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US election 2020 thread

JTG said:
Further tidbits:
Cook Political Report just moved KS-03 from 'likely D' to 'safe D'. Sharice Davids won that one in 2018 in what was something of a surprise - KS-03 is the western suburbs of Kansas City and went for Trump by a point in '16. Now she's reckoned to be cruising home in her bid for re-election. If the Dems are walking it in suburban Kansas then it's gonna be similar carnage in the suburbs of NC, TX and wherever else.
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might the Kansas shift also be due to what Yuwipi Woman posted about Kansan fury at the previous Republican Governor's fuckups as well?
 
Streathamite said:
might the Kansas shift also be due to what Yuwipi Woman posted about Kansan fury at the previous Republican Governor's fuckups as well?
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Yeah of course, it's all fuel for the fire. But it does seem that nationally those suburban areas are trending away from the GOP wherever they are, particularly suburban women. It shouldn't affect the Kansas statewide outcome at all, everywhere outside Kansas City and Wichita is deep red (though Obama won IN in '08 so you never know) but it's a useful insight into what may be happening across the US
Two suburban Texas counties to watch: Collin & Denton, the two counties immediately north of Dallas-Fort Worth. Both pretty wealthy, high educational attainment and traditionally strong for the GOP. Trump won them both handily in '16 (15-20 point margins) but they both shifted by 10 points in '18 when Beto O'Rourke was challenging Cruz for the Senate. If that movement carries through to this year then the President has a real problem
 
JTG said:
Yeah of course, it's all fuel for the fire. But it does seem that nationally those suburban areas are trending away from the GOP wherever they are, particularly suburban women. It shouldn't affect the Kansas statewide outcome at all, everywhere outside Kansas City and Wichita is deep red (though Obama won IN in '08 so you never know) but it's a useful insight into what may be happening across the US
Two suburban Texas counties to watch: Collin & Denton, the two counties immediately north of Dallas-Fort Worth. Both pretty wealthy, high educational attainment and traditionally strong for the GOP. Trump won them both handily in '16 (15-20 point margins) but they both shifted by 10 points in '18 when Beto O'Rourke was challenging Cruz for the Senate. If that movement carries through to this year then the President has a real problem
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Oh agreed, there could be some fantastic broader trends for the Dems.
If Texas goes blue - as is appearing more and more likely with each passing day, not least down to the info you've posted on places like Harris County - then my joy will be absolutely unconfined.
 
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Streathamite said:
Oh agreed, therfe could be some fantastic broader trends for the Dems.
If Texas goes blue - as is appearing more and more likely with each passing day, not least down to the info you've posted on places like Harris County - then my joy will be absolutely unconfined.
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I'd still say it's a reach and they'll need some heavily Democratic but also low turnout counties (eg El Paso) to run their numbers up more than usual. But then every Dem that votes early means they can devote more funds and energy to turning other voters out. I also focus on Harris because it's easily the most heavily populated county in the state and turnout % increase there could have the greatest impact on the race
Texas starts counting votes early as well so could actually be more likely to declare on the night than some eastern swing states who only start processing ballots on election day and could take days to count. If you want early indications of a Biden victory then NC, FL, TX & AZ should all declare on the night. Any of those going blue should mean he's home
 
Here's a bit of fun for y'all on this thread.

538 - yeah, yeah, I know, and I agree lean tossup is at least as good - has this interactive map of the States where you can plot each state going Dem or Rep, to see how either candidate can get to 270.

But remember; right click Biden, left click trump. I mesed up several times on that.:oops:

However, one thing became clear: if Biden wins (as we all expect) all that HRC did, plus PA, WI and MI, then he only needs to win Colorado to get to 274. it won't matter what happens in Arizona, North Carolina or Florida (where Biden has a steady, though small lead) or Georgia, Texas, ohio and Iowa
 
Even before he reaches into his trousers, Giuliani does not appear to acquit himself especially impressively during the encounter. Flattered and flirtatious, he drinks scotch, coughs, fails to socially distance and claims Trump’s speedy actions in the spring saved a million Americans from dying of Covid. He also agrees – in theory at least – to eat a bat with his interviewer.
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:D
 
The line between The Onion and reality grows thinner every day...

www.theonion.com

Rudy Giuliani Tests Positive For Slew Of Obscure Bat Diseases Unrelated To Covid-19

NEW YORK—After undergoing tests to rule out the possibility of coronavirus infection, sources close to Rudy Giuliani confirmed Friday that the attorney tested positive for several dozen obscure bat diseases completely unrelated to Covid-19. “As of now, we have confirmed 27 diseases and counting...
www.theonion.com www.theonion.com
 
Something interesting:
Monmouth University have released an Iowa poll showing the Ds ahead in both Presidential and Senate races. Iowa being the state that was won twice by Obama but swung hardest to Trump last time
That's not what's interesting though. The good bit is that they have produced two scenarios - high turnout v low turnout and the Dems are further ahead in the low turnout one. Why is that interesting? Because in the sample they used for the poll, 37% of them had already voted (roughly equivalent to where the state is at in reality) and these people split 71-28 Democratic. So in this case, more Dem voters are classed as 'likely voters' (cos they've already voted!) so are weighted by more in the sample and the only thing that makes it better for Trump (and he still loses) is if GOP voters turn out at the same rate Democrats already are.

