Are any contented moderates less contented.

On Election Money - Biden outspent Trump by a pretty large sum .... and the Dems accounted for about 54% of the total spent on the election.

On the issues - Yeah , most of the country is in the middle - Moderate. When you talk about raising taxes and increasing spending to unprecedented levels .... you turn a heck of a lot of people off. People vote with their wallets for the most part.

Going to the fringes disenfranchises those in the middle on both sides. You don't win national elections with Bernie and AOC. Those people only get elected in districts that lean heavily towards one side or the other.

 

i feel less contented since this feels like wacking off without the punchline..

every time i go to lubys i will order the liver but in "half" order size.
medium sugar.

 

Looking at Florida and Texas it’s hard to make a case that going more to the left is what would have driven a landslide and won the Senate. The issue is information and propaganda. Latinos are even affected and highly vulnerable of a Demographic in the future to keep the GOP alive if the Dems don’t find a way to turn them out in the south moving forward.

People will be pondering for 4 years where the hell the Dems went wrong in 2020 even if Biden does squeak this out. Either way I don’t believe Biden will be the nominee in 24 and a progressive will 100% primary him or go head to head with Harris if Biden retires.

I think pretty much every Dem will be in agreement though that tonight was a failure even if Biden wins. The country is fundamentally broken and it’s more than any issue that a progressive could have brought to the table. If anything the data shows we probably would do worse.

 

Even on Fox news, which will probably end up in the 'fake news ' category by trump, had bizzaro Ted Mosby display a graph that the country wants Accessible health care and a couple of more 'socialist' things.
I don't know the host's name but I call him bizzaro Mosby.

 

Dems don't understand mammals very well at all.

They should ask themselves: what separated a B. Clinton and B. Obama from a J. Biden and H. Clinton: no, not first names that begin with B. Magnetic personalities on video and in person. To say nothing of height, (regretably).

Run someone like the Rock (with sure, progressive policies, but that's not what people vote on, apparently), and watch what happens. I wish I was kidding. Why do you think Republicans can win with a Reagan or even a horrid person (but still TV-ready somehow) like Trump?

EDIT: Also, Dems don't have a FOX News, they just don't. That **** is so damned effective and it's been running for so long it's completely molded a lot of people's mind, beyond the point of taking in data. It's incredible.

 

Exactly. The Senate is broken both functionally and structurally

Dems can run a popular former gov in MT in a big blue year and not really come close against a lousy generic Republican. That basically means the Senate's rural bias guarantees Republican control forever unless there some supermajority election (like a D 60% national one)

It can't continue like this.

 

I think an older more mature AOC in 10-15 years can be that charasmatic person but with actual government experience.

 

its not broken. trump and the repug enablers (remember it takes a group) ..the white voting male 45+ group .

and were able to get just enough buy in from poor, hispanic, and blacks to create a stalemate.

the story to me highlights how lost the poor , hispanics and blacks are.
they really think the repugs care about or identify with them and its the stupidest saddest things ever.
everyone is an entrepreneur and a baller living in their trailer.
this is what got trump elected first time and his whole existence is perfect metaphor and caricature for usa..fat, gross, spray tan, fake, gaudy, mcdonalds, sadly a sign of the times.

if you were going to make a pizza the hut character with pepperoni falling off his face it would look like trump. usa and him are perfect for each other and if you spending 25 seconds watching keeping up with honey boo boo and devin booker you might be a redneck..but it is who we are. we all have "that friend" or cousin and sadly they somehow vote. apathy is the word again and after a virus its safe to say trump would have won landslide without it..

trumps handling alone of that then see he gets that many votes shows you more what is broken. culturally we didnt do much to lose the people of walmart vibe

 

I need a bit more space removed to make a deeper analysis, but it looks like a Biden win but in the worst way possible, with Trump still having strong turnout, polls being off, and not taking the Senate. And in my opinion Biden ran the best campaign I could imagine him running and Trump ran pretty much the worst campaign I could imagine him running.

I think the end result is that the Democratic party will not run a moderate again. And I think the Republican party will embrace Trumpism.

If you are any sort of moderate, as I am, the result is about the worst possible result. I think the Democratic party will go more left and the Republican party will go more into nationalism (which, in my opinion, is not a small government philosophy so I will not say they are going more right). And we will end up even more divided than we were before this election.

For the first time in my life, I'm not optimistic about the future of this country. Nor do I any longer believe the things I was taught growing up about American exceptionalism.

 

This is a result of the past 40 years of economic trends. The economic trends come first, then the division and social unrest.

It's why I'm somewhat frustrated at moderates. They assume a mere Democrat adminstration and congress saves the country when their polices are also complicit in the past 40 years of economic trends.

 

You don’t think MSNBC is their Fox News? I’m haven’t watched either in a long while, but I had thought they essentially mirror each other. What would a Dem version of Fox News even look like?

 

Its hard not to agree with you. I feel like we will still get the type of term that Hillary was going to have and worst thing is.... wait for it.....Yes Trump will run again.

With no Senate and a weaker House, it’s pretty much a setup scenario where the Republicans can sabotage his term and run a campaign that Biden did nothing. You then have Fox doubling down and giving Trump a platform to start campaigning on February 5th. Trump has two months to put in trap door after trap door to help himself campaign against Biden or Harris.

