Cont: 2020 Presidential Election part 3

[eerok]

Trump speaks out. and spouts BS as usual.

Trump slams judges' election decisions: 'What kind of a court system is this?' [foxnews.com]

"We’re not allowed to put in our proof. They say you don’t have standing," Trump told "Sunday Morning Futures." "I would like to file one nice big beautiful lawsuit, talking about this and many other things, with tremendous proof. We have affidavits, we have hundreds and hundreds of affidavits."

"You mean as president of the United States, I don't have standing? What kind of a court system is this?"

 

[Delvo]

This election was a failure for Democrats in every way except the fact that Trump lost... little blue dents in the red wave.

... the people have made an unmistakable statement that they do not see the Democrats as offering what they want; the overall result is a thorough repudiation of Trump individually, and of democrats generally. And most Democrats are continuing to pay no attention to that fact.

What, specifically, do you suggest the Dems do about this, starting with Biden?

Identify, and fight for, policy positions which are popular and easy for the Democrats to put their stamp on in contrast with Republican positions on the same issues.

It might sound obvious, as in "Well of course that's what political parties do because that's what politics is about", but it's not what most Democrats have been doing. How often have you seen & heard any of them pushing a message of exactly what they want the government to do and why they want it to do that? (And of the little sliver of samples of that, how often was the message clear, clearly different from the Republicans', and clearly on the side of what the people want?)

And this includes not just choosing which policies to push, but even the basic concept of choosing to spend their time in public view pushing policies at all, instead of distractions like "identity politics" and insult-competitions, which don't draw votes in their direction because they don't tell voters what they would have the government actually do about issues.

 

[newyorkguy]

This was Hillary Clinton speaking to her supporters the day after the 2016 elections when she won the popular vote but, nevertheless, lost the electoral vote by the thinnest of margins, about 80,000 votes out of 120 million cast.

“Last night I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country,” she said. “I hope that he will be a president for all of our country. I’m sorry that we did not win this election for the values we all share. Donald Trump is going to be our president,” she said, speaking at the New Yorker hotel in Manhattan. “We owe him an open mind and a chance to lead.” Guardian news link

 

[pgwenthold]

Trump speaks out. and spouts BS as usual.

Trump slams judges' election decisions: 'What kind of a court system is this?' [foxnews.com]

The conservatives on the SC (Scalia/Thomas especially) have really put a hammer on standing. For example, when it comes to lawsuits about the government giving tax revenue money to churches, they tend to get thrown on on standing, because tax-paying citizens don't actually have the right to sue the government when it uses tax dollars in ways that violate the constitution, and it's never been established who actually does have the right to complain.

But that's what the courts have ruled, and so we live with it. Too bad it's biting them on the ass now, although it doesn't really matter, because the courts have also ruled that the suits wouldn't get anywhere on their merits, either.

 

[Mojo]

https://twitter.com/JennaEllisEsq/status/1332414252003581954?s=19

There's an eventbrite link to the "public hearing" being held at a Hyatt Regency by "select members" of the AZ legislature.

Other members have noted the way they've set this up (only one party's members, held outside of the capitol without any notice) make their use of the term "public hearing" very suspect. It's a stunt for cameras.

I did a search for “Hyatt Regency Landscaping”, but didn’t manage to find it.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's an important issue, but not the only one, by far. This goes back to your oft repeated complaint, though. Democrats are generally bad at messaging in comparison to Republicans. In the end, the pandemic was a good reason to vote against Trump, but I didn't get the impression that it was used all that well to make the issue actually pro-Biden or more generally pro-Democrat. Same for a lot else, really. Biden was sold strongly as... a decent guy. That, in reality, is incredibly tepid as a pro-Biden thing. Biden, policy-wise, was vastly better in pretty much every way. Policy was never all that much of a focus for the campaigning, though, which let the GOP try nearly unimpeded to shape the conversation about what Biden would actually push.

People were not voting about policies policies. Whenever I hear people say they like Trump's policies I want to ask them, which one? Because his policies from my perspective were trash the environment & health care and reward his rich cronies because he likes the power of doing favors for select people. He selects them from people he sees as on his level.

The Democrats were bad at messaging, that's a different issue. I'm not sure why you think the pandemic was their main message. The main message was, as you say, put a decent man in office. That worked.

