New York Times tells Democrats how to regain the White House

71 thoughts on “New York Times tells Democrats how to regain the White House”

1. I don’t see what difference all this makes until we neutralize the electoral college.

   1. Hmmmm. You may have missed something here. It seems to me this whole piece is about how the Democrats can negotiate the vagaries of the Electoral College.

      1. The very first line of the NYT piece refers to six million voters, and there simply aren’t that many whose votes actually count, else Trump wouldn’t be president.

         1. I don’t follow your reasoning.

            1. He might be saying that only swing voters in swing states count, since the outcome in states like California is a foregone conclusion…

            2. That’s how I interpreted it too, but how does that rebut what I said since many of those swing voters are the people the article discusses?

            3. The only votes that count in a presidential election are those cast by the 538 electors of the Electoral College. Popular vote matters not one whit; Trump *lost* the 2016 popular vote by millions of (irrelevant to the outcome) votes.

               Unless the analysts know who the 2020 electors are going to be and what matters to them, the entire piece is pointless regarding the 2020 Presidential election. There may be some value in discussing 2020 Congressional races, but that’s not even hinted at in the NYT piece.

            4. Oh, I see. I didn’t understand what you were getting at. You think electors will cast their vote irrespective of the outcome of the results of the popular elections. That is technically possible for some (not all) states but it is not the reason Trump won in 2016 nor is it likely in 2020. The article discusses (perhaps they are wrong) how the Democrats can bring back some of the 2016 Trump voters, which naturally would have an impact on the votes of the Electoral College, irrespective of what you think might happen. I do not think that is pointless, though I agree with others that what the Democrats need most of all is simply to get out the vote.

            5. You haven’t been keeping up with current events. The courts have determined that electors may vote however they wish, and neither states nor anybody else can do anything about it. See, for example, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/faithless-elector-court-ruling-just-changed-how-we-pick-our-n1044961

            6. Interesting, Bruce. Thanks. I hadn’t known about this case. It is, however, only one decision and it conflicts with another from Washington State (referenced in the article you posted). It seems SCOTUS will have to decide on this.

               It doesn’t anyway have any impact on the usefulness of the issues highlighted by the NYT piece; the Democrats have their work cut out for them this election.

   2. “I don’t see what difference all this makes until we neutralize the electoral college.”

      Nothing wrong with the Electoral College. What the democrats need to do is find a candidate that actually knows what they are doing during a presidential election. Hillary certainly didn’t know how in 2016 and it looks like the democrats are set to nominate another un-electable person in 2020. But yeah, let’s blame the electoral college for the democrats failures to nominate a competent candidate. Makes a whole lot of sense. Really, it does.

   3. Agreed. But an even more urgent concern is the compromised and corrupted ballot systems. It’s pointless to talk about who can beat Trump or what issues are most important to voters when the voting systems themselves are vulnerable and broken. You don’t hear any Democrats talking about this. Everyone takes for granted that when they cast their votes that everything just works as planned. We have lots of evidence of machines being compromised and altering votes in the 2016 election. I suggest following Jennifer Cohn on twitter for more info: @jennycohn1

      1. If by “Dems” you mean the presidential candidates, I expect it is because voting processes are a state level thing. At their level, it all falls under “voter suppression” and “election security”.

2. After I read a bit of your post, the questions sounded familiar. I took that survey, but my response was not counted because I voted in 2016. Thanks. It is good to find out what came of it. GROG

3. I thought maybe the Times was lower on the list of Newspapers but perhaps this week it is the Post. For all who do like to talk down about having a better medical system in this country and think what we have is just fine – there was an article of interest in the Washington Post, stating that Americans are paying $8000 more per year per person than the next highest cost country, Switzerland. I will not bore you with all the details but this is from two Princeton economists that have a book coming out, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism.

   Our system costs 1 Trillion more per year than Switzerland, the next highest. That is where we get the additional $8000 per person in cost. We do not have better health outcomes but we do have lower life expectancy than Europe. We have half as many physicians per head than most European countries and American physicians get twice the pay.

   So, we have a great medical system??

   1. No. You have an absolutely terrible medical system. In my country – the UK – if I get sick, I don’t need to be worried about being bankrupted by my medical bills because I don’t have any. If I have a choice between a right to medical care free at the point of delivery or a right to carry a gun… well, I’m more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than to be involved in a home invasion, even in the USA.

