Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name:
If the benefits run out under Trump while COVID continues to spike, a 60 Dem Senate becomes possible.
I hope it's not 60 seats. That would mean winning every seat currently defended by Republicans, and defending every seat ourselves - a legendary achievement to be sure, but it would incentivize the Dem caucus to pursue a bare-minimum agenda within the parameters set by the filibuster. Like what happened 2009-10.
I want them to get 59. There needs to be a break-glass epiphany for more liberals, and being a single vote from overcoming an arbitrary procedural barrier to urgent relief for a cratering society is more conducive to that. A 59-Dem Senate is more prepared in my estimation to pass a transformative, as opposed to briefly
stabilizing, agenda - commensurate with the size of the House majority - than a 60-Dem Senate, because of the distortions associated with the threshold effect.
Thankfully, even Joe Manchin has gone on record saying he won't allow Biden's agenda to be stonewalled.
Re: education from the other thread, I won't search for cites to support but I recall determining that a majority of the population born since ~1960 has at least
some tertiary education. We shouldn't create a dichotomy, there's going to be some spectral shift between a high school and a 4-year degree. How many tens of millions of dropouts and associate's degree holders (whom I only lump together as an intermediate category to the above, not in a normative way)?
Originally Posted by Pannonian:
Lucky you. Over here, we've got Brexit to come, the no deal version rubbished as a possibility by the Brexiteers here when i raised it. And any coming hardship will be blamed on factors others than the Tory government. There will be some palming off on Covid, but it will mostly be blamed on the EU. How does it look for Trump and any potential efforts in blame shifting?
Mostly they've been trying (not exhaustive):
1. It doesn't exist/it's a political hoax
2. It's not that bad
3. It'll go away on it's own
4. The Democrats have sabotaged Trump
5. It's been successfully managed by our heroic god-king
6. Socialisms!
7. Riots!
Given that Trump's polling declines among white senior citizens have been higher than those among voters of color, this genuinely inept and navel-gazing raving is having a self-destructing (as well as other-destructive) effect.