US election 2020 thread

[littlebabyjesus]

So voting patterns do change over time...View attachment 235647

Carter won right across the South. Four years later...




...he just clung on to his home state.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

A sitting president who won a narrow victory first time, only to be wiped out when seeking reelection...

 

[moochedit]

So voting patterns do change over time...View attachment 235647

Carter won right across the South. Four years later...


View attachment 235650

...he just clung on to his home state.

Skip forward another 4 years..

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Sitting presidents have generally had an advantage. Looking back at sitting presidents who lost having previously won an election (so not Ford), there are only Carter and Hoover in the last 100 years. And there were special factors in play with both - the Wall Street Crash for Hoover and the Tehran hostage crisis for Carter. Trump's special factor is surely Covid-19.

ETA; Sorry I forgot Bush the elder. easily done. His special factor was a third candidate taking half his votes.

 

[moochedit]

Sitting presidents have generally had an advantage. Looking back at sitting presidents who lost having previously won an election (so not Ford), there are only Carter and Hoover in the last 100 years. And there were special factors in play with both - the Wall Street Crash for Hoover and the Tehran hostage crisis for Carter. Trump's special factor is surely Covid-19.

And George Bush senior failed relection in 1992

 

[frogwoman]

But Bush had just come in after Reagan surely.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

But Bush had just come in after Reagan surely.

He won the election in 1988. He counts but the Ross Perot factor is what killed him against Clinton in 1992.

 

[moochedit]

But Bush had just come in after Reagan surely.

Yes three terms in a row for his party but only 1 term for bush snr himself.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And George Bush senior in 1992

I edited just too late.

 

[moochedit]

But Bush had just come in after Reagan surely.

Edited my post now. 1992 was meant to refer to year he failed to be re-elected not year he was first elected.

 

[spitfire]

I couldn't find the original source on the MSNBC site but this does look promising doesn't it?

 

[strung out]

Astronauts at the International Space Station have just voted. Their votes probably count in Texas apparently

 

[Dogsauce]

I couldn't find the original source on the MSNBC site but this does look promising doesn't it?




View attachment 235657

Needs the context of how other age groups are voting too. Hope the young do get out, though I bet their social media is being bombarded with ‘they’re all the same, why bother voting?’ messages

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I couldn't find the original source on the MSNBC site but this does look promising doesn't it?




View attachment 235657

The only downer I would put on all the early voting stats is that we don't know how much of this is due to the covid-19 factor. Record numbers of early votes were to be expected this year, I think, regardless of which candidate was doing well.

Not unreasonably, people don't want to be standing in crowds atm.

 

[JTG]

ermm, Raphael warnock is more yer inoffensive black guy....but yes, agreed on every other point you make.
It's still a bonus to me if he wins GA - vut if he does, hw will almost certainly have won AZ, PA, FL, WI and MI. game over.

I was on about Biden mate!

 

[Streathamite]

So voting patterns do change over time...View attachment 235647

Well yes, but surely you've heard of 'The Southern Strategy'? Or what the difference was between the democrats of the South and the North, prior to the 1960s?
And are you honestly not aware of the massive demographic changes - driven by economic development - that have occured on the west coast over the past 40 years or so?
c'mon, this stuff really is old hat!

 

[Streathamite]

I was on about Biden mate!

ahh...sorry, my bad!

 

[JTG]

He won the election in 1988. He counts but the Ross Perot factor is what killed him against Clinton in 1992.

HW Bush was basically Reagan's third term. Yes, Perot killed him but the reason that was possible was approval ratings of -22. Only sitting President more unpopular than the current one

 

[JTG]

Astronauts at the International Space Station have just voted. Their votes probably count in Texas apparently

Indeed, they are registered in Harris County! Where turn out is so great they're even voting from space

 

[Streathamite]

And there were special factors in play with both - the Wall Street Crash for Hoover and the Tehran hostage crisis for Carter.

It wasn't just that for Carter - it was the economy. He never got that quite right, veering between keynesian reflation and 'balanced budgets' deflation. Consequently, by November 1980, the US economy was in a particularly shitty state

 

[Streathamite]

ETA; Sorry I forgot Bush the elder. easily done. His special factor was a third candidate taking half his votes.

As an interesting side note, ditto the only other incumbent who failed to get re-elected in the 20th Century - Taft.

 

[JTG]

Well yes, but surely you've heard of 'The Southern Strategy'? Or what the difference was between the democrats of the South and the North, prior to the 1960s?
And are you honestly not aware of the massive demographic changes - driven by economic development - that have occured on the west coast over the past 40 years or so?
c'mon, this stuff really is old hat!

I was reading the other day about the Ocoee massacre - Wikipedia. Florida 100 years ago - the entire black population of Ocoee was either killed or driven out when Mose Norman attempted to vote - for the Republican candidate. The black vote, where they were allowed to vote back then, was pretty much a block Republican one and it was the Democrats who upheld white supremacy in the South.

As you'll know, this only really started to flip after LBJ signed civil rights into law and then Nixon took advantage by appealing to the southern racist vote. Reagan then rammed it home.

Going back to the stuff about relative GOP/Dem registrations in places like Florida in the last year or so, there's an argument to say this is only catching up with existing voting habits. There were still counties with majority Dem registration that the GOP were winning handily - perhaps shadows of the old Dixiecrats only finally passing into being full on registered Republicans.

 

[Streathamite]

I was reading the other day about the Ocoee massacre - Wikipedia. Florida 100 years ago - the entire black population of Ocoee was either killed or driven out when Mose Norman attempted to vote - for the Republican candidate. The black vote, where they were allowed to vote back then, was pretty much a block Republican one and it was the Democrats who upheld white supremacy in the South.

