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Post by curiousliberal on Feb 8, 2021 22:16:11 GMT
Doug Jones barely beat an outed paedophile in a low turnout special election when the #MeToo movement (pre-Kavanaugh at that point) was at the height of its popularity and the Trump administration was least popular (in the midst of the TCJA and attempts to overturn the ACA).
If he wants to win in Alabama, he's better off waiting for the next Republican midterm and then running for gubernatorial office where there is a bit more flexibility. AL's US Senate seats are just not open to Democrats anymore.
Despite all this, I could see him running a high-profile bid for Senate to stay relevant - an audition for a Biden/Harris administration post rather than an elected one.
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 25, 2021 13:02:10 GMT
And in the continuing tale of Arizona Republicans lessons not to learn after a crushing defeat, Kelli Ward has been re-elected State Party Chair, and resolutions censuring Governor Ducey, former Senator Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain were passed. If implemented the latter two are to be prevented from holding membership of, or participating in activities of, the State Party. Presumably it’s partly why Ducey has definitively ruled out a Senate run against Mark Kelly next year. Basically censuring anyone who can win statewide. AZ Republicans have a habit of kicking out their frontrunners/"rising stars." If you look at their row officer elections in recent cycles, for instance, you can see a higher than average number of successful primary challenges. That being said, there's still a pretty good bench and Republicans don't necessarily need a good candidate to win AZ in 2022/2024 (it's still several points to the right of the national environment going by national popular vote). She's unlikely to run, but former Gov. Jan Brewer could be a strong candidate as she's moderate in a way that's actually popular these days: economically (while still retaining some social conservative bonafides, that is). AG Mark Brnovich and Treasurer Kimberly Yee might also be better candidates than Ducey given his post-COVID 19 approval ratings, although I suspect that by 2022, his reputation will have recovered such that he'd still be a better recruit in theory (although he's not going to run anyway).
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 25, 2021 12:54:10 GMT
The GOP are entering the "It's better to believe in something and lose" phase of politics. Good. It's helpful that they are too stupid to see how that worked out for Labour recently It really isn't. Doubling down has consistently worked for them* in the long run, perhaps because they have institutional/financial/media support that will stick with the party in favour of more tax cuts until the bitter end and because these institutions place much less value than Democratic-leaning ones in the aesthetics of compromise and "norms." *The party brass, that is. The Republican base have not really been given the culture war red meat wins they want and that is working as intended.
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 22, 2021 0:32:57 GMT
Regardless of whether they had enough info to reliably call it when they did, the proposition (by Murdoch and others) that it was bad because "it altered the narrative of election night" even though it was correct, is outrageous. It did help change the narrative - from a wrong one to a correct one. That cannot be bad, by any sane analysis. It is bad because Newsmax has been eating more of Fox's market share since election night. It's scored its first TV ratings win over Fox and is likely to eclipse it properly in the years to come.
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 16, 2021 21:08:07 GMT
If Trumpism is to be sidelined, there has to be a natural progression to an alternative Republican candidate for most of his current supporters. Liz Cheney is one of the least plausible contenders here as she's a fairly obvious swamp creature. But the challenge is not to find a replacement for Trump that is acceptable or liked by people who wouldn't vote Republican in a month of Sundays. It is to find someone that can be liked and even lauded by the Republicans, who would know that they are leaving Trumpsim behind without having to acknowledge it. That's my argument. Sidelining Trumpian types (in so far as they are a coherent bloc as opposed to a personality cult) requires putting forward a candidate who is somewhat palatable to Trump supporters while also not being radioactive elsewhere. Liz Cheney is too much of a throwback to a previous form of Republicanism many Trump supporters would deem unacceptable - her politics isn't that different from her father's, her brand certainly isn't (although much of that is outside of her control), and those voters backed Democrats when he was VP.
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 16, 2021 20:57:44 GMT
Got to be a serious contender if Trumpism is side-lined. If Trumpism is to be sidelined, there has to be a natural progression to an alternative Republican candidate for most of his current supporters. Liz Cheney is one of the least plausible contenders here as she's a fairly obvious swamp creature.
