US Presidential Race 2020

[thirdchill]

Mar 21, 2020 17:25:21 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

Mar 21, 2020 16:23:21 GMT Merseymike said:

Interesting. I've certainly had American acquaintances saying that all our politicians sound like varieties of Democrat to them.

I think the Conservatives would do a lot better in the Northeast than the current Republican Party. Perhaps Maine and New Hampshire would go to them, and Connecticut might be competitive.

Obviously California would be a Momentum stronghold. The Greens would make a play for parts of San Francisco.

I think the Lib Dems would make a play for states where one of the big two is very weak at the federal level like Massachusetts and Vermont.

New Hampshire is definitely a one that would go Conservative. It's only a swing state due to the religious right influence and social conservatism of the republican party. Maine possibly as well, outside of Portland would be fertile territory.

10 years ago I would have put Vest Virginia in the labour column, but of all the states this would have had the biggest lab to con swing over that timeframe.

[heslingtonian]

Several areas of the UK appear somewhat analogous with parts of the USA:

Mid West/West Midlands - the industrial Mid West certainly has parallels with the West Midlands for deindustrialisation and an increasing move towards right wing populism.

The Great Plains/East Anglia - states like Kansas and Nebraska have some similarities with Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. A big dependence on agriculture and fairly poor transport infrastructure. Both areas are fairly small “c” conservative.

New York/Washington suburbia/Home Counties - states like Connecticut and Virginia have some similarities with counties like Berkshire and Surrey. They are full of highly-educated middle class workers who are moving more Liberal but not yet there in the UK.

Texas/Essex - some similarities here. Both were Democrat/Labour in previous times but moved Right in the 1980s largely on the back of fiscal conservatism and patriotism. Will large-scale immigration in Essex see it eventually become competitive in the way Texas is now?

California/London - big outlier politically. Again largely Right of Centre until 1990s and now home of the woke brigade. Much younger population for both than country as a whole.

Appalachia/Coalfield areas - definitely some demographic, economic and political similarities between places like West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky with the old coalfield communities in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham and Yorkshire which swung so far to the Conservatives last year.

[bjornhattan]

Mar 23, 2020 18:09:26 GMT heslingtonian said:

Several areas of the UK appear somewhat analogous with parts of the USA:

Mid West/West Midlands - the industrial Mid West certainly has parallels with the West Midlands for deindustrialisation and an increasing move towards right wing populism.

The Great Plains/East Anglia - states like Kansas and Nebraska have some similarities with Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire. A big dependence on agriculture and fairly poor transport infrastructure. Both areas are fairly small “c” conservative.

New York/Washington suburbia/Home Counties - states like Connecticut and Virginia have some similarities with counties like Berkshire and Surrey. They are full of highly-educated middle class workers who are moving more Liberal but not yet there in the UK.

Texas/Essex - some similarities here. Both were Democrat/Labour in previous times but moved Right in the 1980s largely on the back of fiscal conservatism and patriotism. Will large-scale immigration in Essex see it eventually become competitive in the way Texas is now?

California/London - big outlier politically. Again largely Right of Centre until 1990s and now home of the woke brigade. Much younger population for both than country as a whole.

Appalachia/Coalfield areas - definitely some demographic, economic and political similarities between places like West Virginia, Arkansas and Kentucky with the old coalfield communities in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham and Yorkshire which swung so far to the Conservatives last year.

Unlikely - barring maybe Thurrock (which was already pretty competitive), immigration levels to most of Essex are rather low. Of course that changes once you start heading into Barking or Newham, but technically that are isn't in Essex any more.

The best analogies for the North East are similar to those for the West Midlands, but probably more Upper Midwest - Northumberland (including Newcastle/Gateshead) might fit Minnesota, with a relatively conservative rural area, a few populist small towns which are still just about left of centre for now (Ashington/Duluth), and a large left-leaning conurbation with two main centres (plus a famous shopping mall). Durham might be more like Wisconsin - Madison makes a good Durham analogue with its middle class university educated population, Green Bay could be Sunderland (maritime centre which punches above its weight in football), while Milwaukee and the surrounding area might be similar to Teesside. Iowa could be a decent stand in for the more rural south of Durham, in that both have swung heavily rightwards, both are very ethnically homogenous, and both are anchored by a fairly average town whose name starts with D (Darlington/Des Moines).

