Our Next President?

[DSpencer]

Re: Our Next President?

Yeah, those are the kind of questions I hate. Maybe they still serve the intended purpose, but it seems to only reinforce the idea that you have to pick a side and there are only two options. You either hate the government or love the government, there's no in between. I'm curious how much of the drift apart has to do with the digital echo chamber that serves to reinforce everyone's pre-existing beliefs.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

Yeah. They've been asking the same thing for decades. No doubt the real world is more complex. But the responses are correlating increasingly with Party ID over time. More than that, the 10 questions just establish a category scheme. Those who fall within the categories answer 100 other questions more consistently than before. Meaning the 10 questions are only used to establish baseline categories. But the percentage of random respondents who fall in each category change over time. And the correlation between categories and many other policy positions changes over time too. Put another way, people are much more likely to answer all 10 questions in a consistently conservative or consistently liberal way than they were a decade ago, and to follow up with other unrelated questions with similar consistency as one might expect. Hopefully I'm making sense there. Can explain better later if it's useful. Questions and weighting below:






Anyways, even if you don't buy this, you can look at something less arbitrary like Nominate scores and see a similar polarization effect. Or look at counties that went 20 points or more for one candidate or another. That's striking.







What it all adds up to in my estimation is that turning out the base will be a relatively more valuable strategy than swaying the middle, which has become relatively less valuable.

[DSpencer]

Re: Our Next President?

Do you know how to find the 10 questions they ask for that poll? I'm curious to see what they are.

I'm not a big fan of the concept that political views exist on a line where depending whether you answer yes or no to a question you get pushed one direction or the other. I think the real world is much more complex than that. It's frustrating to have everything turned into some issue where there's only two points of view and everyone has to take a side. Do you want to ban all fossil fuels or do you hate the environment?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

Maybe I'm underestimating the willingness of the far left to let Trump "burn it down". As always the Supreme Court might force people to hold their nose and vote their party. If RBG makes it to the end of Trump's first term (which seems increasingly unlikely), it seems inevitable she won't make it through a second. She's 85 years old and in questionable health. Breyer is 80 right now. Will he make it to 86 in adequate health to keep serving on the court?

I don't expect the Bernie crowd to vote for a Clinton Dem in the primaries just out of the perception that they will do better in the general election. So if they get their way in the primary then it could be an interesting election. I just don't see that many Democrats refusing to vote for Beto or Biden or whoever if they know the alternative is four more years of Trump and possibly a couple more SCOTUS picks.

I think you're right, in that I don't think it is many. But I don't think it has to be many either. All it takes is for marginal numbers in a few states to stay home. It's a part of how Clinton lost. Beto married a billionaire's daughter. He's part of the New Democrat caucus. There are lots on the left who will never trust him. Biden's history also is problematic for that group.

To be totally clear, I wasn't talking about the general before. But if I am going to talk about it, below is the one graph that I think everyone needs to really let sink in. 2020 will be nothing like 2008. The base of the electorate is now at the tails. If you're not playing to and motivating the base accordingly, you're losing. The center cannot hold because centrists are going the way of the dodo (outside of press outlets and think tanks at least).



Another important thing to realize: That little mound in the center is older than the growing zeniths on either side. So it's going to continue to shrink. If anything, I think the proof in the pudding there was how effortlessly Trump and Sanders could draw stadium crowds in 2016 while more centrist candidates cried, "Please clap."

It can be tough to think like a young leftist, but here's the intuition from what I gather: The Trumps, The Saudis, The Clintons, The Bloombergs, The Kochs, The Adelsons, even the Bin Ladens, all of them are part of a corrupt and criminal ruling class whose power must be diminished. The 'class war' stuff Obama ran away from is more or less the emerging worldview. If the Democrats run billionaires or families of billionaires or anyone who doesn't know and can't or won't credibly talk about life as a virtuous laborer vs. the criminality of the billionaire class, it's going to disappoint a ton of people. And young people are the most likely to stay home anyways and the hardest to motivate to vote.

You see what I'm saying? Trump is not an anomaly when you think like this. He's emblematic. Behind every great fortune is a great crime. They're all corrupt swindlers and crooks.