Yougov have done a poll showing a roughly 70-30 split in early voters as well

More data to back up the sense that the Biden campaign is establishing a large lead. It's all fag packet calculations but if it really is 70/30 then that would mean Biden has banked half of HRC's vote already
 
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Maybe it's just me but I'm far from convinced Trump is down and out in this election. I do hope I'm wrong but my spider senses are tickling.
 
killer b said:
Stop hedging your bets man, he's done for. His goose is cooked. The only thing left that can see him over the line is industrial level electoral fraud, and while there's some signs he'd be into that, I don't reckon they have the means.
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Completely this. I can see no convincing evidence that he's going to mount a comeback over the next 14 days. He's getting buried
 
I'd bet money that it's too little, too late for the Trump campaign. Although given how 2020 has been, I wouldn't bet a lot of money.
 
JTG said:
Completely this. I can see no convincing evidence that he's going to mount a comeback over the next 14 days. He's getting buried
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I really really hope you're right. You must admit it feels like we've been here before, surely?
 
How 2020 has been is one of the reasons I reckon it's in the bag for Biden tbh. The pandemic has been a disaster for the populist right, and I'm fairly confident the result is going to be a global swing away from them, at least in the short term.
 
Seymour's mailout today on this topic is good: I'd say the swing back to the centre is something that was already in motion, accelerated by current events myself though. I've pasted it for you below 'cause it's paywalled.

A vulgar marxist theory would say that the US election is going to be won by investors. The funding cartels that lost their political monopoly in 2016, are going to re-establish their dominance through Biden.

That is the conclusion that a simple version of Thomas Ferguson's 'investment theory of politics' would probably lead us to. Indeed, as he points out, the more favourable political climate for corporate donors likely had a big impact on the Democratic primaries this year. From that point of view, you could argue that Biden is re-running the 2016 campaign - same funder coalition (FIRE, communications, healthcare, lobbyists), same strategy (wooing suburbanites and elderly swing voters) - and making it work this time round.

However, that analysis looks shaky on close inspection. In 2016, Trump raised far less money than Hillary Clinton (far less than half), and still won. In 2020, he's raised almost as much money as Biden, and the polls have him losing by double digit margins, and the Senate going Democratic. Not only have his industrial donations broadened this time, with more money from healthcare and FIRE sectors - probably a great deal of that from small firms banking on aggressive opposition to lockdown policies - but he's accumulated more grassroots money. In 2016, he raised $86.7m in small donations. In 2020, that has risen to $251.9m. The single biggest donors toward Trump in both 2016 and 2020 have been retirees. This cycle, he has raised $134m from pensioners, compared to $37m in 2016. He hasn't had to self-finance his campaign at all, whereas it made up about a fifth of his funding in 2016. He has faced no competition for business funding from any Republican rival, since there was no serious primary challenge.

If this was about big money, there's no reason why Trump shouldn't be doing better than he did in 2016. If it was about the excitement of the core vote, Trump should be doing better. And yet, even on the most pessimistic outlook for Biden (of the kind given by Twitter sentiment analysis), that simply isn't the case. It hasn't been the case for months. We have to assume that Biden is likely to win, and that the Democrats will control Congress and the executive. This is likely why Trump is reverting to preaching to the hardcore, and why the GOP is emphasising stacking the Supreme Court with reactionaries, skewing census data to favour right-wing small states, and a surge in voter-suppression court activism. Hence the constitutional crisis unfolding in the United States. Why? It's possible that the plague is rebuilding the authority of the political centre in the short-run.

Crises don't necessarily favour immediate political polarisation. The 2008 credit crunch saw voters gravitating toward the centre, reaching for the security blanket of traditional authority. Only in later years, through the state's austerian metabolisation of the crisis, did the collapse in political authority polarise the electorate. Moreover, a crisis like the plague - in which the 'bad guy' appears to be a virus rather than banks - is almost the opposite of the credit crunch, in that it tends to reinvigorate the authority of 'experts' rather than diminish it.

It wasn't impossible for right-wing nationalism to take control of the situation. Yet it is notable that the catastrophilic Right has fumbled its reaction to an actual disaster. Trump, for example, could have imposed a friend/enemy distinction on this virus (the 'China flu' line could have worked), and set himself up as a national protector. It would have required a decisive, early epidemiological intervention and a strong stimulus package that wouldn't run out before November. However, that is contrary to his own instincts, inimical to the radicalised middle-class base, and anathema to the GOP leadership and the donors. Trump's very success in motivating the grassroots, making peace with the Republican establishment and building his donor base made it impossible for him to do what was needed. In the end, aggressive reopening and refusing to renew stimulus was tantamount to throwing the election.