I think Biden will pretty much be in the position LBJ was in during Vietnam. We’ll see how it goes but Biden has a hell of a challenging term if he ends up winning.

If Biden wins though I think it’s important that we have his back but maybe make him a sacrificial lamb for a sea change that makes the Dems look like a different party altogether to have any chance at 24.

 

If Joe Biden isn't a moderate enough Democrat for the American people then who is?

I don't think the majority of the American voters really care about anything other than their pocket books. Trump has been very effective as a fiscal conservative for the cities and a fiscal liberal for the rural areas. Just buy the votes and you win.

 

dang dude you are going high and low on me quick here ..im still feeling the mania from your earlier posts. still up..

the more i look at this its all about what it was and what we thought. my surprise is more how close and admit i thought collectively we were smarter than this... i thought the virus was enough to make it edge biden easily vs. this tightness.

but with all the faded leather bag skin and newport chain smoking in arizona that is a surprise that biden took it. i think of florida person and arizona person as the same guy so its a bit surprise.

i think you are over analyzing and looking at this a bit hot..when you calm and get a bit hyped again you will be really positive and make a strong case that way too..

take the coaster up gimme some more


if i aint part of the greatest i gotta be the greatest myself

 

I attribute a lot of those economic trends to trickle down economics though.

I don't want to get deep into theory but my ideal economic policy creates safety nets that not only help people have a basic quality of life but will give people much more mobility to essentially do what they want, which I think on a macro level can lead to huge economic growth. I think Biden had a lot of great stepping stone policies to get us there. I worried someone like Sanders went a little too far and would prevent the overall growth part, although I'll admit that I'd still take that over Republican policies because I care more about taking care of people than growing the economy when it comes down to it. But I do believe we can have our cake and eat it too when it comes to taking care of our own but also growing the economy

I don't think Bidens policies were perfect but they were certainly significantly better than Trumps. I recognize it's a huge problem to see economic growth but no wage growth for the vast majority of the public which is what we've witnessed for the last 40 years. Trump's policies only serve to further that gap. I think Bidens policy was more realistic to start closing that gap than Bernie's would have been. Although this result has even me rethinking if a moderate is the way to go, because at the end of the day it doesn't matter if we never win.

 

I think there are a couple of options (MSNBC and CNN) but they don't have the big personalities that FOX does and I don't think people who watch MSNBC and CNN lap it up like many do with FOX.

 

Yeah, I agree. Was going to say to @durvasa that I know a lot of Fox viewers, and they don't really question what they see there and they don't catch themselves repeating the talking points. I know (far fewer) MSNBC types, but they seem to admit it's a guilty pleasure and that it is just telling them what they'd like to hear. I know one MSNBC addict who admit she would never use it to get actual news. I don't know any Fox viewers who talk that way. But this is just anecdotal.

I assume Fox clobbers MSNBC on ratings, but I haven't looked that up actually.

 

Looking at not just Democratic Presidents but also recent Republican Presidents this really is image over substance. Neither Obama or Bill Clinton were progressives but they were very charismatic and captured the energy of the electorate. GW Bush won the "who would you rather have a beer with" over the Al Gore and John Kerry who were both noted for their stiffness. Trump is above all else a marketing genius at self-aggrandizement.

This isn't a new phenomenon either. I was reading something the other day about the 1960 Democratic primary. JFK was actually on the Right of the candidates and candidates like Humphrey were far more liberal than JFK. JFK was known mostly for being anti-Red and the Kennedy family had close connections to Joseph McCarthy. Looming in the shadows was Adlai Stevenson who was the thinking man's candidate and almost had a cult like following in the Democratic party. The problem was that Stevenson was a two time loser to Eisenhower and in the 1956 election Eisenhower ran a simplistic campaign designed by advertising executives while Stevenson appealed to the intelligence of the US electorate. Result Eisenhower won easily. JFK crafted a campaign less on issues and more on the image of youth and energy, that along with the first use of analytics in US Elections got him the nomination over the more skilled candidates.

Obama and Bill Clinton are certainly very intelligent people but their campaigns were about that. In both cases they ran a campaign around change, youth and energy.. From what I'm seeing in the last two elections that might be what it takes for the Democrats to not just get the presidency but back to a majority party in both houses of Congress and state houses. Out of the crop of this years candidates the one's that seemed to fit the bill were Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker. They both have problems and it mystifies me somewhat that Booker completely fizzled. The other candidate that certainly could bring the energy is Elizabeth Warren. Depending on what happens this year I think the next major Democratic candidate should be someone who combines those factors.

 

I'm not a moderate, really, but that's just a great post. Two things.
1. Yes, there is ZERO motivation for the GOP to move away from Trumpism or whatever it becomes next. Nasty divisiveness, nationalism, and magical thinking (countering facts wherever they are inconvenient) all seem to work well politically. They can just chuckle at these few Lincoln Project types and brush off patriots like Maddog Mattis.
2. It's not absolutely the worst outcome. I think having House, Senate, POTUS all under minority population extremist control would be the worst, but I'm picking nits.

It's bad, and the left will have motivation to swing further left (as per the OP's aim). Starts to look more and more like pre-Franco spain, pre-Pinochet Chile. Yuck.