What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[The Minsky Moment]

White Christians make up less than 50% of the US population - its somewhere in the low 40s.  The return of white identity politics is not a confident assertion of a majority population, it is a backlash from a group that sees itself in danger and under siege.  That is why it is so tough to root out and so dangerous.

[Grey Fox]

Fix rural income insecurity & you'll see change.

[DGuller]

Nate Silver predicts that this noncharismatic 80 year old Biden will reach 80 million votes. While barely campaigning, during a pandemic, with all the attempts from the GOP at voter suppression.

You make it sound like this is the worst-case outcome.  There are a lot of reasons to think that this was actually the best case outcome.  One of the obvious reasons is that Biden won when his party itself seems to have lost.

The answer is not to try and reach the Trumpers. They are impervious to facts and policy. The answer is to turn out your voters and start building an organization that can win local races at every level.

The answer is to not push people towards Trump.  You can judge people all they want for voting for Trump while not being a terminal imbecile, but their vote counts just the same.

[PDH]

The answer is to nuke from orbit and start over in a million years.

[Zoupa]

Nate Silver predicts that this noncharismatic 80 year old Biden will reach 80 million votes. While barely campaigning, during a pandemic, with all the attempts from the GOP at voter suppression.

You make it sound like this is the worst-case outcome.  There are a lot of reasons to think that this was actually the best case outcome.  One of the obvious reasons is that Biden won when his party itself seems to have lost.

The answer is not to try and reach the Trumpers. They are impervious to facts and policy. The answer is to turn out your voters and start building an organization that can win local races at every level.

The answer is to not push people towards Trump.  You can judge people all they want for voting for Trump while not being a terminal imbecile, but their vote counts just the same.

Who pushed people to vote for Trump exactly? How does that even work?

[DGuller]

Fix rural income insecurity & you'll see change.

Is there any evidence supporting this theory at all?  I get the impression that people talk about "economic insecurity" as the cause of Trumpism because there is no way to discuss racism productively.  Unfortunately bad diagnosis rarely leads to good treatment.

[Malthus]

White Christians make up less than 50% of the US population - its somewhere in the low 40s.  The return of white identity politics is not a confident assertion of a majority population, it is a backlash from a group that sees itself in danger and under siege.  That is why it is so tough to root out and so dangerous.

True - those who identify as White and Christian make up less than half the population. The problem with identity politics, though, is that not only those who fall into both categories at the same time can join - those who identify as White or Christian make up more than 50%.

By appealing to that, Trumpites can win. People who are not White can be persuaded to vote for them because of "Christian" issues (think of abortion). That's how you get sone Blacks and Hispanics voting Trump against their best interests. People who are White but not Christian can be persuaded to vote for them "because White lives matter".

Throw heterosexuality into the identity politics mix, it becomes even more one sided.

Also - it is one of the fundamental tricks of this sort of right wing populism to convince their audience that they are under siege, wherever it is true or not.

[DGuller]

Who pushed people to vote for Trump exactly? How does that even work?

Asked and answered gazillion times by now.

[OttoVonBismarck]

White Christians make up less than 50% of the US population - its somewhere in the low 40s.  The return of white identity politics is not a confident assertion of a majority population, it is a backlash from a group that sees itself in danger and under siege.  That is why it is so tough to root out and so dangerous.

Right, I mean this is not likely a winning thing for Republicans long term, which is why I mentioned outbreeding and outliving them. Which is more or less what is happening. It does look like the GOP is trying to takes its unvarnished message and expand it to culturally conservative black men and Hispanics, and got a little (tiny) bit of play with the former and a bit more play with the latter in 2020. But I am skeptical they can meaningfully widen the coalition without changing the core message at all.

That's why I go back to not really knowing that I have any magic answers here. The Dems can't get in bed with angry white racial grievance, that's not viable for a number of reasons. Oddly enough the suggestion by AOC to do "Deep Canvassing" may be one way that works, but that's incredibly labor intensive and only reaches smallish numbers of people.

