2020 Democratic Primary Thread: Focus on House & Senate races

[the cac mamba]

This is the point tho. Voters are dumb, but you have to be able to think like them if you are trying to predict their behavior.

Biden getting weeks on end of coverage about "is he corrupt, isn't he corrupt" is going to plant that seed in the casual rural voter's head in the same way that "crooked Hillary" + Benghazi + Comey investigations did against Hillary even if nothing came out of that.

maybe, but

-biden is a man
-dems can hit back. they need to make a huge deal out of trump hiding his taxes because he's a fukking criminal. that should be a spotlight this time around

 

[the cac mamba]

U.S. economy grew 2.3 percent in 2019, the slowest of Trump’s presidency — The Washington Post

pretty low energy

 

[StatUS]

that’d make sense if there weren’t 12% of supposed progressives voting for republicans as well.

I don't think you can state that the 12% is all progressive. Alot were just looking for an anti establishment candidate.

 

[Pressure]

I don't think you can state that the 12% is all progressive. Alot were just looking for an anti establishment candidate.

Why would they vote other than Trump now?

 

[storyteller]

an example from 4 years ago is better than an example from TWELVE years ago.

Lets stay focused.

Guess I wasn’t clear. I’m saying millions of 2012 Obama voters didn’t show up for Clinton in 2016.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wa...re-than-a-third-of-them-black/?outputType=amp

So to reiterate my point. If you run a turnout focused campaign, there’s gonna be a segment that stays home if you don’t win. Getting the message out to more people will bring in a broader base but their votes aren’t guaranteed for alternative options.

 

[StatUS]

Why would they vote other than Trump now?

That's another question entirelly. On one hand you could say that 12% actually was enviograted for Sanders or an anti establishment candidate in the primary. I don't know if these were open or closed for Dems. And honestly this is a narrative I don't subscribe too for the loss of the election. Hillary herself did not got to the states she narrowly lost by. I don't think she even had an operation in Philly like that. She was off being silly trying to win Texas and Georgia. Also plenty of Obama voters didn't show up from pervious times.

Of course if someone can post the data of the makeup of that 12% and how it can correalate to 2020 I'd be more than happy to discuss. But at the end of the day Hillary lost because she had her priorities messed up. We can talk about populism vs establishment politics or Russia and Comey. But she still should have won had she just held up those states.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[blotter]

A lot of people can probably relate to this. Those Payton/Kemp teams that made me a Sonics fan

 

[Pull Up the Roots]

12% Bernie to Trump
25% Clinton to McCain

The way that discussion has been hashed out here in the last few weeks you would think it was 90% Sanders conversion to Trump vs 10% Hillary conversion to McCain.

That's not the general vibe I get whenever this point is brought up. Or it shouldn't be, because that's dumb. Bernie voter showed up.

While it's true that there were more Sanders to Clinton voters than Clinton to Obama voters, it is more honest to say:

25% McCain (and that number might not be that accurate) [1]
12% Trump, 3% Johnson, 4% Stein, 2% write-in





ANES from 2008 wrt Clinton to McCain voters:

[1]

One piece of this that’s important to keep in context is that you always see this kind of defection between a primary and a general election. In 2008, you saw a lot of Hillary Clinton voters who ended up backing John McCain — so it's not abnormal to see this kind of thing. And more of them did so in 2008 than this time. [15 percent of Clinton’s 2008 voters in the primary supported McCain in that year’s general election.] Although given the candidates this time versus in 2008, it may have been surprising to see even this rate of defection.

The Bernie voters who defected to Trump, explained by a political scientist

 

[nyknick]

Didn't millions of Obama voters stay home too? This is something that happens when your electoral strategy is to bring newcomers who haven't been consistent voters into the tent. I'd guess that it'll happen with a turnout strategy in general since you're bringing in a broader base. You can't promise their participation with some other candidate who doesn't inspire them. I would add though, that the vast majority of Bernie voters I know and speak with say they'll hold their nose and vote for whoever (with the exception being if Bernie leads heading into a contested convention and then the nomination goes to someone else via super delegates in round 2). I'd also add that I find it more problematic when party insiders can't even commit to endorsing Bernie if he wins (Clinton and Biden in the past couple of weeks), partially because it's hypocritical and partially because that type of behavior is more likely to turn off newcomers from participating if Bernie wins. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy at that point; refusing to admit you'd support the progressive but expecting progressives to back you up in the reverse situation.

One constant in all the blame game is that nothing was Hillary's or establishment's fault.

No matter how many numbers/statistics you give them, they will never accept the responsibility. Because accepting the blame means giving up their position of power.

That dumb fukk Robby Mook still gets big jobs, Obama was able to force Tom Perez in there, Hillary is trying to speak on Bernie like her opinion still matters.

 

[DonKnock]

I thought the argument was that Bernie voters sat out, not that they voted for Trump.

It seems we aren't comparing apples to apples here.

In the video that the stat was pulled from there's a Hillary surrogate saying that it is Bernie's fault that Hillary lost because Bernie didn't do enough for Hillary's campaign, the Sanders surrogate responds that Hillary did 10 events for Obama and Sanders did more than 40 for Hillary.

The Hillary surrogate then says "the Clinton machine did more for Obama than 10 events worth of value" implying that "the Clinton machine" has this massive additive value that swung all of her voters to Obama to a level Sanders didn't that makes it completely on him that she lost.

Then the question must be asked if the Clinton machine is what caused all of that great turnout for Obama, why couldn't it do it for Hillary herself, and if not how was it still entirely reliant on Sanders (which the surrogate reinforces multiple times through the video) that she lost because he said mean things about Hillary (the mean things specifically mentioned being that she did speeches for Goldman Sachs and that Chelsea Clinton has a massive apartment) rather than other factors.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[King Static X]

 

[Armchair Militant]

Bernie is finally getting vetted. You wanted media attention...you got it. Enjoy.

 

[storyteller]

One constant in all the blame game is that nothing was Hillary's or establishment's fault.

No matter how many numbers/statistics you give them, they will never accept the responsibility. Because accepting the blame means giving up their position of power.

That dumb fukk Robby Mook still gets big jobs, Obama was able to force Tom Perez in there, Hillary is trying to speak on Bernie like her opinion still matters.

I just think the Clinton/media combo constructed a lot of weak narratives that ought to be thought about more. Bernie did really well with Independents and people who were atypical Democratic voters, the expectation that a chunk of those people would stay home or vote Trump is baked into that math out the gate. Then you that these numbers aren't particularly out of line and it just feels to me like the campaign people needed to give themselves some cover from taking the blame and losing the next payday. It takes the media way too long to even acknowledge when the numbers change. Bernie's definitely improved his numbers with people of color.

They pound narratives into the voters heads and hope for a frequency illusion to kick in. It helps that Bernie has a huge support base online too. It can be 1/20 Bernie heads really saying wild ish but it'll look like a lot more than the rest of the field since Bernie's got way more people repping online in general.