Election 2024 Part III: Out with the old!

[Kyriakos]

Leads to the intriguing question of what shifts you think have occurred and are likely to continue, of course.

I am an ocean and a sea away, so hardly the best to examine this. From where I stand (so far away) this appears to have been the result of an actually popular candidate (regardless of the reasons; Trump is vile, but popular) going against a grey suit that has shiny buttons with establishment logos glued on them. Trump, by now, is the party, and he runs it like a personal fief to the extent that the US system allows for that. Kamala was another drone. There is the famous quote by Sun Tzu, about knowing the enemy and knowing yourself, and what a deficiency there will inevitably cause.

You really think that folks don't realize the role the pandemic played in the 2020 election? Or are you just speaking rhetorically? There were a number of factors, like sustained civil unrest, specifically the BLM protests, but of course the pandemic created so many issues, lockdowns, remote schooling, masks, vaccines and all the fighting over those issues is a big part of why there was record turnout in the 2020 election.

Again, Biden in 2020 got about 15 million more votes than Harris did this cycle, and she lost by about 5 million votes, which is more than what Hillary won the popular vote by in 2016. So to @innonimatu 's predictions, you can argue about whether its a "landslide", but there is no disputing that he won in resounding fashion.

A couple of weeks ago, when I said that imo Kamala is a bad campaigner, I wasn't met with any sympathy. Glad to see that it's all about having to actually be a day from a massive loss to entertain the possibility the other person isn't blind.
Tldr, if you accept that the pandemic played a major role, and you recall that Biden won by a very small margin, you should easily conclude that his win was not about some change in what the electorate thinks or wants.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Just say you will do it! All the time! Everywhere! There is literally no cost to saying it, and with inflation cooled off you could take credit for it in a second term even if you never did it.

That's what Trump did. He just kept declaring that if he won he would reverse inflation, lower the prices of groceries and gas, get rid of all the illegal immigrants, secure the border, make all the cities safe and bring back all the jobs. He gave no plans or explanation of how he would do any of this, other than "drill baby drill" and vague mentions of "tariffs" he just kept saying it. Like you say, he can and will just take credit for any good things that happen, hand wave anything that goes poorly, and there isn't going to be any accountability.

It reminds me of the O'Donnell piece that we were all debating a few months back. If the Democratic candidate just recklessly promises the sun, moon and stars, the voters are going to hold them accountable and be disappointed when they obviously can't deliver on all that pie-in-the-sky.

 

[Sommerswerd]

A couple of weeks ago, when I said that imo Kamala is a bad campaigner, I wasn't met with any sympathy.

OK, but I don't see what that has to do with the pandemic playing a major role in Biden's win in 2020.

 

[Kyriakos]

I don't see what that has to do with the pandemic playing a major role in Biden's win in 2020?

You think I was met with more sympathy when mentioning the role of the pandemic? ^^
I like to allude to things which are tied to things explicitly mentioned in my post, leaving the connection implicit, as a little gift.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

He gave no plans or explanation of how he would do any of this

That is literally all politicians on campaign ever do regardless of where you are. Nobody ever lays out anything even remotely resembling an actual plan.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Also, I don't follow you on these points.

The spin that 2020 was evidence of voting pattern changes should die now.

you should easily conclude that his win was not about some change in what the electorate thinks or wants.

I mean, I think I understand the point you are trying to refute, I just don't remember anyone arguing this point or making this argument. I guess I'm sort of calling it a strawman, but I don't mean to attack you, I just genuinely don't understand why you are trying to argue against something that I don't think anyone was saying. At least I don't remember. Maybe I just missed it. I obviously can't read every single post on every thread.

If you remember/can find it and feel like it, please quote/post it when you get a chance, just so I can see what you're talking about.

You think I was met with more sympathy when mentioning the role of the pandemic? ^^

Yes actually, I would think so. I certainly just agreed with your point about the role of the pandemic. You feel like people disagreed with you when you said that the pandemic played a role? Can you post it? I would like to see what you're referencing.

