What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Berkut]

I was responding to Biscuit.  Sorry not clear.

No it was clear

I just chose to interpret the word of Biscuit and argue my interpretation

So they go low, we go lower?

I would say its more a matter of recognizing that the fight is sometimes not as high as we would like, and unless you want to just cede that space, someone has to be willing to fight in the trenches.

How do you feel about what the Lincoln Project was doing in the last election cycle?

[OttoVonBismarck]

At its core the reality is a lot of people vote on personality, ephemera, rumor, and preconceived biases. A "just the facts, ma'am" style of campaigning that doesn't really focus on the negatives of the other candidate, basically cedes the ground to all the voters who do vote and process information that way.

We don't and probably shouldn't just run outright lies, but there's a huge gulf between "rude and mean-spirited" campaigning and outright fraud.

[garbon]

I was responding to Biscuit.  Sorry not clear.

No it was clear

I just chose to interpret the word of Biscuit and argue my interpretation

So they go low, we go lower?

I would say its more a matter of recognizing that the fight is sometimes not as high as we would like, and unless you want to just cede that space, someone has to be willing to fight in the trenches.

How do you feel about what the Lincoln Project was doing in the last election cycle?

I think it was amusing and certainly something that pissed Trump off. But I also doubt it moved the needle / they all came across as rather scummy individuals going for low blows.

[Jacob]

So they go low, we go lower?

No, it's not a competition that way. It's not that whoever goes the lowest wins.

But if there are exposed kneecaps or jugulars, go for them. Don't leave them untouched. When appropriate, hammer them. It doesn't have to be the only thing that's done, nor should it be what the candidates themselves focus on in their campaigns.

In fact, IMO non-Trumpists should start the process of perpetual character assassination on the Trump kids (there's so much to work with, but find something that resonates with their own potential supporters as well as something that fires up key Dem voting groups) so when one of them tries their inevitable run on their father's coat tails (with a dash of reinvention) there's a heavy load of accumulated baggage. It worked against Hillary, I think it's worth doing to lower the chances of any potential Trumpist dynasty.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right, and the perception that it "doesn't work" for Democrats in my opinion isn't well tested. Like there has been low level "rough" shots taken at Trump, but nothing that compares to the way Republicans have gone after prominent Democrats. Democrats who lead investigations of Trump were far less bombastic and less prone to hyperbole in the press, just compare the way the Republicans went after the Clintons' work with the Clinton Foundation vs the broader Democratic party and the Trump Organization and Trump's adult children who 3 of them have had significant roles in the organization. Like a few scattered shots across the bow likely isn't going to get the job done.

It's hard to remember now but HRC was a fairly popular figure once, so was Bill Clinton. They weren't turned into boogeymen with one or two nasty op-eds or mean statements in a committee chamber. It was a consistent, persistent, unrelenting campaign. They've gone after other Democrats this way as well, and while Obama and Biden were both harder to go after because they weren't nearly as....compromised as the Clintons in many ways, I think the efforts did hurt both men politically.

Most of the Trump Presidency it felt like seriously looking at the juicy dirt on Trump would result in a few New York Times articles as some new piece of corruption out of the Trump Org would leak out, but then the next day the collected energies would shift to the new 'silly Trump outrage of the day.' By and large Democrats let Trump choose what topics they were going to argue about for 2015 all the up until March of 2020. The only thing that undermined Trump's ability to control the topic was the pandemic, a once in a lifetime event that Trump could never find a way to bluster away, and almost a deus ex machina you can't just expect in future contests.

[OttoVonBismarck]

And by the way, I think there may be (understandable) confusion about my claim the Democrats didn't go after Trump as reviled as he was and considering he got impeached twice. I have no issue with the stuff the Democrats did do to try to hold Trump to account, I just think it shouldn't have been all that they did. Both impeachments got bonged down in legal and constitutional issues that made a lot of non-politics people's eyes glaze over, and didn't do much to really change the state of the culture war.

