Reasons I Feel Better This Time Around

[Willto]

I have watched shows and read threads here talking about how well things looked in 2016 and yet how it all went to crap. The intended lesson being that we shouldn't put too much stock in the poll numbers we are seeing now. Well I am always cautious with my optimism but allow me to lay out my reasons I feel better this time.

1). Despite the leads Hillary had in the polls in 2016 she almost never hit 50% in any of them. Biden is consistently hitting 50% and higher in state and national polls.

2.) The Republicans had smeared Hillary with almost 30 years of unrelenting propaganda. Sadly propaganda works and they successfully implanted a negative opinion of her in a great many peoples minds. Biden does not suffer from such high negative opinion numbers.

3.) The Democratic primary of 2016 was long and bitter. It ran right up to the convention and left the party pretty divided. A lot of people did not have sufficient time to get over their disappointment. This time it ended much sooner. More time for people to shake it off and get back on board the big bus.

4.) Russia definitely interfered last time but I think peoples eyes are a little more open to their tricks and tactics this time.

5.) The misogynistic factor isn't in play. As much as it disappoints me to say it I firmly believe that a lot of men out there just would not vote for a woman at the top of the ticket. Not the kind of thing they would admit to a pollster but when they were alone in the voting booth it was another matter.

6.) The reports seem to indicate that there will be no bullshit investigation news or indictment of Biden here in the remaining weeks prior to the election like the bullshit Comey pulled on Hillary with the e-mail crap.

7.) And finally I just don't think a lot of people took Trump seriously back in 2016. I think they saw him as a joke with no chance to win. So many of them did not turn out to vote. Well hopefully the last 4 years have educated them to the fact that he may be a joke in many respects but he's a damn lethal nightmare of a joke. And his threat to win again has to be taken seriously.

These are my thoughts. What say you?

[Wounded Bear]

1. All pretty good points...

[Yavin4]

2. Add the midterms of 2018 to your list.

When Dems are highly motivated to vote, we win.

[Lotusflower70]

3. Good points

Now people know what a despicable POS Trump is, a lot of us already knew and tried to warn. But now people see the destruction that Trump leaves. People are pissed and tired of his nonsense.

[Blue_true]

14. One thought that constantly comes to my mind is that the majority of Americans want

a sense of stability and don’t see re-electing Trump as a way to get there. Trump has his core voters, but they have never been enough to elects president, Trump got voters in 2016 who overlooked clear warning signs because they were sold on the false image from The Apprentice that Trump was a hyper successful business person who got things done.

[DLCWIdem]

18. I agree

I don't know how many interviews I saw where people were disgusted with the state of affairs in Washington. They were being negative about politicians, in general, and thought that anybody could do a better job. With this crisis they are realizing that public policy is serious. You saw it in 2012 right after that hurricane. Suddenly people realized that government actually helps especially in a time of crisis.

[Blue_true]

22. Anyone with half a brain should agree that the notion of a federal government that is so

small that it can be drowned in a bathtub is pure idiocy. Not a single state has the resources to take care of a major problem, not even the wealthy blue states. The country needs a strong, well managed federal government in existence.

[Ponietz]

4. Good points--have you seen the 'mail in the ditch' stories?

There are 600,000 postal workers.

[redstateblues]

5. 👍

[MoonlitKnight]

6. Nailed it

Add on the massive swing in older voters and white women, as long as we show up by voting we will win.

[Ohiogal]

7. Unfortunately

I think there was a lot of #5 going on...

All your points are valid though.

[GulfCoast66]

8. All that is true. For me it is more personal.

I don’t have a lot of close friends. The wife and I share all hobbies and we are best friends. Don’t get me wrong, the friends I have I hold tight for decades.

But I’m an extrovert at work. We don’t generally talk politics at work and I never bring it up.


But I know know 5 republican trump voters and one who wrote in Kaisch who are voting for Biden. Granted, they are college educated and higher earning, but if I know 5 in my limited circle there are many, many more. Just found about the 5th today.

I know anecdotal means generally nothing. But it does to me.

[soothsayer]

9. I still worry about ballots being invalidated or delayed

Or whatever other shenanigans they can pull

[Blue_true]

16. That is why we need to be smart about voting.

If we trust our county election officials and they have earned that trust, then vote by mail if the mail is moving fast, otherwise mask up and vote in person, early if possible.

[soothsayer]

17. Yes yes, early in person

[Happyhippychick]

10. I feel way better. There was so much Dem infighting last time, not at all now.

[Willto]

11. Also

With all those factors in play against Hillary the margin of Trumps victory was razor thin in a few key states. Without these factors in play all we need is the smallest of gains in those states to win.

[delisen]

12. No analysis omitting Russia & foreign actors is accurate

H Clinton was and still is an enormous threat to all anti-democratic and virulently anti- female regimes.

No male Democratic candidate in our era could
ever be ever be feared and hated in the same way by these adversaries.

