# This is how you blow a very winnable election **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [August 26, 2020, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094 "2020-08-26T21:25:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/81 "2020-08-27T04:36:48Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > No it didn’t. An unpopular candidate and mistaken strategy, plus a significant racist or racist tolerant population, led to Trump. Yes, right again. What’s really gross about a lot of these far-lefties is that they imply, or sometimes even state outright, that Trump voters were justified in trying to “blow up the system” or whatever. No. No, they were not. > [@k9bfriender](#): > > Hopefully what changes is that we get enough of a blue wave to implement real reforms across the board, in education, social services, policing and everything else. > > What also changes is the Republican party, where they find that catering to the evangelicals and racists is no longer a winning strategy, and they instead try to pick up some of us moderate democrats who are not entirely comfortable with some of the progressive proposals, but would rather support them than the Republicans. This! If the election were between Romney and Bernie, I’d actually have to think that one over. But as things stand now, any Democrat will get my vote even if they are not my preferred center-left type. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Vote for the candidate most like Bernie at every opportunity. That’s what we should do going forward. In every primary, and every general election, local, state, and federal. No, now you’re wrong again. This is terrible advice. We saw in 2018 what an awful strategy this is. All the “Justice Dems” who tried to win targeted seats lost. The only left wing Dems who won were in deep blue seats. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/82 "2020-08-27T04:44:18Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > It’s absolutely a winning strategy. They own the Executive, Judiciary, Senate, most of American geography / electoral districts, 30% of public mindshare, an alliance with the Kremlin… what makes you think in any way they are struggling? It’s always far easier to destroy a democracy in favor of a small WASPy in-group than to try to build a big tent like the Democrats. You snipped off the first part of my post that says that the conditions of this are that there is a blue wave, which would be why they would be struggling. That your gripe is that the Democrats try to build consensus, while the GOP just tries to burn everything down, then I don’t really see where you are coming from. The only reason that it would be ineffective is if people saw consensus building as inferior to authoritarianism, and supported the authoritarianism over democracy. Based on your anecdote, it is effective on you, but my hope is that there are not so many Americans who admire brutality over compassion. > [@Reply](#): > > What makes you think this is a failing strategy for the GOP? Trump’s approval rating has not meaningfully changed during his tenure, especially among the GOP. They’re not going to cater to you in the middle. They’re gonna steamroll you. I suppose if you are right that there are more who would rather see the right wing radicals take power than to keep a democracy, then that would be the case. I’m not quite that pessimistic about the American populace, but I could be wrong. The more I hear from people who declare that they will throw their lot in with the racists and religious fanatics rather than for democracy and freedom, the less optimistic I get. Your posts, for instance, tell me that there are those who would rather let the far right go for scorched Earth than allow the democrats to try to reunite our country. I know that there are those like you out there, my hope, possibly a futile hope, is that you do _not_ represent a very large contingent of my fellow citizens. > [@Reply](#): > > A temporary lull isn’t necessarily a good thing. The longer we wait as a country to actually tackle these issues, the worse climate change gets, the more powerful China gets, the more powerful Big Tech gets, the worse gerrymandering gets, the worse voter suppression and manipulation gets, the worse inequality gets, the more armed the right will be, the more refugees will flood the world stage and create more racists… And it also gives us more time to try to prevent or alleviate these problems. Do you really think that electing Trump is going to be better for the environment than Biden? That Trump is going to hold China at bay? That Trump will stop “Big Tech”, gerrymandering or voter suppression? > [@Reply](#): > > If a Trump reelection leads to disaster in 2 years and a Biden one leads to a disaster in 8, the one in 8 will likely be far, far harsher. I don’t agree with this premise. At least partly on the grounds that you are claiming that allowing a disaster in 2 years will somehow prevent one in 8. If a Trump reelection leads to a disaster in 2 years, from which we are still trying to recover from when a new disaster occurs in 8, that will be even harsher. