That is remarkably one sided (the deal I mean, not your comment) - what else is going on there ?

As an Australian I can guarantee you that is NOT the case, at least for Aus. China is clamping down on all our non-essential exports in an effort to economically cripple us for our govt calling the CCP out on a whole bunch of shit (HK, Taiwan, Xinjiang, various cyber attacks, CCP infiltration of local business, etc). Every one of our bigger exports has been "unofficially" cancelled in the last few months. They haven't touched our iron ore exports yet because they depend almost solely on Australia for that, but there is no love lost between our two countries at the moment. Plus we just signed a military pact with Japan that China sees as a threat. And public sentiment is pretty anti-China in Australia at the moment - the general public mostly overlooks domestic issues in other countries, even if there's a little hand-wringing going on as they turn the blind eye, but Chinese officials have been so aggressive in their language towards us, and it's been reported so much in the media here, that no one bar a few big business lobbyists and migrants from mainland China wants anything more to do with them. It's an interesting time - we're about to be cut loose of our biggest trading partner of the last 30 years or so, but general consensus seems to be that the economic hit will be for the greater good.

I highly doubt China are worried about our li'l army going up against theirs. Maybe they're scared of our skill at shooting afghan farmers after they've surrendered, I dunno. Sounds like you're reading a bit too much murdoch press, to be blunt.

I don't know about Australia but China absolutely sees Japan as a major regional threat and if Japan and Australia agree to pursue closer military cooperation you better believe China's gonna take notice.

I have no idea how you got that from my post - I pretty much read exclusively fairfax/ABC news, and everything I wrote there comes more or less from those sources.

Since this came up earlier in the thread...

Dianne Feinstein will be stepping down as the ranking Dem on Senate Judiciary. Good news in that she clearly wasn't the right person to meet the Republicans blow for blow on that committee, but signs point to her being replaced by Dick Durbin, who isn't exactly known for being a pugilist when the situation calls for it either.

Feinstein should be brought up on racketeering charges for how badly she fucked San Francisco for her own personal gain back in the 80s.

I was in this thread a minute ago reading posts from around Super Tuesday, and goddammit not a single person here, myself included, had any faith that Trump was gonna lose the election, and who could blame us? Every single factor from the beginning of the election cycle in 2019 up until maybe a couple months ago, even with the Covid situation deteriorating at the rate that it was deteriorating at by summer's end, pointed towards either an outright Trump victory, or a situation where Biden barely wins by the skin of his teeth and then Trump manages to convince the Supreme Court to overturn the results in his favor. Instead, Trump lost pretty decisively across multiple swing states, even with his much higher popular vote count compared to 2016, and every single legal challenge he has tried to mount throughout the country has been almost immediately rejected and ridiculed by the judges he himself appointed. He'll be gone come January 20, and that's going to happen. Obviously a Biden presidency is gonna be rather not ideal (and in many cases regressive thanks to Biden's whole "I want to have unity" bullshit), but I think it really is a testament to how much Trump shot himself in the foot in the last couple months before election day. I think that if he hadn't gotten Covid and tried to rule while his brain was melting from all the drugs they gave him, he wouldn't have lost, or at least not lost by 6 million popular votes and 84 electoral votes. If the latter, it would have been much closer and probably only in one state, and that would have been all Trump needed to pull a Bush v. Gore.

Anyone have any theories for why Biden did so much better than Hillary? He seemed about as uninspiring as a politician can possibly be. There were many deleterious facets of Trump's administration, but I think you have to admit that it was far more benign than what many people predicted and feared it would be when they pontificated about it in 2016. Hysteria often backfires. And given that, it surprised me that Biden's turnout was so much higher, I thought the election would be much tighter.

Trump is a uniquely mobilizing, polarizing figure. No one besides #nevertrump conservative op-ed writers and Biden's personal family members were actually voting for Biden. Those 80 million people were voting against Trump. Trump was his own best friend and worst enemy.

A lot of it comes down to political identity. Biden's had decades of being Amtrak Joe, the salt-of-the-earth, plain-talking street pol who gets along with people and whose experiences with loss imbue him with a fundamental empathy. That identity's baked in, so Trump's efforts to redefine him as socialist/out of touch/whatever fell flat; suburban voters just fundamentally viewed Biden as moderate and a lot of working class whites (whom Trump still won overall, but by a narrower margin) still saw him as the guy who took the train to work every day and won the dubious honor of 'poorest US Senator' year after year. Clinton didn't have that benefit, and the Republicans knew she was going to run again so they spent years building on an image of her that already existed from her First Lady days, as inauthentic, focus group-tested, 'coastal elite', etc. Combine that with Comey's October surprise and Trump's ability to mobilize people in his base...


