The Politics Thread

[DRW50]

In case you see that Charles Koch puff piece going around...

 

 

[victoria foxton]

 

  

[MichaelGL]

This press conference is HORRIBLE 

[Vee]

Trump slips and gives the first indication of another administration coming in as he rambles on about taking credit for the vaccine he had nothing to do with. Lester Holt cuts in and interrupts him.

[Roman]

I will never watch anything he's in ever. he's done and dusted. 

Ana Navarro-Cárdenas

 

@ananavarro

·

5m

 

Is it my TV or is Trump’s hair not looking it’s usual dog-piss yellow today?

 

 

[Taoboi]

I'll say this...through all of the craziness of 2020, I've gotten much joy from the Kpop Fans butthurting these crazy Trumpers. So them turning MillionMAGAMarch Hasttags into pictures of Pancakes (I was just talking about Waffle House yesterday) is GOLD.

 

 

[DramatistDreamer]

[Vee]

 

[JaneAusten]

I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts here.  I normally don't read or post much from Politico but this was shared by someone I actually respect. An interview with David Shor, Democratic Strategist and Pollster

 

“Florida is a very instructive push back against this idea of demographics as destiny.”

 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/11/12/2020-election-analysis-democrats-future-david-shor-interview-436334

[victoria foxton]

 

  

[DRW50]

 

One of the things that irritates me about certain Obama-era strategists, like David Axelrod and David Plouffe (who wrote a much-circulated, very damaging op-ed jeering Biden and his campaign people for the "basement strategy" which went on to help Biden raise a great deal of money and increase his favorable ratings) is that they have a very absolute view which isn't as absolute as they want it to be. For instance, his talk about how shocking it was for Democrats to not have their emerging majority built by demographics is Absolutism 101 - that was in no way shocking because people have been discussing this for over a decade, when the permanent majority that some hoped for after Obama won imploded only two years later. Some Democrats likely had their heads in the sand about the desertions of minority voters (especially Hispanic voters), but it wasn't anything that was new, and treating it as such just gives an overdamatic feeling to the piece. 

 

In this case, I do agree with some of his points (especially about how much power television still has, and about Florida, which, again, we just need to abandon at this point), but his going back over and over to the idea of college elites running the party is a talking point that is regularly used to hurt the party and people who would be helped by it. He is saying the exact same things that the champagne socialists at Chapo have been saying to try to rally leftists into stopping Biden's plans to ease some student debt - that it is elitist and that most voters will resent people who went to college getting some of their debt eased. He also does not mention that many of the rural losses did not have abrupt changes from 2016 - these were places that had started to swing away much earlier (especially during the time he himself was a strategist for Obama). So it goes beyond saying well this is happening because out of touch collegiates are alienating rural people. They are being used as a bogeyman for class warfare that will just further divide a badly divided party.

 

I think there is too much emphasis on sophisticated messaging of the GOP - no one gives a damn about Ted Cruz, who lost a primary that he should have been highly favored to win because he was such a deeply unlikeable person. This was not a year where sophisticated messaging won the day - the GOP doubled down on a conspiracy theory that tells people many Americans are killing and drinking the blood of children they traffic. Their bright new faces are the likes of Tom Cotton, who advocated for soldiers declaring war on peaceful protestors, and Josh Hawley, who said that no judge should be chosen unless they oppose all forms of abortion. Their main figurehead was a hatemonger, so vile this year that even some of his supporters pined for when he was more "joyful" in 2016. But it didn't matter. They still romped downballot, because you don't have to be a sophisticated messaging system - you just have to have media control and you have to hate all the right people.

 

I also agree with him about "defunding the police," which was always a terrible strategy, always terrible optics, right from the start where millions of people would have seen a video of Minneapolis' mayor, essentially, a cute, innocent-looking white guy they would probably wave at across the street, being shouted down and berated by a jeering mob. But what isn't said in the piece is that yes, while Democrats do need more message control, you can't convince far left activists to tailor their views (many of them hate the party anyway) nor can you convince the media to not equivocate them to being the Democratic mainstream, or voters from falling for it. 

