CNN's exit poll survey provides us with a lot more than NBC's (which only told us that #whitewomen swung right). From CNN's info I glean: Virginians dislike both parties, w/ little loyalty to either Biden or Trump. https://t.co/UuZtcnsEaJ
I don't think this follows. In most recent elections, Democrats lost ground in rural areas but gained in the suburbs. Last night, they lost ground in the suburbs too. That's different and it's worth asking why (and, yes, the answers are probably complicated and multi-causal). pic.twitter.com/DJsL4rAIcV
Now, it's true electoral trends are thermostatic (i.e. they tend to break against the governing party) in somewhat predictable ways. But part of that is because parties adjust their strategies after defeats, in e.g. the way the GOP did in Virginia that it didn't in California.
As a corollary, Democrats probably should consider strategic adjustments in response to last night—exactly how they should change it and on what issues is a harder question, of course—rather than just attributing it to a poor national environment.
Entirely plausible scenario is that GOP has a bunch of good outcomes in 2021/2022 without Trump but then nominates Trump anyway and has a bad 2024. https://t.co/AtqmjXXYNC
My basic, boring take though is that Virginia probably won't affect the 2022 midterm odds very much (dreary outlook for Dems either way, TBH). It'll mostly impact *how* 2022 is contested and what political elites argue about.https://t.co/AifCHV8hJJ
Yglesias from last night on creating and spreading a narrative before you've got strong data
If you're doing a take about specifically white racial backlash in Virginia, I think you should produce some evidence that the backlash was limited to white voters because based on the maps available now I don't see it.
I've done some version or another of this tweet a million times since the Miami-Dade results came in on Election Night 2020, but progressives do themselves no favors by pretending there are no Black and Hispanic swing voters.
Like is this what happened? Before we "confront" this landscape shouldn't we check if it's true that the swing was limited to white voters? https://t.co/XUvfQoTJw0
Something to note is that racial attitudes are very imperfectly correlated with racial identity.
Just as there are white people with very left-wing ideas on race, there are non-white people who "agree strongly" with the conservative stance on racial issues. pic.twitter.com/a5Yo7av6kj
I think that where many analysts, even Yglesias, seem to be missing big time, and I just found out, is that the Lt. Gov. Elect is a woman with black skin, immigrant parents from Jamaica who brought her along at age 6 (DACA anyone?) , military service (a marine; for the Pentagon friendly in VA!), an advanced degree, experience running a homeless shelter and has lots of experience running for VA office not to mention being vice president of the Virginia Board of Education. Sounds like a swing-vote getter to me! Especially from woman of all colors and immigrants:
Before running for public office, Sears ran a homeless shelter.[6] In November 2001, Sears upset 20-year Democratic incumbent William P. "Billy" Robinson, Jr. while running for the 90th district seat in Virginia's House of Delegates.[7][8] Sears was the first Jamaican female Republican,[9] first female veteran, and the first naturalized citizen delegate, to serve in the House of Delegates.[10] She challenged DemocratBobby Scott in 2004 for Virginia's 3rd congressional district seat, but lost,[11] garnering 31 percent of the vote.[4] and has received presidential appointments to the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Census Bureau.[12]
In September 2018, Sears entered the race for U.S. Senate as a write-in alternative to Republican candidate Corey Stewart.[13] She received less than 1% of the vote.[14] On May 11, 2021, she won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia on the fifth ballot, defeating second-place finisher Tim Hugo by 54% to 46%.[15] On November 2, 2021, she won the race for lieutenant governor of Virginia on a ticket with businessman Glenn Youngkin, becoming the first black woman elected to a statewide office in Virginia.[16] In her victory speech she said, "When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican. But this country had done so much for me, I was willing, willing, to die for this country.” [17]
Yglesias on the whole "CRT" thing, with comment from Zachary Elwood
I don't see particularly clear evidence for the centrality of "CRT" to the Virginia outcome, but I do think on the merits that progressives' habit of denying that there have been any noteworthy changes to educational practice in recent years is a little bizarre.
It sounds pretty bad, based on what I've seen and read about it.
This isn't a question of "should we teach people about the history of slavery?" it's "should we teach people to equate valuing writing with whiteness?"
Some people might like these thoughts about how the problem seems to be around a failure to define what we’re even talking about most of time. pic.twitter.com/wv4XmAkLfc
on Nassau County, 1 of 2 counties making up Long Island, NY (which extends out into the ocean just like Cape Cod does in MA) the first county to the east of the NYC border in Queens. Shane Goldmacher is a national politics reporter for the NYT previously the chief of politics for the Metro NY area desk:
The results in Nassau County seem an important piece of understanding what is happening in the suburbs
Yea - maybe all politics aren’t local as much anymore? How many swing does SALT impact? How un-energized is dem base by DC stalling? How much is just anti incumbent because of supply chain / inflation pocketbook stuff? Or maybe it’s just property taxes.