[Deleted]

Hispanic immigrants in the USA are arguably similar to Asian immigrants in the UK in that a lot vote for the left but a significant minority don't.

Just as Republicans do well with Cubans, the Conservatives have strong support from Ugandan Asians.

Maybe the Tories will become toxic in the suburbs as white collar workers flock to the (Liberal) Democrats.

Politically no state has a similar history to Bolsover or Leigh but you have counties that voted Democrat for 150 years and flipped to Trump in the same way.

[myth11]

Mar 21, 2020 14:00:19 GMT @conservativeestimate said:

If the Republicans were like the Conservatives and the Democrats were like Labour, who would win where?

Looking at 2016/19 exit Cons do better with the over 50,s with over 65s voting con by a margin of 45 points+ in 2019 compared to 8 points for the GOP.
GOP does better with under 39s than cons but cons do better with lower income groups.

[Sibboleth]

We are very, very different societies with very, very different politics. Superficial similarities come and go, but the differences are always bigger than they seem. Harlan County, KY (which has a similar place in American labour history to the Rhondda here; the song 'Which Side Are You On?' comes from there) gave Trump 85% of the vote. And this, remember, was absolutely not in the context of a national landslide.

[Sibboleth]

Still, the tendency of British political nerds (who then influence, often, what British political actors do) to assume otherwise is not always without consequence. The very American Left tone of a lot of Corbyn Labour's messaging after 2017 was very alienating to many traditional Labour supporters and if 'your' usual party of choice does not sound like 'your' party of choice anymore, you are less likely to actually vote for it, particularly if you have other concerns.

[Deleted]

Mar 23, 2020 19:13:38 GMT Sibboleth said:

Still, the tendency of British political nerds (who then influence, often, what British political actors do) to assume otherwise is not always without consequence. The very American Left tone of a lot of Corbyn Labour's messaging after 2017 was very alienating to many traditional Labour supporters and if 'your' usual party of choice does not sound like 'your' party of choice anymore, you are less likely to actually vote for it, particularly if you have other concerns.

though it did blair no harm to lift new labour from clintons new democrats

[bjornhattan]

Mar 23, 2020 19:13:38 GMT Sibboleth said:

Still, the tendency of British political nerds (who then influence, often, what British political actors do) to assume otherwise is not always without consequence. The very American Left tone of a lot of Corbyn Labour's messaging after 2017 was very alienating to many traditional Labour supporters and if 'your' usual party of choice does not sound like 'your' party of choice anymore, you are less likely to actually vote for it, particularly if you have other concerns.

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

[nelson]

Both PA and RI will move their primaries to 2 June. 

Puerto Rico has moved their primary to 26 April, but may postpone even further. 

[Deleted]

Mar 23, 2020 19:19:37 GMT bjornhattan said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:13:38 GMT Sibboleth said:

Still, the tendency of British political nerds (who then influence, often, what British political actors do) to assume otherwise is not always without consequence. The very American Left tone of a lot of Corbyn Labour's messaging after 2017 was very alienating to many traditional Labour supporters and if 'your' usual party of choice does not sound like 'your' party of choice anymore, you are less likely to actually vote for it, particularly if you have other concerns.

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

I'm not sure thats 100% accurate. Sanders has spent a lot of time working on the lack of diversity in his 2016 coalition. The increase in his support amongst latinos in particular and the drop in his support amongst wwc may or may not be linked but its nothing do with being woke

[timmullen1]

Mar 23, 2020 19:23:59 GMT @priceofdawn said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:19:37 GMT bjornhattan said:

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

I'm not sure thats 100% accurate. Sanders has spent a lot of time working on the lack of diversity in his 2016 coalition. The increase in his support amongst latinos in particular and the drop in his support amongst wwc may or may not be linked but its nothing do with being woke

I think his drop in support amongst wwc early on was very much because it wasn’t a binary election, and they made the same mistake as Corbyn in 2017 in assuming the vote was an endorsement of their policies rather than a repudiation of the opponent. Those wwc voters are most likely small government and so not especially keen on Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

[Richard Allen]

Mar 23, 2020 19:23:59 GMT @priceofdawn said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:19:37 GMT bjornhattan said:

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

I'm not sure thats 100% accurate. Sanders has spent a lot of time working on the lack of diversity in his 2016 coalition. The increase in his support amongst latinos in particular and the drop in his support amongst wwc may or may not be linked but its nothing do with being woke

Further to this. It really should be emphasised that Sanders isn’t woke. He is overwhelmingly concerned with economic policy and really doesn’t give a shit about fringe social issues.

