What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[crazy canuck]

Is the slam on Jim Jordan a good one?  Honest question, I know nothing about it.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/politics/jordan-osu-wrestlers-strauss-invs/index.html

Team doctor was abusive for years. Multiple athletes have come forward about it, and many have specifically said that Jordan made comments himself about the doctor, or was present when athletes complained.

It's certainly possibly that Jordan somehow worked with a doctor who abused athletes something like over 150 times, many of whom complained, and plenty who said that it was an open secret that the doctor was a total creep, and somehow he just never noticed or heard anything that many, many of his athletes said was common knowledge, and it is possible that those who recall specific comments made in his presence of even by him are all lying for reasonreasonsreasons.

It doesn't seem likely though. I think this is more than fair game.

And so the facts are important.  We go from mud slinging Otto to fact based Berkut.  World of difference and critical in my view.

[grumbler]

I am skeptical about how effective those are though (and they have been used, if perhaps in a muted way)...it seemed pretty common for many Trump supporters to tout the line "yeah, we know he's sleazy, but he'll appoint anti-abortion judges and build a wall, so it's all good".

That's true, but the Trump supporters are not going to be convinced by anything at all, so write them off.  There are people who voted for Trump who won't be happy to learn that he and his whole family are just grifters.  The point has been made in the past, but it hasn't been hammered on, so people mostly missed it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right, so a few things.

1. The "always Trumper" were never going to move no matter what, grumbler is 100% right, don't even factor them in. They are not enough to win the Presidency or hold any real power in the country.

2. A lot of the attacks against Trump where whack-a-mole shit, and most importantly they attacked Trump over the things that upset Democrats i.e.: racism, sexism, abuse of office, saying stupid things. It's actually similar to what I'd call the "Jon Stewart" model, Jon Stewart made Dems have stiffies every time his show aired during the Bush Admin and Obama Admin, he usually blasted GOP "hypocrisy" and focused on all the ways the GOP was terrible. But he did so only as it related to things that bother fairly liberal people. I don't think Jon Stewart's style of attack changed the minds, of a single person.

3. Changing minds doesn't mean making someone a Democrat, it can also just mean making someone decide not to vote at all.

4. I think the core value proposition for people who voted for Trump was: he makes libs cry and he bullies people we don't like, he is a "business man" and "he isn't another politician" and "he actually cares about the working class." The people whose main reason for supporting Trump is that he torments liberals are not balanced and healthy people, and likely are not worth messaging to, but on a lot of those other points--Trump had weaknesses. But crying about how his minions violated the Hatch Act, focusing on how he degrades women, or focusing on how he abuses the office of the Presidency in arcane ways, none of those hit at those issues, and most just sail over the heads of the voters involved. My postulation is that if you made a sustained effort to focus more on how Trump hurts working class people and is a plutocrat who is out of touch with ordinary people and just pretends to be one of them, it would have done far more damage than a thousand "Access Hollywood" tapes. Keep in mind Trump barely won the Presidency against one of the worst Democratic candidates in recent history, you actually didn't have to change much to have made Trump a 0 term President.

FWIW I don't even want this conversation to be too much about Trump, Trump was/is a charismatic demagogue and I think to some degree he is a special case. But I also think Dems spent most of his Presidency attacking him for the things they hated, they were things that even if you agreed the Dems were "right" if you were in the Trump camp you probably didn't care that much about. Most Trump voters don't actually care about bigotry or promoting violence against non-whites, for example--in fact many support those things.

I think there's a chance that Trump's boorish behavior may have cost him the white suburban middle class by some time around the 2018 midterms and I'm not actually sure he was ever getting them back, so I'm not actually sure he was ever going to win reelection in 2020. It's impossible to know, and I don't personally think the pandemic had nothing to do with it, but Trump didn't lose because of Detroit and Atlanta (cities where he actually improved his vote share, albeit marginally, with blacks), he lost because of the suburbs, and it looked like he had lost the suburbs pretty bad 2 years in to his Presidency and he never did anything to attempt to regain them. Probably the main risk for Dems in 2020 was nominating someone who would have pushed suburban whites back into "holding their nose" for Trump.