      The fundamental duty of a government is to protect its citizens from harm. Why some Americans think that includes multi billion dollar aircraft carriers but not adequate healthcare never fails to amaze me.

      1. But then, do you not think it strange that so many of us, even in the democratic party, think medicare for all is just terrible, socialistic and oh my g*d, they want to take away my private insurance and my expensive doctor and expensive medicine. We love paying all this additional money to make doctors rich, pill factories even richer and Insurance companies richest of all. And most of all we like all these people going bankrupt each year attempting to pay their medical bills.

         1. Change is scary. And hard. Americans aren’t stupid…at least no stupider than anyone else… but are wary of such large scale change. Most folks I know are willing to accept universal health care but what assurances can be given that we won’t wind up worse off? Remember that despite the country’s percapita wealth, a great many of us have a grip on our standard of living with a greased rope.

            Please note before you attack me, although I reject yours and Jeremy’s claims that our health care system is “terrible” (it is demonstrably NOT), I am FOR universal health care though I have no illusions that we will get it.

            1. I am not going to attack you. However, when you say Americans are not stupid, I could have a discussion on that one. The con job that Donald Trump has been doing on America for the past 3 years should settle that one. Just the same, the real con job has been the one the medical establishment, the pharmaceutical companies and Insurance companies are doing to us. We are the only country in the world doing this insane system and we are doing it very badly. Why do you think people over 65 love their medicare? Why do you think we have it? At some point I just have to say….wake up.

            2. Firstly, your healthcare system is objectively terrible. It is more expensive than that of other developed countries, has worse outcomes, bankrupts its citizens and doesn’t even cover all of them. This is not an attack on you, it is disagreeing with you on one point.

               Americans are not stupid. No, but they are badly informed and some of them don’t seem to have any motivation to get better informed. Universal healthcare will be much better than the current system and yet there is fear of the necessary changes. I see that a lot in America today: fear.

            3. Even with America’s informed citizens there seems to be the attitude that any big change to health care has so many things that can go wrong that it is better to stick with our current, broken system. There are real risks of course but what is really sad is that hardly anyone, me included, has faith that government can make adjustments during implementation. The Republican Party will try to destroy anything the Dems create and the healthcare and insurance lobbies will be happy to help.

         2. Yes I do find it strange. I honestly don’t understand how a normal non wealthy American could objectively compare their healthcare system with ours in the UK and come up with the conclusion that they are better off than me.

            Of course, they don’t get to do that because they are being fed lies about the NHS and they are told that paying taxes towards other people’s healthcare is socialism and that’s bad.

      2. As an interesting example I can report is the care my wife got when she was diagnosed with hepatitis in Italy caused by contaminated food during a trip in the UK. We were staying near Lucca, and the local state hospital took her in. We had travel insurance that included health care. When I asked about this, the hospital reception told me, “Don’t worry, if they don’t pay, nobody pays.” She stayed in the hospital for one month. Next to her room was a kitchen where two nuns cooked all her (fat-free) meals every day. After a month the doctors judged that she was fit to return to Belgium, where we were staying with my parents. The doctors said, we will arrange everything. An ambulance brought her to the Milan airport, where a nurse was waiting, and who accompanied her to the airplane, and flew with her to Brussels. In Brussels the airplaine made a stop before taxiing to the airport terminals. It stopped on the tarmac where an ambulance was waiting, and another nurse took over, and delivered her to my parents (while I was driving our car back to Belgium). A month later we received a note from the insurance company, asking whether we were happy with their services. The whole adventure had not costed us a single cent.

         1. Well, Alexander, to be fair, it cost SOMEBODY a shitload. As Jeremy Pereira correctly notes, the services are “free at the point of delivery,” which is not the same thing at all as free.

            That being said, even a libertarian like me can see that universal healthcare WORKS. My wife and I pay about $26K U.S./per annum for Blue Shield, which doesn’t seem to cover shit. Large deductibles, and I saw a pulmonary specialist today…brief consult, no tests. $80 co-pay. A stent cost me $6K out of pocket.

            But DAMN, don’t “my” shiny new F-35s look FINE! OK, gotta go polish my jackboots…

            1. El Feo – you are a brother in arms re the military-industrial-government complex!!

      3. “Why some Americans think that includes multi billion dollar aircraft carriers but not adequate healthcare never fails to amaze me.”