[alfred russel]

Fix rural income insecurity & you'll see change.

Rural areas are fucked. You don't need many people to work on farms, and whatever low cost manufacturing used to be available has generally evaporated.

No one is going to fix rural income insecurity because the immediate future is with urbanization.

[The Minsky Moment]

About 1/3 of GOP voters have a college degree, which is more than in 1996 when Bob Dole ran.  10% of GOP voters have post-college university education (same as in 96 and compared to 15% nationally now).  Trump actually increased his vote share among high income (100k+) voters compared to 2016 and got a majority of that vote.

Trump got 70+ million to vote for him because he attracted a broad coalition of very different kinds of people.  Not just evangelicals, "very fine people" and trailer park denizens, but also small business owners, sunbelt professionals, and a good chunks of Latino men enticed by his fake tough guy image and appeal to traditional values.  Some of those people are true believer Qanon suckers impervious to reason, some are not.  There are plenty of people out there who had considerable recognition of Trump's many faults and voted for him anyways

[Zoupa]

Who pushed people to vote for Trump exactly? How does that even work?

Asked and answered gazillion times by now.

Sure, whatever. You do you, believe what you will.

[crazy canuck]

The Republicans have found a strategy they think wins elections - just lie about everything, spread fear, use white, Christian and hetero identity politics. Unfortunately the left can't win using the same strategy only on reverse - as I've noted, in a straight contest between White and non-White, Christian and non-Christian, hetero and non-hetero, the former wins every time because they are in the majority in the US and likely to remain that way.

If the Republicans embraced compromise, building a bigger tent, ditched the divisive  identity politics, stopped the lying and fearmongering, in short became a boring ordinary right-leaning political party ... that would be awesome. In a perfect world, that's what I'd want to see happening.

Unfortunately it seems unlikely, as the Republicans are in a cancerous state.

I would not say unfortunately when describing the fact the Dems can't use the same tactics.  Why would they want to be Republican light?  I would say, very fortunately, the left will use a strategy that will not cater to the same smaller group of Republican voters.

[Sheilbh]

For what it's worth I think AOC makes some good points about organising and campaigning here which I feel are very valid. It almost feels like the talk about how progressives messaging cost votes is distracting from talking about the substance here:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Biden's Win, House Losses, and What's Next for the Left
The congresswoman said Joe Biden's relationship with progressives would hinge on his actions. And she dismissed criticism from House moderates, calling some candidates who lost their races "sitting ducks."
By Astead W. Herndon
Nov. 7, 2020

For months, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been a good soldier for the Democratic Party and Joseph R. Biden Jr. as he sought to defeat President Trump.

But on Saturday, in a nearly hourlong interview shortly after President-elect Biden was declared the winner, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez made clear the divisions within the party that animated the primary still exist. And she dismissed recent criticisms from some Democratic House members who have blamed the party's left for costing them important seats. Some of the members who lost, she said, had made themselves "sitting ducks."

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

We finally have a fuller understanding of the results. What's your macro takeaway?

Well, I think the central one is that we aren't in a free fall to hell anymore. But whether we're going to pick ourselves up or not is the lingering question. We paused this precipitous descent. And the question is if and how we will build ourselves back up.

We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues. We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.

But we also learned that progressive policies do not hurt candidates. Every single candidate that co-sponsored Medicare for All in a swing district kept their seat. We also know that co-sponsoring the Green New Deal was not a sinker. Mike Levin was an original co-sponsor of the legislation, and he kept his seat.

To your first point, Democrats lost seats in an election where they were expected to gain them. Is that what you are ascribing to racism and white supremacy at the polls?

I think it's going to be really important how the party deals with this internally, and whether the party is going to be honest about doing a real post-mortem and actually digging into why they lost. Because before we even had any data yet in a lot of these races, there was already finger-pointing that this was progressives' fault and that this was the fault of the Movement for Black Lives.