Totally. Im actually looking forward to reading the hot takes! However dumb some may be. Although it’s 3 AM so@I may be regretting that when sober and awake tomorrow!
Except it isn't. Both Nassau & Suffolk currently have Democrats as county executive & district attorney. Substantial populations of Black, Latino, Asian residents. Affluent areas with college educated professionals. Unless absentees save her, few thought Laura Curran would lose.
Just pointing out that it's not really Fox or Trump country. Has many independent voters, who determine election results. Narrow margins here remind me of when Suozzi lost the county executive to Mangano. Suburbs are still very competitive & Democrats can't take them for granted.
Laura Curran is currently losing 48% to 52% without absentees. She narrowly won in 2017 with 51%. There are national issues in the background, but she ran a good campaign on local issues like property taxes. I thought she'd be several points ahead. Nope, another very narrow race.
Suffolk County was a bloodbath as well. Of the 10 towns, 6 have Republican supervisors. While not all towns were up, 2 of the 4 dem supervisors were unopposed. Dems went from 10-8 majority in leg to 12-6 minority.
She's complaining about bi-lingual "outreach" to change votes to Dems. But I suspect that's not going to work unless you're offering strong anti-crime, pro-small-business, pro less taxation policies and are anti-affirmative action in schools. These are classic small business owing people who work 12 hrs. a day, 7 days a week and have managed to climb the ladder enough to buy a small house or something like that, whatever language you speak to them, they are still going to go with voting GOP for local offices! They don't want more bureaucracy and they don't want nanny state stuff, no way. Probably even Bloomberg pissed them off with his anti-big-gulp sodas and anti-cigarette stances, they could make good money off of those...
Another clip from Virginia that will trigger nightmares: "I believe that Republicans now, especially we minorities, have stood up- because I'm sick of people stigmatizing me (for being) a Republican and me being expected not to speak up." Shocked that @UniNoticias aired it TBH pic.twitter.com/IjhvBACWJK
You know, i see "first woman of color as mayor of Boston" and I'm like, fine, and then i see the following about hundreds of years ruled by "white male", and I'm suddenly "fuck you, who else was going to do it?- some Chinese coolie pre-Boxer rebellion under the Emperor? some Mexican in the age of Pancho Villa? some Turk in the era of the Caliphate?" Applauding new inclusion doesn't have to have this gratuitous shitting on white males just because we got things done and led the country to being largely #1 in the world (and with Europe the most progressive democracies, for all the hiccups along the way). Like it or not, women have more trouble lifting and moving 100lb loads, as an example of the physical requirements for much of the world's work until maybe 40-50 years ago in mines, farming/ranching, ocean transportation, military, et al., which is also how men who weren't elected mayor of Boston often died much much younger. A friend noted Busch spills more beer in a day than Sam Adams brews in a year. Make similar comparisons to all these other alphabet categories. I had someone going on and on about how many "female engineers" there are - certainly not many til of late, many focused around chemical and computers rather than say civil and manufacturing, and then the woman started equating being a physicist with being an engineer - uh, no, applied engineering has in general been much less attractive to females (oops, shouldn't use that loaded term) than natural sciences, for whatever reasons, even though there are obviously exceptions, and there's a reason you don't have to push & promote "men in STEM" very hard, whatever that reason is, just like girls will easily play with Barbies no matter how grotesque their actual physiognomy is.
As a *flip in perspective* exercise in empathy I invite progressives to think for a moment about this detail from Matt Taibbi's dispatch from Virginia: 1/x pic.twitter.com/uEFnqq1Fp8
How would you feel if you heard that a majority of a school board in your county made a closed "Anti-CRT" Facebook group that included a list of local parents deemed insufficiently supportive of Chris Rufo-style activist efforts?
Democrats should be able to validate the concerns of parents like this one as well as the concerns of parents who want, say, American slavery and genocide taught, not obscured. It isn't a difficult needle to thread, it just takes accepting that *parents like this are numerous* https://t.co/xhV1HWofaU
Angry Republicans and Democrats in my inbox: *How can you spend any time criticizing the most wrongheaded actions of people on the fringes of my coalition when the most wrongheaded actions of people on the fringes of the other coalition are so frightening?*
thread related to your rant (tho they don't focus on the male thing as they should, it's just presumed)
after every even mildly disappointing result for the dems there's an outpouring of anti-white vitriol from fairly mainstream voices that would've been considered crazy and embarrassing even like 6 years ago
Not just twitter...last summer Rod Dreher pointed out that Ta-Nehisi Coates' 2015 description of whites was same as you-know-who's descriptions of Jews. Coates won National Book Award and MacArthur Grant for it https://t.co/AsZGYSYSo5pic.twitter.com/gLd7j36YG1
Nate Cohn, election & poll analyst for the NYTimes:
I said this to a few people on the phone so it may be worth adding publicly too: from the standpoint of electoral implications, one of the most important things about CRT (either IRL or caricature) is that it's a critique of liberalism from the left.