For example, one of the things I remember saying myself when people cited the pandemic as playing a role in Biden's win, I would often note that with many Presidential elections, there is some major event that happens that plays a big role in the outcome of the election and so the pandemic was not unique in that regard.

As an aside, if all this back and forth is essentially just you wanting to get in an "I told you so". Then I am certainly willing to cut to the chase and acknowledge your grievance, gloat, whatever. You were right and others, including myself were wrong. Harris lost, Trump won. Well done you. You should feel proud. You got what you wanted. Congratulations.

 

[Kyriakos]

@Sommerswerd I am not sure what argument you are talking about when you say "I don't remember anyone making this argument". At the very least you should mention it, so that I can respond.
If I had to guess, you mean that no one (in your view) claimed that the vote for Biden signified a dismissal of Trump, instead they attributed Trump's loss entirely to the pandemic. Which of course you aren't saying, because it would be irrational. So what did you mean?
What I am arguing is that without the pandemic, Biden would have lost. Phrased like this, it's easy enough to reflect on it and agree or not.

 

[Senethro]

Which again just goes to show what many others have been saying that the facts don't actually matter, because crime has been falling for a while and the Democrats aren't much less conservative on immigration these days than the Republicans are. They tried to pass a conservative border bill and the Republicans wouldn't go along with it so they could keep blaming the border on the Democrats! And not of it matters because to far too much of the electorate, feels over reals

I think immigration would be the best example of the asymmetry of the parties and what they do.

Its a very easy prediction to make that Trump will not "solve" immigration, because the problem as it is described is very difficult. But if he is energetic and harsh in his measures, he'll get awarded the win by his people.

But if the Democrats were to somehow achieve a perfect cruelty free zero net migration, they'd not gain votes from it. They'd also shoot themselves in the foot by just killing the fruit agriculture and using prison labor in care homes or something.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

The American people have chosen. As non-Americans, let's respect their culture.

The way I see it.

One. Reduce immigration. Deport undocumented migrants.

Two. Reduce support for foreign wars. Spend the money elsewhere.

Three. Go back to more conservative, Protestant, Judeo-Christian social norms and values.

Four. Increase traditional, non-renewable energy. Reduce renewable energy. Begin selling energy resources.

Five. Raise tariffs on imports.

Six. Reduce corporate tax to compete for foreign direct investment.

Personally, I was surprised they didn't give incentives to re-industrialise Middle America. The USA has abundant land and resources, and still decent infrastructure and institutions. New technology is making cheap labour costs in East Asia almost irrelevant.

 

[choxorn]

Again, Biden in 2020 got about 15 million more votes than Harris did this cycle, and she lost by about 5 million votes, which is more than what Hillary won the popular vote by in 2016. So to @innonimatu 's predictions, you can argue about whether its a "landslide", but there is no disputing that he won in resounding fashion.

Tldr, if you accept that the pandemic played a major role, and you recall that Biden won by a very small margin, you should easily conclude that his win was not about some change in what the electorate thinks or wants.

I mean, Trump's popular vote margin is basically the same as Biden's was in 2020. His electoral college margin is a little less thin but still just 1-3% in a handful of states. If Biden's margin was "very small" then this was hardly a blowout.

 

[Kyriakos]

I mean, Trump's popular vote margin is basically the same as Biden's was in 2020. His electoral college margin is a little less thin but still just 1-3% in a handful of states. If Biden's margin was "very small" then this was hardly a blowout.

The point is that this time, unlike the previous one, there was no pandemic, therefore it is an idea to examine whether 2020 actually had a better candidate/campaign/strategy than 2024 for the dem party. For all we know, in 2020 Kamala would have also won.

 

[Sommerswerd]

@Sommerswerd I am not sure what argument you are talking about when you say "I don't remember anyone making this argument".

Neither do I. That's why I asked you to quote/cite/link/describe it. That's exactly why I said that "I don't remember"

At the very least you should mention it, so that I can respond.

