A lot is being focused on race, but being poor means being ignored. Symbolic victories better be filling and nutritious. Winter be comin. This atlantic article might be up your alley (one of many criticisms of the press): Horse-race-ism Decades ago in Breaking the News, I wrote about the near-irresistible impulse to convert the substance of anything into how it would seem from a political operative’s point of view. Much as football commentators can remain neutral between teams, but express sharp opinions on the three-four defense or whether the blitz pays off, political writers can avoid taking a side by expressing their judgment with tactical commentary. last week in The New York Times about Douglas Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris. Here was the hed and dek on the story: Will Doug Emhoff’s Legal Career Be an Issue for the Biden-Harris Ticket? Mr. Emhoff, the husband of Senator Kamala Harris, has a long record as a litigator at two of the nation’s top firms, posing potential conflicts that could draw scrutiny. Note the touches in the presentation that don’t appear to take a side, but actually do: The question in the headline itself, deciding that the potential issue deserves notice. “Posing potential conflicts,” again not taking a side but declaring a problem. “Could draw scrutiny.” This was also the framing of nearly all of the reports on Hillary Clinton’s emails. For the record, perhaps they exist, but I haven’t found articles framed as explorations of whether Ivanka Trump’s trademark having been approved in China, or Jared Kushner’s relatives promoting their business there, might pose “potential conflicts.” And from the story, about Emhoff’s association with a law firm, DLA Piper, that has a lobbying arm as well: It remains unclear whether Mr. Emhoff will continue to practice law in any capacity, but keeping a connection to a firm with a thriving Washington lobbying practice and offices in places like Moscow and Riyadh could prove problematic. Critics are already scouring his client rosters at DLA and a previous firm, which have included representations viewed suspiciously by progressive voters whom Democrats are relying on to help defeat President Trump. James Fallows: ‘Both sides’ and the decline of public institutions “Remains unclear … could prove problematic … critics are already scouring … viewed suspiciously by progressive voters.” This is how you take sides and express judgments while striking a pose of not doing so. (An also-familiar phrase with the same effect: From the interviews, a picture emerges … When you see that phrase or anything like it, realize that you’re encountering someone who should be writing, “I came to think” or “From reporting I learned,” but is working within constraints that make “a picture emerges” seem “objective” and “I learned” seem judgmental.) Also, it’s a way of showing you will be tough on all sides. A recent illustration of the powerful draw toward the ever-tightening horse race: This past Sunday, September 12, The New York Times ran a poll showing Joe Biden up by nine points in Minnesota. The headline on its article from the state was “Minnesota: Some See an Edge for Trump.” Or just yesterday, as Matt Viser of The Washington Post noted in a tweet, Joe Biden gave a speech about climate policy, and then got three questions from the press: What would be his message in Florida the next day? Why are his numbers among Hispanics so low? and, Are the gloves off? As I spent much of Breaking the News arguing, questions like these are of enormous in-the-minute fascination to political reporters. But they have virtually nothing to do with most voters’ concerns at the election, and even less to do with what historians will say was at stake in our times. Dan Froomkin, or another by Jay Rosen, about how to drop the pretense of both-sides-ism, and channel the analytical ability that goes into tactical commentary in order to plainly say who is lying and who is not, and what is at stake. Rosen also argues that the media should form a “threat modeling team” to anticipate efforts to undermine the upcoming election. What is at stake is more than just another race.
