Politics: US Presidential Election 2020 Question

TIDE-HSV said:

By Gawd, he's saying the same things I've been saying and the answer I get is "Look at the Dow!" Fools!

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Don't worry. When you go to say I told you so later they'll just say it was a deep state plot and not Trump's policies.

MattinBama said:

Don't worry. When you go to say I told you so later they'll just say it was a deep state plot and not Trump's policies.

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or like with the w years, the memories will just cease to exist.

i thought this was an interesting read.

It's the conservative evangelicals, stupid

Amy Walter at the Cook Report has an interesting analysis of the 2016 electorate that blows up some of the myths we've all been operating under due to the exit polls being less than accurate:

There are LOTS of opinions and narratives out there about white voters.

Hillary Clinton lost because white women abandoned her.

White, non-college educated voters are Trump’s base. They are never coming back/will come back to Democrats.

Donald Trump’s testosterone-laden presidency alienated lots of white, college-educated women who held their noses and voted for him in 2016.

Most of these narratives are built on data supplied by the 2016 exit polls and the "education level" cross-tabs in current polling. However, new data and analysis of the 2016 vote suggest that many of these assumptions are worth reassessing.

...

Meanwhile, among women, if you remove evangelicals, white women with and without a college degree have the same (very low) opinion of the president.

White evangelical women without a college degree give Trump a 68 percent job approval rating, while those with a degree give him a much lower, though still positive 51 percent approval rating. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval among white, non-evangelical women without a college degree is 35 percent, just five points higher than the 30 percent approval rating he gets from white, non-evangelical college-educated women.

Podhorzer’s analysis leads to two conclusions. First, stop assuming that all white, non-college voters are core Trump supporters. Trump’s base is evangelical white voters, regardless of education level. Second, white non-evangelical, non-college women are the ultimate swing voters.

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UAH said:

David Stockman is one Republican who isn't drinking the Kool Aid!

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Here’s more of that interview-

If you assume a centrist cannot win then Biden is out. If you assume Americans will not elect another black President, Booker is out. If you assume America is not ready for a woman President, then Warren and Duckworth are out. Another Kennedy would be like another Bush or Clinton. None of these assumptions may be anywhere near right, but it is not hard to believe they are all flawed compared to a sitting, white supremacist, male who is loved by the alt right evangelicals. It is my opinion that the Dems have 27 months or less to find an electable candidate and I am not sure they have anyone. Maybe it will be Trump vs Bernie, who knows, two old, white guys squaring off.

It is my considered opinion that Democrats can't win in 2020 by running old men. I like Biden, but my favorite guy is a second term congressman named Seth Moulton. He maintains that for Democrats to win, they have to avoid talking about Trump on the campaign trail. Talk about issues: infrastructure, education, health care, the environment, and the necessity of working across the aisle to get things done. Taking an opposing stance from Trump simply divides us, empowering the solid Trump base. If Bernie or Warren are the candidate we lose.

It would be interesting if democrats stole the debt narrative. I think it’s actually something they could manage with the gift that trump has given regarding how the debt has skyrocketed. I don’t think it would be hard for them to sell the fact that the tax cuts have disproportionately gone to the rich. It might get them to identify with the blue collars that may feel they have been forgotten. Especially if they couple it with an infrastructure plan coupled with globalization retraining. Quit pushing college, maybe instead of making it cheaper/easier to go to college, focus on trades.

Throw in a plan to determine gerrymandering standards at a federal level, a plan to make net neutrality a law and not an fcc guideline, as well as an attempt to at least revisit campaign finance laws, and you can build a coalition that avoids anything overt like abortion, guns, or god.

bobstod said:

It is my considered opinion that Democrats can't win in 2020 by running old men. I like Biden, but my favorite guy is a second term congressman named Seth Moulton. He maintains that for Democrats to win, they have to avoid talking about Trump on the campaign trail. Talk about issues: infrastructure, education, health care, the environment, and the necessity of working across the aisle to get things done. Taking an opposing stance from Trump simply divides us, empowering the solid Trump base. If Bernie or Warren are the candidate we lose.

