The Blue Period
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Summary
The Blue Period by Richard Spencer Read by the Author The Democrats Will Soon Achieve Political Governance in an Age of Radical Polarization - It Probably Won t End Well. The Blue Period is an essay written by Richard S. Spencer that examines how the Democratic Party will achieve political hegemony in an age of radical polarization.
Transcript
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The Blue Period, by Richard Spencer, read by the author.
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The Democrats will soon achieve political hegemony in an age of radical polarization.
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On November 3rd, Joe Biden should comfortably win the presidency of the United States,
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earning between 325 and 375 Electoral College votes, matching Barack Obama's results in 2008 and 2012.
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In an age of polarization, and in light of Trump's tremendous popularity among Republicans,
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Biden's victory will be viewed as a landslide, a national denunciation of Trumpism.
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Demoralization and confusion among the Republican faithful will follow.
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In addition, Democrats should take control of the Senate, with a tight majority of 51-49.
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More than one long-time Republican stalwart and Trump ally will be sent packing.
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In the House, Democrats will maintain dominance.
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The wave election already occurred in 2018, and to a lesser extent in 2016.
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This year will be marked by consolidation, not conquest.
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Inertia is the most powerful force in politics.
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Some 75% of all House races are uncompetitive slam dunks.
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And we can expect incumbent congressmen, especially members of the House, to be re-elected at a rate around 90%.
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But after multiple cycles of consistent gains, on January 20th, 2021,
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the Democrats will stand in the same position the Republicans did four years earlier.
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They'll have the presidency, they'll enjoy a House majority in the realm of 235 to 250 members,
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A 25-year era of mostly Republican leadership in Congress will be supplanted by a new blue period.
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This is the result of seismic, demographic, geographic, and attitudinal and psychological shifts.
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But ultimately, the 2020 victory will paper over deep problems for the Democrats,
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which will likely lead to an unhappy presidency for Mr. Biden.
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But more important, it will assess the structural basis for the coming Democratic dominance
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and expose the fault lines that make doing politics, even for a hegemonic party, exceedingly difficult.
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In 2016, Trump was not just the candidate of right-wing populism, but chaos as well,
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Trump ran against his own party, its leadership, and quite a bit of what it held dear.
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Biden, on the other hand, has run a bipartisan campaign on the promise of a return to normalcy.
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Normalcy means ending the Trump experiment, the outrages, scandals, wild talk, and nationalism.
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But it also means keeping at bay left-wing energies, wokeness, BLM, and democratic socialism,
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that are now motivating a great deal of Biden's voters.
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Biden's experience of the Democratic primaries is best described as survival, not triumph.
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And it was only possible through the intervention of party luminaries at the 11th hour.
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Biden has a long history of being extremely un-woke, and his Clintonian policy proposals are simply
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out of step with the majority of Democratic activists and operatives, if not high-level
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Thus, Biden is caught in a pincer, and there is a strong chance that he will be undermined
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early on by forces within, perhaps even given a rude comeuppance.
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Moreover, it is becoming questionable whether America is governable at all.
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We will soon be in a remarkable situation in which the once-and-future party of political
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hegemony, the Democrats, will be governing a population that has undergone radical polarization
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In the new blue era, the Democrats will struggle for legitimacy, not power.
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Biden's coming victory must be put into perspective.
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The era of monumental landslides, when one candidate captured a unified national mood, is passed.
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The last time a candidate won more than 500 electoral votes was 1984, when Ronald Reagan came close
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to matching Richard Nixon's 49-state domination in 1972.
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Barack Obama's comfortable victories in 2008 and 2012, or George Bush's 2004 win as the stay-the-course
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wartime president, never approached the lopsidedness seen in the 1930s, 50s, and 60s.
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This has, perhaps surprisingly, led to stasis and rigidity.
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Voters are polarized in the sense of being frozen in place.
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You simply are red or blue, and there ain't no doubt about it.
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On some level, red-blue politics has eclipsed race, ethnicity, and religion as the source and
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When polled, Americans who strongly identify with conservative or liberal are skittish about
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the prospect of family members marrying someone of another political affiliation.
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A hardcore conservative worries more about his daughter marrying a Democrat than a man of
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There are, I should point out, some key issues of remarkable national consensus.
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At least in 2018, a majority of Republicans supported a national health care system, or
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Medicare for All, a program touted by Bernie Sanders.
