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2018 Elections Thread (1 Viewer)

I think TN, not TX, is the key race. I would be surprised if Beto won and Bredesen lost.

Dems have a good chance to pick up NV/AZ. Meanwhile, Dem incumbents are in the most trouble in FL/ND.  If they pull one of those out (and incumbents in MO/IN/WV/MT hold on), then they only need one more.

 
zftcg said:
I think TN, not TX, is the key race. I would be surprised if Beto won and Bredesen lost.

Dems have a good chance to pick up NV/AZ. Meanwhile, Dem incumbents are in the most trouble in FL/ND.  If they pull one of those out (and incumbents in MO/IN/WV/MT hold on), then they only need one more.
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Indiana looks like the biggest trouble spot for the Dems to me. I think Nate Silver mentioned recently that less populated states have a much stronger incumbency advantage, which makes sense- the fewer people, the easier to shake everyone's hands and tailor your politics for them and so on. Indiana is bigger than all the swing states except Florida and Missouri. Also, while all of the incumbents already won a race in a less friendly environment for Dems in 2012, Donnelly and McCaskill got big boosts when their opponents went off the reservation on rape/abortion. Can't count on something like that happening again. The others won without that scale of unforced error.

I think they're gonna lose Indiana and one other close one (maybe MO or FL), which means they have to gain four, which means they'd have to win TN and TX, which seems incredibly difficult. Hopefully I'm wrong. I think I saw a stat that incumbent Senators from the opposition party are something like 54 for the last 54 in midterms I think, which is obviously encouraging, but we also haven't had a huge shift in the electorate like the one along race/education lines that's happened this decade.

 
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zoonation said:
No potential presidential nominee could win a senate seat in Texas.  But Beto is exactly wheat they are looking for in 2020.  They don’t even have a real candidate right now imo.  
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An aside here- Six months ago people lamented the absence of a single prominent Dem voice under 50. Now there's at least three- O'Rourke, Gillum and Ocasio-Cortez. Some might fall off if they lose, but others will definitely take their place. This stuff happens quickly and is difficult to forecast.

 
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TobiasFunke said:
An aside here- Six months ago people lamented the absence of a single prominent Dem voice under 50. Now there's at least three- O'Rourke, Gillum and Ocasio-Cortez. Some might fall off if they lose, but others will definitely take their place. This stuff happens quickly and is difficult to forecast.
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Cortez isn’t even close to ready for the national platform.  She would get destroyed.  

 
zoonation said:
Cortez isn’t even close to ready for the national platform.  She would get destroyed.  
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I wasn't suggesting she should run for President in 2020. She's not eligible anyway. I was just pointing out that until very recently everyone was bemoaning the lack of young leadership on the left, and now we have it. This stuff moves fast.  

And Cortez might not be ready for a presidential debate or something yet, but she's way better than the older generation when it comes to using social media.  This is basically a "how-to" for politicians on twitter.

 
And while I'm on the whole kick about people being overly critical and generalizing about the Dems early in the cycle, here's another good example. 

The story is that there's a lawsuit in Texas to invalidate the entire ACA. Dems are being forced to represent the defense, since the Trump administration has announced it won't defend the ACA in court. If the lawsuit succeeds the entire health care market will be thrown into disarray, as I understand it (not an expert, just passing along what others have said).

The ACA is pretty popular with voters now,, and definitely preferable to total chaos.  So someone asks a reporter why aren't Dems bringing this up? And the answer is that they are, a lot. They're also bringing up the ACA generally and preexisting conditions specifically at every chance. Cable news isn't covering it because it's not as sexy as the Op-ed whodunit or the Mueller saga, so you could be forgiven for thinking that the Dems are getting distracted and aren't playing to their strengths. But they're definitely working these angles more than all the DC drama at the state and district level- you just have to follow the races to know about it.  Even Joe Manchin is working this angle, in his own special way.

 
TobiasFunke said:
And Cortez might not be ready for a presidential debate or something yet, but she's way better than the older generation when it comes to using social media.  This is basically a "how-to" for politicians on twitter.
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She'll never win the approval of the Ren Hoek crowd because she's not quite anti-Zionist enough.

 
Henry Ford said:
If people who want that will vote, we'll all be in better shape.
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It'd be a lot easier if the national party and DCCC weren't backing well-off millionaires on the take from weapons/pharmaceutical/oil industries over their progressive counterparts.  I think Dems are much better positioned to build an opposition party, a good one, than the Republicans are at this point.  The reason I'm hard on Dems is that I feel they've done so little to change the makeup of the party and hold themselves accountable since getting wiped out by Trump.  