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/83 "2020-08-27T04:47:14Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > No, now you’re wrong again. This is terrible advice. We saw in 2018 what an awful strategy this is. All the “Justice Dems” who tried to win targeted seats lost. The only left wing Dems who won were in deep blue seats. I voted for Bernie in 2016, under the impression that I was helping to move the Overton window to the left a bit. I do regret that vote now, and did not vote for him this time around. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/84 "2020-08-27T04:57:45Z")
If a party sort of like the British Liberal Democrats could take power in this country, that would be ideal. A mix of politicians like Romney, Biden, Hickenlooper, and Murkowski, with no need to cater either to the Bernie/AOC/Omar crowd nor to the insane MAGAheads, the religious right, or the ultra-libertarians like Rand Paul. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/85 "2020-08-27T05:15:04Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Yes, if you mean “that’s how we got Richard Nixon”. 😑 We would have been a lot better off with my fellow Minnesota DFLer Hubert H. Humphrey! We had this conversation before, you keep forgetting that more recently in 1992 people concluded that the Republicans where full of it by attempting to blame the riots on the lax Democrats, forgetting that Democrats did condemn the violence then too, Democrats though also pointed at the systemic racism and poverty as one of the reasons for the riots in LA and other places caused by police brutality then. People did not reelect Bush Senior. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/86 "2020-08-27T06:45:51Z")
At one point in 1992, Bill Clinton was third place in the polls – and he only got 43% in the end. I’m not saying we can’t win this election, I’m saying we shouldn’t tempt fate. And we are also potentially putting ourselves in trouble in two years or four years, when the environment is not so favorable. ---
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/87 "2020-08-27T08:47:19Z")
You know, the FEELINGS of some people are just as important as the LIVES of those “other” ones. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 9:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/88 "2020-08-27T09:02:08Z")
You know whose lives also matter? The 150,000 dead due to Covid. The unknowable dead due to having sub-optimal health care in general. That blows away by orders of magnitude the dead due to prejudice in the same time period. (Except of course where they intersect such as unions getting health care in the mid century while everyone else didn’t, but why oppose people who want to correct that?) ---
**Author:** ![ThisIsTheEnd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thisistheend/32/4713_2.png) [@ThisIsTheEnd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThisIsTheEnd)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/89 "2020-08-27T09:49:03Z")
Racism won’t be solved ever. Police shootings won’t be solved in the next two months. Covid won’t be solved in the next two months. Trumpism won’t be solved in the next two months. Trump can be solved in the next two months. White SJW misfits high on self-righteousness do not help solve the solvable. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/90 "2020-08-27T09:55:46Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > At one point in 1992, Bill Clinton was third place in the polls – and he only got 43% in the end. I’m not saying we can’t win this election, I’m saying we shouldn’t tempt fate. And we are also potentially putting ourselves in trouble in two years or four years, when the environment is not so favorable. Who is this we, though? Biden has said repeatedly he’s against the violence. And he even picked Harris, the law and order VP pick. Do you think the rioters are Democrats? Because they clearly aren’t. If they thought working within the system could work, they wouldn’t be rioting. That said, you do need to listen them for one reason: what they are upset about is clearly wrong. And you do not stop people from being upset over something wrong by telling them or trying to force them to stop. You don’t shame them into stopping. If they are angry about something horrible, that anger (if not their actions) is justified, and what you have to do is stop the horrible thing. It’s up to us to prove the rioters wrong that the system doesn’t work by making sure that the problem with racial bias and violence in policing is dealt with. Obviously you can’t deal with it in such a short time. But you can at least show some indication you are trying to move towards fixing the problem. That’s why Biden’s message to the mom’s was a bad one. He calculated it to try and bring in the disaffected Republicans. But he’s also justifying more riots by saying that he’s ignoring the problem. You can never stop angry people by making their anger seem illegitimate. It’s why saying “calm down” doesn’t help people actually calm down. They have to feel like they are being listened to, that you care about what they are upset about. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/91 "2020-08-27T12:32:36Z")