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The problem is that the far left has to come to terms with the fact that Warren and Bernie aren’t going to beat Trump. If that ever happens then I’m far more optimistic, but from the many I know personally they are talking more about how Clinton screwed them and it’s their term than the moron in the White House.

They really need to choose someone that isn’t going to play into his comedy routine like Warren surely would. I thought where Jeb lost the primary against him was when he started fighting back instead of letting him hang himself. Instead every misstep was drowned out by a bad Jerry Seinfeld episode of insults and one liners that his base ate up. Clinton walked into that same trap instead of keeping to principles.

I have evangelical Christians on both sides of my family. Without getting into a religious debate here, suffice it to say when people say God is telling them to vote for and support Trump there is no changing their mind.
My sister in law is a one issue voter, abortion. I have tried to explain to her that the republicans really don't care about overturning Roe v Wade because they use as part of their platform every four years and it works. IMO the religious right will support Satan himself rather than a Democrat.

To me the Dems only hope is that Trump goes down when Mueller report comes out. If Mike Pence is their candidate, he can be beaten due to his creepy factor.

It says a lot about how sick/sad/other adjective our country has become that the storyline being talked about here isn't that the Democrats could nominate a sack of rotten potatoes and have it beat Trump 538-0.

81usaf92 said:

The problem is that the far left has to come to terms with the fact that Warren and Bernie aren’t going to beat Trump. If that ever happens then I’m far more optimistic, but from the many I know personally they are talking more about how Clinton screwed them and it’s their term than the moron in the White House.

They really need to choose someone that isn’t going to play into his comedy routine like Warren surely would. I thought where Jeb lost the primary against him was when he started fighting back instead of letting him hang himself. Instead every misstep was drowned out by a bad Jerry Seinfeld episode of insults and one liners that his base ate up. Clinton walked into that same trap instead of keeping to principles.

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Whomever the Dems finally nominate he/she needs to understand that trading insults with Trump during the campaign, and especially in a debate, is a losing proposition. I agree that going totally negative and throwing around the "i" word is a losing strategy for the Dems. I agree with chanson's take above on what the Dems' campaign strategy should be.

GrayTide said:

Whomever the Dems finally nominate he/she needs to understand that trading insults with Trump during the campaign, and especially in a debate, is a losing proposition. I agree that going totally negative and throwing around the "i" word is a losing strategy for the Dems. I agree with chanson's take above on what the Dems' campaign strategy should be.

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that was as much a function of election coverage as anything. the 2016 campaign was covered/presented like a reality show with trump at the center. i'm sure that will happen again.

MattinBama said:

It says a lot about how sick/sad/other adjective our country has become that the storyline being talked about here isn't that the Democrats could nominate a sack of rotten potatoes and have it beat Trump 538-0.

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but is justified because hillary/obama/bernie/ocasio-cortez/socaimalism/ are doing the work of satan

bobstod said:

It is my considered opinion that Democrats can't win in 2020 by running old men.

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I tend to agree with this for both parties (as always, Trump was the exception).

The last 3 Presidents before Trump were all 54 or under on Inauguration Day.
In the color TV era that counts. Reagan turned 70 a few weeks after he was sworn in, but he didn't look 70.

bobstod said:

I like Biden, but my favorite guy is a second term congressman named Seth Moulton. He maintains that for Democrats to win, they have to avoid talking about Trump on the campaign trail. Talk about issues: infrastructure, education, health care, the environment, and the necessity of working across the aisle to get things done. Taking an opposing stance from Trump simply divides us, empowering the solid Trump base. If Bernie or Warren are the candidate we lose.

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He's correct on that, but good luck getting the public to buy off on that gun control thing.

Also, nobody takes House members as Presidential candidates seriously anyway. Now - if we're talking 2024, that's another issue altogether.