         Exactly. I always ask the warmongers why they’re such ardent socialists, which brings the inevitable (and heated) denial. And then, sez I: “Of COURSE you are. You seem to have no problem at all with ‘single payer’ foreign military adventurism and hegemony; why are you socialists only in favor of socialism for invading people and killing them, but never for treating/curing them, or educating them?”

         I’m a real wet blanket at warmonger cocktail parties.

   2. Glad you mentioned physicians pay. People rant about insurance companies profits but ignore how much we pay doctors who are specialists. That may well be where the higher costs are coming from, not pay to insurance company clerks making fifty thousand a year.

      1. I had to go see a retina specialist (flashes of light). I spent less than 45 minutes in the office and spoke to the Dr for less than ten of them. It turned out that I have nothing to worry about (no retinal tear, just Olde age) but the bill my insurance company got was $1250. For a ten minute consult.

         So yeah. Costs are out of control.

         1. But is that what they pay? On my statements there is some crazy high figure billed by the provider and then another figure about a tenth as much negotiated and paid by the insurer. Sometimes I think I’m simply paying my insurance company to negotiate the lower rate since the reduced figure they pay is not much more than my insurance premiums.

            1. I will jump in here and mention that the bill one receives for physician services is not the same thing as “physicians pay”. These days, your physician is likely to be an employee of large hospital groups, who buy and sell practices and clinics to each other like currency traders.
               We are on our third owner in the last two years. The partner physicians sold to a non-profit hospital group, which immediately sold it to a for-profit company, who sold to yet another group after less than a year. Each time, groups of people with no medical background have managed to pull huge sums out of their part of the deal. But at least it is a profitable practice, or it would be gone.

               There are a great many people getting rich off of US medical care who do not contribute in any way to patient care, even peripherally.

               It is pretty easy to look at the ridiculous cost and inefficiency of our medical care system, and assume that doctors are the problem, because they are the part of the system you interact with.

            2. Perhaps if the government managed the system the inefficiency would be reduced. Fancy that!

            3. That would be a first. But, yes, this might be such a case.

4. It is my opinion that, if somebody still supports Trump now, nothing the Dems can say or do is going to change their mind. I think the next election is all about who can motivate their supporters to actually go out and vote.

   I absolutely agree that concentrating on identity politics is not the way to do that. If a lot of your potential voters in swing states are unemployed coal workers, telling them they are privileged white males isn’t going to make them want to vote for you.

   1. I’m in agreement with you.

   2. I’m hoping that the grown up Democrats(not the AOCs and the Ilhan Omars) march in complete lockstep behind whichever candidate gets the nod, and have learnt enough to focus only on the issues that voters care about and steer clear of identity politics like it’s radioactive, which it pretty much is.

      Having said that, I still think it’s a contemptible situation that the Republicans have wholeheartedly embraced identity politics, of the white kind, and are feeding it relentlessly every day(and succeeding as a result), while left-wing identity politics, that is predicated on giving voices to marginalised people and is at least generally well-intentioned, is electorally toxic, but that’s reality. I understand it without agreeing with it.

      …It was crazy of the left to ever believe they could completely exclude the largest voting bloc in every western nation from their politics-of-oppression and not experience any electoral blowback, just crazy. White people vote. This was the single thought whistling through the empty corridors of Trump’s mind in 2016 – he was completely uninterested in any other demographic, even openly contemptuous of them, and yet he won.

5. Sub

6. That us good information. It remains to be seen if the democrats will use it or continue to be seen as representing identity politics and open borders.
   Hillary just never gave voters a reason yo vote for her.
   Dome negative ads are good, but building a campaign on negatives is not a winning strategy.

7. First off, I’m skeptical of opinion polling at this point. How many of us answer phone calls from unknown numbers? I never do. I live in Iowa, where the infamous Iowa Caucuses will take place in one month. 4, 8, 12, etc. years ago my phone was ringing off the hook with legitimate pollsters desperate to know all about me, as well as phony pollsters trying to get me riled up about “traditional marriage” or something. But my opinion will never be counted this time around, because I don’t answer calls from strange numbers (too often it’s “Rachel from Cardholder Services” or that Chinese lady telling me my visa has expired and I need to send her $400 in Walgreens gift cards). And I’ll bet a lot of other people don’t answer their phones either, so the only people who are being sampled are the ones who… don’t mind robocalls?