That doesn't make sense. How can I mention/quote an argument/statement that I don't remember anyone making. You said people were "unsympathetic" to your position about the 2020 election being impacted by the pandemic. Do you mean that someone was denying that was the case? Or just that you were being ignored about it?

If I had to guess, you mean that no one (in your view) claimed that the vote for Biden signified a dismissal of Trump, instead they attributed Trump's loss entirely to the pandemic.

No, it seems like you have it reversed. I'm saying that whenever you claimed that the pandemic played a major role in Biden winning in 2020, no one (at least not that I remember) argued that this was not the case. Everyone agrees/knows/acknowledges that the pandemic played a major role in the result of the 2020 election, so I didn't understand why you seemed to be arguing that someone was disagreeing with something so obvious.

What I am arguing is that without the pandemic, Biden would have lost. Phrased like this, it's easy enough to reflect on it and agree or not.

I agree. Biden would probably have lost if there had been no pandemic. However, something that I think you are not fully taking into consideration, is the role that Trump directly played, in how bad the pandemic was in the US. Trump completely mismanaged the pandemic right from the very start, constantly tried to downplay it because he was worried it would hurt him politically, which ended up bitterly dividing the country along political lines about whether to take the pandemic seriously or not, which made the spread of the disease much worse than it should have been.

The US had the worst death toll of any country in the world, by far. It was crazy here during the pandemic, shipping containers behind hospitals stacked full of dead bodies, over capacity hospitals with patients laid out on cots in the hallways. Businesses being shuttered and going bankrupt everyday. Our children couldn't attend school, we could not travel or go on vacation, you had to wear masks everywhere you went, relatives having to go into quarantine in their own homes, no parties, no cookouts or get togethers for Christmas and Thanksgiving... and all the while there were massive protests and bitter polarization over the masks, lockdowns, anti-covid safety measures, vaccines and more.

So yes Trump lost in large part because of the pandemic, but it wasn't the existence of the pandemic that cost him the presidency. It was the criminal malfeasance in how he handled the pandemic and all the other terrible things that people in the country had to go through as a direct result of Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. So yes the voters of the country were dismissing Trump, for mishandling the pandemic.

Which ties into one of my larger points. There is often some event during a Presidency (Mortgage meltdown, dot-com crash, Monica Lewinsky, Oil embargo, Iran Contra, Bay of Pigs, Watergate, Civil War, etc.) that defines the Presidency and how the POTUS handles that event has a major impact on the next election. The pandemic was Trump's defining event, and he blew it. That's why he was dismissed by voters. So hopefully you can see what I mean when I say its not mutually exclusive. Trump lost/Biden won because of the pandemic, and Trump was dismissed by voters because he catastrophically botched the handling the pandemic.

 

[innonimatu]

Actually, what I need a forward-looking thread for is rumination on how Trump might operate in office in this second term. That's what I've been mulling this morning.

At the center of my still-hazy thinking is wondering whether Trump will be motivated to do much of anything at all. First, he's already achieved the primary thing that motivated this run: Merchan now won't sentence him to prison time, and he can dismiss all the other cases. He's never been much motivated by the work of the job, except to create the impression that he's being successful. He won't be campaigning any more, and I think that might make a difference. He's very motivated by seeking people's approval, but the consequential form of approval is being elected and he can't shoot for that again. (There will maybe be some idle talk of repealing the 22nd amendment). He might invent some pretext for holding rallies, but it will probably feel a little flat because they'll be inconsequential. He'll mostly just want to golf and not be bothered, I would think.

I think we will want to get things done. He likes attention, he has to do things to get it. Part of the reason why he didn't get much done in his first term is that he was inexperienced in politics. Probably ran without expecting to actually win? Then the people he picked spent the next few years sabotaging what he wanted to do. Remember the general who later bragged about disobeying orders to widthraw from the occupation of Syria?

Wait and see who he picks for underlings. If it's the same as last time, it will go the same way. If it's new people, he may get more things done his way.