There's another sense in which this crisis rebounds against rightist nationalism, particularly in the United States. Trump-style 'anti-globalism', while it did not offer a coherent alternative to liberal globalisation, did a great deal of political damage to US global dominance. It isn't that he threatened the dominance of Wall Street and the dollar, which continued to be hugely overvalued well into the Covid crisis, and is still used in the overwhelming majority of global transactions. It isn't that he hurt corporate profitability - what was lost with the TPP was a setback for multinational revenues, but the standard Republican tax cut made up for a lot of that. Nor did the jousting with China seriously harm world trade. There was some flattening of trade in recent years, but only in the pandemic did it severely contract. And China, in trying to appease Trump, has offered him some juicy benefits - like, allowing US banks to wholly buy up Chinese financial firms.

However, the political destabilisation has been obvious. The US Treasury, for example, all but created the G20. It usually runs it, writing its communiques before seeking consensus with other states. Trump didn't care. Under his administration, the G20 was left to other member-states to run. The WTO is, likewise, an enemy of Trump's rather than a major accomplishment of American power. Indeed, insofar as multilateralism represents the internationalisation of the American state, and its penetration of allied states, Trump's actions have tended to destabilised, sabotage and impede this dominance (without yet seriously overturning it: see Panitch & Gindin for the usual insight on this). Rarely has that been more obviously damaging than during the plague.

Traditional Washington would have responded to the plague by treating it as a global security risk. It would have coordinated a standardised global pandemic response, with the WHO, and with the expanded Center for Disease Control and specialised White House agencies leading the nation's "biodefence". It would probably have tried to orchestrate a global economic response through the G20 and the WTO, in order to prevent the collapse of supply chains and the long-term loss of global trade after the pandemic. I can be certain of this because this is more or less what Biden is promising.

Trump has done none of this. As a result, he has faced a global crisis as the head of the most powerful state in the world, and in history, representing a people accustomed to global dominance - without being able to propose a solution that furthers that dominance. Not just he, but the Republican establishment, have been manifestly uninterested in the sources of their power. In that context, the imperialist nationalism of the hard-centre - epitomised in Biden's rhetoric about China, Putin, and so on - is probably more persuasive to a large number of voters than Trump's erratic sabre-rattling.

Finally, while the plague has also unleashed some radical energies - it is difficult to see the Black Lives Matter uprising being as massive and culturally resonant as it has been, without the pandemic - the fact that the Left has been defeated on the terrain of big electoral politics for now, means that these movements are likely to be siphoned into votes for the centre. We can see this, a classic instance of what Gramsci called 'trasformismo', with the alliance between Democratic organisations and Black Lives Matter groups. Hence the reconstitution of the political centre.

We should, of course, be careful with big extrapolations from current trends. The plague is still, to a large extent, an unknown force. We don't know how long Covid-19 will be with us. Some estimates say as late as 2024. We don't know how a vaccine would work, given that people seem to get re-infected: meaning immunity is limited. We don't know about the long-term physical effects of the disease. 'Long Covid' is the name we're giving to some of these effects, but that doesn't mean we understand it. For all we know, the virus is going to destroy human fertility and see the downfall of human civilisation. We just don't know. It certainly doesn't seem unlikely that the coming years, with the severe economic crisis afflicting us, will see major, set-piece social struggles.

Moreover, even if the above prognosis is roughly right, and we can expect the centre to score a few victories in the next few years, it certainly doesn't mean that the violent, fanatical Right of recent years is going away. That is the last thing I would expect to happen.
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8ball said:
I really really hope you're right. You must admit it feels like we've been here before, surely?
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Not really, because this is a completely different campaign

Relative outsider v the actual President with a record to defend
Dem candidate with awful personal ratings v Dem candidate with OK ratings
Dreadful district level Dem polls being ignored v dreadful district level GOP polls being ignored
Good 2014 midterms for the GOP v good 2018 midterms for the Dems
HRC never getting close to 50% in polling despite leading v JB regularly being above 50%

Quarter of a million dead Americans
The most unpopular first term President since GHW Bush

He's toast
 
JTG said:
Not really, because this is a completely different campaign

Relative outsider v the actual President with a record to defend
Dem candidate with awful personal ratings v Dem candidate with OK ratings
Dreadful district level Dem polls being ignored v dreadful district level GOP polls being ignored
Good 2014 midterms for the GOP v good 2018 midterms for the Dems
HRC never getting close to 50% in polling despite leading v JB regularly being above 50%

Quarter of a million dead Americans

He's toast
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I get the logic, and I get that I'm probably being paranoid.
I'm still paranoid, though. :hmm:
 
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