The implication: it lets certain GOPers be relatively liberal on race.
If CRT is raised to sufficient salience, GOPers don't have to rev up the base with outright conservative views--like anti-immigration or denial of police brutality--to polarize along racial attitudes
Of course, many Republicans will instead emphasize outright conservative views that alienate more voters. I'd guess one might have lost VA.
But for more moderate GOPers, CRT is a gift. They can bash the left and earn cred by merely sounding like... Obama '08
As an aside: watch some Youngkin. Obviously he's a Republican. It's *not* Obama '08. But there is that implicit aspiration to a postracial, colorblind society. It lets the GOP assert that it's the other side dividing by race. It's a big turn from the Trump era
And look, I was a HS debater--I get the instinct to simply say CRT is a legal theory, say nothing's there in public schools, etc. It would win some debates. But don't let that obscure how it's playing out in practice
And I mentioned this in a thread about Hungary (lol) a few weeks ago, but if you're someone who basically lives on Twitter you can see it in your neighborhood simply by watching these silly Twitter debates over iconoclastic Substack accounts.
There's a public group of liberal, Obama-era writers who now have entire brands built around distinguishing themselves from the left on race/culture. This is clearly potent stuff, and CRT is the first time it really got off Twitter
"Get those kids off my lawn" vs "hope i die before I get old" - race version. Works every time (at least in the US - we're so easy to manipulate and get thrown off stride)
"If you want to win races, you can't tell people what you think should be the most important issue facing them. You need to speak to what their most important issue is."
WASHINGTON — In Shakespeare, when characters want to fulfill their desires, they escape to what’s been called the Green World.
And that’s what Democrats promised voters: that they could leave behind the vitriol and aggravation of Donald Trump’s America and escape to an Arden that was cool, calm and reassuring.
Democrats violated that pledge. On the way to that verdant forest, we got led into a circular firing squad. Tight margins in Congress do not bring out the best in pols.
“We promised to change the rancor and division,” said one top Democrat. “So we offered something else: division and rancor." [.....]
There’s some truth in what James Carville told Judy Woodruff: “What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools.”
There’s also some truth in what Representative Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Virginia Democrat in a tough re-election battle, told The Times’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns about the president: “Nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
Virginia Republicans officially seized control of the state House of Delegates late Friday night, taking back power of the chamber after Democrats flipped it in 2019 and further growing their gains in the key battleground state https://t.co/639WvRCowZ
Voters don't care about Donald Trump. They care about Joe Biden's unpopularity. VA is a good example: the 16% of Virginia voters who didn't like Biden or Trump, Youngkin won by better than 2 to 1. This was a key bloc that put Youngkin over the edge. https://t.co/mKCEsn16A0
The one thing that is constant in all these races where the GOP overperformed 2020 is that Biden is unpopular. And Democrats trying to play up Trump are finding out that voters care about the man in charge (i.e. Biden)
The swing in NJ from 2020 was likely bigger than the swing in VA from 2020. Campaigns matter for sure, but any analysis of what happened Tuesday should probably acknowledge that fact.
Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, Biden's "unpopular" for the same reason Hillary was "unpopular" - there's a huge marketing machine to repeat over and over how bad they are however benign and middling they are. I keep seeing bullshit about how Americans want to focus on issues, but they want to focus on issues while being entertained by smash football. Biden is even more middlin' and non-controversial than Hillary, and he's a charming old corny non-controversial white dude, but a (un)healthy portion of the country is infected with Trumpism even though Trump may "go a bit too far", a natural extension of Newt Gingrich and Tom "the Hammer" DeLay and the Tea Party born out of crash and burn (and Karl Rove, but Rove came across as nicer than he was/is).
Long Yglesias thread reacting to Perry Bacon Jr. on "the woke" thing and politics
imo a big part of the reason why it’s a bad idea to lose votes over “wokeness” is precisely because there is so little policy content at stake, it’s not like running a political risk for the sake of cutting child poverty and greenhouse gas emissions https://t.co/G22SFa9x0N
Would those things matter to persuadable voters or is that too trivial? Well, they’d matter to the people leftists who’d get angry about it on Twitter (before voting for them anyway) so why not?
Terry McAuliffe could have said it’s important to teach the truth about the dark chapters of American history, but he hears parents who say some teachers forget to teach the light and it’s important to not lose sight of the greatness of this country and its heroes.
Probably should have given the Columbus bit to Murphy in light of New Jersey’s huge Italian-American population.
Why triangulate like this? Why not go all-out and pander to your constituents on an emotional topic with zero policy stakes? pic.twitter.com/iScFQs3rtD
Biden could go to a low-income rural white community that will benefit from BIF funds, and say I understand why people in towns like this don’t like to hear lectures from celebrities about how privileged they are; they get forgotten by folks in Washington but I remember.