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That said, on a host of metapolitical topics, like inequality, racial discrimination, and the
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environment, gaps between red and blue are only widening.
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The parties themselves have become hostile nations with little overlap.
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This is demonstrated in a longitudinal study by the Pew Research Center covering the past
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In 1994, 64% of Republican voters were to the right of the average Democrat on a host of
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Put another way, the average Democrat was to the right of one-third of Republicans.
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Effectively, all, 95 to 97% Republicans, are to the right of Democrats, and Democrats to
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Some old-timers still wax nostalgic about a bipartisan era long ago when both parties would roll up
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their sleeves and get things done for the American people.
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The reality is, compromise and collaboration are simply impossible when there is literally
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Mormons and evangelical Protestants are overwhelmingly Republican.
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And to no one's surprise, self-described atheists are liberal to roughly the same degree as
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Polarization is also strongly regional, a phenomenon known as the big sort.
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Blue states are clustered on the eastern and western seaboard, and states containing large
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Texas and Georgia are notable southern exceptions.
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Polarization also marks the intersection of race and class, as Republicans have gradually
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become the home of the white working class, those without college degrees.
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I'll explore this in more detail in the next essay in this series.
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In 2004, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry by a close score in the popular vote, 51-48.
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But mapping the election county by county told a very different story.
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The entire heartland and south was deep red, with some blue outliers in predominantly African-American
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Someone in, say, Casper, Wyoming might not know another soul who voted for John Kerry, to
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Polarization is even more radical than elections would lead you to believe.
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Terms like secession and Civil War II are in the air.
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A Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted from November 2016 through January 2017 found 22% of respondents
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supporting the state they live in, quote, withdrawing from the USA and the federal government, end
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Support among non-whites was even higher, at 29%, with less than an outright majority opposed
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and the remaining quarter of the population, unsure.
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Some 40% of both Democrats and Republicans openly tell pollsters that political violence
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is justified, quote, a little, end quote, if the other guys win.
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Both the QAnon conspiracy and Russian collusion narrative, which led to Trump's impeachment,
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are factually dubious, but true to the prevailing zeitgeist.
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For QAnon, the Democrats aren't just wrong or misguided.
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They are literally satanic, blood-sucking pedophiles.
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The mass media, or fake news, is only there to distract the public from Trump's noble crusade
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On the other side, resistance liberals say that Trump is in Vladimir Putin's pocket, effectively
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reviving a Cold War-era ghost story about a Manchurian candidate, once the bugbear of right-wing
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Trump doesn't just want better diplomatic relations with Russia.
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He is, in fact, a tool of a Slavic autocrat bent on world domination.
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Marianne Williamson captured the mood as only she can.
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I told my daughter this morning that if he wins again, he'll probably start rounding people
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You might get a call at some point to come bail out mommy.
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Don't tell a Jew they'll never have to worry about being rounded up.
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And don't tell a woman she's never been underestimated because of her gender.
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What is key here is that both Reds and Blues view the other, not as an adversary, but as
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Why debate or find common ground with someone who wants to throw you in a dungeon?
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Radical polarization is disturbing, and it might foretell an eventual breakdown of the
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United States, as unthinkable as that might sound.
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But for our limited purposes here, polarization means electoral stability, and that means that
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four out of every five states in any presidential election can be forecast years in advance.
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For yet another cycle, a dozen or so states will determine the outcome of the presidential
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Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio,
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The other 38 are not likely to produce surprises.
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Texas and Georgia are two remarkable additions to this list, as both have been reliably Republican
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since 1996, and are thought of as bastions of conservatism.
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Among the 12 states in play, three, Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania, will prove most important,
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since they are populous and polling has been both close and volatile.
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Mainstream forecasters, the Cook Political Report, The Economist, FiveThirtyEight, and The New
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Joe Biden's advantage immediately jumps to the fore.
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Taking the 38 non-swing states as givens, Biden will begin election night carrying some 215 to 225
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Of the dozen decisive states, half of them are leaning towards Biden.
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Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Arizona.
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Only Texas and Georgia are significantly leaning Republican.
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This leaves Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa as the toss-ups among toss-ups.
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The problem for Trump is that Biden does not need to win all of the Democratic-leaning toss-ups
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to reach 270 electoral votes, and thus an electoral college majority.