I specifically think attacking Trump for being a corrupt rich man who did things like employ illegal immigrants was a line of attack that just never got the fuel it should have been given. Did you ever notice that Trump never fought about his illegal immigrant hiring stuff much? Or his Chinese business dealings? Instead he'd change the topic. He did fight about Ukraine a lot because he felt he dominated that topic because more talk about Ukraine put more attention on Joe Biden. I don't know that the Ukraine shit changed many votes at all to be honest, so I don't think Trump was right about it, but I do think it's telling that there are lines of attack that Trump never engaged in, almost like he knew better than to fight on ground that wasn't favorable to him.

In many ways it's hard to sus out how intuitively good Trump was at some of the politics shit because he had such poor impulse control and poor personal diction, that he did frequently own goal himself, but if you follow the full path of his political career it's kinda obvious certain areas he made sure just were never the topic of discussion. Why is that? Why isn't that where we struck?

[Malthus]

The problem with going after Trump in this way was not that there was too little focus on attacking Trump. The attacks on Trump were constant. They dominated the news for four solid years. You could not turn on the news without some talking heads attacking Trump.

Problem was, these attacks didn't move the needle much. All they did was cement the fact that there were two camps that hated each other like poison. People who already hated Trump ended up hating him more; people who liked Trump took the attacks as the exact sort of baseless lies that they themselves constantly dished out against others. It just becomes schoolyard chatter in which the other side can do no right. The fact that the attacks aimed at Trump were largely true did not matter, because Trump supporters, and those susceptible to Trump support, have become unable to tell the difference between truth and fiction. For attacks on Trump and the GOP to matter, the population has to care about the difference between truth and fiction.

What sunk Trump was that, for all the noise pro and con, he was fundamentally uninterested in and incapable of actually governing so as to accomplish anything. This is fine as long as no governing needs to be done, as the US has tremendous momentum and can keep going for a while even with a wrecker at the helm. The pandemic, though, kinda demanded some minimal level of competence to attack. Few governments attacked the pandemic problem well, but few did it as badly as the Trump administration, and this could not be hidden. The difference between truth and fiction was demonstrated in a way that everyone can see - though there are plenty who will deny it even now, the sight of people dying all around is hard to ignore. At least done critical number had their minds changed.

This is why I doubt such a strategy can work now. It worked against the Democrats because the Republicans were able to build a kind of cult mentality in which truth was secondary to "owning" the other side, and this message was attractive because it appealed to ethnic tribal type loyalties: 'all lives matter' meaning 'white lives matter'.

A mirror image Democrat strategy cannot succeed, that ground is already occupied. Democrats must use other tools to convince voters who may be attracted by the GOP's ethnic message that it is worth their while to switch away from them ("reality matters for your life").

[crazy canuck]

I was responding to Biscuit.  Sorry not clear.

No it was clear

I just chose to interpret the word of Biscuit and argue my interpretation

So they go low, we go lower?

I would say its more a matter of recognizing that the fight is sometimes not as high as we would like, and unless you want to just cede that space, someone has to be willing to fight in the trenches.

How do you feel about what the Lincoln Project was doing in the last election cycle?

You were the one who rightly argued that the Dems should not fight dirty just a few pages ago. 

If the Dems do what Otto suggests what would be the difference between the Dems and the GOP other than Trump playing for the other team.

A mirror image Democrat strategy cannot succeed, that ground is already occupied. Democrats must use other tools to convince voters who may be attracted by the GOP's ethnic message that it is worth their while to switch away from them ("reality matters for your life").

Yep

So basically the Dems need more CountdeMoneys?

I can buy that argument.

The world definitely needs more CdMs.   But I don't recall CdM being indifferent to the truth.  Quite the opposite.

[Jacob]

You were the one who rightly argued that the Dems should not fight dirty just a few pages ago.

If the Dems do what Otto suggests what would be the difference between the Dems and the GOP other than Trump playing for the other team.

The difference would be significant: the substance of their policies and their governance.

A mirror image Democrat strategy cannot succeed, that ground is already occupied. Democrats must use other tools to convince voters who may be attracted by the GOP's ethnic message that it is worth their while to switch away from them ("reality matters for your life").

