Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, all the right-wingers, neoconservatives, and Republicans who created the fertile soil for a low-life like Trump to become their party’s standard bearer but later abandoned him to advance their own agendas, are now trying to put the brakes on any progressive measures that Biden might take by bad-mouthing progressives. Republican John Kasich, who ran for the Republican nomination is 2016, is one of the first out of the gate, baselessly claiming that the far-left almost cost Biden the election when they actually helped him win in Arizona and almost in Georgia.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was having none of this rubbish and immediately shot back.
Anyone saying this after immigrant organizers delivered AZ, Black grassroots flipped Georgia, MI going blue w reality-bending 94% Detroit margin + @RashidaTlaib running up the margins in her district & Trump publicly challenging @IlhanMN in MN and losing isn’t a serious person. https://t.co/2FtJzqGki8
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 7, 2020
The neoliberals comfortably ensconced with within the Democratic party establishment are also trying to use their reduced number of seats in the House and their failure to get a Senate majority, in opposition to what the polls predicted, to blame progressives. But there is a plausible alternative explanation for that, in that Trump is a black swan who has the unique ability to bring out his cult-like following in droves and they are the ones who also voted for Republican down-ballot candidates. When he is not on the ballot, as in 2018, results were closely aligned with expectations.
But it has been pointed out that every single swing-state Democrat who backed Medicare for All won on Tuesday.
Support progressive policies like Medicare for All and win elections.
Campaign against progressive policies like Medicare for All and lose elections. pic.twitter.com/DZ7mUeE6Po
— Ryan Knight 🌹 (@ProudSocialist) November 7, 2020
this from @AOC is spot on, and no one who seriously cares about the future of the democratic party should disagree with it. https://t.co/l0mgZ5MqsH pic.twitter.com/IHNL0YQ5oE
— mike casca (@cascamike) November 8, 2020
But not all the news was good for progressives. Kara Eastman ran on a Medicare for All, Green New Deal platform in a Congressional district in deep red Nebraska but lost by five points while Biden won her district by seven. The reasons for that need to be examined. Progressives put a lot of effort into registering and firing up voters in swing-states, particularly targeting minority and poor voters. I do not know to what extent they did this in deeply conservative states like Nebraska. It is to Biden’s credit that he put in some effort in Eastman’s district and won it, unlike in 2016 when all five electoral votes went to Trump
Incidentally Nebraska and Maine are the only two states where the winner does not get all the electoral college votes. The winner of each congressional district gets one vote while the remaining two goes to whoever gets the overall majority statewide. So in Nebraska, Trump won 4-1 while in Maine, Biden won 3-1.
Unfortunately, I fear Biden had negative coattails. Because he campaigned on nothing but anti-Trump, Dem voters heard mostly that, so too many went to vote for Biden and voted for nobody else.
If Biden had campaigned on any actual issues, he would not have cut off good candidates such as Eastman.
Biden takes us back to the Obama era of losing 1000 state legislative seats.
That seems a bit harsh. Losing by five points in a “deep red” district wouldn’t really be a bad sign, at least relative to what your expectations ought to be. However, the 2nd district (Omaha and thereabouts) isn’t so deep red but is split more evenly, as we saw this election.
For another comparison, the results posted on wikipedia say Eastman got 62.1% in the Dem primary there. Biden got 76.8% (Sanders 14.1%, Warren 6.3%, Gabbard 2.8%), but of course that’s for the entire state including the other two congressional districts, which are more “deep red” than the 2nd district. Not too clear how to interpret that, although it is suggestive.
But really, when California of all places had 33.4% of people voting for Trump (4.8 million, much more than the entire population of Nebrask), you shouldn’t really think it’s such a totally different world in place where that number goes up a little more to give a majority (+16.6%), because even one out of every three people voting that way is quite a few people.
Biden got more Republicans supporting him by being more of a Republican himself — seems like by far the most obvious explanation to me. In a more Republican-leaning state, you shouldn’t be surprised when someone like that does a little better. That doesn’t mean he’ll win, of course (as in Texas, Ohio, Florida, possibly Georgia and North Carolina).
Indeed, the fact that any Dems are taking Kasich’s handwringing seriously is pretty good evidence of what I’m talking about. Why was that shithead even at our fucking convention? They really wouldn’t be taking advice from someone in the opposing political party at face value, if they were treating them like the political opponents they are. And yet, some of them do. Next, we’ll be listening intently to Steve Bannon’s malformed thoughts on how best to undermine everything we ought to stand for. After all, there’s an outside chance that it might give the establishment Dems more power to do next to nothing that we actually want, but if those votes are all we’re ever going to think about, well….. It seems to work for them (but of course not us), at least some of the time.
Another good one to look at is Susan Collins’ victory in Maine. With 99% reporting…..
Biden: 52.9%, 430,023 votes
Trump: 44.2%, 359,502 votes
Others: 2.9%, 23,792 votes
Total: 813,317
Collins: 51.1%, 414,970 votes
Gideon: 42.2%, 342,698 votes
Others: 6.7%, 53,736 votes
Total: 811,404
The vote totals are very close, and there almost certainly weren’t too many who didn’t cast a vote for either position. (You can assume there were some, but not that many.) So there were maybe around 87,000 who voted for both Joe Biden and Susan Collins. That’s more than 10% of the total number of voters.