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In other words, for Trump to eke out a victory, he must hold Southern stalwarts like Georgia,
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Florida, and Texas, and win at least a couple of Midwestern states, Iowa and Ohio, for example,
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that formed his unlikely Rust Belt strategy of 2016.
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A victory for Trump, based on, say, winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Florida,
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would already be reflected by polls suggesting a Republican wave.
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Biden has maintained a comfortable lead in national polling in the area of 7 to 10 points
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This is significantly higher than Clinton's lead over Trump throughout the summer and fall
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of 2016, which hovered between 1 and 6 points and was trending towards deadlock.
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Numbers on early voting foresee a dramatic, multi-fold increase of turnout among young
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people, 18 to 29, a group that skews heavily towards Biden.
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As they say in the NFL, any team can win on any given Sunday, and that rule holds for Tuesdays,
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If, say, Trump secures Florida with its 29 electoral votes, then his chances of pulling off an upset
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But we need to remember how astounding Trump's win in 2016 really was.
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In the Electoral College, Trump beat Clinton handedly, 304 to 207.
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On a state-by-state basis, however, his margins were razor thin.
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Trump won Florida, a state of 22 million, by 100,000 votes.
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Treading such a precarious, narrow path to victory one more time is too much to ask of
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And demographics in those states are clearly moving in the wrong direction.
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America might never again see a truly national statesman, that is, a man who transcends party
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and policy, and is widely viewed as the right guy to take charge in a crisis.
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After 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt seemingly couldn't lose, consistently boosted by his resolve
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Since then, wartime can make a president invincible before sinking him.
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Lyndon Baines Johnson won a landslide at the height of the Vietnam War,
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then bowed out of the 1968 election early, having lost control of his own party.
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George H.W. Bush's approval ratings were just shy of 90% after launching the first Iraq war.
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They then dipped as low as 29 in 1992 when the fight was over.
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His son, George W., experienced a similar ordeal.
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He broke 90% after the September 11th attacks, just before his approval cascaded downward and
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he became a national punchline in his second term.
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W. might be the last president to achieve unanimous adulation, however fleeting.
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After years of relative peace for the American empire, Trump was challenged in the final year
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of his term with a crisis of biblical proportions.
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A plague from the Far East that brought the world to its knees.
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Trump achieved his highest approval ratings in the first half of May 2020, 49%,
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weeks after he had officially declared the coronavirus a national emergency.
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For all of the shrill talk about Trump being a fascist, the reality is that Benito Mussolini
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would have relished the chance to mobilize the nation under pandemic socialism.
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And if Trump governed more like a fascist, perhaps donning a nightly hazmat suit during press
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briefings, he would have a much better chance of being reelected.
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No leader on earth has paid a price for overreacting to coronavirus, even if some have indeed overreacted.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has consistently urged lockdowns, has had an approval rating in the
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mid to upper 60s on his handling of the pandemic, double that of Trump.
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The nation was clearly begging to be given marching orders by a strong man.
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Trump, for his part, chose the power of positive thinking, a uniquely American form of Christianity
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articulated by Norman Vincent Peale, a minister who presided over Trump's first wedding.
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Trump's response to coronavirus will forever be remembered by his claims that it was a
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Democrat hoax, that it will go away in the spring like a miracle, various goofy proposals
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for instant cures, and his fretting over the health of the Dow Jones Industrial Index.
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By October, Trump was losing seniors, the most vulnerable to COVID-19, by 10 points in the
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Voters over the age of 65 would seem to be the natural constituency of any conservative.
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Yet in 2020, the olds have a voting profile much like their self-centered left-wing grandchildren.
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Trump is one of the only presidents in recent memory to declare himself a nationalist, and
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he has invoked the pre-war slogan of America first.
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But in the end, his nationalism, whatever it might mean in practice, is a minority political
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Trump's approval rating among Republicans is rising to 95%.
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The country is headed in a very different direction.
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The 2018 midterms amounted to a wave election for the Democrats, the one obscured by the final
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A split government, with the Republicans increasing their lead in the Senate.
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That year, the Democrats achieved a net gain of 41 seats in the House, which put the victory
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on par with two iconic Republican waves of recent history.
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The 1994 Revolution, net gain of 54 seats, and the 2010 Tea Party, net gain of 63.
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Remarkably, the 2018 Blue Wave was greater than those two, at least as measured by the popular
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Yes, all politics is local, especially in the House.
