POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Montmorency]

https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/sta...48875397378048

Liberals want to evict an elderly, financially troubled Covid survivor and his family from inner-city public housing

Maine and Nebraska are the only two states which do not award winner take all for the entire state.

Maine dedicates two points to overall winner of the state, and then gives each congressional district within Maine (there are two) a single point for the winner of that district.
Biden won the vote in District 2 and he won it by such a margin that he also won the overall state count. He lost the other district which went for Trump (it's more rural), so it was split 3 to 1.

And Biden exchanged it for one in Nebraska. I believe this is actually the first ever election in which the split-district system has produced a split in a state' electors.


Incidentally, I checked the Generic Ballot (overall balance of polling for the House elections) and the same pattern as above appears, namely that the results conform to the polling if you redistribute all the Undecideds to the Republicans, adjusting post-hoc for the small third party share of less than 2%. (With the caveat that as blue states like California and New York release their tallies next week, the Democratic vote share will increase.)

This wasn't quite what happened in 2016, since there were so many Undecideds (and third party voters) that many of them did come to Clinton - they just broke for Trump overall. As far as I'm seeing with 2020 polling, the Undecided-to-Trump/Republican vote is something like 90 to 100% of them (without third party), or maybe 50% Trump/Republican, 40% third party, very roughly. There shouldn't be a reflex to simply categorize Undecideds as de-facto Republicans going forward, since it's quite possible this phenomenon is an artifact of living under Trump. But I will struggle to resist looking at future polling through the lens of Undecided = Republican.

This should also underscore that, contrary to liberal fixations, third parties routinely siphon vastly more votes from Republicans than they do from Democrats. It's a justifiable outrage, but there's maybe 1 election in American history where a third party clearly harmed Democrats*: 2000 Naderism.

Libertarians definitely cost Trump Georgia and Arizona for example.

*Arguably also George Wallace in 1968, but that reflected an actual schism within the party and those white Southerners promptly switched to Republicans permanently under Nixon.

[Hooahguy]

After seeing all the celebrations today I only wish that John Lewis would have been able to see this. I'm not a particularly religious person but if there is a heaven then I'd like to think he is proud of us, especially his fellow Georgians.

Also shoutout to electing our first woman VP. Big day.

Edit: a beautiful video that aired on Irish tv.

[ReluctantSamurai]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

On Saturday morning, as Trump played golf and continued to baselessly accuse the Democrats of stealing the election for Joe Biden, he announced, in a Tweet since deleted, that there would be a “Big press conference” at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia.
That was quickly clarified, however. It was not the noted hotel, but Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a suburban business situated between a crematorium and an adult book store on the outskirts of the city.

[Crandar]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

[edyzmedieval]

A very good article from NYT outlining the path to the White House. Long read but excellent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/u...president.html

[spmetla]

I can only hope that Biden's long experience in politics together with such a close count in the Senate encourage some bi-partisan work together in DC. The zero sum politics of take control of the whatever branch and then either dictate terms or obstruct which has been the norm since Harry Reid has not been good for the country. This increased tribalism makes us weak internally and ineffective externally.

I can also only hope that Trump can step out of the lime light once he's out of office. If he's seriously considering start an election campaign for 2024 once he's out of office and we endure 4 more years of constant campaigning it'll be bad for the country. The two year election cycle is bad enough but perpetual campaigning is not sustainable if the government is to function.

[Hooahguy]

It will depend on what happens in Georgia in January. Hard to predict what will happen but I am defaulting to the GOP holding the Senate. Unknown what the relationship between Biden and McConnell will be but I cant imagine it will be too warm.

No idea what happens with Trump. He might try again in 2024 but I think it would also depend on what legal or health issues he is having. Maybe he makes good on his promise and flees the country lol. But the bigger issue we need to worry about is a more competent Trump coming into office. Someone like Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton, who sounds a lot like Trump sometimes but not as much of the buffoonery. My chief worry is that Trump was just the start, and that goal #1 of a Biden administration needs to be strengthening our institutions to prevent undemocratic abuse so we dont become an illiberal democracy like in Hungary or Turkey.

[Pannonian]

I can only hope that Biden's long experience in politics together with such a close count in the Senate encourage some bi-partisan work together in DC. The zero sum politics of take control of the whatever branch and then either dictate terms or obstruct which has been the norm since Harry Reid has not been good for the country. This increased tribalism makes us weak internally and ineffective externally.

I can also only hope that Trump can step out of the lime light once he's out of office. If he's seriously considering start an election campaign for 2024 once he's out of office and we endure 4 more years of constant campaigning it'll be bad for the country. The two year election cycle is bad enough but perpetual campaigning is not sustainable if the government is to function.