There's always some truth to the degree and amount African Americans have been underserved by the Democratic party on a day to day basis. I still don't get the love for Bill "first black president" Clinton when his reform bills on crime and welfare reduced benefits (and yes, it felt racially motivated) all while tightening the belts of the very services designed to reduce numbers in the former. Prosperity for all, including blacks, rose to some extent during his tenure, yet black home ownership also rose during Bush (until it all went bust the second term). So maybe that age group supports Trump for the same rationale, they care mostly about the economy and their day to day...Families, home ownership, and promotions (due to economic stability/expansion) are the main priorities for that age group. I mean, is it a tru-ism that the "economy is better" under Republicans? Data is dubious, but the propaganda is real. Market juiced upward in the last 3 years, and not a peep about the 2 trillion to service it and the unpaid "1-for-you-4-for-me" tax cuts. But you're 30-44, haven't got enough sleep, kids screaming in the background and that 2 grand from Uncle Sam will stretch things further. Spend now, and let the politicians worry about the complicated **** or I'll vote him out for the guy who promises to fix everything. Off topic rant...Fairness Doctrine was a big win. 97 was under Clinton eh? Deregulate everything, and everyone's better off for it! Conservative dogma...neoliberal dogma...who cares? It's mercan now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/politics/poll-supreme-court-trump-biden.html https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/us0920-crosstabs/e9c96a16d8951e8c/full.pdf Spoiler THE NEW YORK TIMES / SIENA COLLEGE POLL Joseph R. Biden Jr. 49% Donald Trump 41% Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of 950 likely voters from Sept. 22 to Sept. 24. Voters prefer that the winner of the election choose the next Supreme Court justice, and trust Joe Biden over Donald Trump to do a better job in making the pick. Whom would you like to see appoint the next Supreme Court Justice? 56% Winner of election | 41% Donald Trump Whom do you trust to do a better job of choosing a Supreme Court Justice? 50% Joe Biden | 43% Donald Trump Do you think abortion should be... 60% Always or mostly legal | 33% Always or mostly illegal Do you support or oppose the Affordable Care Act? 57%Support | 38% Oppose Joe Biden leads Donald Trump among most groups, and they are tied among men, who typically lean Republican. Total (n=950) 49%Biden | 41%Trump | +8 Biden GENDER Men (476) 45% | 45% | Even Women (465) 53% | 37% | +16 Biden AGE 18-29 (136) 61% | 26% | +35 Biden 30-44 (196) 57% | 34% | +23 Biden 45-64 (313) 41% | 48% | +7 Trump 65+ (276) 48% | 45% | +3 Biden RACE White (643) 42% | 49% | +7 Trump Nonwhite (276) 66% | 22% | +44 Biden PARTY Dem. (314) 93% | +89 Biden Rep. (275) 90% | +84 Trump Ind./Other (278) 51% | 30% | +21 Biden Voters approve of Donald Trump’s overall handling of the economy, but disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and blame him for the resulting recession. Do you approve of the way Donald Trump is handling the economy? 54% Approve | 42% Disapprove How responsible do you think Donald Trump is for the current recession? 43% Not at all or not very responsible | 55% Mainly or somewhat responsible Do you approve of the way Donald Trump is handling the coronavirus? 41% Approve | 56% Disapprove Do you think the worst of the coronavirus pandemic is over, or that the worst is yet to come? 43% Worst is over | 49% Worst is yet to come In a survey of likely voters taken in the week leading up to Mr. Trump’s nomination on Saturday of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the high court, 56 percent said they preferred to have the election act as a sort of referendum on the vacancy. Only 41 percent said they wanted Mr. Trump to choose a justice before November. More striking, the voters Mr. Trump and endangered Senate Republicans must reclaim to close the gap in the polls are even more opposed to a hasty pick: 62 percent of women, 63 percent of independents and 60 percent of college-educated white voters said they wanted the winner of the campaign to fill the seat. The warning signs for Republicans are also stark on the issue of abortion, on which Judge Barrett, a fiercely conservative jurist, could offer a pivotal vote should she be confirmed: 60 percent of those surveyed believe abortion should be legal all or some of the time. The poll suggests that Mr. Trump would reap little political benefit from a clash over abortion rights: 56 percent said they would be less likely to vote for Mr. Trump if his justice would help overturn Roe v. Wade, while just 24 percent said they would be more inclined to vote for him. While most voters would prefer that the next president appoint Justice Ginsburg’s successor, the country was effectively split on whether the Senate should act on Mr. Trump’s nomination: 47 percent of voters said it should, 48 percent said it should not, and 5 percent were undecided. Still, women and independents were firmly against the Senate’s seating Mr. Trump’s appointee. The poll had a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points. Mr. Biden is leading Mr. Trump, 49 percent to 41 percent, the Times survey shows, propelled by his wide advantage among women and Black and Latino voters and by his gains among constituencies that strongly favored the president in 2016, including men and older voters. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are tied among men, with each garnering 45 percent. The former vice president appears notably stronger among college-educated white voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. Mr. Biden is winning 60 percent of white women with college degrees, compared with 34 percent for Mr. Trump, and he is beating the president among men with college degrees, 50 percent to 45 percent. Four years ago, according to exit polls, Ms. Clinton won college-educated white women by only seven percentage points and lost college-educated white men to Mr. Trump by 14 points. The question of which candidate would do a better job picking a Supreme Court justice, for example, effectively matches the White House race: 50 percent of voters trust Mr. Biden on the high court, 43 percent trust Mr. Trump, and 7 percent are undecided, equaling the percentage of undecided voters in the presidential race The poll shows that 71 percent of independents said abortion should be legal all or most of the time, and even 31 percent of Republicans said the same. Only 33 percent of the country said the procedure should be illegal all or most of the time. Crucial constituencies said they would be less likely to vote for Mr. Trump if his nominee would overturn Roe. That included 65 percent of independents and 61 percent of college-educated white voters. Fifty-seven percent of voters, including nearly two-thirds of independents, said they supported the Affordable Care Act. About a month after Mr. Trump used his convention to castigate Mr. Biden and his party in false terms as allies of rioters and criminals, the president is not seen by most voters as a successful law-and-order president. Forty-four percent of voters said they approved of his handling of law and order, while 52 percent said they disapproved. Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic continues to be a major political liability, and the poll indicates that he has not succeeded in persuading most voters to treat the disease as a quickly receding threat. A majority of voters, 56 percent, said they disapproved of Mr. Trump’s approach to the pandemic, including half of white voters and the same proportion of men, groups that usually lean to the right. Two-thirds of voters said they would support a national mask mandate, while 63 percent said they would support new lockdowns to fight a second wave of the disease if public health experts recommend them. Yet 40 percent of the president’s own party supports a nationwide mask mandate. And while Mr. Trump has insisted that the coronavirus will soon disappear, most voters disagree. Half said they believed the worst effects of the pandemic were still ahead, while 43 percent said the ugliest phase was over. The poll shows that Mr. Trump is strongest on economic issues, an enduring strength for him. Fifty-four percent of voters said they approved of his handling of the economy, including about half of women, Hispanics and college-educated white voters, groups that mainly support Mr. Biden. The president has staked his re-election in part on the argument that he is best equipped to restore economic prosperity once the pandemic has passed. But voters’ assessment of Mr. Trump’s economic leadership is not entirely positive, and in this area the president appears to be paying a price for his role during the pandemic. Fifty-five percent of voters said Mr. Trump was somewhat or mainly responsible for the economic downturn, compared with 15 percent who said he was not very responsible for the recession and 28 percent who said he bore no responsibility at all. Much of the electorate appears to be in a pessimistic mood, with a large share of voters convinced that the American government is deeply dysfunctional and inclined to view the stakes of the 2020 election in drastic terms. Three in five said that the 2020 election would decide whether the United States would remain a prosperous democracy, while only 30 percent said the country would remain prosperous and democratic no matter who won. While a majority of voters — 54 percent — said that the country’s political system could still address its problems, a full 40 percent said America was too divided for the political system to work. Voters were about evenly split over whether those divisions would ease if Mr. Biden was elected president, with about a third saying the situation would improve and a third saying it would get worse. Three in 10 voters said the situation would stay about the same. But most of the electorate saw little hope for improvement under a second Trump term. Only 17 percent said the country’s divisions would ease after another Trump victory, compared with 50 percent who said they would get worse.
Exactly. Everybody wants to create the story, I think they want to get into the TV pundit role or just be next reporter whose story gets them airtime.
Heres a novel idea? Maybe a lot blacks were for the crime bill and the welfare cuts. Do some research and get back to me and then you can answer "why" yourself.
It is really hard for me to imagine something major happening within the next month, maybe I'm too confident, but 538 is basically saying Trump MUST win Michigan and Wisconsin for him to win. Biden has a pretty strong lead in those states. Trump in every scenario of theirs has to win New Hampshire. I never really looked too into the map before today(but did this morning because of the news of Arizona-Florida race squeezing) but Trump has some work to do, the GOP needs to manufacture some big scandal next month or something. Biden is basically built for states like Michigan and Wisconsin. I know Biden's lead there isn't insurmountable but I'm glad we're not depending on Florida. It looks like Michigan, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire are going to be the states that decide this election. Michigan-Wisconsin Trump barely carried against Clinton, NH Clinton barely won.