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But if the 2018 midterms were treated like a national referendum, then the Democrats had
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a nine-point advantage over the Republicans, matching Biden's 2020 advantage over Trump.
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The 94 and 2010 midterms birthed new heroes in the persons of Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan,
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The impeachment of President Bill Clinton, the consolidation of the religious right as
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a reliable bloc, endless prattle about budgets and various government shutdowns marked the
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terms of those speakers in this red era of Congress.
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It's difficult to think of any legislative achievements.
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Recent Democratic gains in the House, on the other hand, brought us Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
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and the so-called squad, all of whom immediately became stars and generated friction with the
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centrist leaders of the House and Senate, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.
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Biden, too, is running as a centrist, the man who, as he brags, beat the socialist and
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will revive a globally oriented foreign policy.
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Whereas Republican presidents were generally aligned with popular energies in their parties,
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He may be the last Democratic standard-bearer to promise nothing will fundamentally change.
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Regardless of what Joe wants, creative and paradigm-shifting policy, the Green New Deal
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being a perfect example, will begin flowing out of the Democratic House.
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In 2018, Fortuna looked fondly upon Republicans.
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That year, only eight of their 51 seats in the Senate were in play, whereas the Democrats had
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Republicans seized the opportunity, and the recent confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett would
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not have been possible were it not for the lucky hand they were dealt.
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In 2020, Republicans faced the inverse of the happy situation last cycle.
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They have 23 seats up for election, while the Democrats have only 12.
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Among the Democrats' 12 seats in jeopardy, only one is likely to be lost, Doug Jones' perch
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in Alabama, which was acquired in a bizarre special election against Christian fundamentalist
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In 2020, Alabama will likely send Republican Tommy Tuberville, the old Auburn football coach,
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Of the Republicans' 23 seats that are up for election, eight are considered toss-ups, and
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in the case of Martha McSally in Arizona and Cory Gardner in Colorado, likely losses.
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Seats that should be solid are now in play, such as Joni Ernst in Iowa and Lindsey Graham
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in South Carolina, both of whom seem to be dragged down by their close association with
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Graham's unlikely challenger, Jamie Harrison, has raised more money than any other Senate
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candidate in U.S. history, upwards of $85 million.
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For Republicans, there are simply too many signs that too many things are going wrong.
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A baseline expectation for the Democrats would be to lose Alabama and keep 46 of their current
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The Republicans should reasonably hope to maintain their 15 safe seats.
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However, they should expect to lose between four and five, that is, half of the toss-ups.
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Normally, the re-election of a party's incumbent president means a rising tide, but this is
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The Republicans should lose five seats, and on November 4th, 2020, the Democrats will gain
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It's a common refrain you hear from Trump fans.
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It also harkens back to 2012, when Republicans were similarly confident that polls weren't
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capturing Mitt Romney's support, a contrarianism that led Karl Rove to engage in embarrassing
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displays of delusion and denial on national television when the results came in.
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The short answer to the question, weren't the polls wrong, is no.
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Trump's entrance onto the political scene in 2015 was a watershed in that traditional
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metrics and punditry, which had worked so well in previous elections, failed spectacularly
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to understand his popularity over the course of the next 18 months.
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Much like Ron Paul in 2008, Trump was the candidate from the internet.
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He activated a base that was increasingly getting its news from social media and not from network
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That included Fox News, which, we shouldn't forget, opposed Trump's ascendancy throughout
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Trump simultaneously developed a cult following among younger and more activist men and women,
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who liked him precisely for his combative personality and because he waged war against
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This was the alt-right in its broader and more nebulous form.
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From the outset, it was demeaned by the mainstream media as a gaggle of internet trolls and even
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In late 2015, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight infamously wrote,
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Dear Media, stop freaking out about Donald Trump's polls.
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For my money, that adds up to Trump's chances being higher than zero, but considerably less than
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Your mileage may vary, but you probably shouldn't rely solely on the polls to make your case.
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A strange statement coming from a man whose career is based on aggregating polls.
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Over the course of the nominating process, Silver and other cephalogists assured the public
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Plugging historical precinct figures, campaign finance data, and political endorsements into
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their algorithms to weight the polls, they put Trump at the bottom of the pack.
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Jeb Bush was to be the likely nominee, with Marco Rubio the possible upset candidate.
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Absent from these prediction formulas were rally attendance numbers, social media engagement,
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and organic, rather than media-manufactured, public interest.