But you're probably right about civic engagement.  There's no such thing as an Anarchist Party.  But if it can be a local measure like legalizing drugs or something like that, there's no real good reason not to help that along.  

 
ren hoek said:
It'd be a lot easier if the national party and DCCC weren't backing well-off millionaires on the take from weapons/pharmaceutical/oil industries over their progressive counterparts.  I think Dems are much better positioned to build an opposition party, a good one, than the Republicans are at this point.  The reason I'm hard on Dems is that I feel they've done so little to change the makeup of the party and hold themselves accountable since getting wiped out by Trump.  

But you're probably right about civic engagement.  There's no such thing as an Anarchist Party.  But if it can be a local measure like legalizing drugs or something like that, there's no real good reason not to help that along.  
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I think you're wrong about this on a number of fronts, as I've been documenting in this thread. It hasn't been as great a pivot as some would like, of course, but at some point we need to accept that progress is being made.

But then I think referring to an election in which you get 2.7 million more votes than your opponent in the presidential race, and gain both seats and voter shares in both the House and Senate, and lose the presidential election only because your opponent puts together the perfect combination of 80,000 votes across three states thanks in part to voter suppression laws, as getting "wiped out" by your opponent betrays just a little bit of bias.

 
ren hoek said:
It'd be a lot easier if the national party and DCCC weren't backing well-off millionaires on the take from weapons/pharmaceutical/oil industries over their progressive counterparts.  I think Dems are much better positioned to build an opposition party, a good one, than the Republicans are at this point.  The reason I'm hard on Dems is that I feel they've done so little to change the makeup of the party and hold themselves accountable since getting wiped out by Trump.  

But you're probably right about civic engagement.  There's no such thing as an Anarchist Party.  But if it can be a local measure like legalizing drugs or something like that, there's no real good reason not to help that along.  
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“Wiped our by Trump” means getting almost 3 million more votes than Trump.  The idea that the Dems should burn the party down when they actually won more votes in the last election and have been dramatically outperforming 2016 results in recent special elections is perhaps the worst analysis I’ve seen on this board in a decade.  

 
ren hoek said:
Henry Ford said:
If people who want that will vote, we'll all be in better shape.
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It'd be a lot easier if the national party and DCCC weren't backing well-off millionaires on the take from weapons/pharmaceutical/oil industries over their progressive counterparts.  I think Dems are much better positioned to build an opposition party, a good one, than the Republicans are at this point.  The reason I'm hard on Dems is that I feel they've done so little to change the makeup of the party and hold themselves accountable since getting wiped out by Trump.  

But you're probably right about civic engagement.  There's no such thing as an Anarchist Party.  But if it can be a local measure like legalizing drugs or something like that, there's no real good reason not to help that along.  
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That is because we feel comfortable where we are as a party.  

 
tommyGunZ said:
“Wiped our by Trump” means getting almost 3 million more votes than Trump.  The idea that the Dems should burn the party down when they actually won more votes in the last election and have been dramatically outperforming 2016 results in recent special elections is perhaps the worst analysis I’ve seen on this board in a decade.  
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I agree 100%

 
TobiasFunke said:
I think you're wrong about this on a number of fronts, as I've been documenting in this thread. It hasn't been as great a pivot as some would like, of course, but at some point we need to accept that progress is being made.

But then I think referring to an election in which you get 2.7 million more votes than your opponent in the presidential race, and gain both seats and voter shares in both the House and Senate, and lose the presidential election only because your opponent puts together the perfect combination of 80,000 votes across three states thanks in part to voter suppression laws, as getting "wiped out" by your opponent betrays just a little bit of bias.
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Something like 40% of the country didn't even vote in the last election.  For most people there wasn't anything resembling a real choice.  Some turnout. 

Most of them I'm sure felt like the political system abandoned them a long time ago.  Like Ocasio said, the swing is not going to be Left/Right/Independents.  It's going to be nonvoting to voters.  

 
ren hoek said:
Something like 40% of the country didn't even vote in the last election.  For most people there wasn't anything resembling a real choice.  Some turnout. 

Most of them I'm sure felt like the political system abandoned them a long time ago.  Like Ocasio said, the swing is not going to be Left/Right/Independents.  It's going to be nonvoting to voters.  
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Turnout was up compared to 2012. Down less than 3% from 2008.  Up from 2004, and up substantially from, 2000 and 1996. In fact I'd say that 2016 was an above-average year for turnout since the 1960s. And then of course there's the voter suppression issue, which is an artificial limitation on turnout (one that, paradoxically, the Dems really can't bring up).

I agree with AOC's statement, but we're talking about improving turnout around the margins from 2014/2016 levels to 2006/2008 levels for Dems (while hoping Trump voter turnout among non-college whites was a one-time thing).  Otherwise your post was utter nonsense, not backed by any reasonable view of the facts. It also doesn't address the main criticism of your previous post- that in no way shape or form can you say that the party that gained seats and voter share in both the House and Senate and won the popular vote for president by almost 3 million votes was "wiped out." "Devastated to lose to an obnoxious bigot whose brain is made of moldy applesauce," perhaps. But not "wiped out."

