The 2020 Presidential General Election thread

I've loving the way that the disparity between votes for Trump and down ticket Republicans is being seen as evidence of fraud. Like the Democrats were there filling in millions of fake ballots before someone thought to ask why they were only making fake votes for president.

Trump (and by extension his supporters) thinks everything is about him, and him alone. Of course Democratic operatives would only sabotage his election.

Which is why, IMO, state and local elections are more important or at least should be.

Kindly 'splain that to @Tererun and the other "libertarian"/third party/"I ain't votin' for nobody 'cause they all suck" voters.

Mmk, but you cited national elections as reflective of the will of the people. That's dubious.

So, today, the Trump campaign texts started at 10 AM. Then, I got one every two hours until about 8 PM. I wonder if they’re starting to give up.

It's pretty dishonest to not account for socialism's primary faces, AOC and the rest of the Squad, all won their races despite millions being thrown at them to defeat them, that people who supported things like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All did pretty darn well, to cherry-pick establishment Dems who agree with the author's viewpoint as proof, and to equate the notion that "Biden won't be able to accomplish much" with socialism taking a hit.

It was an even bigger loss for libertarianism.

LOL

The notion of whether progressives/socialists who ran for office were either more or less successful than a moderate standardbearer doesn't strike me as a very good measurement of whether progressive/socialist ideas are currently more popular than moderate ones among voters, let alone among people eligible to vote.

At the heart of the progressive/socialist critique is the notion that there are numerous voters who do not participate because they either don't believe change is possible, because the mainstream Democrats and Republicans don't speak to their issues or do outreach to them, because the system is rigged in favor of big money. I think there is objective evidence that the percentage of registered voters is about half the amount eligible to register, and we further know that even among registered voters, typically a fraction of those actually vote.

It's really impossible to know the truth of that in a vacuum. Bernie was not objectively able to show that his ideas could translate into a surge of new voters. Perhaps AOC or someone else can.

Seems a strange metric to me. Many moderate D candidates lost while the Squad won. Yes, the Squad ran in comparatively safe D districts. That means that those districts ran and elected social democrats, when they could have run moderates instead.

Even most Republicans, although they are socially conservative and nativist, want this country taken to the left on economics. This is what Trump promised in 2016, and yet governed mostly like any other Republican, starting with big tax breaks for the rich and corporations. This is one of the many reasons he lost re-election.

We never got big infrastructure projects. We never got better healthcare. We never got a second pandemic stimulus. All because Trump rolled over for the establishment GOP.

In more news from third world shithole Republicanistan, Mitch McConnell and other leading Reactionaries refuse to accept the will of the people. Will this election come down to the party affiliation of military leaders?

No, really. I'm serious. Why aren't you guys out by the millions ousting those figures? THEY ARE STEALING THE COUNTRY!

Remember when a bunch of rightforge members defended things like South American coups because the leaders were doing things like having referendums to ask voters for permission to extend their terms?

Let's look at some of the Dems that lost reelection:

Collin Peterson (MN-7): Blue Dog Democrat (Wikipedia) who voted with Trump more than against (538). Definitely a conservative. Led Biden by ~7 points in his district.
Abby Finkenaur (IA-1): Moderate (Govtrack) who opposed Trump even more than AOC (538): they agreed 7.1% of the time vs 14.3% of the time. Led Biden by ~4 points in her district.
Xochitl Small (NM-2): Moderate liberal (90% from Progressive Punch, more moderate rating from Govtrack ), 8.3% legislative agreement with Trump. Lagged Biden by what appears to be quite a bit, but it's kinda hard to tell where her district ends relative to the counties.
Kendra Horn (OK-5): Moderate, lagged Biden in her district by ~1% in OKC, possibly beat him in the rest of her district.
Joe Cunningham (SC-1): Conservative-moderate, lagged Biden quite a bit in Charlston County, led him in the surrounding counties (I don't have a good sense of how much due to county shapes)
Donna Shalala (FL-27): middle-of-the-pack Dem (#113/236 most liberal, Govtrack). Lagged Biden 7 points county-wide, but the district is very small, so this might not mean much.
Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (FL-26): about the same as Shalala, slightly more liberal (tied with Ben Luján, who just got elected Senator from New Mexico, lagging Biden 3 points in that state). Lagged Biden by a fair bit in Miami-Dade, maybe beat him in Monroe County. Biden REALLY failed to dispel Trump's lies with Cuban-Americans.

If anything, this supports a hypothesis that this was a rather anti-Trump, but otherwise conservative year. :/

I wish I had saved the tweet thread but I read something that made some decent sense.

Basically that Biden winning along with many Republicans isn’t a wacky coincidence.

By at least playing a centrist (his platform is more progressive than Bernie’s 2016 platform), by embracing moderate Republicans (remember them at the convention?) and having anti-Trump Republicans campaigning for him (Lincoln Project, etc) he convinced a lot of the more sane Republicans to vote for him. But many of these voters wouldn’t have voted for Trump anyway and would have just stayed home (like in 2018). Instead they were convinced that you could be a good Republican and vote for Biden, as Trump was a big enough threat. So they voted for Biden and then Republicans.

That also sums up French politics perfectly! It's exactly what the "yellow vest" movement was all about.

In fairness, taken as stated, that is a perfectly rational political position. You go into a negotiation wanting as much service as you can get for as little money as possible. Very few people reject taxes altogether; mostly they want their taxes to go to their preferred services rather than other people's preferences, and they prefer taxes to be distributed such that they pay less rather than more. None of that is paradoxical or dumb, and frankly, I believe that both your political positions can be phrased exactly along these lines.

That's not true. They are willing to give their money so the government can give multi-billion dollar corporations even more money calling it "corporate subsidies".

What the American people don't want is based on a bullshit definition of socialism that is being passed around to avoid allowing people to vote for all the things they actually want.

Everybody wants the same things, but the difference is that some people are willing to pay for them through taxes. Conservatives are always bellyaching about "liberals" wanting "free stuff", but they're the ones who aren't willing to pay for anything.

The media is back in pearl clutching mode. Trump won’t allow the GSA to sign off on the transition to the Biden Administration. So start calling it out for what it is: petty, sour grapes, unpatriotic, and a knife in the back of our country. This whole “Republicans gonna Republican” attitude is continuing to damage our republic.

Meh. Enjoy the show. Trump and his toadies are just milking it.

Mexico will pay for it!

Today’s episode of the Lawfare podcast deals with this.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/lawfare-podcast-firings-transitions-and-staffing-oh-my

A couple of points.

The money isn’t a big deal. The Biden campaign has the cash on hand to self finance the transition. Bush had to self finance until Gore conceded and it was ruled that when this happens the campaign will be reimbursed.

If it drags on it could impact the makeup of Biden’s early political appointees. If there isn’t enough on boarding time then Biden will feel pressured to appoint folks who have prior experience in these agencies and don’t need as long to be brought up to speed. With a few notable executions these folks tend to be old white guys.

It does limit the number of people who receive classified briefings. Transition staff have been and will continue to receive classified briefings but potential cabinet appointees and other high ranking officials won’t. If it drags on this could be an issue.

Interestingly, Florida voted for Trump but also voted to increase the minimum wage.

Seems strange to me.

Not when you consider they're either retired or in services.

And Biden's win in GA continues to widen. @oldfella1962, you better check your firewall settings...