Yep

The argument is not to mirror the GOP, but to do one of the many things the GOP does: attack where there is weakness, relentlessly.

The world definitely needs more CdMs.   But I don't recall CdM being indifferent to the truth.  Quite the opposite.

Maybe I missed the part where it was said the Dems should be indifferent to the truth. I certainly don't think they should be. But you can present the truth in different ways and in different places and frequencies.

F. ex. the statements "he is going through some marital difficulties" and "the guy is fucking prostitutes while his wife is taking care of their sick child, and his platforming on being family values" can both be true. One framing is kinder than the other. There's also a difference between mentionining it once or twice and making sure it's attached to that politician's brand.

[alfred russel]

I disagree on this stuff. Trump was viciously attacked on a routine basis for fact based stuff from corruption to abusive behavior toward women to general incompetence to...well everything. Maybe it would have been better to focus on just one or two things but that is impossible when there are 24 hour news stations.

Trump almost won reelection despite being in the middle of a pandemic and economic downturn and general civic unease because 47% of voters liked the shit he was selling.

I don't think attacks really have anything to do with this, but there might be marginal merit to Democrats going so hard after Bush, McCain, and Romney that when the real scumbag ran voters were desensitized.

[crazy canuck]

You were the one who rightly argued that the Dems should not fight dirty just a few pages ago.

If the Dems do what Otto suggests what would be the difference between the Dems and the GOP other than Trump playing for the other team.

The difference would be significant: the substance of their policies and their governance.

A mirror image Democrat strategy cannot succeed, that ground is already occupied. Democrats must use other tools to convince voters who may be attracted by the GOP's ethnic message that it is worth their while to switch away from them ("reality matters for your life").

Yep

The argument is not to mirror the GOP, but to do one of the many things the GOP does: attack where there is weakness, relentlessly.

The world definitely needs more CdMs.   But I don't recall CdM being indifferent to the truth.  Quite the opposite.

Maybe I missed the part where it was said the Dems should be indifferent to the truth. I certainly don't think they should be. But you can present the truth in different ways and in different places and frequencies.

F. ex. the statements "he is going through some marital difficulties" and "the guy is fucking prostitutes while his wife is taking care of their sick child, and his platforming on being family values" can both be true. One framing is kinder than the other. There's also a difference between mentionining it once or twice and making sure it's attached to that politician's brand.

You may have not read Otto's post carefully before agreeing with his approach.  I quote "I don't much care if Jim Jordan knew that the team doctor was raping the wrestlers, what I care about is if we talk about it all the time, it hurts Jim Jordan."

I am all for pointing out things that are real.  I am very much against character assassination based on false innuendo.

[Barrister]

How do you feel about what the Lincoln Project was doing in the last election cycle?

I think it was amusing and certainly something that pissed Trump off. But I also doubt it moved the needle / they all came across as rather scummy individuals going for low blows.

There's evidence it moved the needle - although not that much.  There was a noticeable amount of voters who switched from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020 - enough to outweigh the marginal gains Trump got in black and hispanic voters.

[crazy canuck]

And I suppose more to the point Jacob, one can have some confidence in Dem policies now because they have a commitment to actual facts.  But if they abandon that commitment to truth simply because they believe in the end they will be better policy makers - we get closer to Robespierre territory.

[Sheilbh]

There's evidence it moved the needle - although not that much.  There was a noticeable amount of voters who switched from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020 - enough to outweigh the marginal gains Trump got in black and hispanic voters.

Yeah - I don't think the Lincoln Project changed anyone's mind. I think it was preaching to the choir.

And I'm not sure the voters who were switching weren't already observable in 2018, before they started.

[garbon]

How do you feel about what the Lincoln Project was doing in the last election cycle?

I think it was amusing and certainly something that pissed Trump off. But I also doubt it moved the needle / they all came across as rather scummy individuals going for low blows.

There's evidence it moved the needle - although not that much.  There was a noticeable amount of voters who switched from Trump 2016 to Biden 2020 - enough to outweigh the marginal gains Trump got in black and hispanic voters.

And the evidence that was down to the Lincoln Project?