My hope is the Dems can sort this out and put someone up there that while I don't agree with on a number of things can still actually be seen as a President. Of course, I'll admit Trump has lowered that bar substantially, too.

MattinBama said:

It says a lot about how sick/sad/other adjective our country has become that the storyline being talked about here isn't that the Democrats could nominate a sack of rotten potatoes and have it beat Trump 538-0.

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They tried that in 2016.

GrayTide said:

If you assume a centrist cannot win then Biden is out. If you assume Americans will not elect another black President, Booker is out. If you assume America is not ready for a woman President, then Warren and Duckworth are out. Another Kennedy would be like another Bush or Clinton. None of these assumptions may be anywhere near right, but it is not hard to believe they are all flawed compared to a sitting, white supremacist, male who is loved by the alt right evangelicals. It is my opinion that the Dems have 27 months or less to find an electable candidate and I am not sure they have anyone. Maybe it will be Trump vs Bernie, who knows, two old, white guys squaring off.

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Your points would be correct if the assumptions are, but I disagree there (tbf - I think you were speaking extremely hypothetically, my apologies if I misunderstand you).


Ideology has got to be the most overstated and (almost) unimportant thing in politics. I'm not saying it's not important, but I'm saying it is treated by the chatterboxes in both parties as if it's the be all/end all.

The problem with the centrists is in the primaries - because it's the radical activists who tend to vote there (Roy Moore winning the GOP Senate nod in Alabama is an extreme but accurate example of the application locally). But the other problem - one the Democrats might possibly experience in 2020 - is when you have 2 or 3 candidates that divide the largest bloc among themselves and allow someone else to sneak in. That's how Dukakis won it in 1988. He was a bit of a technocrat as a candidate, didn't have the rhetorical flair of Jesse Jackson, and he didn't understand the first thing about Washington DC. But when Gore and Gephardt split the white center/left vote and Jackson got the black vote, Dukakis got nominated.

And painting Dukakis as a left-wing nutbag wasn't all that difficult.

Carter won the same way, but Carter was a pretty good candidate who benefited from Watergate and his emphasis on integrity in government. Eight liberals split the vote, Carter won the moderates and the conservatives who wanted nothing to do with George Wallace (within the primary system). And, of course, Trump won the same way.

Let's not rush it. They still have time. In September 1990, Bill Clinton's name would have only been known by political junkies - and even then, he was the guy who gave that long-winded nomination speech in 1988. More folks had heard of Obama in September 2006 (thanks to the Net), but he still was an unknown and the race was going to be Hillary vs Rudi.


There's an admitted problem in facing Trump on stage. You can't devolve as Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush did into the mud fight, but you have to give off the vibe of "standing up" to Trump as well - because the voters watching might say they deplore negative campaigns, but they also think that if a candidate won't stand up to another candidate, he won't stand up to (say) Russia, either.

And yes, I'm well aware of the irony of what I just said, which is why I said it.

MattinBama said:

It says a lot about how sick/sad/other adjective our country has become that the storyline being talked about here isn't that the Democrats could nominate a sack of rotten potatoes and have it beat Trump 538-0.

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the new boogey man will be presented so that we again have a large chunk of the population saying "gosh trump/repubs sure are awful, if only the democrats wouldn't/would've done x i wouldn't have to vote for them"

like the past 30 years. wash, rinse, repeat.

I would love to see Biden run. For the theatrics in the debates alone.

He is a centrist, so the disaffected Republicans and independents would gravitate toward someone who a) wasn't Bernie Sanders(free stuff) b) wasn't a nutcase xenophobe with the maturity of a 2nd-grader.

Its On A Slab said:

I would love to see Biden run. For the theatrics in the debates alone.

He is a centrist, so the disaffected Republicans and independents would gravitate toward someone who a) wasn't Bernie Sanders(free stuff) b) wasn't a nutcase xenophobe with the maturity of a 2nd-grader.

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biden would be entertaining, but i think he would have about as much success as he did on his last two attempts.