I am curious whether he bows to Musk or tells him to stuff it and keeps Lisa Khan on the job. If his victory margin was small he would have to keep Musk on board, depend on his backing. But it was large. That upset Musk, game. Trumo does not need him (his media) to make sure handover of power happens. There is no talk of unfaithful electors, and the Trump=Hitler+endofdemocracy narrative was already shut down completely.

I mean early on he'll end the war in Ukraine (by telling Zelensky we're not going to fund him any more, so seek the best deal he can with Russia). He'll bring peace to the middle east (since there has to be some point when Israel thinks it has achieved its military objectives, and that moment will fall during Trump's term; he'll be happy to package that as him ending the war that Biden couldn't). I think he'll have to make a show of deporting a bunch of people, but that may not prove as popular when people see it as it is when people think of it in the abstract, so if there's a PR downside, he'll just declare that issue solved and his followers will care as little as they care that the wall didn't get built.

The war in Ukraine is nealy done. There are no more soldiers and no more materiel to keep it going past spring. The euroopean chickenhawks (tlo which we are well acquainted here) are not offering their blood or money for sacrifice to the war they love so dearly.

The middle east, I'm convinced Trump won't start a war with Iran because he already blinked when such a war seemed easier. It is anyone's guess if he'll try to put a stop to the attempt at genocide. I hope he does but it's just that. The outgoing ones certainly didn't care to stop it.

Interesrting times. More so than in european politics yet.

 

[Gorbles]

Part of the reason why he didn't get much done in his first term is that he was inexperienced in politics. Probably ran without expecting to actually win? Then the people he picked spent the next few years sabotaging what he wanted to do.

This is so amazingly ahistorical it's hard to keep a straight face.

 

[innonimatu]

I agree. Biden would probably have lost if there had been no pandemic. However, something that I think you are not fully taking into consideration, is the role that Trump directly played, in how bad the pandemic was in the US. Trump completely mismanaged the pandemic right from the very start, constantly tried to downplay it because he was worried it would hurt him politically, which ended up bitterly dividing the country along political lines about whether to take the pandemic seriously or not, which made the spread of the disease much worse than it should have been.

I recall his first instinct was to shut down air travel with the affected areas. It might have worked if done fast, might have stopped the spread, like SARS had been stopped. But he lacked authority to get it done. The opposition to that went so far as doing hug-any-chinese stunts to counter him...
The spread probably happened before worldwide alarm, halting travel by itself would not have been enough to extinguish the damn thing at that stage. I still thing it could technically have been done. Only not politically in the circunstances. Most countries were totally innefective at reacting to the pandemic early.

This is so amazingly ahistorical it's hard to keep a straight face.

Funny how people without valid arguments have been replying that to me. Laughuing, yeat laught away. Had the same about disagreewing with the polls. And I explained why I thought them wrong. Did you laugh much last night about the polls turning out wrong?

I also explainabove why I think Trump may act differently now, in getting more of his agenda (whatever it is) done. And what to watch for. If you have nothing useful to reply to those points, it's a good opportunity to not say anything?

 

[GoodEnoughForMe]

Personally, I was surprised they didn't give incentives to re-industrialise Middle America. The USA has abundant land and resources, and still decent infrastructure and institutions. New technology is making cheap labour costs in East Asia almost irrelevant.

Well the Dems just did this; manufacturing jobs, particularly in battleground states are way up due to large scale industrial policy, and it gained them basically nothing.

 

[Ajidica]

I am curious whether he bows to Musk or tells him to stuff it and keeps Lisa Khan on the job. If his victory margin was small he would have to keep Musk on board, depend on his backing. But it was large. That upset Musk, game. Trumo does not need him (his media) to make sure handover of power happens. There is no talk of unfaithful electors, and the Trump=Hitler+endofdemocracy narrative was already shut down completely.