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Trump dominated internet search queries throughout the campaign cycle.
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A Trump supporter might, on two days' notice, take off work to drive three hours for a chance
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to get inside a sports stadium for a Trump rally, and face a very real chance of being kept outside
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on account of the venue reaching maximum capacity.
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Jeb Bush, on the other hand, had difficulty filling up an elementary school classroom,
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Yet this patent disparity in intensity was thought by the experts to be electorally insignificant.
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Usually, when a state politician endorsed a candidate ahead of a caucus or primary, tens of thousands
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of people might hear about it, most often days afterwards through second-hand media reports.
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But during Trump's rise, tens of millions of people would hear directly and instantaneously
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from Trump via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
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It was not uncommon for people to be made aware of the endorsements of Trump's opponents
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The conventional blessing of a political establishment had become the curse of the swamp.
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The big miss of the mainstream media came in 2015, when pundits dismissed Trump, despite
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his strong polling and measurable online engagement.
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Nate Silver, for one, gave Trump a much better chance of winning the 2016 election than his
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The national popular vote total was actually well within the range of major polling predictions.
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The real clear politics average across 11 different polling companies showed Hillary Clinton winning
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Most of the national polls were within the margin of error.
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The breakdown in polling reliability, at least relative to the boring election night of 2012,
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Trump strongly outperformed his statewide polls in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Pennsylvania,
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But we should remember that Hillary outdid expectations in Nevada, despite most late-October
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Red states went redder than the polls predicted, and to a lesser extent, blue states went bluer.
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The correlation between Trump's margin of victory and his overperformance relative to RCP polling
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Pollsters have learned lessons from their shortcomings in 2016.
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And more importantly, even if all the 2020 polls were as wrong as those in 2016, Biden would
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Mainstream polling is simply not fraudulent, and the move towards Democratic hegemony is
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seismic, not a result of the latest news cycle.
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Trump pulled off an amazing upset in 2016, but demographics and attitudinal change forecast
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a new blue period in American politics, a process that began well before the nomination of Joe Biden.
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Trump's victory and inauguration was a winter of discontent for the American left.
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Scenes of crying, shock, hysteria, wailing, and gnashing of teeth filled the news outlets
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But perhaps they shouldn't have been so bent out of shape.
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In 2016, Hillary Clinton received almost 3 million more votes than Trump, roughly 65.8 million
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And many overlooked that Democrats actually gained seats in the House and Senate.
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Since 1992, Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.
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Both Trump and George W. Bush relied on the idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College
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and with Bush, the Supreme Court, to secure their first terms.
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On the whole, America is a left-wing country, by any reasonable measure.
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In the 20th century, the Democrats were the party of hegemony.
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For six decades after Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, Congress was effectively a
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Between the 73rd Congress of 1933 and the Republican Revolution of 1995, Democrats controlled 28 of
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the 31 Congresses, losing to the Republicans only briefly in 1947 to 49 and 1952 to 53, and
00:31:09.640
For better and for worse, the Democratic Party is responsible for every lasting policy paradigm,
00:31:17.500
from the New Deal to the Great Society to civil rights to immigration reform.
00:31:21.980
The last notable policy initiative of either party was the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare,
00:31:27.540
of 2009, which again was achieved when the Democrats had control of both houses.
00:31:33.460
The quarter century since Republicans took the House in 1994 can be thought of as the Red
00:31:39.460
The Republicans' share of Congress has increased from some 25% in the early 1930s to over 55%
00:31:49.160
Republicans have held both chambers 7 out of 12 election cycles, and held on to one chamber
00:31:56.840
Democrats, as mentioned, were only in full command for two years during Barack Obama's
00:32:01.860
Since realignment in the 1960s, Republicans progressed, slowly but surely, from being an
00:32:12.980
Yet it's questionable whether they were ever a governing party.
00:32:17.140
Outside of tax cuts, cantankerous complaining, and vague calls for limited government, Republicans
00:32:23.520
seem to have no clue what to do with power once they capture it, much like a dog chasing after
00:32:29.940
The GOP has certainly been popular, but it has clearly lacked the intellectual resources
00:32:37.860
As the Red Era took shape, the margins of dominance in Congress by either party have progressively
00:32:46.400
In other words, the Red Era is one of visionless deadlock, obstruction, and back and forth.