I've already started looking into the actual functioning of these campaigns. And the thing is, I've been unseating Democrats for two years. I have been defeating Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee-run campaigns for two years. That's how I got to Congress. That's how we elected Ayanna Pressley. That's how Jamaal Bowman won. That's how Cori Bush won. And so we know about extreme vulnerabilities in how Democrats run campaigns.

Some of this is criminal. It's malpractice. Conor Lamb spent $2,000 on Facebook the week before the election. I don't think anybody who is not on the internet in a real way in the Year of our Lord 2020 and loses an election can blame anyone else when you're not even really on the internet.

And I've looked through a lot of these campaigns that lost, and the fact of the matter is if you're not spending $200,000 on Facebook with fund-raising, persuasion, volunteer recruitment, get-out-the-vote the week before the election, you are not firing on all cylinders. And not a single one of these campaigns were firing on all cylinders.

Well, Conor Lamb did win. So what are you saying: Investment in digital advertising and canvassing are a greater reason moderate Democrats lost than any progressive policy?

These folks are pointing toward Republican messaging that they feel killed them, right? But why were you so vulnerable to that attack?

If you're not door-knocking, if you're not on the internet, if your main points of reliance are TV and mail, then you're not running a campaign on all cylinders. I just don't see how anyone could be making ideological claims when they didn't run a full-fledged campaign.

Our party isn't even online, not in a real way that exhibits competence. And so, yeah, they were vulnerable to these messages, because they weren't even on the mediums where these messages were most potent. Sure, you can point to the message, but they were also sitting ducks. They were sitting ducks.

There's a reason Barack Obama built an entire national campaign apparatus outside of the Democratic National Committee. And there's a reason that when he didn't activate or continue that, we lost House majorities. Because the party — in and of itself — does not have the core competencies, and no amount of money is going to fix that.

If I lost my election, and I went out and I said: "This is moderates' fault. This is because you didn't let us have a floor vote on Medicare for all." And they opened the hood on my campaign, and they found that I only spent $5,000 on TV ads the week before the election? They would laugh. And that's what they look like right now trying to blame the Movement for Black Lives for their loss.

Is there anything from Tuesday that surprised you? Or made you rethink your previously held views?

The share of white support for Trump. I thought the polling was off, but just seeing it, there was that feeling of realizing what work we have to do.

We need to do a lot of anti-racist, deep canvassing in this country. Because if we keep losing white shares and just allowing Facebook to radicalize more and more elements of white voters and the white electorate, there's no amount of people of color and young people that you can turn out to offset that.

But the problem is that right now, I think a lot of Dem strategy is to avoid actually working through this. Just trying to avoid poking the bear. That's their argument with defunding police, right? To not agitate racial resentment. I don't think that is sustainable.

There's a lot of magical thinking in Washington, that this is just about special people that kind of come down from on high. Year after year, we decline the idea that they did work and ran sophisticated operations in favor of the idea that they are magical, special people. I need people to take these goggles off and realize how we can do things better.

If you are the D.C.C.C., and you're hemorrhaging incumbent candidates to progressive insurgents, you would think that you may want to use some of those firms. But instead, we banned them. So the D.C.C.C. banned every single firm that is the best in the country at digital organizing.

The leadership and elements of the party — frankly, people in some of the most important decision-making positions in the party — are becoming so blinded to this anti-activist sentiment that they are blinding themselves to the very assets that they offer.

I've been begging the party to let me help them for two years. That's also the damn thing of it. I've been trying to help. Before the election, I offered to help every single swing district Democrat with their operation. And every single one of them, but five, refused my help. And all five of the vulnerable or swing district people that I helped secured victory or are on a path to secure victory. And every single one that rejected my help is losing. And now they're blaming us for their loss.

So I need my colleagues to understand that we are not the enemy. And that their base is not the enemy. That the Movement for Black Lives is not the enemy, that Medicare for all is not the enemy. This isn't even just about winning an argument. It's that if they keep going after the wrong thing, I mean, they're just setting up their own obsolescence.