[Deleted]

Mar 23, 2020 20:22:57 GMT timmullen1 said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:23:59 GMT @priceofdawn said:

I'm not sure thats 100% accurate. Sanders has spent a lot of time working on the lack of diversity in his 2016 coalition. The increase in his support amongst latinos in particular and the drop in his support amongst wwc may or may not be linked but its nothing do with being woke

I think his drop in support amongst wwc early on was very much because it wasn’t a binary election, and they made the same mistake as Corbyn in 2017 in assuming the vote was an endorsement of their policies rather than a repudiation of the opponent. Those wwc voters are most likely small government and so not especially keen on Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

I agree with your first few sentences but disagree with your last sentence. The wwc like many other people tend have strong opinions on what the government should be doing and often they feel the government isnt doing enough on various issues. In terms of Medicare for All, the policy is popular across America. I've not seen a poll yet from any state that shows Medicare for All is unpopular

[finsobruce]

Mar 23, 2020 21:02:14 GMT Richard Allen said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:23:59 GMT @priceofdawn said:

I'm not sure thats 100% accurate. Sanders has spent a lot of time working on the lack of diversity in his 2016 coalition. The increase in his support amongst latinos in particular and the drop in his support amongst wwc may or may not be linked but its nothing do with being woke

Further to this. It really should be emphasised that Sanders isn’t woke. He is overwhelmingly concerned with economic policy and really doesn’t give a shit about fringe social issues.

Like Ralph Nader who memorably said " I'm not interested in gonadal politics"

[Merseymike]

Think that's going a bit far. He's a pretty typical American liberal on things like gay rights.
But the problem was that Hillary Clinton appeared to almost forget about economics altogether - and that was reflected in her vote and where it fell.

[curiousliberal]

Mar 23, 2020 19:19:37 GMT bjornhattan said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:13:38 GMT Sibboleth said:

Still, the tendency of British political nerds (who then influence, often, what British political actors do) to assume otherwise is not always without consequence. The very American Left tone of a lot of Corbyn Labour's messaging after 2017 was very alienating to many traditional Labour supporters and if 'your' usual party of choice does not sound like 'your' party of choice anymore, you are less likely to actually vote for it, particularly if you have other concerns.

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

I would guess the primary loss of some of his WWC base came from direct switching to Trump (n.b.: he still over performs with this demographic relative to his primary vote share, so it remains one of the more important parts of his voter coalition). While Sanders' social progressivism may have had something to do with this (his platform hasn't changed much except on guns, though his campaign's rhetoric has altered in tone), it is probable that a lot of these voters would have been lost to him no matter what he did, as they now have an incumbent to unite behind (in addition to the anti-Clinton factor not applying to Biden to the same degree).  The opposite would probably be true were Trump the insurgent and Sanders the president now.

[bjornhattan]

Mar 24, 2020 3:24:40 GMT curiousliberal said:

Mar 23, 2020 19:19:37 GMT bjornhattan said:

Oddly I think Sanders had similar problems. At least superficially his support in 2016 resembled the sort of base a Labour politician in this country might get, but he seems to have lost a lot of his white working class support this time by being too "woke" (though facing Biden not Hillary won't have helped either). Just compare Michigan between 2016 and 2020 to see this in action.

I would guess the primary loss of some of his WWC base came from direct switching to Trump (n.b.: he still over performs with this demographic relative to his primary vote share, so it remains one of the more important parts of his voter coalition). While Sanders' social progressivism may have had something to do with this (his platform hasn't changed much except on guns, though his campaign's rhetoric has altered in tone), it is probable that a lot of these voters would have been lost to him no matter what he did, as they now have an incumbent to unite behind (in addition to the anti-Clinton factor not applying to Biden to the same degree).  The opposite would probably be true were Trump the insurgent and Sanders the president now.

I think that the rise of figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (the likes of whom are often connected with Sanders) means that there has been a subtle shift in tone on many social issues. I also think issues of America's relationships with the world have shifted for Sanders, perhaps because of Trump making more "nationalist" rhetoric unpalatable on the left. It seems like issues like softening rules on immigration now play a greater role in Bernie's campaign, while things like free trade have been sidelined. Of course, I concede that this might just be my impression of the situation.

