Speaking of cherry-picking facts, third-quarter U.S. economic growth strongest in 11 years. News like that must really piss off republicans.
I don’t for a second believe in this unassailable “blue wall” nonsense. The presidential election has always been a popularity contest. The result could easily shake out like 2004, even without an incumbent for the republicans. Just because Obama pulled out two elections doesn’t mean anyone can do it.
This is the opposite of cherry picking. You keep claiming that the public trusts Republicans more on issues that are important to them, so you cite a poll that asks which party do people trust on the issues most important to them. And the answer is that you, once again, are wrong. Seriously, how can you even argue with this? You were the one who linked to the cite that shows a poll that Americans prefer Democrats on issues that are most important to them!
One poll out of oh, 50 on that page?
Not just one random question. It is literally the only question relevant to your claim!
If I wanted to know which restaurant Americans like most, which approach would you recommend I take?
Ask Americans to name their favorite pizza place, hamburger joint, Chinese take out, and fine dining establishment. Then, knowing that pizza is usually Americans’ favorite food, state that the winner of the first polling question is America’s favorite restaurant. I’ll call this the adaher approach.
Ask Americans to name their favorite restaurant. I’ll call this the Ravenman approach.
Saying that he latter approach is cherry picking because it asks the one relevant question to obtain the needed data, rather than asking a dozen questions to obtain a lot of noise, is really fucking stupid.
There’s a fundamental difference between Presidential election years and midterms. In Presidential years, turnout is high, and you win if you can get the median voter on your side. But midterms, with their reduced turnout, are base years. The side that gives its people more, better reasons to turn out will be the winner.
This is why Republican-lite works for the Dems in Presidential elections. But in the midterms, people who will vote Dem if they vote, but often don’t, aren’t exactly motivated by Republican-lite.
I think the Blue Wall will work for the Dems as long as they nominate relatively centrist Dems such as Obama and the Clintons.
But if the Dems did nominate Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, the Blue Wall would disappear pretty fast, simply because regardless of whether Sanders or Warren are all that liberal, the groundwork is already there for them to be painted as such, and the GOP/Fox noise machine would do a good job of it.
Fortunately, the Dems will in all likelihood nominate Hillary, even if Sanders or Warren makes a run for the nomination. I’m all for their doing so, just to remind Hillary that we’re out here.
But I wouldn’t want to see her actually lose the nomination. The Dems need to win this Presidential election, so that when Scalia, Kennedy (who both turn 80 in 2016), and the Notorious RBG (who is already >80) retire, a Dem will nominate their replacements. We’ve had too many decisions like Citizens United and Hobby Lobby.
I don’t buy this “Obama is a centrist” stuff. But he is black and the black community voted heavily for him while in other elections they sometimes just stay home.
I contend that a white Democratic President, with the same record as Obama, would have had their ass handed to them in 2012.
I do think it’s true that Obama is an exceptional candidate due to the support he gets in minority communities(not just black). When he’s not on the ballot, they not only don’t turn out, they are more likely to vote Republican.
I really do think the 2016 election is going to look a lot like 2004.
Interesting theory. Which states would you say were tipped to Obama due to increased turnout by black voters?
The number of eligible African American voters increased by 400,000 from 2004 to 2012. The turnout of AA voters was 66% in 2012, compared to 64% for white voters. In 2004, AA turnout of eligible voters was 60%.
Obama won the 2012 election by 5 million votes. In order for your theory to be valid, I think the black population of the United States would have to be at least an order of magnitude larger than it really is.
State level results aren’t really indicative of presidential level results. No one thinks that Kentucky is a swing state because they elected a Democratic governor. No one thinks Illinois is at risk because they elected a Republican governor. For the last couple elections, the GOP has given the “Pennsylvania is closing!” line and pumped money and campaign visits into it only to see it lost by 5%+.
Out of those three, the only one I see an argument for is Nevada and Obama took that state by 7% in 2008 and 2012. Despite a Republican governor or Republican senate wins.
If you look at the white share of voting in presidential elections, it has decreased by somewhat regular intervals going back decades.
In 1972, it was 89%. In 2012, it was 71%, which was lower than 2008. Did Obama become more popular among minorities between 2008 and 2012? Not very likely. What is much more likely is that wider demographic and civic society changes have increased on the non-white share of the vote over a much longer arc than Obama’s presidency–by about 2% per term.