Well, because it might get you the votes you need to cut child poverty and greenhouse gas emissions and appoint an Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights who’ll vigorously uphold anti-discrimination law.
“Democrats should be less ‘woke’ by which I mean just pander to people’s simplistic and naive patriotic ideas and selfishness” is an idea that it’s awkward to express in public so people talk around it.
Like Obama does not brag proudly in his book about pandering to conservatives on marriage equality in 2008 so that he could win the election and put Kagan & Sotomayor on the court.
It’s sort of shameful — but it’s how the vocation of politics is practiced.
Tuesday was the latest example of why Republicans shouldn't fear high turnout. Massive swings in both races and... SIGNIFICANTLY higher turnout than four years ago. Also shows high turnout may continue, even without Trump in the WH. https://t.co/PALq7926k0
I know I sound like a broken record, but your diagnosis of what happened in Virginia really should take into account the current 13 point swing from 2020 in NJ. If it doesn't, it's missing plenty.
George Norcross says nobody in the state predicted last week’s losses for the party. “It was just a tsunami,” he said.
By Sam Sutton @ Politico.com, 11/8, they made it the current headline story also
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — New Jersey’s kingmaker didn’t see it coming.
George Norcross, the South Jersey insurance executive who leads one of the most powerful Democratic organizations in the country, had no idea Gov. Phil Murphy’s victory over Republican Jack Ciattarelli would come down to just a couple of percentage points. He didn’t see Democrats losing a half-dozen legislative seats to a Republican party that’s been in decline since Gov. Chris Christie left the Statehouse four years ago.
He certainly didn’t see his close friend and political ally, state Senate President Steve Sweeney, losing an election to an unknown truck driver with a campaign war chest that would barely cover the cost of a few tickets to a New Jersey Democratic State Committee fundraising event.
“It was just a tsunami,” Norcross said in an interview. “Nobody saw this coming. Nobody. Including me, and I like to think I’m pretty astute about this.”
It’s gut check time for New Jersey Democrats. Every public poll had Murphy’s margin of victory in the high single digits or better. Turnout models from Monmouth University’s Polling Institute to state Democratic internals failed to predict a Republican wave in New Jersey, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 1 million voters.
Sweeney was caught in the riptide and Norcross, a prolific fundraiser and unelected party chieftain with close ties to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, attributes his friend’s collapse and Murphy’s close shave to the party’s dismal plodding through the first year of President Joe Biden’s presidency.
The administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, followed by months of infighting over an ever-shrinking multi-trillion dollar infrastructure and social spending package — the House passed the infrastructure bill Friday night — evaporated support within Democratic strongholds and erased gains made in conservative districts.
According to Norcross, Democrats need to change voter perceptions fast if they want to preserve their majority in the House of Representatives. As many as four or five Democratic members of New Jersey’s House delegation will run into challenges with redistricting and reelection “if this mood maintains itself,” he said. “That’s trouble.”
what Bernie-type lefties know: class war works and racialism warring doesn't:
People on Twitter get excited about terminology but what the Jacobin survey simply shows is that working-class voters—of all races!—prefer the top message to the bottom two.
Very little from NGO world about how the Asian vote in New York City dramatically swung toward the Republican Party. For progressive organizations, this should be something like a crisis - Asians are the fastest growing group in NYC, by far - but nary a peep.
will know more when absentee ballots are tallied but you had majority or plurality Asian Assembly Districts getting outright won by the Republican mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa
anti-black propaganda is working on the Asian community, from magnet school admissions to black-on-yellow crime vids. Same thing is happening within the Hispanic and Muslim communities.
This is a city of immigrants who stay to start small businesses and also do things like vote, and many of them, including many Caribbeans, are not real fond of the Dem Party machine nor of the city bureaucracy that bedevils them, nor are many very fond of Afro-American culture, think of it as about failure, too much like where they came from. And the latter is true especially for all kinds of Asian-American immigrants. And the smart ones also know Eric Adams has a history of being a machine pol.
That pretty much goes for any Asian immigrant type I can think of -far east, near east, southeast, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, aetheist, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, etc.
This guy is at at least looking at some big picture good stats.
Look, Giuliani ousted Dinkins, was re-elected until he couldn't be anymore, and Bloomberg was endorsed by Giuliani and spent a gazillion on of his own money on his first campaign, won and was re-elected until he couldn't anymore.
New York is a city of immigrants who become citizens, and then move out of the city when they can afford to and those are for the most part not liberals!
In Manhattan & Brooklyn, the well-to-do white and Jewish elites and young white free-lance careeristas being supported by their parents from allover the USA make up most of the liberals. Many of the ultra wealthy on Manhattan's upper east side are Republicans as are lots of the Staten Island well-to-do blue collar, like plumbers, electricians, contractors. Plenty of Wall Streets don't even vote in NYC, their home is in Jersey or other burbs (often even they can't afford the upper east side!)