   Here’s my cautiously optimistic take on the November election: a) nobody who voted against Trump in 2016 is going to vote for him this time, and b) a whole lot of potential voters who simply stayed home in 2016 have seen the error of their ways and will be damn sure to get out and vote against him this time around. So I’m hoping for a landslide.

   1. When determining the sample size needed for a given confidence level, pollsters take into account all sorts of confounding variables, including accounting for people who refuse to answer their phones. Whether or not a voter even has a phone is accounted for too.

      I suspect your second paragraph is on the money – it gives me some small hope anyway.

8. I couldn’t agree with you (and Andrew Sullivan) more: at all costs the Dems need to resist “the temptation to focus on Mr. Trump’s personality.” His supporters won’t hear it and his revilers don’t need to hear it. Worst of all, Trump thrives on it.

   1. Right, we must ignore the bully, we must ignore the bully😀

   2. It’s true that Trump supporters see him as their avatar, so if you attack him they see it as an attack on them. If you insult his stupidity they see it as an implicit attack on them for being dumb rednecks. If you insult his gaudy tackiness and lack of refinement, they see it as an attack on them for the same things.

      But if you separate them from the attack, and phrase it properly…

      eg. ‘Trump’s supporters are so much better than him – they’ve been forced to go along with this lying cheating cowardly crook because they felt like they had no other option, etc.’ and ‘many of his supporters are embarrassed by his shamelessness and dishonesty and stupidity, etc’…

      …then you’re giving his supporters an out. You’re not insulting them, you’re backhandedly complimenting them, and you’re giving them an excuse to turn their back on him, while still allowing them to retain their belief that they’re decent people and that supporting Trump was merely an aberration.

      I’m almost certain that there is a significant chunk of Trump’s supporters who actually feel this way already, and are looking for any excuse not to vote Trump. The Dems should give it to them.

9. The rise of Bloomberg (he is now in fourth place in some polls) is making me more confident. He can beat Trump. Don’t know about the others.

   1. Bloomberg now tied with Warren for third in a poll.

      https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/476689-bloomberg-rises-to-third-place-alongside-warren-in-national-poll

      Go Michael!

   2. “He can beat Trump. Don’t know about the others.”

      Not sure why, since I don’t know much about Bloomberg, but my gut instinct is to agree with you. Of the others my instinct is that only Biden–and that only with the right running mate–has a (slim) chance. Glad to hear Michael is gaining.

      1. A very wise friend of mine sent me this about Bloomberg today:
         In today’s LAT, he’s quoted as saying that he doesn’t regret his support for the Iraq war. That was bad enough. But in light of the current state of affairs AND the substance of the Afghanistan Papers – which are the Pentagon Papers with a new cover sheet – his follow-up explanation that, ” ‘America wanted to go to war, but it turns out it was based on faulty intelligence, and it was a mistake,’ Bloomberg said after celebrating the opening of his campaign office near Pershing Square. ‘But I think the people that made the mistake did it honestly, and it’s a shame because it’s left us entangled, and it’s left the Middle Ease in chaos through today.’ ”

         Give me a friggin’ break!

         1. I don’t give a crap about the past or that someone isn’t perfect in the eyes of the left. I care about seeing Trump defeated and nothing else. Bloomberg is the best bet to do that.

         2. That doesn’t sound like an unreasonable position to be in. I think it’s a little naive in that I don’t think Bush’s motivations to go to war with Iraq had anything to do with weapons of mass destruction, but had the position been reversed and WMD been found, I would not be saying “I regret my opposition to the war”, I’d be saying “clearly in 20/20 hindsight the war was justified, but at the time, I just didn’t trust what my prime minister was saying.

            1. There’s more than a little parallel between Bush Jr’s desire to go into Iraq and Trump’s taking on of Iran. Both countries have governments who are strongly anti-American, both are Muslim, and both are small enough (unlike Russia and China) that the US can bully them with its massive military force. Both presidents might say in private, “Why do we have such a big military force if we aren’t going to punch such countries in the mouth?”