 

It doesn't make good material to just say "there isn't much we can do about this," but in many cases this year, and going forward, that's what it boils down to. 

Edited November 13, 2020 by DRW50

[dragonflies]

 

[JaneAusten]

Thanks for the feedback. I am glad some of it was not me.

 

Florida has been a dumping ground for years and yes even when Obama won it twice.  I  believe the issue in Florida is entirely the democratic party in the state and it's been years and still they have not seemed to be truly invested or have an interest in addressing the issues.  And couple that with the Latino community. I have a friend who is from Puerto Rico. She's also evangelical and has broken from part of her family. One thing she has always said is stop treating the Latino community link a monolith. In Florida in particular the GOP for years has had a program in Florida that helps movers from Puerto Rico get settled and acclimated. The democrats nothing. If the democrats don't want to invest the time in Florida to build from the ground up in various areas - and clearly they don't - just forget it. 

 

As for the Latino community as a whole, Julian Castro and others have been screaming about this for years. Nothing new, Something has to give.

 

And it still amazes me how the democrats/liberals have very little radio and TV presence in rural America and other areas where they need more visibility. At this point you would think someone would have bought up some local affiliates and airwaves but no. Will never understand i t.

[Skin]

The House of Representative is something Democrats need to keep an eye on. Right now they need to prioritize the Georgia senate seats otherwise a lot of Joe’s executive agenda is dead on arrival. Especially with McConnel as the leader. But in the House, Republicans are projected to win 214 seats this Congress, while the Democrats are projected to win 221. That’s crazy close and Republicans just won the rights to gerrymander 40% of districts moving forward.
 

On average Democrats have to over win districts by 6-7 points in order to overcome Republican gerrymandered seats in the house. Expect them to make it even harder for Democrats to win seats moving forward. More over the “party in power” tends to lose a massive amount of seats in the midterm years, Obama lost a record 60 from 2008 to 2010.

 

It will be even worse with Trump screwing up the Census work as well, likely misallocating population totals from a lot of blue leaning cities. They will probably try to rewrite districts to make sure Democrats lose seats (i.e. drawing two Democrat districts into one so they lose seats in red states, and then redraw lines to make more Republican leaning districts), and the census has already started pulling down electoral college votes from some swing states (Pennsylvania is likely to lose electoral college votes in 2024).

 

So many uphill battles it seems. Democrats need really strong defense on all these fronts. Joe did his part in delivering the electoral college of 5 flipped states, now the Democrats need to deliver the Senate, and be on their best behavior for 2022, right around the corner. 

Edited November 14, 2020 by Skin

[DramatistDreamer]

 

Georgia is a much more instructive model than Florida, which needs to start from scratch, if the Democrats are ever going to make it work.

Georgia and even Arizona happened because of grassroots efforts in that were seeded years beforehand.

I read an article about all the organizations in Georgia (not just Stacey Abrams) that were successful because of they were homegrown, not the usual method employed by the Democrats, which usually involves parachuting into communities for six weeks and canvassing. In GA and AZ you had community organizers that are well-known and therefore trusted engaging the community. Native American community organizers went to reservations to register people to vote as well as help some people get to the polls or drop boxes (if you think your mail is slow, try life on a reservation, where a mailbox can be miles away from where you live).

The answer is not for Democrats to parachute in, per usual, in Florida but to find community organizers who are committed to breaking through the relentless voter suppression tactics and just support those people.

It will likely take years, as it did in Georgia and there are never guarantees that these states' shifts will be long lasting but from what I have seen there seems to be new groups of newly empowered people who feel engaged politically in a way they had not been before. As cynical as I can sometimes be about politics (and judging from this group, I'm not alone), I can't be cynical about that.