A lot of the rest of the city is immigrants! It's not Detroit, Afro-American culture does not rule! Never did. In the 20's visiting Harlem was seen as an "outre" night out like to a foreign country. I don't even know where NYC got the reputation of being liberal or lefty, hasn't really been like that for more than a century. It's like they are confusing Greenwich Village in Manhattan, neither of which are NYC. It's just tolerant of other cultures AS LONG AS EVERYBODY OBEYS THE RULES.(Fancy pants intellectual socialists and anarchists from early 20th century Greenwich Village weren't looked on very kindly, either--there was already enough chaos: lock em up! and don't let any more in at Ellis Island, either, turn em back)
Uh, didn't we have a period across the country of black gangs targeting old Asian women or mugging Asians as they were unloading their cars or just random violence to Asians? Could that relate?
Of course. But the mistrust of the culture was already there. i.e., korean deli owners vs. black teens hanging in the store especially since 1992 L.A. Rodney King riots...both cultures they feel the tension
Interesting that sort of thing was prominent in NYC in the "West Side Story" era too, BUT the mistrusted were Puerto Rican youth, as possible troublemakers and the deli owners weren't Asian. From what I can tell from studying NYC history, Afro-American kids weren't much suspected as troublemakers but actually looked at as polite. What changed?
"I hate to lose ... but I'm also someone who believes strongly in our republic ... I see no proof that this election was stolen" -- it's the absolute bare minimum, but credit to Jack Ciattarelli for saying this during his concession speech pic.twitter.com/0rKFgBhFgF
Simplistic blaming of "the rural vote" is not the truth about what happened in the VA election, it's actually dangerously inaccurate:
Some (final?) thoughts on what happened in Virginia: I feel like the conventional wisdom was that it was McAuliffe's weakness in rural areas that cost him the election.
TLDR: That's not enough, if Biden had done as poorly in rural areas as McAuliffe he still would have won. pic.twitter.com/0EfzLV1pDE
In fact, McAuliffe didn't do particularly poorly in rural areas. Here we can see percentage point shift vs. a measure of ruralness (in this case the NCHS metric). McAuliffe lost an average of 10 percentage point relative to Biden's margin in every type of precinct. pic.twitter.com/yHUZWGr73O
Obviously, losing 10pp is more meaningful in precincts that are already lopsided (Democrats have less slack to begin with). And in that sense, Democrats did lose proportionally more in rural precincts, but it's simply not enough to have cost them the election. pic.twitter.com/2Ct2XDFx7p
Like I said, if Biden had done as poorly as McAuliffe is rural areas he still would have won -- so that can't really be the only explanation. Amazingly, this is even true for rural and suburban precincts (though this somewhat depends what you think turnout what have been).
What brings Youngkin over the line is that McAuliffe also did poorly in more heavily African-American precincts. This probably isn't due to vote-switchers, but turnout. (see next tweet) pic.twitter.com/HCOTgz1hUO
Turnout in African-American precincts was 58% of 2020, while the state average was 75%. It's particularly interesting that the exit poll doesn't really pick this up (African-American share barely moves, doesn't change at all in AP Votecast).
Also, this likely Hispanic drop also caused issues for Dems -- though remember there are fewer Hispanic voters in VA (and at least according to exits, there were less in 2021 than in 2020).https://t.co/VbXjHbXOAq
Keep in mind, what I am *not* saying is that one group caused McAuliffe's loss. Elections are complicated, and rarely, if ever, is it as simple as that.
It looks like what happened is that Youngkin hit one of very few paths he had to win.
He had high turnout and high margins in rural areas, he significantly brought down margins in suburban areas and he significantly shifted margins in African-American precincts (probably caused by differential turnout). This was his high turnout path to victory.
Thoughts on methodology: obviously this kind of ecological inference isn't ideal, but it seems that neither are exit polls (turnout among African-Americans, party choice among Hispanic voters). They key is to balance both kinds of analyses and be aware of of their weaknesses.
More methodology:
1) ABEV votes were assigned back to precincts based on size.
2) Demographic data is modeled by @L2political.
3) Measure of ruralness is taken from National Center for Health Statistics
People in Kerrville see the poverty, homelessness, yawning inequality, and broken mass transit systems that he’s talking about as clearly worse in the big coastal liberal cities and think “fuck that” and go vote for Gregg Abbott.
This is another reason I would add to the list of why bad local governance is a problem — you want a world where progressives can say the progressive states are delivering clearly superior outcome than the suburbs of Phoenix not just that they have more interesting restaurants. https://t.co/ub02ByraTL
I read this as a colleague of Marjorie Taylor Greene warning Georgia's 14th Congressional district that she's way dumber than even Trump (and goes without saying that she doesn't have the help he did like coloring book briefings), that there's no there there, and they should start looking for someone with actual basic qualifications:
clearly this spokesman's been lurning all the best conspiracy theories from the old days without checking out how they will play with a significant part of the local constituency! some "young Christian conservative" on his staff probably suggested it...oh boy...