00:32:52.760
You could argue that as margins in Congress are tightening, and polarization becomes more
00:32:58.420
intense, we should prepare ourselves for exchanges of power between the two parties every cycle.
00:33:04.160
But I expect something quite different to emerge.
00:33:07.600
Long-term domination of Congress and the presidency by the left moving forward.
00:33:13.900
The Democrats might never achieve the supremacy of the FDR coalition, but they will set the
00:33:22.140
Medicare for all, universal basic income, and woke policies beyond our imagination will
00:33:35.560
Pronouncements about America's changing demographics, or about how diversity is destiny, are now so
00:33:44.820
The built-in assumption is that demographic realities doom the GOP, the monoracial white
00:33:57.500
In Texas, whites reached minority status 20 years ago, and the state remained a keystone
00:34:05.540
So, theoretically, Republicans could continue to win elections as the white party, the home
00:34:11.580
of legacy Americans and those who aspire to be like them.
00:34:15.620
What is decisive is that the Democrats, and not the Republicans, have constituted themselves
00:34:24.680
The largest demographic group now entering the Democratic Party is not Hispanic immigrants,
00:34:32.860
The left is thus home not only to African Americans, but the new class of corporate and financial
00:34:39.380
While the conservatives are downright proud of the absence of cultured snobs and intellectuals
00:34:45.120
in their ranks, the Democrats have long been the party of thinkers, artists, and dreamers.
00:34:50.480
This new blue grouping that is emerging might seem contradictory, but you could say the same
00:34:55.780
thing about FDR's New Deal coalition, which brought together the urban poor, small farmers,
00:35:03.300
The Democrats are positioned to capture the forces of America's transformation and govern
00:35:12.040
The Republicans are still talking about their half-remembered dream of American greatness,
00:35:20.300
The major obstacle for Democrats is not demographics, surely, nor is it the lack of policy creativity,
00:35:28.920
It is the fact that millions of white people who identify as conservatives and real Americans
00:35:34.840
will view their hegemony as entirely illegitimate and maybe evil.
00:35:40.040
That is a nut the left might not be able to crack.
00:35:49.280
Then again, my assessment could be wrong, at least in the short term.
00:35:54.120
And regardless, it's worth discussing how Trump could actually pull this off.
00:35:58.180
We can start with Joe Biden's personal limitations.
00:36:02.840
The most common criticism of Biden, heard from Republicans, is encapsulated by Trump's nickname
00:36:10.700
Biden is senile, they say, incoherent, stuck in his basement, afraid even to step outside.
00:36:20.260
Biden's bumbling, absent-minded speech patterns and malapropisms are striking, though many of them
00:36:29.920
And American voters are likely to see Biden's personal quirks as a feature, not a bug.
00:36:35.620
As mentioned, Biden is quite popular among seniors, who can empathize with his moments,
00:36:43.220
Hillary Clinton was widely reviled, precisely because she comes off as Machiavellian, calculated,
00:36:49.660
codified, and in a funny way, over-prepared to be president.
00:36:53.660
Uncle Joe, on the other hand, captures the sweet spot of benign goofiness.
00:36:59.620
He's simply too guileless and folksy to be evil, unlike Hillary.
00:37:05.040
The second level of the Sleepy Joe argument is that, they say, his running mate, Kamala Harris,
00:37:11.480
will be in charge, a suggestion she herself seemed to embrace.
00:37:15.300
Though Harris is clearly more of a woke feminist than Joe could ever be, she was selected precisely
00:37:22.680
because, on policy, she's in the same centrist ballpark as Biden.
00:37:29.840
as Kamala Harris joins the Biden ticket, Wall Street sighs in relief.
00:37:35.860
Harris opposes Medicare for All, after once supporting it, supports fracking, ditto,
00:37:41.540
and in a lecture to young people in Chicago, instructed them to give up on their dreams
00:37:49.800
Harris's initial campaign for the Democratic nomination was derailed
00:37:53.100
when she was scolded by Tulsi Gabbard for being a draconian district attorney.
00:37:57.380
Harris hasn't helped the Biden ticket, but she has not seriously hurt it either.
00:38:03.680
And if she does emerge as the eminence grise of the administration,
00:38:07.680
it will be to pursue most of the same policies that Biden would.