      2. He’s got Judge Judy’s endorsement. That’s got to mean something.

10. It’s difficult to take seriously an analysis of what appeals to traditional Democratic constituencies that fails to take into account fundamental economic issues. A strong economy by any measure, historically low unemployment, historically low black and Hispanic unemployment, noticeable growth in average wages after decades of stagnation, fracking, the new USMCA which the unions support….these are all core issues for blue collar Democrats, as well as minority Democrats, and Trump wins the argument on all these issues. Biden’s best bet was to run a “me too” campaign on the economy but he’s already burned that bridge. Unless the prayed-for recession materializes, Trump wins 2020 easily.

    1. I think you are right but the question I have is will the earth keep getting hotter for my grandchild or are the repubs, evangelicals and Trump right…nothing to it.

11. I can make sense of this only by assuming that these voters saw “Medicare for All” as the way most of the candidates—save Warren and Sanders—construe it: as a public option like Medicare that is open to all,

    Even Sanders or Warren will deliver a public option, at most. If the Democrats win a very solid majority in both houses plus the presidency, that’s what can actually pass. But smart politicians, like Sanders and Warren, know that you have to push for and act like you expect much more, if you want to get anything.

    After 5 to 10 years, if public opinion changes suitably, then we can have an actual debate about whether private health insurances should be allowed to continue to cherry-pick healthy patients and lie about it.

    1. Yes, but I think that Sanders’s and Warren’s promise of an all-encompassing Medicare for all is not good for their own chances, nor is it good for the Democrats in general. Of course we all know that neither of them can deliver such a plan.

12. There are so many ways to look at this question:

    1) Suburban women voters who voted for Trump in 2016 will not vote for him again. Since there are many of them, Trump can’t win in 2020.

    2) The one thing Dem voters care about, according to polls, is getting rid of Trump, not issues. Focus on the thing they care about most in order to win in 2020.

    3) The economy is pretty good therefore the incumbent, Trump, will win.

    4) Nothing matters except voter turnout. Dems have much more reason to vote this time than do Reps so Dems will win.

    5) None of the Dem candidates is exciting so it doesn’t matter which wins the primaries, Trump will win regardless.

    6) We’ll be in a war by the middle of 2020. A wartime president will always win.

    7) We’ll be in a war by the middle of 2020. No one wants another forever war. Trump loses.

    8) Regardless of which Dem runs against Trump, they’ll be labelled a Socialist so Trump will win.

    9) Trump will die of a heart attack. No one likes Pence so the Dem will win.

    10) Trump will be impeached and removed from office so Dems will win. Ok, just kidding with this one.

    It’s a real crap shoot.

    1. The caveat to every single scenario is that Trump is the world’ greatest weasel. He weasels out of things, that is his sole skill. So even though I don’t know how he’ll do it yet I know that if he gets in a tight corner he will weasel out of it somehow.

       I said this a couple of years ago, something like ‘haha, maybe he’ll start a war with Iran or someone if things are looking tricky for him, haha’. And lo…

       All you have to do is think of the lowest possible course of action, and bingo, you’ve probably hit upon what he’s going to do.

       1. Yes, and he gives weasels a bad name.

          1. True. Nothing wrong with weasels. I’m not even sure if they’re particularly weaselly.

13. Leaving aside the reality of the Electoral College for a moment, let’s talk about those issues mentioned in the NYT piece. The single biggest issue that I hear from Trump supporters is best summed up in the word privilege, with a side note that when one is used to privilege, equality seems like repression. America is still majority Caucasian, and Democratic candidates talking about reparations doesn’t sit well with Trump supporters. Likewise for talk of immigrants (meaning non-whites to white Trump supporters). America is still majority Christian, and the same remark about loss of privilege applies as well. Christianity is paternalistic and misogynistic; MeToo, LGBTQ+ rights, women’s reproductive rights, etc. are anathema to Trump’s Evangelical Christian supporters. Look at the lower three issues in the chart; Obama/Trump Democrats group with Obama/Trump Republicans and hard-core Republicans on those issues.

    There is zero chance that any Democratic Party candidate is going to stand up for white privilege over civil rights, or give up on Roe v. Wade, and only a few seem to be in favor of Christian privilege over secular government (and it’s unclear how much of that is or isn’t pandering or waffling). They’re not going to be able to dodge those issues. Trump has unabashedly supported white privilege (Charlottesville, border walls, talk of “shithole countries”, etc.) and Christian privilege (Supreme Court nominees, cabinet picks, Muslim ban, etc.). Fox News, watched by more Americans than any other news source is going to keep banging away on those issues. Even if Democrats could dodge those issues and focus on other issues, Fox News will still focus on those and demonize Democrats as “Socialists”.