 
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ren hoek said:
It'd be a lot easier if the national party and DCCC weren't backing well-off millionaires on the take from weapons/pharmaceutical/oil industries over their progressive counterparts.  I think Dems are much better positioned to build an opposition party, a good one, than the Republicans are at this point.  The reason I'm hard on Dems is that I feel they've done so little to change the makeup of the party and hold themselves accountable since getting wiped out by Trump.  

But you're probably right about civic engagement.  There's no such thing as an Anarchist Party.  But if it can be a local measure like legalizing drugs or something like that, there's no real good reason not to help that along.  
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You were hard on Dems before Trump.  That’s why you didn’t vote. 

 
Matthias said:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/just-about-everyone-in-florida-has-already-decided-who-to-vote-for/
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Another five thirty eighty piece, this one by Clare Malone, ventured the opinion (based on polling) that Dem voters were becoming as entrenched in their policy preferences as Repubs were. And those policies were moving steadily left, with support growing not only for single payer but for expanded financial help for attending college and even for changing up the nature of our government itself.

Democratic voters have become a disillusioned bunch; 68 percent say that significant changes are needed to the design and structure of government itself. The party, meanwhile, has struggled to solidify its fundamental identity in the post-2016 universe. In this uncertain climate, rising Democratic stars have trafficked in the new currency of institution-shifting proposals.
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So far, Republicans are staying pretty quiet about all this, probably confident that the existing system and their own exploitation of the voting rules will be enough to prevent majority leftist rule in the future. They can keep making it more difficult for poor people and people with criminal records to vote, make it more difficult for kids to attend college (and become Dem voters) and keep tightening the screws on any and all immigration because those new Americans aren't likely to vote for a party that thinks diversity is a weakness.

I think they're underestimating how their current actions will work against them in the decades to come.

 
I knew nothing about cynthia Nixon, but chapo trap house had a cool interview with her, you can find it Here. I def appreciate her point of view, especially regarding labor rights. 

 
Dedfin said:
I knew nothing about cynthia Nixon, but chapo trap house had a cool interview with her, you can find it Here. I def appreciate her point of view, especially regarding labor rights. 
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Wow, that's such a Samantha thing to say!  :P

Nixon doesn't have a chance (latest poll showed her down 50), but I'm glad she's running and putting the spotlight on certain issues. As a former NYer, I really find it unacceptable that a state that blue has had such a hard time implementing progressive policies because of all the corrupt backroom dealing. At the very least I think this campaign should put an end to any Cuomo dreams of running for higher office. He's up 50 and still running a really nasty campaign against her. Hard to imagine the left wing of the party ever trusting him again (not that they did before, but this makes their distrust more salient.)

 
tommyGunZ said:
“Wiped our by Trump” means getting almost 3 million more votes than Trump.  The idea that the Dems should burn the party down when they actually won more votes in the last election and have been dramatically outperforming 2016 results in recent special elections is perhaps the worst analysis I’ve seen on this board in a decade.  
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Well, you are using Trump as a baseline so that worst analysis has some competition.   I'd guess millions of those votes you got were anti-Trump votes.  Time will tell.

 
tommyGunZ said:
“Wiped our by Trump” means getting almost 3 million more votes than Trump.  The idea that the Dems should burn the party down when they actually won more votes in the last election and have been dramatically outperforming 2016 results in recent special elections is perhaps the worst analysis I’ve seen on this board in a decade.  
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Winning california by 4.4 million votes and new york by 1.7 million.   Feel free to win by 5 million and 2 million.   That doesn't really help the dems.

 
quickhands said:
Winning california by 4.4 million votes and new york by 1.7 million.   Feel free to win by 5 million and 2 million.   That doesn't really help the dems.
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Which would be more representative of the will of the people: An election determined by the Electoral College as it stands now, or an election where everyone who voted had their vote count as one vote and the candidate with the most votes wins?

 
Ramblin Wreck said:
Well, you are using Trump as a baseline so that worst analysis has some competition.   I'd guess millions of those votes you got were anti-Trump votes.  Time will tell.
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It is unlikely that the Democrats could find another candidate so repugnant to independents and progressives as Clinton, so losing those votes probably evens out the gains from anti-Trump crossover voters.

 
Just now on one of the local stations here in Minnesota, a commercial for Jason Lewis (incumbent Republican US House) was on. A 15 second spot that highlighted that he voted AGAINST Republicans in many cases. He mentions several bills where he voted with Democrats.

When Republicans start airing commercials saying they frequently vote against their own party, it’s time to take notice. I bet the internal numbers show he will lose against Angie Craig in November.

 
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