Dealing with this pandemic is the most important thing right now. People can't go back to work until it's safe. And if people hadn't noticed yet that the hospitals are going to overflow, they will. Trump sycophants won't, but those people are near impossible to reach.

The bad messaging was "defund the police". They didn't really counter this well. It doesn't even make sense. It's worse than not recognizing Bernie's socialism was an easily attacked message. But there wasn't a huge movement to defund the police. BLM, yes, but 'defund the police' was a sideshow.

You can't make Biden into a rock star candidate like Obama.


ETA: Oh yeah, and Trumpers hate immigrants, Muslims, brown and black people, so I suppose those are the policies they like.

 

[eerok]

The conservatives on the SC (Scalia/Thomas especially) have really put a hammer on standing. For example, when it comes to lawsuits about the government giving tax revenue money to churches, they tend to get thrown on on standing, because tax-paying citizens don't actually have the right to sue the government when it uses tax dollars in ways that violate the constitution, and it's never been established who actually does have the right to complain.

But that's what the courts have ruled, and so we live with it. Too bad it's biting them on the ass now, although it doesn't really matter, because the courts have also ruled that the suits wouldn't get anywhere on their merits, either.

I think Trump still thinks he's the boss, and the boss should be able to simply order people to do things, including flipping the election in his favor. He never understood the role of POTUS. Of course, there's a long list of things he doesn't understand.

 

[acbytesla]

I perused the posts this morning and I didn't see anyone posting this. But if it is redundant, I apologize.

The Wisconsin recount is over. They finished in both Dane and Milwaukee counties this morning. The result?

Joe Biden gained 87 votes.

Won Wisconsin for a second time.

The final election results will be certified tomorrow.

 

[eerok]

Dealing with this pandemic is the most important thing right now. People can't go back to work until it's safe. And if people hadn't noticed yet that the hospitals are going to overflow, they will. Trump sycophants won't, but those people are near impossible to reach.

That's true. There are too many Americans who believe covid is a scam, and this is looking to get very ugly before it's resolved. I like the idea of making covid relief payments contingent on vaccination (I'd like this in Canada as well). This would cause a lot of screaming from the right, but it'd save lives.

The bad messaging was "defund the police". They didn't really counter this well. It doesn't even make sense. It's worse than not recognizing Bernie's socialism was an easily attacked message. But there wasn't a huge movement to defund the police. BLM, yes, but 'defund the police' was a sideshow.

Yeah, that didn't go well.

You can't make Biden into a rock star candidate like Obama.

I think Biden was a good choice. I like him better now than when he won the candidacy. He's a good, solid guy who knows how to get things done. The opposite of Trump.

 

[eerok]

I perused the posts this morning and I didn't see anyone posting this. But if it is redundant, I apologize.

The Wisconsin recount is over. They finished in both Dane and Milwaukee counties this morning. The result?

Joe Biden gained 87 votes.

Won Wisconsin for a second time.

The final election results will be certified tomorrow.

The more nails in Trump's coffin the better. I'm surprised Rudy didn't go for more legal tap dancing in Wisconsin, though at this point it wouldn't even matter. All of the key states are out of Trump's reach.

 

[trustbutverify]

Well I disagree with this, it's overly pessimistic and not really reflective of what happened. In one hand, the Dems also over performed in Congress during the midterms, and may even take the Senate majority. It's obviously disappointing that they didn't win a few more seats, but that brings me to my next point.

pollsters this year again were people who didn't know what they were talking about and thought that Biden was going to win a landslide and the dems were going to clean up in both the House and Senate, but instead Biden merely won convincingly and dems have a real chance at holding a majority in both houses of congress, is something that's Biden's or the Dem's fault. but it was their bad projections that set unrealistic expectations that you're point out the dems couldn't meet.

they simply had terrible projections. people think Trump was a joke opponent because he's an idiot, but he wasn't. he got 73M votes, you need to realize he wasn't nearly as unpopular as you were led to believe and neither is the R party.

The pollsters weren't terrible, they used sound, well proven sampling techniques... as they did in 2016. The problem is, and was, that trumpsters lied in mass to poll questionnaires. Most probably to stick it to the deep state, or something.

 

[acbytesla]

The author completely misses the point of what happened. He is right that Joe Biden was uninspiring, and didn't do much of anything to get out the vote.

This election was all about Trump. I kind of like Joe Biden. He's not awful, but he's way too old to take on the Presidency. However, he has one characteristic that made him very, very, appealing.

