"Negative Partisanship Predicts the 2020 Presidential Election"

[Garrett78]

An excellent and fairly hopeful piece by Rachel Bitecofer, written before the Ukraine story broke: https://cnu.edu/wasoncenter/2019/07/01-2020-election-forecast/

By and large, I don’t expect that the specific nominee the Democratic electorate chooses will matter all that much unless it ends up being a disruptor like Bernie Sanders.

Indeed, the only massive restructuring I might have to make to this forecast involves a significant upheaval like the entrance of a well-funded Independent candidate such as Howard Schultz into the general election....Other potential significant disruptions might be a ground war with Iran, an economic recession, or a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11. Otherwise, the country's hyperpartisan and polarized environment has largely set the conditions of the 2020 election in stone....on Election Day Donald Trump will earn the vote of somewhere around 90% of self-identified Republicans. And as 2018 demonstrated, Republicans will increase their turnout rate over 2016. This, combined with a floor for Trump among Independents of around 38% (because of right-leaning Independents) and an infusion of cash that will dwarf his 2016 efforts, Trump has a floor that is at least theoretically competitive for reelection and will force Democrats to compete hard to win the presidency. The polarized era doesn’t produce Reagan Era Electoral College landslide maps.

I agree with the above excerpt. My biggest concern is that because desperate people take desperate action, we are likely to see more voter suppression efforts (e.g., the closure of polling sites in urban areas) than ever before...and even more collusion with foreign powers than we saw in 2016. I'm convinced that the reason Trump is increasingly brazen in his corruption is to normalize it -- or make the public numb to it -- as we head into next year's election. And, as Rachel Bitecofer suggested, the days of a candidate walking away with 400+ electoral votes are long gone. 2008 was a landslide by today's standards, which means we can't get too comfortable.

On the other hand, we won't be nominating a polarizing figure who has been the target of vicious attacks for a quarter of a century. And Trump is no longer new or as much of an unknown quantity, so there will be fewer casual "I'll give him a shot/he won't win anyway/both candidates suck" voters. Someone with a "strongly approve" number in the high 20s and a "strongly disapprove" number that's almost twice as high shouldn't have much of a chance at re-election, even with the electoral college in place and even with a fairly steady economy. It's also worth remembering that we had won Pennsylvania and Michigan for 6 straight elections and Wisconsin for 7 straight. We can definitely win back those states. Florida, North Carolina, Arizona and even Georgia are also in play. It's hard to imagine us losing any of the states that Clinton won.

Again, though, we're dealing with the Republican Mafia. We can't be complacent.

First, and probably most important, is the profound misunderstanding by, well, almost everyone, as to how he won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in the first place. Ask anyone, and they will describe Trump’s 2016 Midwestern triumph as a product of white, working class voters swinging away from the Democrats based on the appeal of Trump’s economic populist messaging.

I wouldn't say "almost everyone," as myself and many others have been railing against that bogus narrative for nearly 3 years. But it's true, sadly, that far, far too many people (in the media and all across the political spectrum) have been (and still are) pushing the demonstrably false "economic anxiety/Clinton focused too much on identity politics" narrative. Even after all of the articles that make clear how false that story is, such as this one and this one.

And it wasn't Obama-Trump voters that were Clinton's downfall either (regarding Obama-Trump voters, everyone should read what Jamelle Bouie wrote). The unfortunate reality is that hundreds of thousands of Obama voters, across key states, simply didn't vote in 2016. Again, Hillary Hate was undoubtedly a major factor.

Next, many people continue to misunderstand who so-called "independents" are. Very few are actually swing voters. The vast majority are highly partisan (most only require the slightest nudge in order to vote for a particular candidate). In fact, studies have shown that the average "independent" of today is more strongly aligned with a particular party than the average party-affiliated voter was in the 1970s. The other thing to understand about independents is that they are less reliable voters, less engaged.

The failure to understand that truth about independents and a misunderstanding of what actually happened in 2016 has led some to this notion that only a specific type of candidate (older, white, male, moderate) can defeat Trump. Also, people get seduced by the hypothetical matchup polls, but they're historically inaccurate at this stage in the game--just ask President Dukakis. We shouldn't be relying on those as any sort of a barometer in terms of picking our nominee.