The GOP-controlled state legislature plans to pass a new congressional map this week that shreds two Democratic seats, but it will only stand for the next four years.
[...] Florida Republicans have caught up with, and now surpassed, Democrats in terms of registered voters. It's a feat that a few years ago was considered unthinkable even as the GOP continued to win close election after close election, whether it was Rick Scott in 2010 and 2014, and Ron DeSantis and Scott in 2018.
Wire— The totals at the end of October showed there are now 6,035 more Republicans than Democrats in Florida out of nearly 14.3 million registered active voters. This accomplishment — telegraphed a few weeks ago by DeSantis — was called a “milestone moment” by Republican Party of Florida executive director Helen Aguirre Ferré.
Vertigo — Democrats for their part are pushing back… somewhat. They have questioned the numbers of voters being reclassified as inactive from active in some counties. Democrats are still ahead by nearly 62,000 voters if you count those now listed as inactive. Yes, it’s true that those voters remain eligible, but less than 1 percent of those who turned out in 2018 were inactive.
One — The plain fact is that Democrats once had a tremendous advantage — one that aided Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 wins in Florida — and it’s gone, Just three years ago, in the election that DeSantis barely won over Andrew Gillum, Dems had a registration advantage of more than 264,000. In 18 of the last 19 months, Republicans have outpaced Democrats in the number of first-time registrants. “The reality is that the state is changing,” said Ryan Tyson, a well-known GOP consultant. [....]
If by "embarrassing" you mean "absolutely golden local TV coverage that perfectly validates Sinema's winning 2018 campaign rhetoric and can easily be used in her 2024 ads" https://t.co/eY4psQYZI6
“I don’t have a lot to say, typically, but when I do say something, I mean it. That [pro-filibuster] op-ed was something that was heartfelt, and it’s something that I believe very strongly.” -- @kyrstensinemahttps://t.co/lpEkln1Odw
My take on this (which leftists won’t like) is that the actual problem here is “the moderate Biden wing” *itself* has moved too far left on tons of issues relative to where Obama was, and moderates express this by complaining about the Squad which doesn’t add up. https://t.co/vIkMjFuUYK
The establishment didn’t lose power to the left; instead (in part to avoid losing power to the left) they themselves moved away from this approach. https://t.co/F3gVfc3lAf
p.s. from Grumbach's thread, worth checking out because:
Lotta good replies that I agree and disagree with to certain extents.
One thing we might all agree on is it'd be better if media focused more on policy and less on vibes, but profit incentive unfortunately points toward sensationalism and punditbrain/horserace-ism.
Tonight, South Carolina Republicans flipped the mayorship of the state capital of Columbia - the state's second largest city - 52-48%. While ostensibly non-partisan, Barack Obama made a robocall for the "Democrat" in the race. Biden won the city with 71% of the vote last year
Comments
Nate Silver:
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/03/2021 - 10:25pm
Yglesias from last night on creating and spreading a narrative before you've got strong data
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/03/2021 - 10:35pm
I think that where many analysts, even Yglesias, seem to be missing big time, and I just found out, is that the Lt. Gov. Elect is a woman with black skin, immigrant parents from Jamaica who brought her along at age 6 (DACA anyone?) , military service (a marine; for the Pentagon friendly in VA!), an advanced degree, experience running a homeless shelter and has lots of experience running for VA office not to mention being vice president of the Virginia Board of Education. Sounds like a swing-vote getter to me! Especially from woman of all colors and immigrants:
Winsome Sears From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 12:21am
Yglesias on the whole "CRT" thing, with comment from Zachary Elwood
also many further replies are interesting
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/03/2021 - 10:44pm
on Nassau County, 1 of 2 counties making up Long Island, NY (which extends out into the ocean just like Cape Cod does in MA) the first county to the east of the NYC border in Queens. Shane Goldmacher is a national politics reporter for the NYT previously the chief of politics for the Metro NY area desk:
(^ Suffolk is the next county east, out into the ocean, including the Hamptons and Montauk)
edit to insert missing intended tweet
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 1:04am
related addition:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 1:06am
here she's talking about districts in Queens NYC that are close to Suffolk County going GOP, they are heavily Asian-American immigrant:
She's complaining about bi-lingual "outreach" to change votes to Dems. But I suspect that's not going to work unless you're offering strong anti-crime, pro-small-business, pro less taxation policies and are anti-affirmative action in schools. These are classic small business owing people who work 12 hrs. a day, 7 days a week and have managed to climb the ladder enough to buy a small house or something like that, whatever language you speak to them, they are still going to go with voting GOP for local offices! They don't want more bureaucracy and they don't want nanny state stuff, no way. Probably even Bloomberg pissed them off with his anti-big-gulp sodas and anti-cigarette stances, they could make good money off of those...