This doesn't get any truer the more progressives repeat it. Plenty of people were enthusiastic about voting for Biden on his own merits, and plenty of people who did vote for Biden wouldn't have voted for a different Democratic nominee, which certainly undercuts the notion that voters were thinking solely about getting Trump out of office.

I have yet to see a single poll out of several that showed that people were more excited to vote for Biden than to vote against Trump. Helmut Norpoth's primary model showed what would've happened had the Coronavirus not hit: a Trump landslide. Biden got annihilated in the first two primary states, and that portends disastrously to his performance in the general, unless something catastrophic happened. Which is, of course, what happened.

Sorry, you don't get massacred in the primaries of white states and then GAIN with white people (while losing ground with minorities) in the general unless a spanner labeled "deadly virus" gets caught in the gears.

I'm in the "Everyone voted against Trump rather than for Biden" school here. The Democrats across the board lost support in just about every conceivable demographic in the general election except for well-to-do white men. That does not indicate some rabid, fervent desire amongst everyone that voted for Biden for Biden. The truth of the matter is that the Democratic Party is absolutely bleeding support from both longtime supporters and new, younger, more left wing people because the party's establishment refuses to actually do anything to make things better. Rather, as us on the actual left have been saying for...well, ever, the DNC cares only about maintaining its own grip over the party itself, and care little towards much else, least of all the people. Why else do you think they stifle any attempts to move the party left by new candidates? The DNC is only good at punching left, and any token attempts at being an opposition party are performative nonsense designed to pat themselves on the back.

We'll never know what would've happened had the coronavirus not hit, because it did. Pointing to predictive models just isn't a realistic way of gauging how well a candidate would have done under some hypothetical circumstance. As for Biden losing in the first two states, the Iowa caucus is literally the single most unrepresentative, un-extrapolatable (is that not a word? It should be a word.) example you could possibly point to, as a tiny, rural, overwhelmingly white state that voted through a caucus format. It also ignores the fact that Biden was on the upswing with white voters before the COVID crisis began in earnest, as well as the fact that... I mean, of course a candidate can improve on their performance with a particular demographic when they go from a party primary where they're competing with six or seven other candidates and a general where they're competing with just one. That's not inconceivable without a crisis.

When you stick your nose out of the beltway, the smell test absolutely indicated that Biden didn't stand a chance until June/July or so. Talk to actual people on the ground and you'd see that most of them were either fine with how things were since the bad shit wasn't affecting them, they agreed with Trump anyway, or they weren't necessarily a fan but would take him over somebody they saw as a milquetoast do-nothing like Biden. If Aurora wasn't in my county it absolutely would go red every year. Covid and Trump's response to it absolutely saved Biden's ass because without it, there wouldn't have been such a massive push for mail-in voting, which heavily favored the democratic candidate and a lot of people didn't even know you could do anyway (which likely led to the much higher turnout than usual apart from simply wanting Trump gone so badly), and it wouldn't have pushed those people from the third category a few sentences ago over the edge to want somebody who at least vaguely gestured towards giving a shit about public safety.



And that's why he threatened to fistfight union workers who were upset that he wasn't doing anything for them, natch.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Biden won because the alternative was a million times worse but the people who actually preferred him over the other possible candidates (even ones I didn't like) absolutely baffle me.

Biden percentally did worse with minorities than any other Democratic presidential candidate since McGovern. White people were his ticket to victory in the 2020 general, so the "whitest states" would've stood behind him since *before* the main strokes of the pandemic hit if it was anything other than a referendum on Trump's coronavirus handling.

Norpoth's Primary Model is incredibly predictive, nailing every single election besides 2020. It literally measures enthusiasm, and the fact Republicans were coming out in droves to vote for Trump in the mostly ceremonial 2020 Republican presidential primaries, typically in larger numbers than any one Democratic hopeful, was a serious indication Trump's enthusiasm towered above any Democrat, or at least well over Biden.

He didn't do, "much better than Hillary." There was a swing of ~100k votes (out of more than 150 MILLION cast) spread across a handful of key states that tipped the outcome in his favor. He operated within the same margin of error that Hillary did, the key votes in the key places just (barely) broke his way.

Have the nutters launched the 'Democrats created COVID to replace Donald !!!' conspiracy theory, yet ?

Hillary got 48.2% of the vote while Trump got 46.1%. In 2020, Trump got 47.2% while Biden got 51.1%. It's hardly a huge step up but there's no question Biden did much better than Hillary, nearly doubling her margin.



Considering they were saying that before the coronavirus even hit American shores... they call it the Plandemic.

Smaller "plague on both your houses" 3rd party vote share and higher turnout in deep blue states. The election still came down to states where the vote fell within polling margin of error. This against a background of a bungled pandemic response and a historically unprecedented economic collapse. Meanwhile Trump's vote share also increased both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of overall votes cast. This was a referendum on Donald Trump, and this will become more clear when the 2022 mid-terms wipe out the Democratic House majority.

