Back on May 10th, I wrote the following:
I don’t like to repeat myself, but it’s my belief that the Republicans operate at a disadvantage because their policies are broadly unpopular. They are still able to succeed because they are extremely good at fighting each news cycle with a coherent and unified message that is carefully crafted to create an us vs. them narrative which basically tribalizes our elections and our political discourse. They simply cannot accomplish this task anymore because most of their thought leaders, from Erick Erickson at Red State, to many of their hate radio broadcasters, to the National Review, to most of their communitariat on television, to their foreign policy elite, to the Bushes, Romneys, and McCains, to the Speaker of the House and many congresspeople and senators, all refuse to sing from Trump’s hymnal. Trump also won’t be able to raise enough money to compete, and he won’t mobilize the leaders in the social conservative movement. He’ll also be fighting the president and his bully pulpit, who will have the advantage of not being a candidate.
It’s not enough to say that the Republicans always win Georgia. You have to look at all the things they do that make winning Georgia easy for them. If they can’t do those things, then suddenly Georgia isn’t easy for them.
I come at politics as an organizer with an organizer’s perspective, which means that I don’t put too much stock in what candidates say, but I look very carefully at what they build. The same is true of parties, which is why I identified Obama as an outlier eight years ago, because he was focused as much on building an organization to win as he was on winning rhetorical arguments with his opponents. The reason I early on concluded that Sanders had no chance at the nomination was as much about how late he got started and how little progress he made uniting elected progressives and progressive organizers as it was about his standing with the black vote. And the reason I am bullish on Trump collapsing is only partly about his staggering flaws as a human being. It’s mainly about his inability to get the GOP up and running the way a major party needs to be run in order to wage a competitive national election.
I see no way that he can do it, and it doesn’t really matter if he can peel off some disaffected Rust Belt union Democrats. The Republicans cannot hold their own people in line without a unified and disciplined and tribalized message that is very well funded and never internally contradicted. The right doesn’t move as a Borg without this, and they cannot maintain their historical strength under these conditions.
One term I’ve used for this over the years is “winning the argument.” You may not like him, but in 1984, Ronald Reagan won the argument, which is why Vermont and Massachusetts and Rhode Island all voted for him. When it comes to an election between Clinton and Trump when the GOP isn’t operating as it was built to operate, winning the argument seems a given, and the only question is whether or not Trump’s narcissism and ignorance and boorishness can take a lost argument to a level we haven’t seen before.
It all looks pretty spot-on to me. The social conservatives are divided but they came on board a little more easily than I anticipated. Whether they’re doing the same level of work with the same level of enthusiasm is another matter. Other than that quibble though, things have gone as I predicted and Trump’s “narcissism and ignorance and boorishness” have definitely taken things to a level we’ve never seen before.
If you’ve been following me all these years, you know my argument about how our divided country stays evenly divided because roughly equally strong forces have been holding up each side of the political wall. This is why we’ve had these fairly stable red and blue states for the last several presidential elections in a row. It’s been as unthinkable that a Democrat would win Texas as it has been that a Republican could win Massachusetts.
But things do not stay the same forever. And when one side loses enough strength, they can no longer apply equal force against the wall and it collapses on them. That’s how a Reagan wins Vermont. And that’s how a Republican could lose Arizona or South Carolina.
I’ve seen the signs and potential for this happening in this election for a long time and have argued that it would not end in a close result. For a long time I was more convinced about this than about who would actually win. Then the polls settled in after the conventions and it began to look like I was wrong. Clinton would win, but win a victory no bigger than Obama’s victories. And this is certainly still a possibility, mainly due to Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate.
I’ll just say, though, if the spectacle of Trump making open war on his own party less than a month before the election cannot change the fundamentally gridlocked divide in this country, I don’t have a clue what possibly could.
If this election doesn’t tip strongly in the Democrats’ direction, then this is the best the left will do until the slow grind of demographic change tips the wall over. This is it. This is the grand opportunity.
And if you’re hung up on Clinton’s emails or some other nonsense, I don’t think you’ve got a clue what the possibilities are here or what the cost of missing this chance really would amount to.
Well put, Rana Verde, well put. There are probably almost as many prescient Booman posts floating around out there as there are hot mic Trump misogyny tapes.
But if the Grand Chance comes to fruition, there will be only two years to make something of it, since HRC flatly refuses to use this short window where every word she says is heard to explain why 2018 non-voters need to vote.
TOTAL TURNOUT:
2008 132 million
2010 90 million
2012 130 million
2014 81 million
“…HRC flatly refuses to use this short window where every word she says is heard to explain why 2018 non-voters need to vote.”
I don’t agree with this claim. She and her surrogates are constantly talking about policies which are inspirational and aspirational:
Look elsewhere to determine the reasons for our Movement’s challenges in mid-term election turnout. Look inward, for example. What will we be doing to make sure our coalition turns out to vote in 2018 and 2022 and onward? Don’t lay it all at Clinton’s feet. That’s way too easy.
Down ballot is what matters now.
