What Have We Learned Since 2020?

What have we learned as politicians have largely shown they do not want to expand the social safety net and voters are primed to say the exact same thing in midterm elections this year? Was Biden’s election mostly a rebuke of Trump? Has the last year gone so horribly for Democrats that a Trump win in 2024 is likely now?

:white_check_mark:

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How about that, I seem to have met my “agrees with Ezekial_Cumberland” goal for the year.

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I think Trump is beginning to fade, and the people carrying the water for him are starting to sound dumber each day as they need to outdo yesterday’s headline.

The Democrat’s policies are generally popular. The problem is their support has been concentrated in a minority of states making it difficult to get anything through the Senate.

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From your fingers to God’s eyes. Gosh, I hope you’re right.

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Let’s see if we can analyze the 2020 results:

  • Trump get’s tossed from office after 4 years of means tweets and plenty of assholery
  • House losses D seats but maintains a very slim (~5) majority
  • Senate splits 50-48 (with 2 Is caucusing with Ds). Ds picked up 2 Senate seats in runoff elections GA largely because Rs stayed home due to Trump’s claims

I’m not sure why you felt there would have been a mandate from the voters of the country to expand the social safety net. 2020 voters didn’t want Trump, they also felt Biden could do a better job dealing with COVID. Biden ran as a moderate unifier. His first year in office has been everything but what he promised (COVID control, moderate, unifier). His only success has been that he isn’t Trump. Don’t worry, Trump might make plenty of noises about running again in 2024, but I don’t see it happening. He’s become as toxic as HRC was in 2016.

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I would also point out that Trump’s election in 2016 was a statement against Hillary. Note that he didn’t get as much of his agenda passed with the House and Senate in R control.

I also think the 2020 election was as close due to Biden’s selection of VP. I think more Republican-leaning independents might’ve voted for Biden had he chose a VP that had a more moderate track record. Personally, I saw that pick was based more on her demographics than skill/experience she would bring to the office.

That sounds so much creepier than the spoken equivalent. Like you’re poking God in the eye.

I don’t know. If you interpret the lips/ears thing the same way you’ve done here it’s a bit weird, too.

2020 was definitely a rebuke of Trump.

Imo, any president was poised to drop in popularity as soon as Trump was out of the spotlight.

Biden is old and boring, which makes him lose more ground with Democrats and independents.

Republicans are now all in on absolutely hating any democrat, so he automatically has ~zero popularity there.

2024 could go either way. Hopefully Biden and Trump will both be out of it, but it will be another race where both sides hate the other regardless.

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Still to early to call 2024. Wouldn’t be surprising if Trump or Biden died before then.

Yeah, maybe should start 2022:
Rs will win the house.

Rs will win the senate, and never lose it again.

Rs will fire everyone who doesn’t swallow the big lie.

The rest of Biden presidency will be stagnation.

Besides possible wars? Russia still has 100k troops
next to Ukraine, so they could still change everything.

Or maybe 2024 will be decided by whether or not covid is still killing people.

Even if Trump is dead, if Democrats do win, they will be accused of fraud and the election will be aggressively if not violently protested.

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Agree. He should’ve picked Klobuchar, except she essentially told him to pick Harris instead.

His pick of Harris certainly made me a lot less enthusiastic about voting for him. Though I held my nose and voted for him anyway.

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Unfortunately, that’s what I see.

Trump may not be the nominee. But, any other R knows the playbook. The R base doesn’t care about niceties like not pardoning people who broke laws to help you.

As long as we have 2 senators per state (i.e. forever) and winner-take-all electoral college, and SC justices picked by presidents and senate only in years when they are both from the same party, I don’t see how the Rs ever give up power.

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I proposed, at one point, having 3 senators per state (one in each class so every state has 1 Senator up every 2 years so we don’t get the weird effect of almost all blue-state or almost all red-state Senators up in a particular election).

And then increase the house to 650 (roughly 50% bigger to preserve the ratio) for a total of 800 Congress Critters. More representatives means smaller districts and a more even cut when it comes time to reallocate. Each individual has less power. 803 electoral votes, so 402 needed to win. Odd number, so no possibility of a tie.

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Indy and I mean that thanks to urbanization, Rs to have a big vote handicap in the senate. And it’s becoming increasingly impossible for D’s to beat the spread.

3/state would make it even more impossible, but that’s sort of beside the point.

I can’t imagine an appetite from our citizenry to get involved in that.

Is this true? Like is it really true?

I think there are several aspects of various policies that are popular across parties. One of the biggest hang ups, though, is how much money to throw at various initiatives.

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I agree, judging by the other recent invasions. The US is mostly apathetic, as long as Russia goes for small bites. But you never know, it could get ugly.