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Post by curiousliberal on Jan 8, 2021 17:45:09 GMT
Nobody in polite society is going to want anything to do with Josh Hawley ever again after this. In years gone by he would have been able to keep his head down for a while but The Lincoln Project now have their new mission. They are going to harass Hawley and Co until they bring about their ruin, and they are going to do by going after those who associate with them. Hawley has made his bad and now he will have to lie in it. He pretended he was trying to overturn the election in order to suck up to the Trumpanzees and all he has ended up doing is destroying his own career and reputation. As a resident of Missouri for the last 5 years, I couldn't be more delighted. Careful. If he crashes and burns too quickly, that's how you'll get Senator Eric Greitens.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 30, 2020 17:16:49 GMT
His diet isn't unhealthy but he benefits from being a teetotaller. In terms of life expectancy, the average 74-year-old American male is more likely than not to survive the next four years and that probably goes double for someone afforded the protections and comforts of Trump's lifestyle. There's an electoral downside to running at 75+ but I strongly suspect a non-incumbent being 80 (or any age younger) means age isn't a prohibitive barrier to the presidency assuming the lack of a steep, perceptible decline in cognitive functions. Biden is 78 although he was 77 at the time of the election. His principal rivals in the primaries (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg) are 79, 71 and 78. The prominence of older presidential candidates is partly a result of the Congressional gerontocracy and the failure of generation X to produce a political class which could compete with the boomers, but it's also a byproduct of an ageing population and the resultant decline in the stigma surrounding older politicians.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 28, 2020 19:43:54 GMT
If this succeeded in changing the presidential result, it would be the end of the United States in short time. I think it would lead to a long-term decline but doubt it would happen in a short time. Trump won a substantial minority of the vote and the opposition has put up with results being overturned before (Bush v.s. Gore was an even closer thing but the Brook Brothers Riots and the Supreme Court making a per curiam decision says a lot about the political forces effectively flipping the presidential election). The US just survived its largest protests in history without any serious governmental reforms resulting from them and the armed elements within the protesters proved themselves to be laughably disorganised (and thus unable to seriously challenge state forces that mostly broke for and would presumably back Trump).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 25, 2020 20:24:51 GMT
Will Brindisi survive after all? Wasserman reported that Democratic and GOP sources have Brindisi ahead by 12 or 13 votes.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 25, 2020 15:24:39 GMT
Assuming that 2024 will be Biden v Trump rerun That's a big assumption! An 82 year old v a 78 year old. Statistically, the changes of them both being in suitable shape for a presidential run in four years is not very high. Surely at some point a new generation of politicians has to come through. Looking at some of Biden's cabinet/administration picks, he seems to be trawling the Clinton and Obama years for retreads. Seriously! Some new blood please. Look at the average age of UK cabinets for a favourable comparison. I read that some people who worked in his and associated campaigns were rather cross about this given that the old guard allegedly didn't pull their weight in the general and most certainly didn't rally behind Biden in the primary until they had no other choice but Sanders.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 24, 2020 13:41:49 GMT
The extent to which that was behind the presidential landslide is unclear (Dole's campaign was bad, voters approved of the state of the economy and Ross Perot had a credible third-party challenge affecting results. Whether the conditions are right for it to happen again is even less so. Republicans kept the House in 1996 and only had a net loss of 3 despite '94 being the Republican wave which gave them back control after decades in the minority. Not sure how true this was in 1996 as opposed to 1992, tbh. If anything his decline the second time perhaps helped the GOP slightly. He still got 8.4% of the vote, more than enough to make a difference at the EC level between a landslide and a very narrow win.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 24, 2020 13:29:47 GMT
That said, voters are unlikely to punish Congressional Republicans for obstructionism. One rule that has remained constant before and during the Trump administration is that the president's party receives the lion's share of the blame for gridlock from persuadable voters. It might be different this time as Biden is the first president to start without a trifecta since HW Bush (assuming Democrats don't win both GA runoffs), but I strongly suspect that's not going to make much of a difference. Depends on how both Biden and the Republicans act. There is a lesson in history here from Clinton and Gingrich between 94 and 96. Clinton compromised a lot but then finally said 'No' and had a few very clear 'red lines'. Republicans forced a shutdown, voters saw that they were the reason for it (having seen that Clinton did try and reach agreement) and punished them for it afterwards when it came to the 1996 Presidential election. The extent to which that was behind the presidential landslide is unclear (Dole's campaign was