But anyway, I think you shouldn't cede 80% of rural America and the white working class to the Republican party. I think you need to attack the Republican party for its plutocracy and its support of policies that directly and predictably harm the working class, and crony capitalism. I think because of how strong culture war issues are, there's a large swathe of the white working class and rural America you will never flip, but Carville has the right of it--pushing GOP vote share down to 75% or 70% from 80% is actually big in those districts. Or even just getting more of those people to stay home.

A lot of these voters used to identify with the Democratic party and it was a sustained game of negative campaigning designed to hit upon their anxieties and biases that flipped them to Republican. Aggressive campaigning targetted at Republican weak points very likely will yield results, and it may not be in one election cycle. But by the way, the GOP didn't build this coalition in one cycle either.

I think "rough attacks" against guys like Jordan are more about not letting Republicans dominate the narrative. There are sensational and bad things out there about Jim Jordan that should be brought up for the rest of his political career. The same way Benghazi was for HRC. There is literally no reason to give a fundamentally dishonest operate like Jordan carte blanche to repeatedly "set the tone" on various debates without hitting back at him. I don't know that you unseat Jim Jordan, but you can help undermine his voice by making him known as the "lets kids get raped" wrestling coach.

[Jacob]

Once more I agree with Otto.

[Malthus]

I have no problems attacking GOP for policies that directly harm the working class whites who form their base. That's not controversial.

I also agree it was and is a bad strategy to attack Trump/the GOP for things that Democrats hate, rather than focusing on things that their own supporters would hate, if they understood what was happening.

It is just surprising to read, after the non stop invective on all sides (including against Trump), every single day over the last four years or more, that what is really needed is more nasty attacks. Like that is the thing we and the public have all missed hearing enough of ...

The risk you run is that the hard hiring expose of how Trump and the GOP really hurt their base will get lost in the stew of attacks flying in every direction.

[Sheilbh]

Once more I agree with Otto.

Same.

[crazy canuck]

When the revolution comes, I am definitely staying clear of Jacob and Sheilbh.

[grumbler]

When the revolution comes, I am definitely staying clear of Jacob and Sheilbh.

I am sure that they are very relieved to hear that.

[Razgovory]

There were situations that I wondered why Democrats didn't exploit.  For instance, Trump saying he wanted to protect Chinese jobs or his business interests in the PRC.  I don't know how much utility any attack would have, Republicans have successfully inoculated themselves from any offending information using he "Liberal Media Bias" vaccine, but I suppose it would be worth a try.

[Jacob]

When the revolution comes, I am definitely staying clear of Jacob and Sheilbh.

A bunch of Jacobins and Sheilbhins the lot of them!

[Jacob]

I am sure that they are very relieved to hear that.

But actually, CC is excellent company.

[Admiral Yi]

I kind of agree with Raz's point, the second half. 

Trump was, for four years, a walking attack ad against himself.  And people weren't fazed. 

I see some tentative signs that more and more people are reevaluating their own thinking about Trump, and coming to their own conclusion that they were batshit crazy.

I don't think this organic process is helped a whole lot by Democratic attack ads pointing out how sleazy and stupid Republicans are.

[crazy canuck]

When the revolution comes, I am definitely staying clear of Jacob and Sheilbh.

A bunch of Jacobins and Sheilbhins the lot of them!

[Sheilbh]

Trump was, for four years, a walking attack ad against himself.  And people weren't fazed. 

In a way I think that was partly what kept his support and still does. You can say anything you want about Trump - but I can't think of any attack that you could really call a surprise. He was, if nothing else, utterly transparent and utterly honest about who he was. He was cruel, corrupt, venal, petty etc - all of those things the attack ads highlighted but he was pretty blatant about it.

I always felt the Democrats could have attacked him more for being weak.

The other part that helped protect him was this:

[Admiral Yi]

no entiendo