Even in my little corner of one of our red states, I’ve noticed the energy level among the right wing is gone. Some local elections didn’t quite go their way, and they’ve had to watch Trump implode at the national level. Putting out Democratic yard signs this year (including, of course, HRC) may not win me popularity contests with my neighbors, but it no longer seems entirely out of place either. And oh yeah, I am well aware of the importance of the downballot races and will do my part. About eight years ago, a friend of mine said the day after Obama was elected that it was a new day. We’ll be most likely saying that yet again this November.
Maybe it’s because of some nonsense that I’m hung up on, but I don’t see what possibilities you’re alluding to.
Consider the revision to the child tax credit Clinton discussed yesterday. A nice anti-poverty proposal whose $200 billion over 10 years cost is to come from tax increases on the wealthy. I don’t see what any Sanders or Stein supporter could say against it.
Do you suppose that any degree of rancor between the Ryan and Trump wings of the GOP House majority – the likelihood of whose survival the betting markets reckon at 97% – will prevent them from finding common ground in opposition to such a tax increase?
Beyond such immediate disappointments lie the profound structural dilemmas of unfettered lobbying and rampant militarism – two cancers that her administration gives every promise of making worse.
Martin is talking about the possibilities of Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House. I’m waiting for Trump to explicitly tell his brown-shirts to vote against down-ticket Republicans.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what the next four years could look like. I’m not saying they’ll be utopian, but the idea of a born-again-neo-progressive Democratic President working with a Democratic House and Senate — having Americans see, not just the natural appeal of a Democratic President (as with Bill Clinton and Obama’s consistently high approval numbers) but what happens with no Gingrich, no McConnell, no bullshit — could make for a seismic change.
Remember William Kristol’s famous memo about how the public must not be allowed to see Democratic health care reform programs in action because they’ll like them so much, the Republicans could permanently lose their appeal? I think we could see that kind of thing, on a very large scale indeed.
The next four years will be lost to war. I don’t imagine Clinton will be able to hold back, but I hope I’m wrong.
Please see my follow-up comment directly below.
(I’m sorry; it’s just that you’re both providing essentially the same objection.)
If Democrats manage to put together a blow-out win, taking both the Senate and the House, will they have the balls to put through important reforms like the public option, allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, cap and trade, etc.?
With a liberal Supreme Court, so much becomes possible even if the Dems are wooses. But I’d love to see them push a true liberal agenda forward.
See my comment directly above. We may be surprised to find that this isn’t the insipid, secretly-conservative Democratic party we remember from the 1980s.
This is unpossible.
Everyone Knows that the Democratic Party is not only more conservative today than in any time in living memory, it keeps getting more conservative.
My feeling for a while — during the whole Obama period — is that basically the military-industrial complex and the NSA are so powerful that they basically say to any incoming President, Look, do whatever you want, but this portion (wars, surveillance) simply can’t be touched.
So it’s almost as if that entire portion of American governance has to be “broken off” and considered separately. From that standpoint, it’s especially impressive that Obama was able to achieve the Iran deal (but perhaps that was in the interests of the “permanent” State Department forces).
Note that what I’m describing is different from the Neoliberal Bill Clinton years (although they’re related); in that time there really was a more conservative agenda amongst nominal Democrats.
Now, I’m saying it’s different: Obama came in with a genuinely liberal platform and was basically prevented from doing nearly anything. (He went along with Afghanistan etc. because he had to for reasons I’m citing.)
So I’m saying, post-Obama, post-Sanders, we may see a genuinely liberal social and economic agenda (single payer, etc.) with the “broken off” portion — the Middle East wars etc. — continuing unabated as per usual.
Interesting to think about. What would you do if you had a two year window?
I’d pick rebuilding our infrastructure with a big jobs program.
Trump likes to walk in on underaged girls, too.
I imagine the Epstein revelations will be coming soon enough.
So are those that were so upset about transsexuals changing clothes or visit restrooms going to be as upset at this man in the girls changing room?
Silly libruul.
IOKIYAR.
Forever.
I have been saying for months here she will win by 10.
I would note 3 weeks ago you were saying something different.
After seeing the 538 model start smouthing out in the distribution curve, I’ll go out on a limb and say that come election day, Clinton will pull more than the current mean of the model and closer to the mode of 360 electoral votes. The long tail still is on the Trump side.
That means AZ, GA, IA would go for Clinton.
SC and TX would be swing states in this scenario.
Booman, hyperbole is thy name.
It’s not the Grand Chance, it’s the FIRST chance. I hope your prognostications come true in every sense of the word.
But if they don’t … change is coming in the South. Florida is now as blue as Virginia was in 2008. Too much has gone down on the right for FL to turn back. For the time being (and for the next 15-20 years) FL will be blue nationally and will turn Blue locally soon.