bad, voters approved of the state of the economy and Ross Perot had a credible third-party challenge affecting results. Whether the conditions are right for it to happen again is even less so. Republicans kept the House in 1996 and only had a net loss of 3 despite '94 being the Republican wave which gave them back control after decades in the minority. At that (much less polarised, pre-Fox News) time, McConnell was not leader of the Senate Republican caucus and his philosophy is one of obstructionism. During the Obama presidency, Congressional Democrats and the president repeatedly sold out their stated principles in attempts to find common ground, presumably with the expectation that they would be rewarded for it at the ballot box if not in the legislative chambers. They once went so far as to back a Republican bill put up as a feigned compromise. The expectation was that it was too right wing for Senate Democrats to accept and it was introduced to make them seem overly rigid, but when they actually accepted it, McConnell simply pulled the bill from the Senate floor. He considered the legislative wins to be worth less than damaging faith in any political process in which Republicans did not have a trifecta. The electorate did not really punish Republicans for this (in net terms, that is - rising polarisation certainly hurt elected Republicans in bluer areas, but it did the same to Democrats in redder places).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 24, 2020 10:09:47 GMT
What admittedly unreliable polling and my limited anecdotal evidence suggest is that even the split-ticketers largely don't want gridlock (a recent poll had them breaking over 2:1 in favour of Republicans 'finding common ground with Biden' as opposed to keeping him in check) but naively think they'll get anything else by splitting their tickets. Compromise governance is a lot more feasible at the state and local level, but not at the federal one as long as the self-styled Grim Reaper remains at the top of the Republican Senate caucus.
That said, voters are unlikely to punish Congressional Republicans for obstructionism. One rule that has remained constant before and during the Trump administration is that the president's party receives the lion's share of the blame for gridlock from persuadable voters. It might be different this time as Biden is the first president to start without a trifecta since HW Bush (assuming Democrats don't win both GA runoffs), but I strongly suspect that's not going to make much of a difference.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 21, 2020 17:32:53 GMT
The strength of the Senate is that Wyoming has the same number of senators as Texas. That's excplicitly how it was explicitly designed, explicitly as a counterbalance to the population-based House. ... and it was deisgned before either Wyoming or Texas were states and when the difference in population between the smallest and largest state was 600,000 rather than 39,000,000. It was also designed under the assumption that settlement of the land would occur at a much slower rate. The continual expansion of the US was to be an important check on gridlock-based tensions (if you were a powerful stakeholder who had a problem with whatever the status quo was, you could simply move west).
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 19, 2020 22:18:47 GMT
These clowns are failing in their own endeavour, but normalising and laying out a roadmap for future, more competent attempts in marginally closer elections. Their probable avoidance of appropriate political and/or legal backlash will only serve as encouragement to would-be dictators.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 19, 2020 18:25:06 GMT
Stunning analysis from Giuliani:
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 18, 2020 19:25:38 GMT
Most incumbent presidents running for a second term seem to get a boost in Hawaii and a backlash in Montana. The lone GOP state Senator in HI won reelection. Procedural rules mean that because there are no other Republicans, he has to remain a member of every committee in the chamber.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 18, 2020 7:44:02 GMT
That polling asks all voters. Amongst only the Republican subsample, Trump leads by a wider margin and Romney is much weaker.
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Post by curiousliberal on Nov 16, 2020 9:47:22 GMT
I think there is a pretty good chance that Pelosi won't even run for re-election to the House in 2022. Opening up a massive bun fight for the Leadership of the House Democrats, suspect that when Pelosi goes there will be huge pressure on both Hoyer and Clyburn to stand aside for the likes of Hakeem Jeffries. However, there have been some pretty comical efforts by the current Dem Leadership in House to encourage ambitious Democrats in the House of run for Senate, State-wide office recently, so no sign that they are in any rush to move on. If the likes of Clyburn or Hoyer dug in their heels after a Pelosi exit, do they have the votes to hang on? Pelosi has survived plenty of disappointing elections herself, so why not the rest of the Leadership? They probably do have the votes to hang on. I would suspect Jeffries is being groomed as the "heir" precisely because he is so weak that he is poorly placed to challenge Hoyer or Clyburn. I thought Clyburn would move against Hoyer after 2022 with the backing of Biden and more progressive Reps, but given that a House majority looks increasingly unlikely after that point, he may instead cut a deal where Hoyer gets one or two terms in the role before standing aside for Clyburn. It's easier to give up a bid for minority leader than it would be to leave the Speakership uncontested.
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