Maybe I have done research before commenting. Maybe in 20 years, I'll be bustin Obama's balls if national healthcare is the more or less same form as when he passed it. At some point parties should take more responsibility than One and Dones.
Trump path to victory is far more narrow than Biden's. Biden can lose the FL and still win whereas if Trump loses FL it's pretty much over. I've been one of the ones far more cautious about this election but I am moving the election more towards Biden and I think in a straight up election with no shenanigans I think Biden has. This the problem I still see is what sort of shenanigans are gong to happen. I also still think winning this election as though this is a normal election is enough. Biden needs to run up the score. We know Trump will contest it but the bigger the margin both in actual votes and electoral votes the harder it will be for Trump to contest.
Biden is the best the Democrats could do in the Upper Midwest. There clearly appears to be a reversion in the trends of white working class voters in rust belt areas towards Trump. Interestingly, this trend is only happening in former manufacturing areas. Areas that were focused on mining seem to be sticking with Trump which is why the Pennsylvania polls are closer than the polls in Michigan and Wisconsin. Pennsylvania has a lot of coal mining regions that switched to Trump and don't seem to be coming back. Eastern Ohio is also diverging from other white working class communities in Ohio for the same reason. This mining conondrum is also why Minnesota polls sometimes look close. The northeastern part of Minnesota is a mining region that seems to share the same DNA as Appalachian coal communities. But because non-mining white working class areas seem to be moving back towards Biden, places like Ohio and Iowa are now competitive. And Trump's campaign is basically broke and isn't on the air in either state while Biden is rolling out huge ad buys in both states (in addition to the rest of the upper Midwest). The tax return story should also help in this region. Also the Supreme Court situation doesn't really help in this region as well. Abortion has never been top of mind in rust belt communities and framing the Supreme Court around health care will play well.
You're right that Trump dominates the Iron Range but MN seems to be moving more safely in the Biden camp. The Iron Range used to be DFL heartland but it seems like it's much more red. I noticed the last few times I've been up to Norther MN there are also a lot of anti-Walz ads. I'm wondering if Southern MN that is dominated by farming isn't as solidly Trump because the trade war hurt that area and that is tipping the state more strongly Biden.
The Iron Range is still the strongest mining area in the US for Democrats but its fallen so far in the last four years. You can look at 2014 (which was a Republican wave year) and see the DFL still doing reasonably in the Iron Range and 2016 where the vote fell off a cliff. And the big trend is that I'm not sure the Iron Range will snap back to 2014 numbers. It'll recover a little for Democrats (and I expect Biden to win the actual mining towns by a decent margin) but the region is probably trending the other way for good. Historical mining constituencies seem to have given up on Democrats which makes sense as Republicans keep weaponizing the Democratic position on environmental protection. Trump is willing to destroy the boundary waters to create the perception that he fights for jobs on the Range if that's what it takes. But as you point out, Southern Minnesota has really bounced back in the polls towards Biden. Part of that is that Rochester keeps zooming to the left but one thing that is overlooked is that smaller towns in Southern Minnesota (Mankato, Winona, St Peter, Albert Lea, Austin, etc..) many times will vote DFL by healthy margins so CD01 is much less reliant on winning tons of farmers. Whereas a Democrat in CD07 is heavily reliant on farm voters as the towns in CD07 tend to vote Republican. Moorhead is probably the only town in Western Minnesota that consistently votes for the DFL (although Bemidji might vote for Biden this time).
This is some real inside baseball MN Politics but the one of the biggest factors in the DFL losing has been the culture change. This is before my time but from what I've heard is in the Rudy Perpich days the DFL was more Pro-Life than the Republicans (which were called Independent Republicans) gradually the MN Republican party has become like the national Republicans on social issues while the Iron Range has remained very socially conservative. Also agree with the you on the environmental issues as the Polymet situation and Line 3 have really turned many in the region against the DFL.