The problem, also seen on this side of the water, is when one side sees that electoral advantage is the be all and end all, and this attitude is backed by the electorate. When that happens, as has been the case from the right for the past few years, there is a firm core that will never be convinced by evidence or reality, and all that remains is to add enough to that to get electoral victory. And when in power, stack up the institutional advantages so that the other side is fundamentally handicapped in any presumption of a fair contest.

There needs to either be a drastic cutting back of the right to show that this does not work, or else a prolonged exile of the right from power to restore normality. Anything short of that, and the scenario raised in the Guardian will come about; the strategy of the alt right combined with a less incompetent individual than Trump. A classical tyranny, in other words (see the ancient Greek tyrants like Pesistratus and Dionysius).

[drone]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-garden-centre

I heard about this Saturday, and the question of "How does this even happen?" has been swirling in my head all day long. Yes, Rudy is obviously off the rails, yes the campaign has been run fairly incompetently so far, but there hasn't been any kind of official explanation/blame shift for this embarrassment. But it finally hit me tonight: after this election is put to bed and all the campaign paperwork filed, there will be a line item in the Trump campaign expense report that says something like "Four Seasons - press conference room rental: $10000". The campaign org is broke, and he is still soliciting donations for the legal fight (60% of which are going towards campaign debt payoff). This is either a way to hide money already grifted from the campaign coffers, or a fresh grab. Whoever gets to audit the books is going to have a maze of these shenanigans to cut through. I hope all the lawyers working to "stop the steal" got paid in advance...

[Montmorency]

As a purely technical matter, I imagine every state issues non-driver's ID (I have one myself), which they should also accept as a valid ID for voting registration.

Also, no one who doesn't have a residence or other connection to Georgia should actually move there to vote in one election. It's a high-cost measure that could bring legal scrutiny.

[Hooahguy]

Yeah I sent an email over to Fair Fight to see what I can do, but my resources are probably better phone and text banking.

Trump's defeat hasnt fully sunk in yet, and probably wont for a while. Its been an extremely long four years and while the end of this chapter is in sight I know that we have a ton of new battles to fight. I kind of envy those who do not bother themselves with politics as this is exhausting at times. I feel like Trump has broken something in American politics and it will be a generation before it is fixed, if even possible.

(someone remind me why I picked this as a career? )

[ReluctantSamurai]

From the NPR link above (referring to 68 of the top 100 counties hardest hit by the pandemic voting predominantly for Trump):

[...] "it's not the case that people are totally unresponsive to death and bad things happening in their area." But "if you are someone who already trusts the president and you trust him to handle the crisis, then you are both not as concerned as Democrats are and you're more willing to trust that he is the person who can keep you safe and keep the country safe from COVID," she says.

Keep the country safe from COVID? I'm starting to lean more towards ACIN's evaluation that people are just fucking stupid and are easily swayed by media. It so reminds me of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule [People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true.]

Given the results in the House and Senate, it is not surprising Dems did poorly in the state legislative races.

This is an area that the Democratic Party needs to start paying more attention to...politics at the grass-roots level. If we want to see such things as voter suppression, gerry-mandering, and the like put into recession, then the party needs to oust as much Republican control at the state level as is possible. Otherwise we will continue to see things like court-packing (I referenced this earlier---the GOP has mounted 20 efforts in the last 10 years to pack state supreme courts, and succeeded twice in Arizona and Georgia), or the ability to control the narrative (as in Texas where Gov. Abbot limited polling places to one per county in an obvious attempt to suppress Democratic voting areas like Houston's Harris County).

Also I kinda resent the pundits who are saying that we now need to play nice with Trumpists. Like yeah we shouldn't needlessly antagonize them but for four years they were all "cry more libtards" and now we are supposed to pretend none of that has happened?

Something former NJ governor Chris Christie and a guest GOP senator (can't remember exactly who) on ABC's Roundtable Discussion said when posed the question of how to reach a more bi-partisan agreement on policy issues, was all about the Dems need to do this and the Dems need to that. Screw THAT kind of elitist talk, folks. Bi-partisan talks go both ways. This is why I have little hope that Biden/Harris will get anything meaningful done that requires Congressional approval unless both senatorial seats in Georgia are taken by the Dems. The Grim Reaper isn't going to budge an inch on anything that doesn't benefit the GOP.

So Trump is going to try to drag this out as long as possible

They know they're screwed. Even if they manage to get a few ballots here and there thrown out, it won't be enough to change the outcome. Many on the White House staff know this and are already applying for other jobs:

https://www.axios.com/trump-defeat-i...8e38b74c9.html