Election 2020 The Non Presidential Edition

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[No Excuses]

All of these hot takes on why Dems got whooped in the House are really bad. Considering Biden ran ahead of nearly all Dem house candidates, it doesn’t seem like a progressive vs liberal issue. 
 

The issue seems structural to me; a horrendous national strategy that almost likely comes down to some level of campaigning failure and reaching out to voters effectively. I subscribe to AOC’s theory that a lot of Dem campaigns suck at digital and gaining recognition with their local communities. 
 

Democrats are going to keep their geriatric leadership in place and continue to run elections in 2020 like its 1980. Just all around bad leadership that is refusing to put its younger members into influential positions. 

[skinsmarydu]

My House rep (Hank Johnson) has shown up at my neighborhood picnic every single summer for the past 10 years (he loves my layered salad ).  Even though the community is heavily Latino, he uses an interpreter and talks to the residents.  It's very important, and we appreciate it.  He probably won't lose this district until he decides to hang it all up.

 

Marvin Lim (my State house rep) came by my house twice during his campaign...I like him, I voted for him, and he won.  The ground game here in GA is strong, and that's why we're continuously moving in the right direction.

My chiropractor says (correctly) that you can't hammer a screw into a hole...it takes patience and constant turning. 

[Larry]

50 minutes ago, No Excuses said:

All of these hot takes on why Dems got whooped in the House are really bad. Considering Biden ran ahead of nearly all Dem house candidates, it doesn’t seem like a progressive vs liberal issue. 
 

The issue seems structural to me; a horrendous national strategy that almost likely comes down to some level of campaigning failure and reaching out to voters effectively. I subscribe to AOC’s theory that a lot of Dem campaigns suck at digital and gaining recognition with their local communities. 
 

Democrats are going to keep their geriatric leadership in place and continue to run elections in 2020 like its 1980. Just all around bad leadership that is refusing to put its younger members into influential positions. 

 

1)  It's certainly possible that any disparity between Biden and (Dem House candidate) might be a little due to the fact that one of their names was next to Trump on the ballot.  

 

2)  I'll also observe.  Traditionally, the Dem's biggest asset in most elections was a huge army of election day "get out the vote" workers.  Things like people picking up busloads of nursing home residents and driving them to the polling place.  Covid obviously knocked out a lot of that.  

[Going Commando]

Politics are local at the end of the day.  The split ticketing for Biden does suggest that left wing progressivism doesn't play in the places Democrats lost seats and lost opportunities to gain seats.  And the attack ads used against incumbents like Spanberger in R+ districts about the radicalism of far Left politics from the summer was undoubtedly effective in supressing her support.  But the lack of voter engagement and ground game was also undoubtedly a factor in these losses.  It's why Democrats lost in Florida and the Carolinas but not in Georgia.  Ground game is how Democrats flipped VA and held onto their gains here, but VA is different because a lot of the work happens in odd years during the local election seasons.  You don't have the same top of the ticket forces impact the ballots here, which brings me to my next point: Trump was an incumbent.  Incumbent presidents drive turnout for their bases and cause a coattails effect no matter how unpopular they are nationally.  We'd see gains in 2008 and 2012 that immediately disappeared in 2010 and 2014, and I think the same thing happened this year, but in reverse for Democrats.

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[bearrock]

So if the moderate dems in swing districts heed AOC's message and get out the messaging on how bat**** crazy they think some of these progressive ideas are, what will the DSA response be?  Will they or will they not seek to primary out these moderate incumbents?  Are we gonna hear about DINOs soon?

[LD0506]

She who controls Georgia controls the universe!

Waiting to see Stacey Abrams revealed as the Kwiszat Haderach

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[No Excuses]

I’m just not buying the “it’s the progressive message” take when Florida is out there passing minimum wage hikes with >60% support. Arizona passed a tax hike to fund education and every state with marijuana legalization on the ballot passed it.
 

The GOP is quite literally operating like a fascist party. If you get outflanked by the extremists on the other side, the problem is with your messaging. Congressional Democrats have sucked on messaging and making the case for their views for a long time now. 
 

The moderate wing of the party needs to listen to AOC here. No one asking them to rebrand as progressives. But don’t be afraid to put your name out there and play on attack, instead of being scared of GOP labeling. 