[brush]

13. THE COMEY LETTER at the last minute tripped the switch.

That won't happen this time. Barr already signaled that the Durham investigation is this year's version of that letter.

[DLCWIdem]

15. Here is more

Last edited Sat Oct 10, 2020, 04:05 PM - Edit history (1)

1. Polls were a little off because the pollsters didn't account for white with/without a college degree. They have corrected that.

2. Despite what people tell you, she was never ahead like Biden. As you pointed out he is over 50% and there are some polls that even have Biden up 12, 16 even 20 points. Even Rasmussen has him up. Not in 2016. Polls also show who is going for Biden. In 2016 tRUMP had older white voters. The margins of these groups show Biden going up.

3. Undecided. There are few left in 2020 but not in 2016 and 3rd party votes are tilting to Biden.

4. There is just more energy out there for Biden. IMO that will bring more people to the polls. As you said there is less negativity about Biden then HC. Remember that data base we heard about which they used to dampen AA participation. People are on to them this time and they are angry. And even the far left Bernie progressives are being positive about Biden. Its that 30 year propaganda that you were talking about.

5. The Lincoln Project and various Republican groups that are working against Trump. They are also speaking to people in the middle and convincing others. We needed to broaden our coalition.

7. Final point. Their panic.

[DLCWIdem]

19. Oops I forgot one

Early turnout.

[uponit7771]

26. +1

[ChoppinBroccoli]

20. Believe It Or Not, I Actually GET The Appeal Of 2016 Trump

Last edited Fri Oct 9, 2020, 10:45 PM - Edit history (1)

I really do. The whole, "he's an outsider who's going to roll into Washington and shake things up, and do things a different way, and it's going to be so refreshing and new," thing can be very appealing. It was to me. I didn't vote for Trump (I saw through his line of bullshit early on), but it's a major reason why I supported Bernie in 2016. Don't worry, I wasn't a "Bernie Bro" who got my feelings hurt and then voted for Trump out of spite.

All I'm saying is the appeal of somebody who promises to come in and do things a different way is a real thing. I honestly get it. The thing is, the entire country has seen for 4 years that he's NOT that guy. So he's going to lose all those people who voted for him because they were hoping he'd "drain the swamp." So all those, "let's give this NEW guy a shot and see what he can do" voters are gone this time around.

That's a major reason why I believe 2020 is going to be vastly different from 2016. That, and the fact that there is a huge segment of the population who just didn't vote in 2016 because they "didn't like either of them," who are all super-motivated to get out and vote for Biden this time around. I have at least 3 of these people in my own family, and I'm willing to bet every person on this board knows at least one person like that. That's a huge swing of voters right there. And we're talking about a guy who lost by 3 million votes LAST time, with all those advantages he had in 2016.

I think he gets his clock cleaned. In a way that leaves NO doubt, and NO room for legal challenges. I bet he loses the popular vote by 10 million votes this time around. And in my very conservative estimate of the Electoral vote (based on my almost obsessive poll-watching State-by-State), I have Biden with 353 electoral votes.

[uponit7771]

27. +1

[LisaL]

21. Add to that Biden is a pretty likable guy.

NT

[spanone]

23. James Comey is no longer in government.

[regnaD kciN]

24. Two more reasons...

...(although the first may piss off some here):

8.) Joe is not a Clinton. Seriously, most of the people on the left that I know of who were really unhappy with the outcome of the 2016 primary race were those who had worked to get Bill Clinton elected, only to see him eagerly (and, some would say, unnecessarily) "compromise" in ways that enacted tons of Republican "wish list" legislation (NAFTA, severe restrictions on AFDC, DOMA, banking deregulation, the "superpredator" crime bill, etc., etc.) without really ever getting anything in return. While it's possible that Hillary Clinton could have charted a more progressive course than her husband, the distrust ran pretty deep, and she frankly didn't help dissipate it by mockingly dismissing any progressive proposal as "free ponies!" and the like. But, even among those who didn't have an ideological dislike of Clintonism, there was a definite "Clinton fatigue" from those years -- if Bill was in some sense a "teflon president" who had nothing stick to him, it could be said that what didn't stick to him stuck to those around him, rendering both Al Gore and Hillary into "velcro candidates."

and, of course

9.) As others have pointed out above, polling organizations re-balanced their demographic allotments in the wake of 2016 to correct for what caused them to be off that year. In general, that meant assuming that less of the white portion of the electorate had a college degree, and thus increasing the weight to non-college-educated whites. In other words, the polls we see today have the 2016 correction already baked into them.

[DLCWIdem]

25. Yeah that was one of my points.

[Withywindle]

28. Excellent points, and one more thing too

Incumbents usually have a big advantage. For an incumbent to be polling this low at this stage of the game - that's disastrous for him. That's a LOT of people who feel like his administration is a complete trainwreck. It can't really be compared to the 2016 race because that was an open seat race with no incumbent.