What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Because I don't see any sign that the bases are being persuaded. I don't see that significant of a realignment occurring either. I do see the squishy middle narrowing in size.

If all voters cared about is not paying taxes, the Republicans would have won every election for the last 100 years. As I said, the election results don't seem to actually track these aphorisms and meandering opinions people have.

[CountDeMoney]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-izbh7UECIc

Nancy Pelosi's husband has his skull fratured by home invader yelling "where's Nancy, where's Nancy."

Jesse Watters, Fox News host, wants the attacker released, thinks he is being treated unfairly.

Paul Pelosi is a crisis actor.  That explains how he's not dead.  I mean, how do you survive a hammer to the skull unless it's fake, right? And at that age? He didn't even have a Life Alert button. I'm mean, c'mon. Obviously fake.
And right before the election?  Obvious false flag operation by the Democrats, just trying to divert attention away from all the inevitable Republican victories next week by candidates that won't accept any other result anyway.

Enjoy your 1933, people.

[HisMajestyBOB]

That reminds me, I really need to get my passport renewal application in.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Speaking about how political strategy seems to rarely track or predict results--there is significant foretelling that Republicans plan to use their future Congressional majority to force cutbacks to Social Security and Medicare. Note that from any form of political thinking this is a gravely terrible idea.

It presents Biden the opportunity to defend something important to almost all Americans, and importantly--programs that large majorities of the Republican party itself vociferously support.

Even worse in terms of tactics, it is in misalignment with the "new" Republican coalition. The surge of blue collar, non-college educated and lower income whites into the party are made up of people who are overwhelmingly not neoliberals. This is not the GOP of the 80s and 90s where the base of the party was more likely to be college educated, upper middle class, managerial / entrepreneurial types. They are essentially absorbing the Democrats old, organized labor industrial base voters, who have no problems at all with public spending on welfare as long as it benefits their class and ethnic group specifically (there is a reason they tend to oppose food stamps and TANF, those are perceived as being benefits for blacks, Social Security and Medicare are not.)

Trump had a decent political feel for this coalition and came out strongly during the GOP primaries in 2016 against any cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and largely never entertained such thinking during his four years in office.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuPiWLPBs1Y

Ted Cruz says the right thing about Paul Pelosi.

[HisMajestyBOB]

"Remember, the Democrats are godless Satanists who want to turn your kids gay, change their gender, and sell them to pedophiles. They're stealing your money and giving it to illegal immigrant criminals. They stole the election and will steal the next election. They oppose you, your way of life, and everything you stand for.

But please don't kill them."

[The Brain]

Isn't he the Zodiac Killer? Glass houses and what not.

[alfred russel]

Even worse in terms of tactics, it is in misalignment with the "new" Republican coalition. The surge of blue collar, non-college educated and lower income whites into the party are made up of people who are overwhelmingly not neoliberals. This is not the GOP of the 80s and 90s where the base of the party was more likely to be college educated, upper middle class, managerial / entrepreneurial types. They are essentially absorbing the Democrats old, organized labor industrial base voters, who have no problems at all with public spending on welfare as long as it benefits their class and ethnic group specifically (there is a reason they tend to oppose food stamps and TANF, those are perceived as being benefits for blacks, Social Security and Medicare are not.)

Holy shit, just three posts above, in post 3690, you told me that you didn't see a significant realignment happening when I brought it up to counter something you were saying. I guess now you do?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Holy shit, just three posts above, in post 3690, you told me that you didn't see a significant realignment happening when I brought it up to counter something you were saying. I guess now you do?

The two comments are not related and were in response to different pieces of news and had different contexts.

My first comment was talking about "election cycle" persuasion, which was also what the long form article I posted from politico was talking about. In response I said there is very little evidence that a significant portion of voters are being "persuaded." Obviously a chunk of voters changes which party they vote for, some every single election. That is not intrinsic evidence that persuasion works, though--which was the point of my post you were replying to, that if anything I see anecdotal evidence that voters change how they vote with little relationship to the persuasions and tactics of the two parties.

You also mentioned an "ongoing political realignment" as evidence of persuasion. I said that I don't see any such alignment. An ongoing political realignment means right now, 2022. In 2022 I don't see much of that occurring. I see the squishy middle shrinking, largely retreating behind the battle lines they leaned most towards.

My second post was juxtaposing Republican neoliberal philosophy with the acquisition of blue collar economically liberal voters, which I noted by referencing the 1980s, was a multidecade change and one that I never said was "ongoing", as I think most of that change was complete by 2012, but it was well under way as far back as 1980.

One post was talking about the 2-year cycle of voting behavior as it relates to political campaigning and strategy and the other was talking about a 40 year realignment of political parties, and the specifics of those two discussions was separate enough that trying to conflate specific words between those independent discussions is unwise.