    And the other issues? A ban on assault weapons will be spin doctored into taking away all guns (look at what happened to Beto O’Roarke). Medicare for All will continue to be spun as scary un-American Socialism, and they’re-going-to-take-away-your-private-health-care-plan. Climate change is low on most people’s radar (relative to the effect on those people of the economy, threat of war, health care, etc.), as is DACA. And the Evangelical Christians who are ecstatic about the prospect of war in the Middle East ushering in a “second coming” don’t care about climate change anyway; they think they’re going to “be raptured” some time in the next few weeks or months (and if it doesn’t happen by election day, they’re convinced it won’t be long after).

    Now back to the Electoral College. Even if electoral votes were apportioned within each state according to the state’s popular vote, the Electoral College system itself disproportionately weights the votes from low population states. Those states are largely rural, highly religious, often Bible-belt states that see Trump’s effective replacement of Constitutional secular government by Dominionist Christian theocracy as one of Trump’s greatest accomplishments.

    1. Four legs good.
       Two legs bad.

    2. The real solution here is to take all the “woke” lily-white academics living in their all white neighborhoods in places like Hanover, NH, and Cambridge, MA, and in gentrified neighborhoods in Manhattan, and forcibly relocate them to the slums in Baltimore or similarly diverse locales like Bridgeport, where they would be better situated to promote racial equality.

       I think there would be support from all sides of the fence for this one. It would be much less divisive than reparations, or busing students. Let’s start busing professors.

14. In the news just now, Iran attacked US bases in the Middle East:

    Iran Launches Missile Attacks On Military Bases Housing U.S. Troops In Iraq

    1. And Trump is already blaming the Democrats for it, because Obama was “soft on Iran.” His followers lap it up.

15. The high proportion of Obama/Trump/Democrat and Obama/didn’t vote/Democrat voters supporting Medicare for all (over 80%), was a surprise to me given that most Americans, much less those who voted for Trump or didn’t vote for Clinton in 2016, don’t seem to be in favor of Medicare for All.

    If you’re a young American, you’ve probably got insurance. That insurance gets to pick your doctor. That insurance is also looking for ways to delay or simply not pay for medical treatments you need. That insurance is incredibly expensive, and in some cases has a monopoly on your area.

    Thanks to Obama you do not even have the option of not having insurance, so in these monopoly situations there is nothing in the market to cap costs.

    A lot of the concerns about medicare-for-all, are moot points for a lot of Americans.

    And sure you don’t have the same healthcare needs as someone over 65 is likely to have, but you’re also at a point in your life where debt is a serious concern.

    For a young American you’ve got decades of stagnant wages, thanks to the great recession your career path is blocked because that meant more experienced people taking more junior positions that would normally go to less experienced people.

    Your lifetime earnings don’t follow the pattern that they did for the boomer generation.

    This is the most educated generation in American history – and that’s a good thing but it also means professional salaries aren’t as high as they were in the past because supply versus demand plays a role in those wages too.

    Further the US has programs specifically designed to attract foreign professionals who don’t necessarily have the same problems regarding student debt, so they don’t have the same need for higher salaries that local graduates have.

    In order to maintain overall market demand the US has historically cut interest rates and increased credit availability – the problem being that even at low interest if wages don’t go up, if you don’t have the money to buy something now, you’re not going to have the money in the future.

    This is the boom and bust cycle.

    Why are millenials not getting married, not buying houses? Why do so many live with their parents? Money issues.

    As Keynes noticed in the Great Depression there is a limit to how much interest rates actually matter.

    At the same time bankruptcy laws have been tightened in such a way as to cut your ability to get out of onerous debts.

    So medicare-for-all, really is a major benefit for under 65s, because if you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and you break your leg that’s a problem.

    The only situation where the argument isn’t moot is if your employer provides your medical insurance, and that is not always the case. Further the fact that the same people pushing for medicare for all are also pushing for higher wages kind of balances that out.

    So when I look at 80% support for medicare-for-all, I think that is genuine support for what it says it is.

    Now why is this not enough to win for the Dems? Because “wokeness”.