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 4:01pm
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 5:48am
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/03/2021 - 11:53pm
Great question and coming from someone who would love it if what he calls "Successor ideology" were a big cause:
Definitely revealing himself as someone who likes to go on facts rather than favored narrative.
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 12:46am
shocking anti-incumbent news in NJ:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 1:10am
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 2:08am
You know, i see "first woman of color as mayor of Boston" and I'm like, fine, and then i see the following about hundreds of years ruled by "white male", and I'm suddenly "fuck you, who else was going to do it?- some Chinese coolie pre-Boxer rebellion under the Emperor? some Mexican in the age of Pancho Villa? some Turk in the era of the Caliphate?" Applauding new inclusion doesn't have to have this gratuitous shitting on white males just because we got things done and led the country to being largely #1 in the world (and with Europe the most progressive democracies, for all the hiccups along the way). Like it or not, women have more trouble lifting and moving 100lb loads, as an example of the physical requirements for much of the world's work until maybe 40-50 years ago in mines, farming/ranching, ocean transportation, military, et al., which is also how men who weren't elected mayor of Boston often died much much younger. A friend noted Busch spills more beer in a day than Sam Adams brews in a year. Make similar comparisons to all these other alphabet categories. I had someone going on and on about how many "female engineers" there are - certainly not many til of late, many focused around chemical and computers rather than say civil and manufacturing, and then the woman started equating being a physicist with being an engineer - uh, no, applied engineering has in general been much less attractive to females (oops, shouldn't use that loaded term) than natural sciences, for whatever reasons, even though there are obviously exceptions, and there's a reason you don't have to push & promote "men in STEM" very hard, whatever that reason is, just like girls will easily play with Barbies no matter how grotesque their actual physiognomy is.
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 2:41am
also see:
but his best is this one:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 3:10am
Hey, remember the good old days of late 2001?
That Osama was a uniter, not a divider, he just didn't realize it.
Identitarian essentialism sucks.
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 3:16am
thread related to your rant (tho they don't focus on the male thing as they should, it's just presumed)
continues...
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 5:02pm
Nate Cohn, election & poll analyst for the NYTimes:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 3:45am
Hah, the best part is the look on her face when they go split screen
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 4:17am
hmmm:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 4:27am
11:40 AM Moscow
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 4:49am
"Get those kids off my lawn" vs "hope i die before I get old" - race version. Works every time (at least in the US - we're so easy to manipulate and get thrown off stride)
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 10:37am
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/04/2021 - 4:51pm
the Democratic party, one big happy family
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/05/2021 - 3:48am
noting significant amount of stuff like this:
by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 3:21am
continued at
Wokeness Derails the Democrats
By Maureen Dowd @ NYTimes. com, Nov. 6, 2021
by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 7:05pm
by artappraiser on Sat, 11/06/2021 - 7:10pm
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 4:59am
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 5:45am
Harry Enten of CNN:
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 5:53am
Oh Jesus Fucking Christ, Biden's "unpopular" for the same reason Hillary was "unpopular" - there's a huge marketing machine to repeat over and over how bad they are however benign and middling they are. I keep seeing bullshit about how Americans want to focus on issues, but they want to focus on issues while being entertained by smash football. Biden is even more middlin' and non-controversial than Hillary, and he's a charming old corny non-controversial white dude, but a (un)healthy portion of the country is infected with Trumpism even though Trump may "go a bit too far", a natural extension of Newt Gingrich and Tom "the Hammer" DeLay and the Tea Party born out of crash and burn (and Karl Rove, but Rove came across as nicer than he was/is).
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 7:54am
Long Yglesias thread reacting to Perry Bacon Jr. on "the woke" thing and politics
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 8:07pm
Harry insists
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/07/2021 - 8:20pm
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/08/2021 - 1:20am
WHOA: New Jersey’s most powerful Democratic boss predicts midterm carnage
George Norcross says nobody in the state predicted last week’s losses for the party. “It was just a tsunami,” he said.
By Sam Sutton @ Politico.com, 11/8, they made it the current headline story also
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 4:34am
Trump's MAGA movement shows resilience if it's able to continue on remotely without him.
by Orion on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 6:20am
NH Gov.Sununu doing a big tease this morning on whether he will run for Senate in 2022 and try to win Democrat Sen. Hassan's seat for the GOP
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 6:26am
a reminder how dirty the fight can get:
a lot of voters DO have bad memories about this sort of thing, all they care about is NOW...