Trump likes Musk because Musk is a professional brown noser.
Khan is out because turning back the clock on anti-trust enforcement, pro-consumer regulation, and the clampdown on crypto / finance fraud is in my opinion the biggest reason tech/finance went to Trump hard.
Purely anecdotally from my area of expertise, one of our financial regulators, the CFTC, has massively stepped up enforcement of crypto scam sites and enforcement of rules on crypto firms. Normally when action is taken all 5 commissioners agree or give polite dissent from the scale of the enforcement action. Last year or so the GOP members of the commission have been giving full throated "we firmly disagree with the action taken by the commission", setting up a fact pattern to roll back those regulations.

The middle east, I'm convinced Trump won't start a war with Iran because he already blinked when such a war seemed easier. It is anyone's guess if he'll try to put a stop to the attempt at genocide. I hope he does but it's just that. The outgoing ones certainly didn't care to stop it.

He may not want a war, but he loves random airstrikes. Remember the surprise missile strike ordered while eating cake against Syria early in his term? Or when he decided to order a drone strike against Solemani, a uniformed serving member of Iran's military?
Iran is definitely looking to see if they can dash to a bomb - look at how Trump handled Little Rocket Man because Best Korea has nukes. Iran having a bomb enters into a coin flip - does the Trump admin decide to let Iran have a nuclear weapon to threaten Israel with, or does America embark on massive airstrikes to destroy Irans ability to develop a bomb?

 

[Gorbles]

Funny how people without valid arguments have been replying that to me.

A random bunch of false claims are not an argument, and therefore do not require one in return.

 

[Voidwalkin]

Iran is definitely looking to see if they can dash to a bomb - look at how Trump handled Little Rocket Man because Best Korea has nukes. Iran having a bomb enters into a coin flip - does the Trump admin decide to let Iran have a nuclear weapon to threaten Israel with, or does America embark on massive airstrikes to destroy Irans ability to develop a bomb

To my understanding, the air force guys aren't hugely confident on the ability of airstrikes to actually get to the Iranian facilities. They're down pretty deep.

Trump the PR guy I don't think risks an op that publicized if it carries a chance of failure. I wouldn't bet on it, though. Guy is arbitrary and it would depend on probably on the confidence of the supporters vs the detractors when the opinion is presented to him.

 

[innonimatu]

Trump likes Musk because Musk is a professional brown noser.
Khan is out because turning back the clock on anti-trust enforcement, pro-consumer regulation, and the clampdown on crypto / finance fraud is in my opinion the biggest reason tech/finance went to Trump hard.
Purely anecdotally from my area of expertise, one of our financial regulators, the CFTC, has massively stepped up enforcement of crypto scam sites and enforcement of rules on crypto firms. Normally when action is taken all 5 commissioners agree or give polite dissent from the scale of the enforcement action. Last year or so the GOP members of the commission have been giving full throated "we firmly disagree with the action taken by the commission", setting up a fact pattern to roll back those regulations.

I know Trump was supported by thouse fraudsters. The relevant thing is, he is not dependent on them. Wait and see wether he "pays them back" anything or not. I'm waiting, don't think it can safely be predicted.

He may not want a war, but he loves random airstrikes. Remember the surprise missile strike ordered while eating cake against Syria early in his term? Or when he decided to order a drone strike against Solemani, a uniformed serving member of Iran's military?
Iran is definitely looking to see if they can dash to a bomb - look at how Trump handled Little Rocket Man because Best Korea has nukes. Iran having a bomb enters into a coin flip - does the Trump admin decide to let Iran have a nuclear weapon to threaten Israel with, or does America embark on massive airstrikes to destroy Irans ability to develop a bomb?

Killing Solemani certainly pissed the iranians a lot. But didn't start a war or even cause any massive retaliation. That was when he blinked, there were attacks againts american bases in retaliation and he refused to escalate further. Smart move, btw, considering Iran's missile capabilities now demonstrated. But I think he blinked because he didn't want to have a major war on his hands, not because he was aware then that Iran was a very well-armed foe.