Wait until Trump gets his hands on Biden's record. I get being wary of predicting a Trump landslide given how volatile everything is--and sure, a really bad COVID turn might changes things--but I am not optimistic that a Biden campaign is going to rally enough voters to displace the Trumpist bloc that you know is going to come out for him.

Why would Biden not get as many democratic votes as HRC did? I'm assuming he will get more because he is more palatable than HRC.

Sounds like he's saying people who showed up to vote against Trump aren't going to be motivated to do the same this time. Which I guess makes sense if you think Biden and Trump are equally bad.

It's sounds like he's poisoning the well for the leftists in the DNC to not show up November.

[Mickey]

"Radical leftists in the DNC"

[Mickey]

Why would Biden not get as many democratic votes as HRC did? I'm assuming he will get more because he is more palatable than HRC.

Sounds like he's saying people who showed up to vote against Trump aren't going to be motivated to do the same this time. Which I guess makes sense if you think Biden and Trump are equally bad.

To be clear, I'm not saying what I personally think (to my mind, Biden is obviously better than Trump insofar as he will personally do less damage to the causes I care about, though I would hear the argument that a Biden win here could lead to an overall worse outcome in 2024). What I am saying is that there's this pervasive assumption that what HRC got in 2016 is the floor for any 2020 candidate, and that absent her unfavorables any Dem candidate will improve on her margins, which probably means beating Trump, especially in key battleground states. I am suspicious of that assumption: I think the country has changed in the last four years such that the Democrats will have a hard time making the case that Trump is an existential threat, and will thus, in the absence of a positive platform (which Biden mostly lacks), have a difficult time rallying their base especially as the general election rhetoric gets underway and Biden's big vulnerabilities--obvious cognitive decline, history of personal corruption, rape allegations--go center-stage. As Rob noted, yes, there was pretty big turnout in the 2020 primaries, but Biden only won 42% of the raw votes and that includes the last wave of primaries where only his campaign was engaged in GOTV efforts. Are we to assume that Biden will also get the votes of the other 58%? I'm not sure that's a safe assumption, given the pretty wide gap between both Biden's platform and the affective/emotional pitch he's making and those of the other primary candidates.

As I've said multiple times in this thread, I would love to be proven wrong. I would love for the final years of Donald Trump's life to be spent in disgrace as a failed one-term president. But I am not optimistic that that will happen and I am especially wary of rhetoric that overstates Trump's vulnerabilities, given how that played out in 2016. If anything, those of us who do not want to see Trump re-elected should be assuming he's going to win and working backwards from there.

[Mickey]

What's the latest on Biden's views on medicare? Considering how the US is the only developed country in the world where you can be made homeless for medical bills (which caused the global recession), I think it's quite an important point. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I'm not willing to sell Biden, it's just that he needs to give me something to sell.

As an addendum on my last post--exactly. How do you make the case for Biden beyond "he's not Trump?"

[Mickey]

--remember all that oppositional energy in early 2017? Where'd it go?

Didn't the Republicans lose 41 house seats in 2018? I don't know what would have changed, in favor of Trump, since then. I think the op positional energy will be there.

Obama lost 63 seats in 2010 and won the 2012 election pretty convincingly. Clinton lost 54 seats in 94. Reagan lost 26 seats in 82 and won 84 by the largest electoral margin since FDR. Again, I am incredibly wary of mapping midterm election results onto a general election with an incumbent president.

[verb_to_trust]

He's not just an incumbent president though. People fucking HATE this guy. He's unique all on his own in presidential history in how much of a brain dead asshole millions of people think he is.

[Mickey]

For starters, Trump's job approval rating is basically as high as its ever been, so that suggests that yes, there are people who feared a Trump presidency who no longer do.

It's natural for a president to see a bounce during a crisis. But George W Bush reached the upper 80s after 9/11, and Trump's bounce has literally disappeared in one month.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/tr ... l-ratings/

is Joe Biden going to marshall enough energy to get people to cast that essentially negative vote for him?

How do you explain the fact that primary turnout is higher than 2016 and Biden is the beneficiary? All the special elections and the midterms showed that people are voting more for Democrats since 2016, and that turnout is high. Why would that stop if the general election candidate is a mainstream, rather generic Democrat? You keep shooting down the evidence for Biden, but what exactly is the evidence that Trump is in a good position here? We know how he makes certain groups feel (some love him, some hate him), we know a lot more about him now. Is there evidence that he can even get as many votes as last time, let alone expand on it?

Okay, last response--that's a fair point. I don't have a wealth of evidence that Trump is in a particularly strong station, though recent battleground polls have him up in PA and tied in Florida. Those alone wouldn't give him the win if Biden takes Ohio-Wisconsin-Missouri-Michigan, but it's not a good sign. I would also add that Biden's current polling margin in Michigan is smaller than the margin Hillary had on the eve of the election, and we know from 2016 that a significant chunk of voters said they wouldn't vote for Trump but did so anyway. But you're right, I am operating on speculation based on what I see as pretty big cracks in Biden's veneer. This, which just came up, would be one of them:

As I said above, I think it's tactically important not to get confident about Biden's chances. He is a uniquely vulnerable candidate and I think we should be operating as if he's going to lose.

[LoathedVermin72]

He's not just an incumbent president though. People fucking HATE this guy. He's unique all on his own in presidential history in how much of a brain dead asshole millions of people think he is.

Democrats, sure

[Bi_3]

He's not just an incumbent president though. People fucking HATE this guy. He's unique all on his own in presidential history in how much of a brain dead asshole millions of people think he is.

Democrats, sure

Then the younger ones need hold their noses and vote for Biden in November.

[Peeps]

As I said above, I think it's tactically important not to get confident about Biden's chances. He is a uniquely vulnerable candidate and I think we should be operating as if he's going to lose.

cant really argue that

[Peeps]

As I said above, I think it's tactically important not to get confident about Biden's chances. He is a uniquely vulnerable candidate and I think we should be operating as if he's going to lose.

cant really argue that