What is your expectation as to how open the Biden administration will be to the left? And what is the strategy in terms of moving it?

I don't know how open they'll be. And it's not a personal thing. It's just, the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grass roots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.

I think the transition period is going to indicate whether the administration is taking a more open and collaborative approach, or whether they're taking a kind of icing-out approach. Because Obama's transition set a trajectory for 2010 and some of our House losses. It was a lot of those transition decisions — and who was put in positions of leadership — that really informed, unsurprisingly, the strategy of governance.

What if the administration is hostile? If they take the John Kasich view of who Joe Biden should be? What do you do?

Well, I'd be bummed, because we're going to lose. And that's just what it is. These transition appointments, they send a signal. They tell a story of who the administration credits with this victory. And so it's going be really hard after immigrant youth activists helped potentially deliver Arizona and Nevada. It's going to be really hard after Detroit and Rashida Tlaib ran up the numbers in her district.

It's really hard for us to turn out nonvoters when they feel like nothing changes for them. When they feel like people don't see them, or even acknowledge their turnout.

If the party believes after 94 percent of Detroit went to Biden, after Black organizers just doubled and tripled turnout down in Georgia, after so many people organized Philadelphia, the signal from the Democratic Party is the John Kasichs won us this election? I mean, I can't even describe how dangerous that is.

You are diagnosing national trends. You're maybe the most famous voice on the left currently. What can we expect from you in the next four years?

I don't know. I think I'll have probably more answers as we get through transition, and to the next term. How the party responds will very much inform my approach and what I think is going to be necessary.

The last two years have been pretty hostile. Externally, we've been winning. Externally, there's been a ton of support, but internally, it's been extremely hostile to anything that even smells progressive.

Is the party ready to, like, sit down and work together and figure out how we're going to use the assets from everyone at the party? Or are they going to just kind of double down on this smothering approach? And that's going to inform what I do.

Is there a universe in which they're hostile enough that we're talking about a Senate run in a couple years?

I genuinely don't know. I don't even know if I want to be in politics. You know, for real, in the first six months of my term, I didn't even know if I was going to run for re-election this year.

Really? Why?

It's the incoming. It's the stress. It's the violence. It's the lack of support from your own party. It's your own party thinking you're the enemy. When your own colleagues talk anonymously in the press and then turn around and say you're bad because you actually append your name to your opinion.

I chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn't a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.

But I'm serious when I tell people the odds of me running for higher office and the odds of me just going off trying to start a homestead somewhere — they're probably the same.

Astead W. Herndon is a national political reporter based in New York. He was previously a Washington-based political reporter and a City Hall reporter for The Boston Globe. @AsteadWesley

[Josquius]

The Republicans have found a strategy they think wins elections - just lie about everything, spread fear, use white, Christian and hetero identity politics. Unfortunately the left can't win using the same strategy only on reverse - as I've noted, in a straight contest between White and non-White, Christian and non-Christian, hetero and non-hetero, the former wins every time because they are in the majority in the US and likely to remain that way.

If the Republicans embraced compromise, building a bigger tent, ditched the divisive  identity politics, stopped the lying and fearmongering, in short became a boring ordinary right-leaning political party ... that would be awesome. In a perfect world, that's what I'd want to see happening.

Unfortunately it seems unlikely, as the Republicans are in a cancerous state.

I would not say unfortunately when describing the fact the Dems can't use the same tactics.  Why would they want to be Republican light?  I would say, very fortunately, the left will use a strategy that will not cater to the same smaller group of Republican voters.

I guess it depends whether we are talking about winning or what they do when they get there.
If somebody lies and cheats and indulges in all manner of nonsense to get into power but then turns out to actually be a lovely guy who helps the needy, sets the economy on a positive tack, etc... Then that is somewhat forgivable....
Which is the same attitude a lot have to trump et al. Only theyre being tricked about good things happening once they get into power.