[tshile]

Has there been any real analysis yet? One backed up with real data? Or is it too soon?

 

@No Excusesyou definitely have a point about messaging and it’s been an issue for as long as I’ve paid attention and it’s a double whammy because the GOP messaging is actually very good. Dems have always struggled with this and the general fact that they are not in lockstep with each other as a party while the republicans are (just look at how they’ve embraced trump, even the people he personally insulted along the way. Who’s the exceptions here? The Bush family and the McCain family. Anyone else? Even Romney has shown himself to be a spineless coward)

 

I can only speak for myself but as the election neared the democrats message that I was seeing bothered me. Expanding scotus, dumping the EC, things like that gave me pause. Not to vote for trump but how I wanted to handle down ballot. It doesn’t matter that my reps weren’t specifically pushing those ideas, they were topics of conversation for 2 months. I believe early on I pointed out that the sure way for Dems to lose moderates is to try to use the campaign against trump as a way to create a mandate for progressive ideals. And you could see it in the conversations. On one hand it was you moderates need to vote for us because the other option is morally bankrupt and dangerous to the country, but in the other it was once we win we’re going to change everything. 
 

biden won. He seemed to have won pretty handily. The media is chicken **** to call it the way I think it should have been, it could have been called earlier and portrayed as a more decisive win than it has been. 
 

so I don’t want to get too hung up on that. But it seems to me that there’s quite a simple answer to the down ballot results: people definitely wanted trump out, but people are not onboard with the big pitch the Dems made this year. 
 

I really with we could redo the election with a more typical Republican President just to see the results to compare. The Dems have to placate the left side or they won’t show up, we know that. But it’s hard to tell what this strategy would have resulted in if it was run against a competent administration. 
 

I recall reading a post by a few of the left learners here saying that if Trump simply handled COVID correctly he probably would have won. 
 

I think the general narrative that the country is way more progressive than the results show, that they just don’t understand the left wing’s platform and if they did they would support it, is flawed. 
 

and at some point in time even if that is correct, you need to recognize that winning elections is required to wield power and that winning elections is about what the voters think of you, not what you think they should think of you. 
 

I think the Dems get too excited about the changing demographics and what it will mean over time and lose sight of what the current demographics are and what it takes to win elections.

 

I was skeptical of the blue wave. And here we are, it never showed up. After more than a year of basically saying “screw the moderates we can’t waste time appealing to them” (I watched this mentality over and over in these threads) you’ve got your results. Trump is out but unless the gop changes it’s tune you’re not getting much of anything you wanted. 
 

and in 2024 you’re going to run Harris as your nominee. It’ll be interesting to see what her platform is. And, I think, more importantly who the challenger is.

[tshile]

Add:

I also recognize my post has some strong claims but to my knowledge we don’t have a great breakdown of it all yet. At least I haven’t read anything more than some random stabs at interpreting it all. 
 

I tried to start off that way but upon rereading it seems I drifted away from “maybe this is one interpretation” into “this what this all really means”. Wasn’t my intent. 
 

ultimately I think the GOP is great as messaging (but I think their messaging is full of lies and I don’t like what they actually do), and the Dems are bad at messaging (even though I like their messaging and even when I disagree with their specific solution at the time) 

 

The rest of it was more my (extremely) personal/anecdotal view from where I sit (semi-rural Virginia)

[88Comrade2000]

Democrats Have a Much Bigger Problem Than the Senate or the Electoral College

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[Cooked Crack]

 

Did not know you could get CTE from coaching football.

[Larry]

How did this guy not wind up with a spot in Trump's cabinet?  Press secretary?  

 

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[Burgold]

The Georgia runoff will be interesting. In 2018, with Trump off the ballot Trump stumped hard for a lot of candidates that lost that year, but the Republicans still got crushed. OTOH, Democrats don’t usually turnout on nonpresidential races. Plus, Georgia has been such a red state. 

So, is part of the question that will be answered is whether The GOP is the Republican Party or the Trump Party. 

 

[No Excuses]

Everything wrong with Congressional Democrats in one image.

 

You have a base of young, highly educated people and you do everything possibly to make sure that people who understand their views are in no position to become leaders. Total clown show.