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 8:24am
what Bernie-type lefties know: class war works and racialism warring doesn't:
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 3:05pm
here a whole bunch more on that RACIALIZING A POLICY ISSUE IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE IN U.S. POLITICS
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/09/2021 - 3:07pm
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/11/2021 - 12:20am
Barkan writes for The Nation.
But I think: doh, no surprise to me!
This is a city of immigrants who stay to start small businesses and also do things like vote, and many of them, including many Caribbeans, are not real fond of the Dem Party machine nor of the city bureaucracy that bedevils them, nor are many very fond of Afro-American culture, think of it as about failure, too much like where they came from. And the latter is true especially for all kinds of Asian-American immigrants. And the smart ones also know Eric Adams has a history of being a machine pol.
That pretty much goes for any Asian immigrant type I can think of -far east, near east, southeast, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, aetheist, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Laotian, etc.
This guy is at at least looking at some big picture good stats.
but even he is not going far back enough!
Look, Giuliani ousted Dinkins, was re-elected until he couldn't be anymore, and Bloomberg was endorsed by Giuliani and spent a gazillion on of his own money on his first campaign, won and was re-elected until he couldn't anymore.
New York is a city of immigrants who become citizens, and then move out of the city when they can afford to and those are for the most part not liberals!
In Manhattan & Brooklyn, the well-to-do white and Jewish elites and young white free-lance careeristas being supported by their parents from allover the USA make up most of the liberals. Many of the ultra wealthy on Manhattan's upper east side are Republicans as are lots of the Staten Island well-to-do blue collar, like plumbers, electricians, contractors. Plenty of Wall Streets don't even vote in NYC, their home is in Jersey or other burbs (often even they can't afford the upper east side!)
A lot of the rest of the city is immigrants! It's not Detroit, Afro-American culture does not rule! Never did. In the 20's visiting Harlem was seen as an "outre" night out like to a foreign country. I don't even know where NYC got the reputation of being liberal or lefty, hasn't really been like that for more than a century. It's like they are confusing Greenwich Village in Manhattan, neither of which are NYC. It's just tolerant of other cultures AS LONG AS EVERYBODY OBEYS THE RULES.(Fancy pants intellectual socialists and anarchists from early 20th century Greenwich Village weren't looked on very kindly, either--there was already enough chaos: lock em up! and don't let any more in at Ellis Island, either, turn em back)
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/11/2021 - 1:54am
Uh, didn't we have a period across the country of black gangs targeting old Asian women or mugging Asians as they were unloading their cars or just random violence to Asians? Could that relate?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/11/2021 - 2:27am
Of course. But the mistrust of the culture was already there. i.e., korean deli owners vs. black teens hanging in the store especially since 1992 L.A. Rodney King riots...both cultures they feel the tension
Interesting that sort of thing was prominent in NYC in the "West Side Story" era too, BUT the mistrusted were Puerto Rican youth, as possible troublemakers and the deli owners weren't Asian. From what I can tell from studying NYC history, Afro-American kids weren't much suspected as troublemakers but actually looked at as polite. What changed?
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/11/2021 - 2:51am
A helpful reminder to us all that there's all kinds of Asian-Americans. Here's a bunch of them who are pro-football fans:
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/15/2021 - 12:30am
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/12/2021 - 2:49pm
Simplistic blaming of "the rural vote" is not the truth about what happened in the VA election, it's actually dangerously inaccurate:
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/12/2021 - 3:02pm
Yes!
Edit to add: see for example, Orion's complaints about Seattle....
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/12/2021 - 3:14pm
I read this as a colleague of Marjorie Taylor Greene warning Georgia's 14th Congressional district that she's way dumber than even Trump (and goes without saying that she doesn't have the help he did like coloring book briefings), that there's no there there, and they should start looking for someone with actual basic qualifications:
by artappraiser on Wed, 11/17/2021 - 9:27pm
Also via Intelligencer, DeSantis spokesman blaming vaccine passports on the Rothschilds (aka "da Jewz")
Is our politicians lurning yet?
by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 11/18/2021 - 2:41am
clearly this spokesman's been lurning all the best conspiracy theories from the old days without checking out how they will play with a significant part of the local constituency! some "young Christian conservative" on his staff probably suggested it...oh boy...
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/18/2021 - 3:23am
Politico is doing A TON of work and articles on REDISTRICTING! This is just a copy of what's on their home page right now. Just go over there -
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/18/2021 - 9:09am
The GOP now has a slim majority of the Florida vote; registered Dem majority there is gone with the wind:
The day Florida Democrats dreaded
By GARY FINEOUT @ Politico.com, 11/18/2021
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/18/2021 - 9:27am
Bill Scher on Sinema:
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/21/2021 - 1:23am
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/21/2021 - 1:25am
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/21/2021 - 4:50pm
p.s. from Grumbach's thread, worth checking out because:
by artappraiser on Sun, 11/21/2021 - 5:07pm
election for Columbia, SC mayor:
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/25/2021 - 1:22am