If Biden takes office in January, how many of those dead will be prevented? I’ll agree that if he had been in office this last January, that would have probably made a tremendous difference, but a year in, I don’t really see how Biden can do much more to alleviate things than Trump can. Things are already pretty well baked in. Lives are not just lost, but are ruined or traumatized daily by brutal treatment at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us. Wearing a mask and washing your hands will not prevent the cops from harassing, intimidating, or even assaulting or killing you. If you cannot empathize with a black person in one of these cities, and understand that racism is a far more immediate and existential threat to them than Covid is, then you cannot be on board with the ideas of Black Lives Matter. Voting this fall is going to be a far greater burden for minorities than it is for whites, as it always is. You are asking them to not just shut up about the injustices that happen to them every day, you are also asking them to turn out and face quite a bit of uncertainty as to how this election is going to take place in support of the ones who told them to shut up. You want Biden to call out the violence? Done. You want him to call out even aggressive encounters like the one with the diners in DC? Sure, he should. We should even ask the protesters to do some level of self policing. Call out and turn in violent actors in their midst. Call out and dissuade the “rude” protesters. You want Biden to tell them to go back to their homes and just wait until we get around to finding the time to address their concerns? No, we’ve asked that over and over and over again, always asking them to put their priorities behind that of the fear of making white people uncomfortable. Well, we still haven’t gotten there. And we _never_ will, so long as we consider their lives to be less important than the comfort of those who are not in danger of racist policing and policies. And that is _exactly_ the message that will be sent if we tell them to go back to their homes and wait until it is convenient before we consider their needs. If we send them that message, then we have no business asking them for their vote. As a white middle class suburbanite myself, I would hesitate over voting for a party that would not only ignore, but ask those who are hurting to ignore the continuing systemic racism that affects their lives daily. No, you want to be sure to lose the election, you tell the protesters that their voices are not welcome, and that they need to just shut up. ---
**Author:** ![agzem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@agzem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/agzem)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/92 "2020-08-27T12:42:08Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Washington Examiner is a right wing rag What did you find to be incorrect about the article? ---
**Author:** ![agzem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a8b319/32.png) [@agzem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/agzem)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 12:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/93 "2020-08-27T12:44:26Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Newsbreak is a Chinese propaganda site Citation needed for that claim ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/94 "2020-08-27T13:15:55Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Things are already pretty well baked in. I am confident that Biden will get more votes than Trump, and I am fairly confident that when the initial voting is done, Biden will win enough votes in enough states to win the electoral college. However, short of a massive economic collapse in markets that threatens a massive wealth transfer, I am not confident that he will be president in January. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/95 "2020-08-27T13:57:37Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > Lives are not just lost, but are ruined or traumatized daily by brutal treatment at the hands of those who are supposed to protect us. Wearing a mask and washing your hands will not prevent the cops from harassing, intimidating, or even assaulting or killing you. > > If you cannot empathize with a black person in one of these cities, and understand that racism is a far more immediate and existential threat to them than Covid is, then you cannot be on board with the ideas of Black Lives Matter. That said, I think the term “Defund the Police” is about as idiotic, inflammatory and potentially counterproductive term for what they want to do, as the BLM and Left could have chosen. I mean, who doesn’t think that there’s a fairly large set of problems that are better solved by people other than the police? Who doesn’t think that police and city governments tend to succumb to the concept that “if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail”? But when you phrase that as “Defund the Police”, you just raised the hackles of everyone who views the police as anything but fascist oppressors. Defunding them implies reducing their capacity to maintain law and order. To stop crimes. To bring lawbreakers to justice, and so on. Which isn’t the point of the idea, but that’s what a LOT of people hear, not necessarily just the far-right wingers. Talk about giving ammunition to the other side. Trump and the GOP couldn’t have come up with a more inflammatory way to describe that aspect of what the Left/BLM wants, if they’d used focus groups and spent a million dollars on analysis and marketing. And the worst part is that BLM/the Left did it to themselves. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/96 "2020-08-27T14:07:36Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > At one point in 1992, Bill Clinton was third place in the polls – and he only got 43% in the end. I’m not saying we can’t win this election, I’m saying we shouldn’t tempt fate. And we are also potentially putting ourselves in trouble in two years or four years, when the environment is not so favorable. That 43% was due to it being a 3 way race, in any case the “tempting fate” item is going to the authorities and people in power that do think that people will ignore police brutality and incompetency when it was recorded for the whole world to see. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/97 "2020-08-27T14:07:55Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > > > Vote for the candidate most like Bernie at every opportunity. That’s what we should do going forward. In every primary, and every general election, local, state, and federal. > > This discounts the extreme levels of American racial, class, religious, and cultural heterogeneity. Republicans fundamentally do not see brown and black people as worthy humans and do not want to spend shared resources on them. From the left, secular science-based government is fundamentally at odds with fundamentalist American Christianity. Short of secession, what hope for unity is there? It’s not about “unity” – it’s about beating the bigots. In the long term, I think mine is the best strategy to defeat the bigots and institute just and fair policies. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/98 "2020-08-27T14:22:27Z")
> [@k9bfriender](#): > > You want him to call out even aggressive encounters like the one with the diners in DC? Sure, he should. > > We should even ask the protesters to do some level of self policing. Call out and turn in violent actors in their midst. Call out and dissuade the “rude” protesters. Plenty of people have. Al Sharpton, Jim Clyburn, Nancy Pelosi among the most prominent. It would behoove Biden to do so sooner and more often. Here’s the thing… what we hear from the rank and file all too often is, “Yeah, but look at the majority of protesters who are aren’t burning and looting and intimidating bystanders!” Which sounds an awful lot like, “Look at all the cops who aren’t shooting black people!”. It’s a problem and it needs voicing at the grass root level, because that’s the only place that effective change can and does take place. ---
**Author:** ![DeadTreasSecretaries](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deadtreassecretaries/32/4817_2.png) [@DeadTreasSecretaries](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeadTreasSecretaries)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/99 "2020-08-27T14:29:09Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > But then answer me this: What changes in 4-8 years? What happens to those failed policy attempts of Clinton and Obama? To the 30% or so of Americans who would never find themselves aligning with Democrats? To the Russian and Chinese operatives who now realize just how vulnerable and divided America actually is? What do we do when the next Trump comes because Biden merely paused the horrors, unable to extinguish them? Looking at this perspective, by far the biggest difference under a Biden presidency vs. a continuation of Trump is that Biden isn’t sabotaging our elections. Another thing is that Trump takes the pressure off of Biden. If he doesn’t win, any problem with America could just be Trump. If Biden wins and the Dems take both chambers of congress, and Biden’s mainstream democratic policies don’t change the bleak reality for many Americans, Kamala Harris or whoever is next in line for presidential endorsement of the Democratic establishment is going to have to go up against another radical explain why people should still believe in their relatively moderate approach. If Trump wins (assuming we even have elections in 2024), the focus will be on Trump’s completely kleptocratic policies, and the Democratic establishment won’t be tested. Things like foreign interference or the 30% dyed in the wool Republican voters won’t change, so they are not relevant. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [August 27, 2020, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094/100 "2020-08-27T14:37:00Z")
That’s the problem with ignoring a problem until the people have gotten fed up and start their own grassroots movement. They don’t have focus groups or spend millions of dollars on analysis and marketing, they go with what energizes _them_ to go out into the streets and fight for the rights that should be guaranteed to them. It’s not something that was chosen, it was something that resonated. There was no particular individual, committee, or group who came up with this, I don’t even know who it was that first uttered it. It was just something that went viral because no one else had anything better. Does anyone actually choose what goes viral? Bumper sticker slogans are not policy, they are what energize people. For energizing people, it works. And, if you note, it is not used nearly as much anymore, now that it has gotten the people at the table to have a more reasonable discussion. But, you are right, people will use as an excuse that some people used some words that made them uncomfortable as a reason to not support the movement that they claim to otherwise agree with. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/this-is-how-you-blow-a-very-winnable-election/919094.md?page=6)