Last edited Fri Nov 6, 2020, 09:51 AM - Edit history (2)
This whole thing faces up like a giant psy-op to go full 'We must become a party of magnets for Lincoln Project centre right to right Repug types and move further to the right.' That slide will blow out the left third to half of our party at some point, plus it will allow the Rethugs to go even further pure RW fascist nut jobby. Not to mention the dystopian hellhole that an 80% or so barely centre left to centre to centre right to right to full stop RW nation state would be to live in. and those labels are on the crazy skewed to the right (of the so-called centre) American scale. We already are OFF THE CHARTS in terms of rightward skew) for almost every other advanced democratic Western nation. Dems like Sinema, Manchin, etc would be on the rightward edge of the mainstream centre-right liberal parties (liberal is so misused in the US, in the rest of the world it means centre-right classical liberal conservative (free (never fair) trade, big business friendly, hostile to most all unions, pro-deregulation, big bank-friendly, shrink the welfare state, lower taxes etc.) Half or so of the Dem caucus would be on the leftward edge of those centre right liberal parties.
The FURTHEST left of all the Dems elected to Federal office would be middle of road, bog standard social democrats and centre lefties (yet in the US even vast swathes of the Dem party voter base and some in the Party itself call them RADICAL leftists, ffs). Bernie and AOC would never be in an actual far left EU party (unless they dropped MANY of their stances). In Sweden, for instance, the centre right to right wing traditional party (The Moderates, who changed their name from the Conservatives decades ago) wholeheartedly support universal, modified single payer (we use the Beveridge Model) healthcare. They (again this is the RW centre-right to right party) are to the left of well over half of the US Dems on banking regulation, worker protections (to a point, they are very neoliberal about it, like some in our US Democratic party were or are), trade (a big chunk were against TTIP, the EU version of TPP) , climate change programmes, the MIC aka war/security/surveillance state, etc etc etc.
Here is a breakdown of the flipped House races we lost.
Defund the police has been claimed as the number reason we lost them. The maths and electoral histories of the districts do not add up to validate that charge. The very same series of events also helped us explode our own turnout for racial justice, justice that is being overshadowed and shit on by this wailing and gnashing of teeth over RW messaging. People who look like me skin colour wise are going to keep on getting murdered by white power fucking gangster coppers regardless of whether the words 'defund the police' are said 100 million times or zero times.
All but one of the 9 flips (actually 8, read below for an explanation) came from Blue Wave 2018 freshman/women Dems, who rode that one-off wave to victories in red districts and were just victims in 2020 of Rump having extraordinary increased turnout and the districts reverting to norm.
In FL amongst RW Cubans for example, 2 of 9 flips (FL-26, and FL-27) were a direct result of huge voting increases of RW Cubans, and 'defund the police' was not the principal driver from anything that I have seen. I refuse to conflate the super new 'defund the police' hullabaloo (used as a psy-op by people on multiple sides) with a 60 year plus already existing history of faux anti-commie red baiting by the spawn of Batista-loving gangster Cubanos.
Another one of the 8 was MN-7, a massively (the most red of any Dem-held district) ruby red district where the centre/centre-right Democrat Colin Peterson went down hard, and it was a poor campaign by the incumbent Peterson, as he alienated much of his Dem base by going on pure attack mode of Ilhan Omar, saying she should not even be allowed in the Democratic Party.
In NY-11, Max Rose (the most likely to lose anyway, as that district is hardcore Repug) went full Trumper, saying in adverts that he 'stood with Trump' and that he owed zero allegiance to the Dem Party, and attacked the REPUBLICAN opponent for not being 'Trumpy' enough!, lolol. Not exactly a good way to hold onto your Democratic base.
SC-1 Joe Cunningham flipped in 2018 after GOP Rep. Mark Sanford -- an outspoken Trump critic -- lost in his primary earlier that year. The district has been Republican for the past 40 years, and it was a quirk we won it in 2018 (Blue Wave plus the Sanford implosion). It was a blowout in 2020.
OK-5 Kendra Horn, the same as SC-1, but even more of a quirk, as 2108 was the first time in 44 years it went Blue. It was always going to be so hard to hold, especially in a POTUS election year.
IA-1, another 2018 Blue Waver went down, Abby Finkenauer, and it again, was a Trump district in 2016 and even more so in 2020. It is a mostly rural district as well.
NM-2 Yvette Herrell, knocked off freshwoman Democratic Xochitl Torres Small in a rematch. Other than one 2 year term (a fluke when Rethug Pearce chose to run for US Senate, but then came right back to win), that district was Red since the 1970's up until Smalls' upset win. It just reverted to norm without the one-off Blue Wave advantage. Super rural, massive (in land area), defund the cops was hardly a pressing issue.
MI-3 , the last one, is counted a a Rethug flip, but it really was not. It's the Amash seat and it is counted as he left the Rethugs and went indy and then Libertarian and then retired. The Rethugs just won it back, we did not lose it. It is ruby Red, since it was re-districted almost 30 years ago, it has never been held by a Democratic rep.
= new reply since forum marked as read