[curiousliberal]

Mar 23, 2020 21:33:12 GMT Merseymike said:

Think that's going a bit far. He's a pretty typical American liberal on things like gay rights.
But the problem was that Hillary Clinton appeared to almost forget about economics altogether - and that was reflected in her vote and where it fell.

She didn't forget; her stance was quite deliberate, and fringe social policy was deemed a convenient substitute for the enthusiasm which could otherwise be generated by some kind of redistributive platform. 

Pandering to the base with a certain flavour of social progressivism may hurt a candidate in a GE, but (unlike economic populism) it doesn't send the donors into a tizzy. This is a large part of why the New Democrats engage in and promote it so much, and it's also why an increasing number have less electoral appeal than the likes of Sanders to independents. To be clear, there are plenty of areas where tacking left economically alienates swing voters, but issues like the principle of taxation of wealth is no longer one of them, and yet one of the themes of the primary was that X candidate was only not backing Y economic measure because of electability. After saying this, X would then go on to outline some potentially controversial social policy (see: O'Rourke and gun control, Bloomberg and mass surveillance). This - and the numerous failed attempts at pandering to certain communities with mentions of busing and trans positions in the army - indicates either a severe lack of understanding of how popular various policy proposals are, or a willingness to ignore these things for reasons either ideological or financial. While there is probably a genuine ideological commitment from a great many congresspeople who also happen to be economically centrist, I think we can safely rule out the possibility that the likes of Bloomberg have an earnest belief in fringe progressivism.

Biden seems to be an electorally strong candidate (though he's arguably leaned a bit into tokenism where he could have instead opted for bolder but popular reforms). However, the next generation of centre-left Democrats seems somewhat lacking (there are a number of impressive governors, but all who competed this cycle got very little airtime). Hopefully, the 2016/2020 primaries will have given the party the lessons it needs to address the void of ambition and clientelism left behind by the Clinton machine (it's fair to say there have been some hopeful signs for the centre in policy shifts since 2016, and the left's next generation also has a lot of potential pitfalls after Sanders).

[curiousliberal]

Mar 24, 2020 3:30:51 GMT bjornhattan said:

Mar 24, 2020 3:24:40 GMT curiousliberal said:

I would guess the primary loss of some of his WWC base came from direct switching to Trump (n.b.: he still over performs with this demographic relative to his primary vote share, so it remains one of the more important parts of his voter coalition). While Sanders' social progressivism may have had something to do with this (his platform hasn't changed much except on guns, though his campaign's rhetoric has altered in tone), it is probable that a lot of these voters would have been lost to him no matter what he did, as they now have an incumbent to unite behind (in addition to the anti-Clinton factor not applying to Biden to the same degree).  The opposite would probably be true were Trump the insurgent and Sanders the president now.

I think that the rise of figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (the likes of whom are often connected with Sanders) means that there has been a subtle shift in tone on many social issues. I also think issues of America's relationships with the world have shifted for Sanders, perhaps because of Trump making more "nationalist" rhetoric unpalatable on the left. It seems like issues like softening rules on immigration now play a greater role in Bernie's campaign, while things like free trade have been sidelined. Of course, I concede that this might just be my impression of the situation.

Sanders voted against Trump's trade bill as insufficiently tough, so I don't think the bolded bit has much purchase these days, though the presence of a free trade-skeptic in office probably makes Sanders' variant less of a draw for previous primary voters.

You are right about AOC and immigration, although on foreign policy, I don't see any obvious change in Sanders' rhetoric . Much of the shift in tone was deliberate angling for a primary victory, IMO - his campaign seemed anxious to stress (without sounding militantly progressive on the matter) that it was 'a multiracial, multigenerational coalition' (i.e. not just pale, male and stale) after the 'Bernie Bro' narrative took hold late in the 2016 race, but there was no time to course-correct in that primary. It did seem to work for a while, and polls still suggest he is now more popular than in 2016 (in terms of favourability) and would not turn off Democratic-leaning ethnic minorities in a GE (unlike Buttigieg). However, the party decided, and presumably his campaign's problems ran deeper than demographic homogeneity; in any case, more aggressive attempts to nod to specific parts of the base w.r.t their background (the pandering seen with the Steyer reparations pledge etc.) have almost always backfired, so would offer nothing for the Sanders campaign.