Just to be clear, “who didn’t cast a vote for either position” means either casting a vote for one and not the other, or vice versa. If they didn’t vote for both, they’re obviously not recorded in those numbers.
The fact is, there are some anti-government types who like gridlock, and split their ballots on purpose to get it. Seems a bit crazy to me, but there’s evidence.
There is a lot to unpack here. And my guess is is that between discussions about the appropriateness of punching nazis and is atheism so 2008, a lot of time will be devoted to it. I do question, however the appropriateness of automatically equating POC with progressivism. Just because someone wants to be treated equally and not have their children sent to prison and/or shot does not mean they’re going to support the green new deal. Or for that matter, a woman’s right to choose.
followed by:
There was already a potential “correlation does not imply causation” problem with that first quote, but this second one not only seems to add a cherry-picking aspect, but judging districts by the state as a whole. That’s wrong. That district in Nebraska is, as consciousness razor has noted, not nearly as deep of red as the rest of the state. And so how many of these districts where M4A supporters won are more blue to the point where such a candidate can even win the primary than the state itself??? Similarly, how many that were not are in districts that are more red? I know, for example, that Collin Peterson is in PZ Myers’ district, which is redder than Minnesota as a whole.
And I also see Katie Porter is on that list. Last I checked, California isn’t even a swing state (I don’t know how that district stacks up), so that first quote is, well, I’ll be blunt, bogus. That tweet is likewise bogus. Seeing Katie Porter on that list all but confirms it’s a “correlation implies causation” error taking place. You should know better, Mano.
consciousness razor@2:
My understanding is that eastern California is a lot like eastern Oregon and eastern Washington: the part of the state away from the coast tends to lean a LOT more Republican, largely out of spite for the fact that the big cities on the coast tend to drive the state politics and go Democratic.
And that’s even before you get into the fact that parts of California are full of worried-well anti-vaxxers and other people heavy into conspiracy theories, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Trump pulled more Republican votes out of California than any other presidential election in living memory.
“Trump is a black swan”
Not really, he did largely the same as populists in Europe: present himself as an anti-establishment outsider.
“who has the unique ability”
The image Donald the Clown build is not unique at all.
The republicans are lashing out at anyone and anything that they think might reverse the election. Just look at Georgia where the two republican senators, who I really hope will lose their seats since Biden needs that senate if he wants to be able to govern, demand the firing of the secretary of state (a republican) because he is telling them and Trump to pipe down since there is no (widespread) election fraud going on in Georgia. Granted him doing so makes it harder for those two to play the “HALP, HALP, WE’RE BEING REPRESSED!! Need funds urgently to fight against the criminals trying to take my position” card. Which is a good thing IMNSHO.
Something similar is now also happening in Arizona, this time however it is the voting machines (oh my gawd they ain’t Diebold but from a corporation that has ties with the deomocrats) and that people from the republican party were not present during the certification process. Conviently forgetting that the people sent by the secretary of state were republicans. So they are basically acusing their own people for helping to sabotage Trump.
Well, other than the part that’s psychoanalyzing millions of people, which I disagree with, I know there are large rural (or even undeveloped/uninhabited) areas of California. That’s part of the point: you don’t have to go too far outside of your urban/suburban bubble to get at least some idea of what such places are like, if you’re really having trouble understanding them. It’s not going to be entirely like the Midwest or the South, but it’s something. I’ve been all over the country, and people are not so different no matter which state they happen to be in. The whole “blue state” and “red state” thing is not a total fabrication, but too often it is blown out of all proportion. Maybe it’s just that most never look very closely at election results and only ever have a basic idea who has won/lost in a state, which tells them almost nothing useful. That seems like it would be enough to explain it.
Anyway, Los Angeles county is the largest in CA with over 10 million, and according to NPR (using data from the AP), even it had 26.7% going to Trump. The next largest counties are San Diego (37.4%), Orange (44.4%), Riverside (44.1%), San Bernadino (43.5%), Santa Clara (24.9%), Alameda (17.1%), Sacramento (33.8%), and Contra Costa (25.2%), all with over 1 million. Then Fresno (45.4%) which is just under a million, then Kern which I’ll discuss shortly.
The smallest, Alpine county, only had a bit more with 32.6% for Trump, less than the state as a whole (now at 33.3%). You can of course see for yourself that quite a few other small counties had more like 55% to 70% for Trump, and I’m not suggesting otherwise. However, those are all pretty small and for that reason don’t actually contribute much to the overall results in the state.
In Kern county, around Bakersfield and the largest county where Trump got more than Biden (barely), the population is 883k. However, only 58% of the vote is currently known there so that may not be very accurate. The next largest is Tulare with 460k, then Placer with 380k (Trump got a plurality there but not a majority). Those are pretty big compared to a lot of other counties nationwide, but they still aren’t such a big portion of the state, so you couldn’t pin it all on them or on whatever you think those people are supposed to be like. Besides, the 47.7% who wanted Biden in Kern (for example) are nearly as many people as the 50.3% there who wanted Trump, so you can’t very well ignore that part of it either.