MJohnston wrote: » I wish Arizona would hurry up and count their ****ing votes - the sooner there’s an insurmountable Electoral College gap between the two candidates the better.
BluePlanet wrote: » He is squeaking by against an unpopular President in the middle of a pandemic that Trump has failed to manage. How much of a tailwind does Biden really need? If Biden was popular, can you explain why Dems are loosing down ballot races?
StringerBell wrote: » Well, assuming you mean losing and not loosing, one likely reason would be that the polls showed such an overwhelming victory assured for Biden (and in fairness it had been a decisive victory though it appears tighter due to the counting process) that moderate Republicans or Independent voters who would have been happy to see a Biden Presidency but wary of what it may bring if the more liberal elements of the party are putting pressure on and they had total control of Congress to enact certain changes that the moderate Republicans/Independents wouldn't have been thrilled about wanted a check on that power and voted for Biden at the top of the ballot but hedged their bets down ballot.
Retr0gamer wrote: » And there's a good example of the GOP slander working on you. Only someone listening to their slander would call a moderate like AOC an extremist. An extremist is a neo-nazi, communism, white supremacist, the fecking taliban. Even calling her a 'left of center extremist' is a total oxymoron. Left of center is moderate. Always has been.
Carfacemandog wrote: » Some examples of what we were seeing in MSNBC for much of the earlier part of the year.
rossie1977 wrote: » Well let's see last decade or so.. * Student loan affordability act. Every single Republican voted against it, every Democrat voted for it * Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Funding, all but one Republican voted against it, all Democrats for. * Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2013, all but one Republican against, all Democrats for. * Paycheck fairness act, all Republicans against, all but one Democrat for. * End the bureau of consumer financial protection, all but one Republican for, all but one Democrat against. * American Jobs Act of 2011 - $50 billion for infrastructure projects, all 48 Republicans against. 50 Dems for, 2 against * Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension act. All but one Republican against, All but one Dem for * Reduces Funding for Food Stamps. All Dems against. 13 Republicans against, 33 for. * Minimum Wage Fairness Act, all but one Republican against. All but one Dem for I will admit the media and Republicans have done a great job convincing the public the Democratic party no longer care about normal people (it's basically been their strategy for nigh on 40 years now) but even a little research shows the opposite is clearly true.
Gbear wrote: » I'm not sure this has as much value as a statistic as people keep pointing out. For one, the population keeps increasing. One would expect that turnout will increase over time.
BluePlanet wrote: » Which is largely what i posted from the article earlierhttps://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=115265177&postcount=5902 Republicans basically put Biden in the Presidents seat. The Democratic Party have failed in 2020 (again). And they will fail again at midterms if they don't start adopting Progressive policies. FL voted for a $15 minimum wage, that is a progressive policy. Marijuana ballot initiatives win every time they are put to vote, another progressive policy. How could these not be included in Dem platform? Medicare for All is popular https://pbs.twimg.com/media/El7sbBXWkAg_gG1?format=jpg&name=small
TomOnBoard wrote: » Democrats really need to work on the fact that, despite having larger numbers of registered voters than Republicans in Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan, they control none of those legislatures. A massive voter drive, and associated voting education , such as was led by Stacy Abrams in Georgia, has to be a huge priority now. Re-districting and gerrymandering that have been the hallmarks of the last decade have got to be managed and voter suppression and disenfranchisement battled at every turn. In addition, HONEST internal examination of why Dems did not convert a Biden win into Senate and House improvements is needed. Blaming one wing of the party or the other will just alienate and frustrate. Was a considerable amount of Biden's vote attributable to Reps who could no longer hold their nose(s) and vote for Trump? Failure to understand why those of Cuban and Venezuelan heritage voted for Trump, along with many of Mexican heritage in more rural areas of Texas will hold them back next time as well, and many other times thereafter. The GOP messaging that frightened folks in those areas away from Democratic policies needs attention. Clear education as to what elements of Democratic Socialism and other hot-button issues are supported by the Party needs to be simply explained. Their messaging has been all over the place on these, which allowed the GOP spin doctors to spin the confusion against Dems, as spin doctors are paid to do.
Quin_Dub wrote: » It's a little more nuanced than that though. Yes , the progressive candidates did do well , but there is no question that the existence of those progressive candidates damaged the more moderate candidates in Red States. Granted, it was driven largely by an irrational "red under the bed" style fear , but the impact was real. They need to do a better job of breaking down that fear among Moderate/Slightly right voters that they are not going to ban religion etc. etc. etc. Yes , obviously and objectively they are not , but the GOP have done frankly a brilliant job of smearing the entire Democratic party with this "Radical left" brush.