There’s no particular reason to think this trend won’t continue post-Obama.
Nah, most Dems will vote for ANY Dem nominee, just as most Republicans will vote for ANY Repub nominee. The same cloddish stupidity that protects Republican Presidential candidates ALSO protects Democratic Presidential candidates.
How nice of you.
The Dems ALWAYS need to win the next presidential election to prevent Republicans from (place threat here). At some point, you have to ask yourself, is it worth it losing any chance of getting progressive input in the Democratic Party to prevent whatever horrible consequence is currently being predicted? And also, how true is it that only Hillary can win the Presidency? She’s way to the left of Americans on a lot of issues and she’s Wall Street’s bitch. I think Warren might actually have a better chance. People like her for challenging the banks.
Can you say, “Trans-Pacific Partnership”?
“Most” isn’t enough. And the average Democrat is less intense about voting Dem than the average Republican is about voting Republican.
In short, I would do everything I could to avoid putting your theory to the test.
Yeah, I’m a real sweet guy. And believe me, I’m not doing it for you and your kind, people who are casual with other people’s lives and well-being because of their ideology. It’s bad enough that conservatives are like that.
Yeah, and it’s often true. How much ground did we lose during the Bush Administration that we haven’t yet regained, on any number of fronts?
But damned if there ain’t no such thing as Peak Wingnut. While Bush wasn’t willing to gut Social Security without Democratic cover, despite having GOP majorities in both houses of Congress, today’s GOP doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. And it’s a damned sight easier to tear stuff down than build it back up again.
How about getting progressive input the old-fashioned way - by building a progressive movement from the ground up?
Nah, too much work. 
So, she’s way to the left of Americans, and way to their right, too?
So, what are these issues (that people give two hoots about) that Hillary’s way to the left of Americans on?
Hi, Evil Captor.
This is just a duplicate of a thread you put in this same forum a month ago. In that thread, as I’m sure you’ll recall, your claims about the “blue wall” were completely debunked with a wealth of facts, logic, and data. It was also pointed out that the guy who wrote the article that’s your one and only source in both OPs, Chris Ladd, has no particularly strong qualifications when it comes to statistics, and that there are many other, better sources out there. Given all that, I’m not sure why you would once again post claims that you know are false. Do you simply enjoy being proved wrong over and over again?
To rehash: In 2012, the Democrats held a roughly 10-point advantage in party preference. In the latest poll, Republicans hold a 6-point advantage. That means that quite a lot of people who used to prefer the Democrats have abandoned them, and quite a lot of people who didn’t prefer the Republicans in 2012 now do. This will come as no surprise to any intelligent person, given the way that the Republicans butchered the Democrats in the last election. Hence, just because Obama won a particular set of states in the 2012 presidential election doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed to win the same states in 2016.
Moreover, to make matters even worse for Ladd’s theory, the Democrats lost elections in many states where they’re supposedly guaranteed to win: Wisconsin, Michigan, New Jersey, and even Massachusetts, among others.
I’m not sure what you mean by “even Massachusetts.” Democrats were not supposedly guaranteed to win gubernatorial elections there. (The last Democrat to win that office before Deval Patrick was Michael Dukakis. In 1986.)
That’s my point. Evil Captor and BobLibDem seem to believe that a certain collection of states is guaranteed to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2016, but they can’t offer any reason why we should believe this.
I find it fairly likely that Massachusetts will vote for the Democratic nominee. But Wisconsin? Ohio? Michigan? All three of those states have conservative Republican governors who have cut taxes, cut regulations, battled unions, and produced strong economic growth. The voters in those states seem to like economic growth and prosperity, and demonstrated it by returning the Republican governors to office a few weeks ago.
Do we really think that the same body of voters would go strongly for Hillary Clinton’s diet of higher taxes and more regulations, much less Elizabeth Warren’s diet of even higher taxes and even more regulations?
Higher taxes and regulations is an utterance of faith, not a criticism. You can cut taxes stupidly, just as you can raise them stupidly.
Also, those governors won with very low Dem turnout. The GOP gets voters by stoking inchoate rage. That gets people to show up on election day, even on non-presidential years. But there is no reason Dems won’t show up when the big show is on.
It’s only as big a show as the celebrity headlining it.