[Debate] What the 2016-2019 U.S. Elections have to say about the 2020 U.S. Election

It's hard to know what direction you're going if you don't know where you've been!

This is a companion thread to the upcoming election thread for more in-depth debate over what lessons to take from prior elections.

Took down snarky post. But seriously, there are no learnings I can see other than vote for the person who won't put children in cages and *might* take climate change seriously.

Yes it does seem a bit like rehashing discussions from 3 years ago.

farley3k wrote:

Yes it does seem a bit like rehashing discussions from 3 years ago.

Because P&C *never* rehashes discussions from three years ago? ; D

(edit) Just to be clear, I think there's value in continuing that discussion because the full story of those elections is still unwritten and has a lot to say about what our elections going forward will look like, but if you don't, think of it this way:

If people are serious about keeping these discussions out of the 2020 thread, then whenever these discussions pop up, there's a thread people can point to and say "take it over there."

No one is making you visit this thread, right? If you don't want to rehash those discussions, just ignore this thread.

To whatever extent it pulls those discussions you say you don't want to have out of the threads for discussions you say you do want to have, You're Welcome!

Hopefully the Dem's learned to nominate someone who'll...you know... represent us.

I'll vote for whoever the Dem's nominate, even if I think they are a flaming bag of dog sh*t. Others may not.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

No one is making you visit this thread, right? If you don't want to rehash those discussions, just ignore this thread.

Important! Please pay attention before sh*tposting!

SallyNasty wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

No one is making you visit this thread, right? If you don't want to rehash those discussions, just ignore this thread.

Important! Please pay attention before sh*tposting!

Can this just appear at the top of every D&D thread by default?

edit: or even better, as a pop-up after you click on "post", with one last option to back off of sharing that amazing mic drop zinger that will make everyone reading it cower in fear at your digital greatness?

/sh*tpost

Drazzil wrote:

Hopefully the Dem's learned to nominate someone who'll...you know... represent us.

I'll vote for whoever the Dem's nominate, even if I think they are a flaming bag of dog sh*t. Others may not.

That's one of the problems, "Us" is a very board term when it comes to the Dem collation. They're never going to make everyone happy, and some of the loudest segments aren't as big a chunk of the electorate as they sometimes think they are.

I'm glad Warren seems to have at least some of that magic ability to be whatever the viewer hopes she is to them.

Zona wrote:
Drazzil wrote:

Hopefully the Dem's learned to nominate someone who'll...you know... represent us.

I'll vote for whoever the Dem's nominate, even if I think they are a flaming bag of dog sh*t. Others may not.

That's one of the problems, "Us" is a very board term when it comes to the Dem collation. They're never going to make everyone happy, and some of the loudest segments aren't as big a chunk of the electorate as they sometimes think they are.

I'm glad Warren seems to have at least some of that magic ability to be whatever the viewer hopes she is to them.

I'm a far left independant voter who left the Dem party. I believe in my heart that turnouts (at least on the Dem side) are much lower then they should be because they really dont see a difference between the R and the D. I think nominating a centrist will lead to another loss. Time will tell.

I would love for there to be some huge pool of far leftist in this country that we can tap into! But if they exist they should probably get out and start voting in primaries, because otherwise the data we, and both parties, have to work with inclines me to believe they they're not out there. Or if they are out there, that they're so impossible to engage companied to the people who DO vote as to make no difference.

Dem turnout shrank in 2016 because A) we were coming off of 8 years of a D president, B) Hillary was a uniquely smeared public figure with a 30 year crusade against her, C) Social Engineering and influence by a foreign power, and D) The f*cking Comey letter acting as an October Surprise. And she still won the popular vote by 3 million, and only lost the presidency by Electoral Collage funkiness'.

Dem turnout in 2018 was damn near presidential levels. On the other hand, so was Rep turnout. On the Grasping hand... that didn't matter, they got blown out in the House and (Florida being Florida aside) we didn't get the worst case scenario with an abysmally bad Senate map.

Turning out the base is important, but as much as I'd love to be wrong I've never seen any good evidence that the base is as far left as I'd like them, or they there are deep pools of the far left to draw out.

Zona wrote:

I would love for there to be some huge pool of far leftist in this country that we can tap into! But if they exist they should probably get out and start voting in primaries, because otherwise the data we, and both parties, have to work with inclines me to believe they they're not out there. Or if they are out there, that they're so impossible to engage companied to the people who DO vote as to make no difference.

Dem turnout shrank in 2016 because A) we were coming off of 8 years of a D president, B) Hillary was a uniquely smeared public figure with a 30 year crusade against her, C) Social Engineering and influence by a foreign power, and D) The f*cking Comey letter acting as an October Surprise. And she still won the popular vote by 3 million, and only lost the presidency by Electoral Collage funkiness'.

Dem turnout in 2018 was damn near presidential levels. On the other hand, so was Rep turnout. On the Grasping hand... that didn't matter, they got blown out in the House and (Florida being Florida aside) we didn't get the worst case scenario with an abysmally bad Senate map.

Turning out the base is important, but as much as I'd love to be wrong I've never seen any good evidence that the base is as far left as I'd like them, or they there are deep pools of the far left to draw out.

Yes. But here's the rub. On the Dem side we have politicans who go where the polls lead. We need people who lead polls and infulence opinions.

But yes. You're probabally right.

I remember seeing polls here in D&D where it turns out people don't skew fully right or fully left, but they're not 'moderates' either: they might embrace one idea from the 'far left' but not others. I've also seen a lot of stuff about how most 'centrists' really skew towards either Democrats or Republicans.

I think the full story is really complicated (heck, kinda the reason for the thread!) and not always intuitive.

I do think that politicians who just go where the polls lead don't inspire people, but I don't think that means people can only be inspired by someone who is to the far left (which we all know in America isn't very far left at all).

I think there's a difference between being a poll-follower that triangulates themselves into the mushy middle, and being a centrist that comes across as committed to what they believe. I think the perception of integrity and commitment goes a long way, and is as important to a lot of people as ideological agreement.

I couldn't find that on the page you linked to, but poking around, I did find this page with that graph:

Political Divisions in 2016 and Beyond: Tensions Between and Within the Two Parties

two more pieces I found poking around on that site related to that study:

What Howard Schultz never understood about America

Is Centrism Doomed?