I don't think this is guaranteed, but it's definitely a (depressing) possibility. Everything else is more or less spot-on. America is ungovernable in its current state.

The poor showing the Democrats put in down-ballot (especially at the state level) should be seen as an ill-omen for 2022. Everything is likely to be working against them in the mid-terms.

1. Historically, the President's party almost always loses seats in mid-term elections.

2. Democrats are at a significant structural disadvantage in terms of turnout in off-year elections, and the mid-term electorate is almost invariably more Republican than the electorate in Presidential election years.

3. It is going to take a long time for the economy to recover from the pandemic shock, and by 2022, that's likely to be seen as "Joe Biden's economy."

4. Trump will not be on the ballot, so Democrats will have to run on their own platform, not on, "Please don't reelect the orange shitgoblin."

5. The Democratic failure at the state level has left the GOP still in charge of the redistricting process in most of the country following the 2020 census, so the structural math is going to get harder for Dems.

Taken on the whole, I think it is a near certainty that the Democratic House Majority is likely to be erased after the mid-terms.

Hey, Comrade Gulag - The Party(tm) has been covering up the usual litany of sorrows - please discuss why anyone should support your organisation ?

Please attempt to do this without blaming either the victims.

https://fashbusters.wordpress.com/tag/party-for-socialism-and-liberation

https://medium.com/@newdialectician/women-and-the-vanguard-party-why-im-resigning-from-the-psl-30453e819147

I suppose an organisation reflects it's membership, but I'd expected more awful Orwellian bullshit, and less old fashioned sexual abuse, if I'm honest.

I cannot and will not comment on the internal workings of another branch with which I have had no personal contact, other than to note that the member in question was removed from the Party.

What I can comment on is my own experience in the Party. PSL members are working class people. Like other people, Party members make mistakes, they have histories, and they bring the baggage of a life lived in a society that is racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic from the dirt to the penthouse suite. It would be delusional to expect otherwise; we are a party of activists, not saints. I won't say I've never personally witnessed or experienced male chauvinism, racism, or transphobia from other PSL members or candidates; I have. What I haven't seen is that behavior ever pass without being addressed and corrected. What I have experienced is an institutional culture where I and other women, queer folks, and people of color have been systematically given the opportunities and support we need to grow and thrive as activists, organizers, leaders, revolutionaries, and human beings. Women make up half of our Central Committee. Women are an absolute majority of the PSL's leadership at the regional and branch level. Our retention rate for women is significantly higher than it is for men.

My experience has been of comrades across the country who have taken up my fight as if it were their own, who were fighting for me when I didn't even understand I was in the fight. At every turn they have supported me, cared for me, fought for me, and given me opportunities to grow and to lead. My comrades are not perfect, and god knows I'm not, either, but they are dedicated, courageous, and committed to the cause of of a better world for everyone. I have seen comrades make mistakes, sometimes egregious ones, but those mistakes were criticized, addressed, corrected, and atoned for. I have seen members who weren't willing to accept criticism, correction, and discipline shown the door. Nothing I have experienced in my time in PSL suggests to me that there is a pervasive culture of male chauvinism or tolerance for abuse. My experience, and the experience of dozens of women I personally know in the Party has been precisely the opposite.

https://medium.com/@pslweb/psl-women-le ... 2d2e17261e

Democrats have been really shitty at Latino outreach. They have been shitty the past few years. This is why Bill Nelson lost in Florida and why we didn’t get a Senator O’Rourke in Texas. One big thing was “Latinx”. An innocuous term but Latino communities hate it; they think it was a term coined by a bunch of while elitists and it makes it seem like the Latino community is a monolith which it isn’t. You had Cubans and Venezuelans in Florida helping Trump because Democrats shitty messaging didn’t penetrate; same with the Tejanos in south Texas. A lot of Latinos don’t see themselves as “Latino” they see themselves as blue collar; Republicans have a big head start in Latino outreach and defining Democrats as “Socialista.” You need a counter weight to YouTube chuds like Otador who bought into the whole Democrats are socialists. Democrats needs to get on the ball. Get people that know how to do better outreach.

Another factor why thing were so close was the whole “defund the police”. Sometimes a message becomes your worst enemy because it lets the other side define your platform. We all know what “defund the police” really meant but to the low informed voters or the suburban voters, they got a bit spooked by that term because the Republicans were able to get in front of that messaging. And worse some of these police departments and local asshole culture warriors were stoking shit just to maintain the Republicans law and order message.

So what’s the theme here: messaging. Republicans are good at crafting simple easy to digest soundbite messages. Democrats are more policy wonks; we need to do better at SELLING the ideas to the people while not looking like we’re talking down to them.