Overall, Texas is now Red. with big blue spots all over the place. And the blue spots are getting bigger .. as in more populous (+.13[calculated]) . Even with gerrymandering, it will be hard to not achieve a significant gain in Blue congresscritters. Furthermore, as FL turns blue, Texas follows. And its not just because of demographics. Herd instincts begin to come in play. Blue collar white men are voting against their interests because of a feeling of losing control. Sooner or later, the feeling of losing control will go away as they actually DO lose control. Once the behavior begins it is self-reinforcing. Tomorrow? No. 10 years? Probably.
PA (+.09) and VA (+.10) have relatively equal projected increases in population. Both of these projections are well below the 4.1% growth rate for the US overall. Indicating a necessity for redistricting in 2020. Both VA and PA are extremely gerrymandered in favor of Rs. Hopefully that will change, which will lead to a net gain in relatively reliable D representation.
So, yeah. This is a chance. the First one.
What this argument ignores is the underlying assumptions that make it true: because non-whites will vote at 80% or better for Democrats.
But, that is not locked in stone. All the GOP would have to do is repudiate racism, and really repudiate it, not pretend that it was all Trump and not their Deplorables who were the problem. George Bush, for all his endless failings as President got 44% of the Latino vote in 2004 and won.
I’m not saying they would do it, but at some point they are going to stop bashing their head into the brick wall. We can’t count on them never learning anything for the next 10 years and repeating the same mistakes over and over, just because they have done so far.
If the nation reverted to Left v. Right elections, instead of non-white v. white, Democrats would have no inherent advantage at all, and every election would turn on the issues. In such circumstances it’s easy to see a Conservative Republican non-racist winning election, like IKE did twice and Nixon nearly did in 1960. This is because there’s not an inherently liberal coalition. There’s a Dem coalition in which non-whites vote Democratic because the GOP is deeply racist.
I would agree except for one small detail: Tribal politics. There never has been a left-right divide for minorities. The divide was in the white world which was orders of magnitude more powerful than POC. It obscured the uniformity of the minority vote.
I’m claiming that the proximate cause for white males (and attendant females) to support Trumpism is a sense of loss of power and purpose. I’ve seen this arguement time and again in analysis ranging from Trotskyist to Breitbart. It’s not the only cause, but it is the prime driver. I’ve never felt it, but I have felt something similar upon retirement. You no longer go to work day to day, you no longer are remuneratively employed and so forth. It’s disturbing, upsetting and causes a form of anxiety. Assuming you have the resources to not sweat the retirement … you lose those feeling in 1-3 years. For Trumpists, getting their asses kicked 2 or 3 times (call it 10 years) will be the process.
The above analysis is arguable. But, as long as there are effective remnants of Trumpers, I believe the voting gap for Blacks, Women and Hispanics will continue to be as pronounced as it has been in the recent past.
Interesting reading on the background to the latest Ohio polls showing HRC at +10.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2016/10/new_ohio_poll_puts_hillary_cli.html
When describing the actions of why voters are voting for their candidates the paper makes the point that people are voting AGAINST: “…people voting for Trump, 63 percent say they are casting a vote against Clinton. And of those voting for Clinton, 47 percent say they want to stop Trump.”
Looks like to me, that over half of the HRCs voters are voting FOR her. It seems that even staticians can’t wrap their heads around the idea that someone actually votes for her.
‘Tis a puzzlement.
That’s truly dangerous, shameful, fucked-up shit.
Many peace officers and organizations have become enemies of the people, and are now essentially and openly declaring themselves enemies of peace.
I think it all boils down to getting the House and one specific piece of legislation – substantially raising the minimum wage. That is the one passable bill that will make a huge difference to a big chunk of the population. In addition, by moving income to the working poor, there will be a big boost to economic growth, comparable to the Obama stimulus, but with no deficit boost for the Villagers to whine about. That’s what could actually change the politics of the country.
If we don’t get the House, or even get it but don’t pass that, most people’s economic situations won’t improve much, and we’ll see another backlash in 2018. By my estimates, it’s around 2024 that demographics really delivers us a durable majority so in 2020 it’s still possible the Republicans could win the trifecta and install enough voter suppression to stay in power indefinitely. With recent developments in the Trump campaign we can see they’d go even farther than that if they needed to – jailing political opponents, violence against voters, and much more.
OK, that and one other bill – a Voting Rights act with some teeth and gerrymandering protections. You may now commence your “Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition” jokes.
Time to total up where Democrats are not organized and where key state Republicans have already abandoned the top of the GOP ticket without making major noise about it.
What I see is that North Carolina is fairly well organized but not at the intensity of the past two Presidential cycles. I don’t see a organizing operation out of a house in this precinct, for example. But there are still around 4 weeks left.
I see that Nikki Haley was among the first not to endorse Trump, that some think that Clinton has upside in Greenville, Spartanburg, and a whole bunch of rural and small town counties in SC. Whether that’s a matter of bringing out minorities and Millennials or a lot of now un-Trumped whites I can’t tell. But turnout could be a big part of the story in SC.
And Texas is polling as R+6.
That means that in the DailyKos Trumpocalypse map, South Carolina goes Clinton and Texas is a toss-up, as is Utah.