    “Wokeness” is in fact not about promoting social justice. It is a strategy used to undermine every movement it appears in such that progress becomes impossible as erstwhile allies spend more energy fighting each other over perceived slights of identity and “micro-aggressions” than the opponents of the actual issues the movement was created to fight.

    I remember a few years ago I think it was American Atheists getting a new head, who said that the movement would focus on atheist issues first and foremost. This was decried by the woke – because an organisation focusing on the issues it was founded to focus on was just not what they wanted to see.

    I think everybody recognises that the “woke” are a pack of phonies who exist mainly to undermine rather than support social justice, and thus aligning with woke bullshit undermines everything else a politician may claim to support, because “woke” has always been about finding a million and one reasons to be to offended to the point of not doing a damn thing about the things you’re offended by.

    If you support wokeness and claim to support medicare, people just don’t believe you because they’ve seen how wokeness has been used against their unions, they’ve seen how wokeness against their environmental movements, they’ve seen how it has been used against their feminist icons, they’ve seen how it has been used against their civil rights icons. They saw it used against the Occupy movement.

    You can’t take somebody seriously when they’re “woke” and they’re talking about real issues, so opposition to “wokeness” actually does win more points than actual solid policy positions.

16. The support for Biden in some quarters is astonishing. This article does a nice job with focusing on part of Biden’s “problematic” voting record:

    https://theweek.com/articles/887969/joe-bidens-free-ride-over

    There is a certain sub-set of Americans who are feed up being ripped off for health care, colleges, while wages and opportunities stagnate, and while the federal government bails out the banksters on Wall Street. I doubt very much many of them care about the latest Hollywood or NYT’s campaign of virtue signalling.

    The problem is that the Democrats big donors are the people ripping off the consumers, so the crisis of conscience they face how to keep getting money and support from the predator populations, while ginning up votes from the prey population. A Joe Biden presidency means a continuation of Trump and Paul Ryan’s economic policies without the entertaining tweets, and if Sanders or Warren gets the nomination, the Big Money in the Democratic Party has pledged to support Trump (in case we didn’t already know that).

    I think the second option would be best, because it would make it evident to the base that the Establishment is corrupt and in bed with the Oligarchs, much the way Trump has high-lighted to many conservatives the way the GOP preens one way in public, and then legislates on behalf of their big donors.

    Until the Great Oz, the Democratic Party Establishment, is exposed, the people will not be able to find it in themselves to make the necessary changes on their own.

    1. ” the Big Money in the Democratic Party has pledged to support Trump (in case we didn’t already know that).”

       What the…? Are you saying members of the Democratic party are going to openly support Trump financially? And have ‘pledged’ to do so?? I call bollocks on that.

       …Or are you just saying that certain big money political donors, with no actual connection to the Democrats except that they have donated to them, are going to support Trump rather than Warren or Sanders?

       Because the latter groups are not “the big money in the Democratic Party” and I cannot for the life of me see why(even if I assume your initial claim was true) the Dems should be blamed for the political promiscuity of big businesses. That’s a very weird attitude and a very confusing phrasing.

       1. Here is what CNBC says:

          https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/26/wall-street-democratic-donors-may-back-trump-if-warren-is-nominated.html

          I have heard similar rumors about big tech, but I don’t know if any of its been reported.

          1. That is my point though: AFAICT this one anonymous source is not affiliated with the Democrats in any way except that he(or she, although that’s unlikely) previously donated to the Democrats. Seems to me therefore that they are not ‘in the Democratic Party’ and it’s a gift to the GOP and anyone who wants to divide the Dems to make donors synonymous with the party itself.

             Just notes from a far-off land though. My understanding of the subtleties of American politics is probably not that great.

17. Doesn’t this analysis presuppose that by adopting more “republican like” positions there won’t be defectors to the “not voting” camp?

18. I feel that there is way too much generalization in the article and many comments. For the Dems to win, they have to focus on state-specific issues and on specific states. Only a handful of battleground states will determine the outcome of the presidential election, and I believe the voters in say Arizona, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania have different sets of priorities. Current data suggest that there are 6 battleground/toss up states with 102 electoral votes. Forecasts show Republicans with 204 electoral votes and Democrats with 232.

19. I think that in terms of supporting DACA, the Trumpers turned Democrats had more than a 50% support rating—much higher than the Republican base.

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