Another factor is maybe it’s time to look at media ownership laws and start cracking down on that shit. Maybe bring back the Fairness Doctrine so you can at least create a much more level playing field since the Republican Party has used these lax media ownership laws to create their messaging empire.

But the most important variable is missing in your calculus. Donald Trump IS the GOP, he uniquely mobilized Republican voters in ways literally no other Republican has done since Reagan. How the hell is a guy with nothing but a personality cult of followers going to leverage a party successfully after being defeated for reelection, which itself is a near impossible feat in modern American politics? Especially since way over half of GOP voters believe voting is illegitimate anyway.

If Trump doesn't anoint a successor very soon--which I find highly unlikely--all of the vote power he tapped will flutter, and so will all of the anti-Trump power. So what we're left with is an election that no one can have even an inkling as to how it will actually play out.

We also need to consider that Trump may start a spoiler party as "revenge" for the GOP cucks that stabbed him in the back by not installing Trump as the Grand Emperor Imperium.

All we know for certain is that the 2022 senate map is exceedingly disfavorable to the GOP, so much so that I see it as very unlikely they'll be able to retain it.

There is zero objective basis for this statement. In 2016, Donald Trump underperformed Mitt Romney's lackluster 2012 showing and barely outperformed John McCain's numbers from a one-sided shellacking in 2008. In 2020, he basically equaled Romney's performance in 2012. He never even so much as sniffed George W. Bush terrain in either campaign.



So was the 2020 election, and this one took place under far less favorable-to-Republicans circumstances than the 2022 midterms likely will.

What was the GOP platform in 2020? Oh right, they didn't actually have one this time, it was just "The Donald Trump Agenda." You correctly suss out that Trump, as an individual motivated people to go out and vote for Not Trump. But you fail to recognize that the entire GOP political apparatus was just "go out and vote for Trump's party, red no matter who." The stunning numbers of minority voters who came out to turn most state legislatures crimson red wasn't because they've suddenly all become constitutional originalists with an emphasis on small business awareness and fiscal deregulation. No, it was because orange man make woke feminist who won't date me cry.

Do you know why the only GOP who've broken ranks on acknowledging Biden's clear, utterly indisputable victory over Trump are almost exclusively the so-called RHINO's, the ones who have already gone on record as being "not a fan of Trump" and are relatively safe? It's sure as shit not because they think Rudy Giuliani has a chance of overturning the election. It's because the entire GOP *is* Trump, and removing Trump from the GOP is like selling a pack of NoDoz without caffeine.

And it could be even more catastrophic for the GOP if Trump starts The MAGA Party, which he 100% will if they don't stump to his every beck and call for the foreseeable future, which in the process, would further degrade party coherence.

The Dems are in a mess right now, but you do not seem to comprehend how utterly fucked the party who tied every person in their party who got elected to the guy who didn't is.

Your claim is that Donald Trump more effectively mobilized Republican voters than anyone since Ronald Reagan, a statement that is objectively untrue.

2020 had the highest VEP turnout percentally since before women could vote. You don't seem to recognize that mass Republican mobilization doesn't mean hobbled Democrat mobilization. Trump brought out both. Now do it where Trump is the first Republican president since Hoover (H.W. doesn't count bc Ross Perot) to lose reelection, despite the entire party tying itself to that objective loser, and compute the results.

Mobilization is relative to overall turnout, not absolute. By your reasoning, Joe Biden is the most phenomenal mobilizer of Democrats in history. High turnout reflected the unique circumstances of this election cycle, not the effectiveness of the candidates.

By your reasoning, the Vietnam War didn't mobilize peace and anti-war movements across the country, those just happened because... error 404. You can have negative mobilization and positive mobilization and you can have both at the same time.

2020 had nothing to do with policy or any politician besides the incumbent. Just look at their respective conventions and party platforms.

nvm

I'm butthurt, Pockets, have you seriously never heard of Negative Mobilization?

I mean, if you wanna believe that a dude who has never even so much as sniffed a majority vote share in a contested election is some kind of generational mobilizer, that's your prerogative, but I'm kinda done with this avenue of discussion. It doesn't actually hold that much interest for me.

Trump seems to be considering terminating Bill Barr, which are words never in my wildest dreams I thought I'd string together.

All because Barr said that there was no widespread voter fraud in the election. It's gonna be incredibly entertaining watching the Trump machine completely blow up in the final weeks of his presidency, as that might lead to a bunch of Republican voters skipping the Georgia runoffs because Captain Cheeto said to do it.

Willing to bet that Republicans will be screaming "Voter Fraud!" if they lose the senate runoff in Georgia after telling their supporters to boycott it

Breitbart are already running a 'look at the Democrat's dirty tricks' campaign