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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump punched cities. Cities punched back
Last edited Fri Nov 13, 2020, 05:14 PM - Edit history (1)
In the end, there were more of us than there were of them.Please pay less attention to the loser and more to whats been accomplished. Joe Biden won the White House. He reclaimed the upper-Midwest. He flipped two red states. (Arizona was called this morning; Georgia is headed for a recount, but Biden is leading.) The Democrats held the House. The party netted one Senate seat. (They won two, lost one.) Theres a chance, a slim chance, but a still chance to take the Senate seats after a couple of Georgia run-offs in January. This is not a picture of failure.
True, it wasnt the blue wave many hoped for. (I hoped for it.) Republican resilience in the House was a bit surprising. Maine reelecting Susan Collins was very disappointing. The Democrats did not take the Senate and with that go dreams of reforming the court system. More disappointing, perhaps, was the president winning 10 million more votes this year than he did four years ago. For those hoping the whole of the county would reject Donald Trump, that was the most painful fact of all. Post-Racial America was never a real thing, but it felt good to believe in it. Its impossible to believe in it now.
Lets not let failing to meet high expectations define political reality, though. Losing House seats is not and never was about the left versus the center, no matter how much that insufferable simp Chris Cillizza insists it is. Moderate Democrats lost swing districts because swing districts swing, not because progressive Democrats half way across the country take progressive positions for progressive constituents. This isnt to say moderates should be progressive. Its to say swing districts are hard to hold. That a Republican was at the top of the ticket probably explains GOP gains in the House.
Not taking the Senate can probably be explained by incumbency and undervoting. Undervoting is when people who rarely vote, or who have never voted, decide to vote for president but no one else. In the case of the Democrats, people came off the sidelines to vote against Trump but skipped everyone else down ballot. Incumbency was probably the countervailing force for the GOP. That wasnt enough to save Martha McSally in Arizona and Cory Gardner in Colorado, but it was enough to save Collins in Maine, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Thom Tillis in North Carolina.
snip
Edited to add link. Whoops!
https://stoehr.substack.com/p/87d65a18-f319-4000-b0dd-a78f4e3a3a25
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Trump punched cities. Cities punched back (Original Post)
catbyte
Nov 2020
OP
Chipper Chat
(9,676 posts)1. Trump's coattails- unfortunately.
Down balloteers just slid in the back door.
Ugh - tillis
Ugh - Susan.
Ugh joni
Cha
(297,035 posts)2. Exactly! Fuck the LOSERS..
Is there a link, catbyte? TY!
catbyte
(34,360 posts)4. Oops! Sorry! Here it is
Cha
(297,035 posts)5. Mahalo.. I like its Positivity!
Hekate
(90,620 posts)3. Link? Author? Source? (you wrote snip at the bottom)
Cha
(297,035 posts)6. It's added now, Hekate..