The mission isn't to replace one corrupt billionaire with another, or worse, a pawn of another. It's to take power away from corrupt billionaires. Ulysses O'Rourke and and Barron Trump will just go to the same parties and schools anyways, just like Chelsea Clinton and Ivanka Trump did. Voting for Beto vs. voting for Trump is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic.

To be clear, this isn't my personal view. But it is, I think, a more common emerging way of looking at things, especially for younger folk. Bernie's credibility wasn't just in his policies. It was in not sending his kids to Sidwell Friends like Chelsea Clinton or Malia Obama or Julie Nixon Eisenhower or RFK Jr., or in not hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein's or taking rides on his Lolita Express like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and everyone else. He didn't get invited to those kind of parties. And that was a feature for people, not a bug.

[DSpencer]

Re: Our Next President?

Maybe I'm underestimating the willingness of the far left to let Trump "burn it down". As always the Supreme Court might force people to hold their nose and vote their party. If RBG makes it to the end of Trump's first term (which seems increasingly unlikely), it seems inevitable she won't make it through a second. She's 85 years old and in questionable health. Breyer is 80 right now. Will he make it to 86 in adequate health to keep serving on the court?

I don't expect the Bernie crowd to vote for a Clinton Dem in the primaries just out of the perception that they will do better in the general election. So if they get their way in the primary then it could be an interesting election. I just don't see that many Democrats refusing to vote for Beto or Biden or whoever if they know the alternative is four more years of Trump and possibly a couple more SCOTUS picks.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

Is taking the pulse of Leftist thinking a reliable way of predicting a general election? If push came to shove, would supporters of AOC really not pull the lever for Biden if he was running against Trump? Or maybe your point is that a centrist will never make it out of primaries?

I definitely think that attitudes have changed a lot in 10 years. It's hard to use "socialist" as an insult against AOC if she is already calling herself one. Of course, she isn't personally able to run in 2020 anyway.

I think it's still a bit too early to say what is likely to happen in 2020. If the economy is doing well and barring any other big events, I think it will be difficult for a Sanders or slightly older version of AOC to gain enough traction. If there's an economic crisis then that might present an opportunity to bring in a lot of angry people looking for a different direction.

The truth of the matter is that AOC's "radical socialist" 70% top marginal tax rate is exactly the same as it was under Carter, Ford, Nixon, and Johnson & 24% lower than it was under Eisenhower, Hoover, and FDR. This places her to the right of people who've actually sat in the Oval Office. Also to the right of the 80% point folks like Picketty and Saez think the top rate should be.

Reagan chopped it down from 70% to 24%. Just like FDR jacked it up from 24% to 94%. It only took one administration each time. In between, people played small ball. We're still living with the 1986 tax code. I've been saying in other threads how the House is totally different than 2008, because the Progressives are now the biggest caucus, and are poised to potentially be a majority of the Dems if they can continue gaining ground in 2020. This isn't Slick Willy's Citibank®-approved party anymore, for better or worse.

I don't know what will happen in the Primary. But if you're not sort of in the thick of Democratic politics, I think you're missing out on the gravity of what Morgasbord is saying. I'm telling you, the Dems are about as conflicted and split a group as ever. And I am certain that if you waltz in with an Obama-Clinton-style platform, you're writing off a larger and growing chunk of the base now, including a lot of the youth. There's been a growing divide for years in the base between the left and the neoliberals. And in many ways Occupy and all that was a breaking point. But to think of it another way, the 2016 primaries left a big scar, and it has not healed. It's partly a generational thing too. Rightly or wrongly it's millennials looking up to their grandparents who fought fascism and looking down on their parents as a greedier, more self-indulgent generation that failed both them and the country.

So anyways, Clintonworld and Bernieworld hate each other, some more than they hate Trump. Bernieworld sees Clinton as Reagan's shadow who sold out the party of the New Deal. Clintonworld sees Bernieworld as a bunch of traitors who would sink the whole damned party just to get free healthcare or college. Clintonworld is generally more urban, older, more Protestant, alliance between wealthy professionals and the poor. Bernieworld is generally more more working and middle class, younger, and more fed up with the status quo. I suspect that Morgasbord is right in that Biden and Beto and a few others are going to get tagged as part of Clintonworld (and prove it by the people they surround themselves with). And I suspect that more than just Sanders are going to get tagged as part of Bernieworld. There's a loud cadre of people, even if relatively small, who will never vote for Clintonworld or visa-versa. They'd rather see Trump burn it down.