[alfred russel]

If you can see that significant enough blocks of voters have been persuaded over the medium to long term to actually change the make up of the parties, in single election cycles those can be significant? In the 6 presidential elections since 2000, the tipping point state margin has been less than 1% in 3 of them.

The blue collar voters that switched to the GOP and the educated voters that migrated to the Democrats did so as individuals in specific voting cycles. The party that gives up on persuasion in a specific cycle is going to be screwed in the long term but more importantly lose a lot of winnable elections. From a GOP perspective, it isn't hard to imagine that a better strategy in 2020 could have kept the white house considering how close they were but even if you write that off could have at least kept the Senate. It is actually kind of hard to imagine they played the senate run off elections any worse than they did...

[Admiral Yi]

"Remember, the Democrats are godless Satanists who want to turn your kids gay, change their gender, and sell them to pedophiles. They're stealing your money and giving it to illegal immigrant criminals. They stole the election and will steal the next election. They oppose you, your way of life, and everything you stand for.

But please don't kill them."

I read it as an attempt by Cruz to disassociate himself from the QAnon wing of the party.  That's why I found it interesting.

The time lag tells me he probably looked at some polling about the attack before responding.

[garbon]

"Remember, the Democrats are godless Satanists who want to turn your kids gay, change their gender, and sell them to pedophiles. They're stealing your money and giving it to illegal immigrant criminals. They stole the election and will steal the next election. They oppose you, your way of life, and everything you stand for.

But please don't kill them."

I read it as an attempt by Cruz to disassociate himself from the QAnon wing of the party.  That's why I found it interesting.

The time lag tells me he probably looked at some polling about the attack before responding.

Doesn't seem waranted by actual sequence of events. Most charitable is he is swinging back and forth, least charitable he talking out both sides of his mouth.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ted-cruz-paul-pelosi-misinformation-tweet-b2214574.html

Sen Ted Cruz seemed to be amplifying misinformation about the man suspected of attacking Nancy Pelosi's husband after he'd earlier condemned the incident as "horrific".

On Friday, hours after learning that Paul Pelosi, 82, had been "violently assaulted" in the San Francisco home that he shares with the House speaker, who was in Washington DC at the time of the attack, the Texas senator tweeted out a message that said he and his wife Heidi were praying for the Pelosi family.

"We can have our political differences, but violence is always wrong and unacceptable," he tweeted on Friday.

The Republican lawmaker then made an about-face on those earlier sympathies extended to his Democratic colleague, as by Monday he began posting tweets from unreliable sources that seemed to promote falsehoods and innuendo about the suspected attacker, 42-year-old David DePape.

In one of the posts, Sen Cruz had reshared a screenshot from alt-right activist Matt Walsh, in which he pushed back against the information that has been widely reported from reliable news outlets that Mr DePape had recently become engaged in posting on far-right political blogs.

In some of those posts published to a subscription-based blog, viewed by The Independent,  Mr DePape was seen expressing a range of transphobic, antisemitic and racist views, alongside conspiracy theories tied to Covid-19 and QAnon, among others.

Mr Walsh, and seemingly Sen Cruz, seemed to both challenge the notion that Mr DePape was engaged in militant right-wing conspiracies, with the former writing: "I don't know what the h*** happened at Nancy Pelosi's house and I suspect none of us will ever know for sure. But I do know that trying to paint a hippie nudist from Berkeley as some kind of militant right winger is absurd and will always be absurd."

Mr Cruz, appearing to agree with Mr Walsh's conclusions, later quote tweeted a screenshot of the right-wing activist's thread with the caption: "truth".

...

Post that Cruz noted as "truth"

[Tamas]

See this is an important difference between the left and the right: if something mildly/moderately questionable happens on the left side of politics, like some nutjobs at a university yell down some professor they don't agree with, the left is all "omg are we spiralling out of control what is happening to us?!"

When a seriously questionable thing happens on the right, like some nutjob beating up the spouse of a politician, the right goes "well, that clearly shows the left are a bunch of liars and whackos who cannot be reasoned with!"

And to be clear that is to the credit of the left, not the right.

[alfred russel]

So what are the odds on Georgia?
I'm skeptical. I'm guessing a lot of anti trump republicans voted Biden but will vote republican in the rerun.

Who knows?  Everything is so fucking weird right now.  Normally it should be an easy win for Republicans, but this year Stacey Abrams produced a miracle (the women should run the party), and you have a large number of Republicans who take Donald Trump's statement about a rigged election at face value and say they won't vote.

We will see how things turn out on Tuesday, but she is behind in the polls and in one of the most brain dead decisions imaginable, she wore orange today, the day that UGA plays Tennessee.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/celebs/stacey-abrams-feeling-confident-about-her-shot-at-ga-governor/vi-AA13LZuL?category=foryou

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm-5CndRrxQ

Paul Pelosi's attacker is a Canadian in the US illegally.