The bottom line is that our focus must be on boosting turnout of POC, youth and white suburban women. And not on appealing to a limited subset of supposed swing voters who are widely dispersed across all 50 states, at the risk of not firing up the base. Get out the base, get out the base, get out the base. And be prepared to fight voter suppression efforts. That's what will win us the election. If we get turnout even close to 2008 levels, it'll take epic corruption to prevent our nominee from topping 270 electoral votes. But let's not pretend that the GOP is above epic corruption.

[OnDoutside]

1. This. "But let's not pretend that the GOP is above epic corruption."

[smirkymonkey]

2. He cannot win in 2020.

He just can't. We can't take it. We are over if he wins.

[Garrett78]

5. If he's still in office after 1/20/21, this will officially be a shithole country.

[DFW]

3. Republicans know they can't win fairly held elections

They run mostly unappealing candidates. Since 1960, they have run exactly three appealing candidates: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush. Ford lost because of Nixon. Reagan won because he knew how to work a TV camera and dealing with Iran during the hostage crisis. Bush won because he was riding Reagan's coattails and lost because Clinton was appealing, too, younger, and didn't carry the baggage of Reagan's economy.

Nixon, Bush, Jr., McCain, Willard and Trump were not appealing candidates. Nixon actually did win in 1972, but would have lost in 1968 without Vietnam and his famous Dirty Tricks Team (Roger Ailes was a junior member). Bush, Jr. and Trump needed to cheat to get in, and Obama was so popular (and, in 2008 Bush II was so NOT popular) that the Republicans couldn't overcome that. They knew by 2005 that they had fucked up badly enough to be sure to lose in 2008. Thus, early after the 2004 election, Citizens United was already in the works with the selections of Roberts and Alito for the Supreme Court in 2005 and 2006. I'm pretty sure they didn't get their nominations until Rove and Cheney were sure they'd vote for any law like Citizens United. They didn't yet know who the nominees would be in 2008, but I strongly suspect the movers and shakers finally let McCain have the nomination because he had no chance anyway.

There seem to be quite a few pundits who think the same principle rules for Democrats as rules for Republicans: nominate an extremist and the rest of the party will fall in line. I disagree. Democrats seem to be far more inclined to think for themselves. Republicans may let Fox Noise do their thinking for them, but we are not ruled by MSNBC or any of the podcasts out there. We have an uphill battle precisely BECAUSE we do not vote in robotic droves. That may speak well for our collective intellect, but it gives Republicans a huge advantage. If we nominate someone further left than the mainstream, that candidate will have do triple the work to convince--not only to overcome doubt within our own ranks, but to counter the billion dollar onslaught of false propaganda that will inevitably ensue from dark Republican money plus outside interference. The cyber war staff at Savishkina Street 55 and the three GRU directorates involved will not all be out eating bublichki and drinking vodka during the coming campaign. Ergo, not just epic corruption, but epic collaboration, too.

Cheney knew he needed ESS, Diebold and Kenneth Blackwell to get a second term, and they came through in spades. Don't think today's Republicans have forgotten that lesson.

[Garrett78]

4. The '71 Powell Memo was a blueprint of sorts for Citizens United and corporatocracy more broadly.

And, in terms of political power, they started seeing the writing on the wall (with social progression, increased secularism, changing demographics, etc.), so their tactics have become increasingly extreme. Intense voter suppression and gerrymandering, possibly hacking machines and switching votes, full-throated attacks on science and public education, persistent attacks on the "liberal media" to help shift the Overton Window, stealing a Supreme Court seat and packing the judiciary with right wing ideologues, aligning with dictators who share the goal of undermining democracy for personal enrichment, replacing the dog whistle with a bullhorn, and so on.

In spite of changing demographics and whatnot, they can take comfort in a tyranny of the minority system which, paradoxically, makes major structural reform nearly impossible to bring about for the very reasons why such reform is so desperately needed.