As you'll know, this only really started to flip after LBJ signed civil rights into law and then Nixon took advantage by appealing to the southern racist vote. Reagan then rammed it home.

Going back to the stuff about relative GOP/Dem registrations in places like Florida in the last year or so, there's an argument to say this is only catching up with existing voting habits. There were still counties with majority Dem registration that the GOP were winning handily - perhaps shadows of the old Dixiecrats only finally passing into being full on registered Republicans.

I think the blacks in the North started turning to the democrats in the first half of ther 20th century when they began their pivot to being the Left party, and the party of organised Labour and the urban working class, but as for the blacks in the South - yes, you're entirely correct. By the 1950s there were basically two, entirely different and distinct, democratic parties.

 

[spring-peeper]

Lawyers for Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner threaten to sue Lincoln Project over Times Square billboards

Attorneys for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner threatened to sue The Lincoln Project, a prominent Republican group opposing the president, for billboards it put up in Times Square in Manhattan.

thehill.com

Lincoln project says the ad will stay up

 

[Streathamite]

Lawyers for Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner threaten to sue Lincoln Project over Times Square billboards

Attorneys for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner threatened to sue The Lincoln Project, a prominent Republican group opposing the president, for billboards it put up in Times Square in Manhattan.

thehill.com

View attachment 235670

View attachment 235671

Lincoln project says the ad will stay up

FIGHT! FIGHT!FIGHT!FIGHT!!!!

It really is enormous good fun when the Right fall out with each other

 

[littlebabyjesus]

HW Bush was basically Reagan's third term. Yes, Perot killed him but the reason that was possible was approval ratings of -22. Only sitting President more unpopular than the current one

There's other stuff as well of course but tbh my point was largely a positive one. The last three sitting incumbents to lose having won the previous election all had identifiable special factors in play. Covid is Trump's special factor - he might have struggled without it; with it, he's sunk.

(And Streathamite, we shouldn't underestimate the damage done to Carter by the hostage crisis. I'm just old enough to remember that ( ). It was all over the news here all through the election; convenient, shall we say, for Reagan how it dragged on.)

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Lawyers for Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner threaten to sue Lincoln Project over Times Square billboards

Attorneys for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner threatened to sue The Lincoln Project, a prominent Republican group opposing the president, for billboards it put up in Times Square in Manhattan.

thehill.com

View attachment 235670

View attachment 235671

Lincoln project says the ad will stay up

Yeah, let them sue. This article contains the context of that Kushner quote, from 20 March.

Kushner, seated at the head of the conference table, in a chair taller than all the others, was quick to strike a confrontational tone. “The federal government is not going to lead this response,” he announced. “It’s up to the states to figure out what they want to do.”

One attendee explained to Kushner that due to the finite supply of PPE, Americans were bidding against each other and driving prices up. To solve that, businesses eager to help were looking to the federal government for leadership and direction.

“Free markets will solve this,” Kushner said dismissively. “That is not the role of government.”

The same attendee explained that although he believed in open markets, he feared that the system was breaking. As evidence, he pointed to a CNN report about New York governor Andrew Cuomo and his desperate call for supplies.

“That’s the CNN bullshit,” Kushner snapped. “They lie.”

According to another attendee, Kushner then began to rail against the governor: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…. His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.”

“That’s when I was like, We’re screwed,” the shocked attendee told Vanity Fair.

Good luck in court, cuntface.

 

[JTG]

I think the blacks in the North started turning to the democrats in the first half of ther 20th century when they began their pivot to being the Left party, and the party of organised Labour and the urban working class, but as for the blacks in the South - yes, you're entirely correct. By the 1950s there were basically two, entirely different and distinct, democratic parties.

Cheers for the corrections!

Reagan's Neshoba County Fair "states' rights" speech - Wikipedia was a play for those Southern Democrats and it worked. After supporting Georgian Carter in 1976, the South has never voted Democrat again bar Clinton's brief interlude

 

[Streathamite]

(And Streathamite, we shouldn't underestimate the damage done to Carter by the hostage crisis. I'm just old enough to remember that ( ). It was all over the news here all through the election; convenient, shall we say, for Reagan how it dragged on.)

I certainly don't underestimate it - I was 14 at the time, and old enough to remember it, and it was an absolute disaster for Carter. It just wasn't the only thing that did for him

 

[William of Walworth]

Pretty poor article about Trump vs Biden by Jonathan Freedman in today's Guardian (Saturday 24th)

Dare we dream of a Joe Biden win? Given all that's at stake, not yet
Against Donald Trump, nothing is guaranteed. No wonder so many of us can barely sleep

It's worth a quick look though, just to see where liberal paranoia can take a fool.
He even admits himself that he's being irrational, almost paranoid.
And he even allows for Biden's strengths in the final paragraph, thus proceeding to directly contradict all the earlier stuff in his article.

Set against all that is, I know, a much greater weight of evidence in Biden’s favour. He’s so far ahead that even if the polls are badly off, he still wins. And he leads in the states that matter most. It’s true that Clinton was ahead in 2016 too, but her lead was much more volatile; Biden’s has been steadier. His campaign has a huge war chest, comfortably able to outspend Trump in TV ads in this last stretch.
Above all, this is not 2016: Trump is now a known quantity, and Biden is not the polarising figure that Clinton was. Most Americans regard Biden as safe, unthreatening and fundamentally decent (which is why Democrats were shrewd to pick him).

Those are all rational reasons to breathe easy and prepare for a Biden win. The trouble is, elections are not a wholly rational business.