Carfacemandog wrote: » To be fair, your initial post seemed to be willing to place blame on the progressive wing in the assumption they didn't do well in their races. It's a little inconsistent to move from that to "everyone's fault" when pointed out that these candidates did quite excellently and the more moderate/corporate wing were quite a flop. I would also place most of the 'not working as one party' blame on the moderate/corporate wing, as many of them are very quick to jump on side closer to Republicans if the alternative is anything that might be damaging to their donors and the likes. MSNBC put this on full display back in February I believe it was when Sanders was leading in the primaries, literally likening him and his supporters directly to nazis on repeated occasions, which was in especially bad taste considering how many direct family members Sanders lost to the holocaust. There were even open murmurings about wanting truno to win over sanders if it came to it, for fear of people being beheaded in the streets by the regime under a Sanders presidency. Around the same time, that eejit Hillary Clinton also decided to wade in and partake in attacks in Sanders along the same lines. That is toxic to an outright extreme and its very difficult for progressives to fully trust in people who push this type of stuff against you, yet the 'moderate' (kind of hard to use that term given what is outlined above) side of the democrat party and media who lean in that direction were more than happy to do so and potentially cause an irreperable schism in the Democrats if that is what it took. Had the progressive wing of the party had this kind of influence and exerted in such a way, we would rightly not hear the end of it for a very long time. In terms of the election itself, it does seem that Biden was the stronger candidate as he basically maxed out his performance in most cities due to hatred of Trump, but also clawed back nicely in deep red areas where he still lost by a wide margin, but those 65/35 losses instead of being 80/20 likely played a huge role in key states like Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. So that worked out as removing Trump was the biggest issue. But on top of only helping to push the Overton window even further to the right (for the umpteenth time since the 1980s), the moderate/corporate end of the party have an awful, awful lot to answer for in terms of their behaviour over the last 10-12 months and did an awful lot to help fire up the baseless "progressives are communists who want to enslave us all!" narrative pushed by Republicans in this election.
Quin_Dub wrote: » Absolutely a topic for another thread , but there is no coincidence that the countries with the most polarisation and the more right-wing governments are those with a FPTP electoral system. You don't need to win a majority , you just need a plurality or you just suppress the vote such that a small % of the actual populace are enough to sneak you over the line. FPTP is fundamentally detrimental to actual participative Democracy.
BluePlanet wrote: » Why vote for Republican Lite when there's a real Republican on the ticket?
It's basically pitching to the same group of voters.
If the Dems want to flip seats, they have to grow the vote. Progressive policies do that.
Gintonious wrote: » https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1326926226888544256 The all caps is out in force. I think we can expect more of this for the last months of his term.
briany wrote: » Yeah, one of the aggravating trends that's been happening in western politics is right-wingers coming in and insisting that they are centrists and then pointing at centrists as being left-wing, and people to the left of that as being the extreme left. It's a transparent attempt by a very frightened political right to drag the Overton window back toward themselves. They're not arguing why their ideas are better. They're just trying to scare people away from those to the left of them, which is virtually everyone.
jem wrote: » while the "left" in USA is in general nowhere near the left in countries like Ireland etc the reality is that the vast majority of people dont agree with them. That makes them unelectable in the majority of places. Take here for example pbf get elected in specific areas of the country but there is no way that they would even get their deposit in the vast majorioty of constituencies in Ireland. Likewise the "squad" may get elected in the poorer areas of the cities in USA but not a hope in the majority of states. This is the same BYTW with the far right. Look at labour in Uk under T Blair they were centre left and they won 3 elections. moved further left and their seats went straight down. Most people want people of the centre- slightly centre left or slightly centre right and thats where the votes are. The strange thing is that if you dont get the votes you dont get elected and if you dont get elected you get none of your policies through.
jam_mac_jam wrote: » I completely agree with you, they are much better for normal people then the republicans but that's not what they are focusing on. I cannot understand why anyone who is not a millionaire would vote republican. That's not what they are campaigning on. They should be focusing on medicare for all, debit forgiveness, fair rights for workers. For medical care know Obama did try to address and Hillary years ago. But they need to stop being scared they are going to be called communists as the republicans will do that anyway. They are going further towards republican light. Biden said in the campaign that affordable health care was a right for all, not healthcare.