He is not Donald Trump.

Donald Trump inspired millions of new voters who had never voted before to come out and vote. The problem is that he inspired more people to vote against him than to vote for him.

Read a George Will column for Pete's sake. George Will. Recognize that name? All my life, a Republican columnist, until 2016...or was it 2017 that he made it official. I don't remember. There are lots of people like George Will who are staunch conservatives, and solid Republicans, who would never under any circumstances vote for Donald Trump, and in many cases would do anything they could to get rid of him.

Trump's negatives were just too high to win re-election.

And we are not told that Joe Biden won, we counted the votes. Joe had more or them.

Yes, I think this election was very much a referendum on Donald Trump and that may have led to greater turnout both for the people who like him and those that despise him

However, I think the large turnout can also be attributed to the fact that states nationwide made it a hell of a lot easier to vote.

 

[The Don]

People were not voting about policies policies. Whenever I hear people say they like Trump's policies I want to ask them, which one? Because his policies from my perspective were trash the environment & health care and reward his rich cronies because he likes the power of doing favors for select people. He selects them from people he sees as on his level.

The Democrats were bad at messaging, that's a different issue. I'm not sure why you think the pandemic was their main message. The main message was, as you say, put a decent man in office. That worked.

Dealing with this pandemic is the most important thing right now. People can't go back to work until it's safe. And if people hadn't noticed yet that the hospitals are going to overflow, they will. Trump sycophants won't, but those people are near impossible to reach.

The bad messaging was "defund the police". They didn't really counter this well. It doesn't even make sense. It's worse than not recognizing Bernie's socialism was an easily attacked message. But there wasn't a huge movement to defund the police. BLM, yes, but 'defund the police' was a sideshow.

You can't make Biden into a rock star candidate like Obama.


ETA: Oh yeah, and Trumpers hate immigrants, Muslims, brown and black people, so I suppose those are the policies they like.

Also lower taxes - people like lower taxes.

The problem is that they also like public services which means that lower taxes and similar spending leads to ballooning deficits. Of course deficits only matter when the President has a (D) after their name.

 

[acbytesla]

The more nails in Trump's coffin the better. I'm surprised Rudy didn't go for more legal tap dancing in Wisconsin, though at this point it wouldn't even matter. All of the key states are out of Trump's reach.

They desperately tried to get tens of thousands of votes tossed during the recount in Wisconsin with some Trump observers objecting to every single vote in some precincts. The tried so hard to obstruct the recount.

 

[Meadmaker]

I think Biden was a good choice. I like him better now than when he won the candidacy. He's a good, solid guy who knows how to get things done. The opposite of Trump.

I voted for him in 1988, so I didn't have anything against him. This time around, I thought he was too old, but was good enough. As time goes on, I think he might be best man for this time.

Mr. Rogers, but with an attitude. Basically good and decent fellow who wants to get along, but will call B.S. at the right times. That's how I see him. I think that's what we need right now. I suppose we'll find out.

 

[Meadmaker]

However, I think the large turnout can also be attributed to the fact that states nationwide made it a hell of a lot easier to vote.

Probably.

I never found it very difficult to vote in the past, but I suppose for some people it must have been, especially the famous long lines in the inner cities issues.

 

[rdaneel]

I think Trump still thinks he's the boss, and the boss should be able to simply order people to do things, including flipping the election in his favor. He never understood the role of POTUS. Of course, there's a long list of things he doesn't understand.

I always imagine Trump sees himself as Don Corleone, The Big Boss only willing to do things for people who kiss his... ring.

 

[acbytesla]

Probably.

I never found it very difficult to vote in the past, but I suppose for some people it must have been, especially the famous long lines in the inner cities issues.

It really depends on where you live. It's been easy in Washington State for two decades with vote by mail. Get your ballot in the mail. Fill it out over a couple of weeks and drop it in a mailbox or official drop boxes at public buildings like libraries or fire departments. In many Republican states voting was in person and on a specific day. The pandemic resulted in states nationwide implementing vote by mail although the GOP still made it harder in some places.

 

[Paul2]

a lot of stuff never happened until it happened

Do you have any evidence to back this up?

 

[trustbutverify]

Identify, and fight for, policy positions which are popular and easy for the Democrats to put their stamp on in contrast with Republican positions on the same issues.

Which is exactly what McGovern did in 1972. You think the environment is better for sober policy discussion now?