These aren't just surface divisions either. It goes right down to the local bits of the party. "Progressives" have been ousting "corporate dems" with greater or lesser success across the board. The DSA is one vector. But there are a hundred others. They have their own think tanks and party apparatus and are winning over some of the unions and forming their own PACs and organizations that explicitly will not allow former Clinton and Obama staffers on them, and their running their own candidates for everything from dog catcher to state rep. Maybe it's hotter and heavier in Mass and New York and the like at the moment. But it's happening. Did you know that DSA members pay dues? Imagine the Republicans or Democrats trying to pay dues. Working Families Party too. The whole apparatus is no longer interested in running third party candidates. And they're no longer interested in wealthy or corporate donors. They've aligned. They're interested in 'taking back' the Democratic Party. And Clintonworld is not interested in sharing power. But they've ousted several long-term local incumbents--and lost badly against several others.

Long story short, if they really want a knock-out blow against Trump, somebody's gonna have to bridge the gap. Some folks straddle the divide. Reverend Barber comes to mind, for one example. Liz Warren might be another. A couple governors could probably pull it off too. But everyone has a history and everyone has friends and the two camps will judge each other by the company they keep.

[DSpencer]

Re: Our Next President?

If you're not paying attention to DSA's platform and AOC, you're missing the zeitgeist. As someone of the LGBT persuasion and thus very connected to Leftist thinking and those gosh-darned "millennials", my read of the pulse is that a centrist Democrat is not electable anymore; a milquetoast democrat will just lose to Trump. A Democrat will win based on their ability synthesize enough of the DSA/AOC's Green New Deal and Stephanie Kealton explanations of "debt doesn't matter" MMT to fund it into a digestible platform that appeals to under 35's and enough red staters to flip the electoral college.

Is taking the pulse of Leftist thinking a reliable way of predicting a general election? If push came to shove, would supporters of AOC really not pull the lever for Biden if he was running against Trump? Or maybe your point is that a centrist will never make it out of primaries?

I definitely think that attitudes have changed a lot in 10 years. It's hard to use "socialist" as an insult against AOC if she is already calling herself one. Of course, she isn't personally able to run in 2020 anyway.

I think it's still a bit too early to say what is likely to happen in 2020. If the economy is doing well and barring any other big events, I think it will be difficult for a Sanders or slightly older version of AOC to gain enough traction. If there's an economic crisis then that might present an opportunity to bring in a lot of angry people looking for a different direction.

[Morgasbord]

Re: Our Next President?

If you're not paying attention to DSA's platform and AOC, you're missing the zeitgeist. As someone of the LGBT persuasion and thus very connected to Leftist thinking and those gosh-darned "millennials", my read of the pulse is that a centrist Democrat is not electable anymore; a milquetoast democrat will just lose to Trump. A Democrat will win based on their ability synthesize enough of the DSA/AOC's Green New Deal and Stephanie Kealton explanations of "debt doesn't matter" MMT to fund it into a digestible platform that appeals to under 35's and enough red staters to flip the electoral college.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Our Next President?

Don’t count out Tulsi Gabbard.

I'm a fan, but she has no chance. Those two go hand in hand.

She's as independent as they come, hence she must be destroyed.
The loud 10-20% on the left HATES Tulsi. Look at CNN and other left/Dem channels and publications. Look at Twitter. She's "anti-gay, pro-Assad, the Ruskies love her, etc."

[Slimprofits]

Re: Our Next President?

Good call, on the surface. A newcomer with a relatively blank slate onto which bits and pieces of voter preference can be written as the campaign goes on, ala Obama, starting with "opposite of Trump" positioning of "love for each other and for our country." Ideal as a marketing campaign president for more of the same policies as Bush and Obama but without the Trump crazy.

Almost everyone will welcome a return to the regular scheduled programming, except for this: Kamala Harris’s Trump-Size Tax Plan

My wager is for the Dem nominee, not the election winner!

[Slimprofits]

Re: Our Next President?