00:38:12.560
The stronger argument in favor of Trump is that all of the same dynamics of 2015,
00:38:21.760
Echoes of the Trump-Jeb rivalry have returned in 2020,
00:38:25.720
as Trump continues to generate large crowds and religious-like devotion,
00:38:31.240
while Biden holds rallies to audiences of a few dozen journalists.
00:38:41.840
And it's not wrong to sum up the dynamic of 2020 as such.
00:38:50.360
Can Biden pull off a victory on exasperated negativity alone,
00:38:55.740
on his voters settling for him as a relief from the other guy?
00:39:01.520
As mentioned, Trump is approaching an astounding 95% approval among Republicans.
00:39:11.260
66% of his supporters were strongly enthusiastic about voting for him.
00:39:15.700
These are the types that attend rallies, post on Facebook,
00:39:19.560
and talk about Trump tirelessly to their friends and co-workers.
00:39:23.800
At the time, Biden's strong support was only at 46%.
00:39:27.400
But over the past three months, enthusiasm for him has begun to rival conservatives' adoration
00:39:33.140
of the president, perhaps as the left's hatred of Trump reached levels previously thought impossible.
00:39:39.220
On social media, Trump remains miles ahead of Biden on active engagement, as we would expect.
00:39:48.980
in the past 30 days, Mr. Trump's official Facebook page has gotten 130 million reactions, shares, and comments,
00:39:57.140
compared with 18 million from Mr. Biden's page.
00:40:00.360
That is significantly larger than the engagement gap for the preceding 30-day period,
00:40:05.200
when Mr. Trump got 86 million interactions to Mr. Biden's 10 million.
00:40:10.840
The same story goes for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube,
00:40:13.940
and especially the new alt-tech platforms like BitChute and Parler.
00:40:19.560
Moreover, while polls are one thing, actual voting is another,
00:40:24.540
and Trump has looked particularly stout on this front.
00:40:28.340
No major Republican dared challenge him in the GOP primaries.
00:40:32.360
And in New Hampshire, for example, he received 85% of the vote in the primary,
00:40:37.700
building on his total from four years ago by 30%, from 100,000 to 129,000,
00:40:43.940
despite the fact that these elections didn't seem to matter much.
00:40:47.820
In other words, MAGA enthusiasts, and not necessarily Trump haters,
00:40:52.580
are committed to trudging through a snowstorm to cast a ballot for their hero.
00:40:58.680
There is also the potential for the activation of anxious, though shy, Trump voters.
00:41:05.840
They aren't willing to announce themselves to pollsters,
00:41:08.600
and they might cast ballots on the basis of angst over the BLM riots,
00:41:12.820
which flared up over the summer and have resulted in looting,
00:41:19.020
Princeton academic Omar Wasau has studied the major protest movements of the 1960s
00:41:27.880
In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater promised law and order
00:41:32.840
against crime in the streets, but lost in a blowout to President Johnson,
00:41:42.920
and Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon successfully marshaled a
00:41:47.040
tough-on-crime campaign to help win the White House.
00:41:49.840
What happened in those four years between Goldwater and Nixon?
00:41:54.620
For one thing, the protests became more violent,
00:41:57.460
particularly in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King.
00:42:01.440
Wasau marshals county-by-county data and concludes that in 1968,
00:42:06.320
localities that were proximate to nonviolent protests tended to vote more liberally,
00:42:11.700
that is, for Hubert Humphrey, than they might otherwise have.
00:42:14.760
When Wasau looked at counties that were exposed to violent protests,
00:42:19.680
Nixon tended to gain some two percentage points.
00:42:25.980
Wasau suggests that Humphrey would have likely won the election of 1968
00:42:33.640
Such social science modeling reinforces gut instincts.
00:42:37.760
When people see crime, chaos, and racial hatred,
00:42:42.400
whether that be incumbents or the candidate viewed as the most right-wing.
00:42:50.060
violent protests occurred throughout the swing states of Georgia,
00:42:58.760
Antifa, Defund the Police, and Black Lives Matter have become household terms.
00:43:03.820
And violent images of mayhem and destruction have been broadcast across the globe.
00:43:12.840
One that is even more pronounced this time due to the virtual proximity created through social media?
00:43:22.360
That said, Trump's path to victory remains the same.
00:43:26.360
An electoral college squeaker which would drive liberals into conniption fits.
00:43:30.720
And we shouldn't forget how close it was four years ago.
00:43:35.120
A Donald Trump victory in 2020 remains just as possible impossible as it was in 2016.