Good call, on the surface. A newcomer with a relatively blank slate onto which bits and pieces of voter preference can be written as the campaign goes on, ala Obama, starting with "opposite of Trump" positioning of "love for each other and for our country." Ideal as a marketing campaign president for more of the same policies as Bush and Obama but without the Trump crazy.

Almost everyone will welcome a return to the regular scheduled programming, except for this: Kamala Harris’s Trump-Size Tax Plan

My wager is for the Dem nominee, not the election winner!

[vt]

Re: Our Next President?

"Mrs. you didn't build that" will not play well for those aspiring to become rich.

It will be a new face, possibly an outside face no one is aware of. And they will come from the center with a message of unification to enrich all, and end all the fruitless, immature division.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Our Next President?

You may be right.

Still, I think her past will throw up some hurdles. For one, I don't think she's the offspring of an immigrant. From what I know, her mom was a white-bread midwestern gal and her dad was an Air Force brat whose dad was stationed in American Samoa. Her grandma was a local that her grandpa met there, so she's got some roots on American Samoa. But so far as I know, 3 of her 4 grandparents were certainly US citizens, and one was a citizen of a US territory.

The Hindu thing and any ties to India seem like they're only because her family got really wrapped up in a Hare Krishna sect called Science of Identity. They had a bunch of members as politicians, including her dad. Both her parents were board members of the Science of Identity Foundation (as were her husband's parents, iirc). But her father has since switched from Republican to Democrat and Hindu to Catholic. Who knows exactly what that means, as it's a secretive group. The Congresswoman was named after it, and the only schools she attended besides homeschools from K-12 were their schools in the Philippines, which were described by some who attended as odd to say the least. They span both parties and switch between them, but the sect has its own views.

It may all be nothing. But there's potentially skeletons there. First she'll have to deal with her position switches. They're already hitting her on that. Then there will be all this Krishna fundamentalist offshoot stuff. Then there's the questionable foreign policy stuff, especially vis-a-vis Assad. Finally there's the fact that the left has long had their knives out for her for various reasons.

You're right. It's early days. Maybe it all becomes a big nothing-burger or whatever.

[EJ]

Re: Our Next President?

Simple messages like "A Chicken for Every Pot" and "Join the Silk Stocking Class" messages brought up-to-date will resonate versus obscure tax policy and without offending any interests.

Americans don't want the rich held back. They want to join them. To get in on the action.

The winning political message for 2020 isn't "I'll punish the rich" ala Sanders but "Elect me and I'll make you part of the Elite that runs things and controls all the money. I'll bring you in."

It's a time-tested win-win.

Warren has possibly figured this out.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Our Next President?

Don’t count out Tulsi Gabbard.

She just about ticks every box in a manufactured candidate.

Female
Offspring of a legal immigrant
Ethnic minority
Veteran(left office to serve on deployment)
Unpopular with entrenched Democrats(not shortlisted to backfill Senator Dan Inouye)
Blue Dog-ish Democrat in appearance

She’s only missing small business ownership/startup experience or strong empathy

She’s already announced and is a clear outsider, but would be far more likely to sway voters on the right and possibly the middle than either Kamala Harris or Elizabeth Warren.

——-

What should not be underestimated is the disruptive influence Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is having.

AOC is not eligible to run for President or experienced enough to lead the way out of a paper bag, but her social following is not to be underestimated.

She effectively represents the voice of:

1)People carrying $1.5 trillion 8nnstudent debt indentured servitude

and/or

2)People struggling in the low wage, low skill service “gig” economy

and/or

3)People carrying(or are close to) medical debt or medical bankruptcy

And that’s a lot of people. If they can be activated as a voting block......it could get interesting.

Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren are already reactively adapting their own output/content to catch up to AOC’s social momentum.

AOC is pushing a very hard left “feelings > facts” narrative that is connecting with the 3 large and growing audiences I listed above.

AOC also seems unwilling to be reigned in by Democrat leadership and is trolling retired senior Democrat leaders like Lieberman.

AOC has potential to be an internal Democratic Party disruptor that could split the party between hard left and center left.

Hence why I think someone like Tulsi Gabbard could be viewed as a Center Left safety choice.

But it’s very early days.

If Trump is not running in 2020, I’m going with Nikki Haley as the GOP’s doppelgänger