Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues The Trump Administration The Impeachment of Donald trump

Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat its same mistakes. Hillary stayed left during the general election campaign trying to placate Sanders supporters. Which in turn enabled Trump to win the independent vote and thus the White House. There's a lesson there to be learned, or not.

Do we address the grand strategy of the upcoming election, some of which may or may not work or do we just resort to name calling or one's personal opinion of Trump. There will be around 140 million people voting next year, we are only two of those.

I'm interested in seeing how both parties, how Trump and whoever addresses the independent voter. Approximately 40% of those 140 million will be independents. Those not affiliated with either party, those less to non-partisan folks. Probably quite a lot of them in neither the pro or anti Trump camps. It's those folks that will determine who wins and who loses.

Sounds great! Now the reality, for the majority of the working class, this is what it looks like:

This is flat out just about right. That being said they still have jobs and JOBS, regardless of whether they pay the rent, are still #1. Always have been and always will be. This is a simple fact (I think - can't back it up <sigh>)

If the majority of independent voters are hard right voters who will brook no movement towards the left then we are already f*cked.

At least those of us who think we seriously need to move a little to the left right now.

Everybody who welcomes fascism and authoritarianism should be pleased as punch that Trump will serve another four years. Neo Nazis, neo confederates, neocons and neolibs will all rejoice that corporate needs will forevermore come before the needs of the people.

Why ever would any independent ever vote against Trump? Look at the economy! Look at all the jobs! Look at the stock market for heaven's sake! Look how great everybody is doing right now! A move to the left would surely destroy us and independent voters saw that in 2016 and will see it again this time around.

They saved us from Hillary and they will save us from that left wing nutjob Biden.

Pero...I think you've gotten things wrong on this. Sanders might have beaten Trump handily. Clinton didn't "lose" because she was too far left...she won by 2.65 million votes in case you had forgotten. It was a wicked twist with regards to the location of a few of those voters which installed Trump as our ruler.

Some say it's because she didn't campaign enough in certain areas that cost her the race. That she read the polls and arrogantly chose not to go there because they were rightfully hers. Comey's announcement alone might or might not make the difference. Misogyny among male voters could have done it.

Your claim that it was because she went an nth of a degree too far ideologically is why she lost the race just don't look like enough to hang your hat on.

I looked at the particulars of the recent Morning Consult poll and it was plain that Independents are not sticking with Trump. The strike of the gavel meant something to them who was cutting him slack previous-like.

Nothing scientific about my opinion that independents will break heavily for any democratic candidate. But I'm gona stick with it.

Pero thinks that if Dems nominate Sanders or Warren the indies will go with Trump. I'm saying otherwise.

Jobs that don't pay the rent or the insurance, or the groceries aren't jobs. We used to call that slavery.

During a different time there was a company store we owed our souls to...maybe today is more similar to that one as working families go deeper and deeper into debt so that their corporate overlords might live like gods...

So no. Work which only makes someone else money isn't acceptable. It's not "Number One" in anybody's book.

I stand by the reasons I gave for Hillary's loss. She should have won by 10 points. She lost the three key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin because independents voted against her. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in all three. Independents in Michigan went for Trump 52-35 over Hillary off setting the 40-31 Democratic advantage in party identification. Trump won independents 50-40 in Wisconsin and 48-41 in Pennsylvania.

It's true that 62% of male voters had an unfavorable view of Hillary vs. 52% of female voters. Still a majority of both genders viewed her unfavorably. To be fair, 57% of male voters viewed trump unfavorably, not much difference in how males saw the two candidates. 64% of females saw trump unfavorably which is a ten point difference between the two candidates.

Now I don't have the breakdown between male and female for past election, but I do for the two major party candidates. 2016 was an election where the majority of Americans didn't want neither candidate.

Favorable/unfavorable views.
2016 Hillary Clinton 38/56 favorable/unfavorable, Trump 36/60 favorable/unfavorable
2012 Obama 62/37 favorable/unfavorable, Romney 55/43 favorable/unfavorable
2008 Obama 62/35 favorable/unfavorable, McCain 60/35 favorable/unfavorable
2004 Bush 61/39 favorable/unfavorable, Kerry 57/40 favorable/unfavorable
2000 Bush 58/38 favorable/unfavorable, Gore 55/45 favorable/unfavorable and so on on back.

Notice the huge difference between Hillary and Trump and previous major party candidates. Neither was liked, neither was wanted. Bum candidates chosen by both major parties.

We know the GOP will have their bum candidate running in 2020, what about the democrats? Did they learn not to run a bum candidate from 2016 or not? We'll see.

2016 I term as the anti election. Where most folks voted for the lesser of two evils, the least worst candidate or as I like to put, for the candidate they wanted to lose the least. Not win, but lose the least. A majority of Americans wanted Hillary to lose, a majority of Americans wanted Trump to lose.

For me, 2016 was a good news, bad news election. The good news, Clinton lost, the bad news Trump won. I was one of 9 million voters who voted against both.

As an after though to my post above, I wondered if today's polarization, ultra high partisanship might affect how Americans view the announced Democratic candidates vs. the feelings they had for Trump and Clinton 2016. Are the totally negative views held by most Americans of Trump and Clinton in 2016 being passed on to future candidates. Is it a case of Republicans automatically hating Democrats and Democrats automatically hating Republicans regardless of the who the candidates are. So using information supplied as of 17 Dec 2019, here are the favorable/unfavorable's. I'll include Trump. This is of all Americans.

Trump 40/53 favorable/unfavorable
Biden 40/45 favorable/unfavorable
Buttigieg 31/36 favorable/unfavorable 31% don't know or never heard of him.
Sanders 42/44 favorable/unfavorable
Warren 40/42 favorable/unfavorable

https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ua3ar45wbg/econTabReport.pdf

It does seem that polarization is having some effect, but not a huge one. Still none of the major candidates have a net positive. The democrats are close to the break even mark, Trump not. This is of all Americans.

Compare this to 2016, only Sanders, Kasich and Rubio had a higher favorable rating than unfavorable. Being seen more positive than negative by America as a whole didn't help them in their party's primaries. Both major parties went with the candidates that had the highest negatives, the most disliked by America as a whole candidates. This probably says more about the polarization, the ultra high partisanship within each party than with the country as a whole.

Only 8% of all democrats view trump favorably, the Republicans range between 10-15% favorable's on the democratic candidates I mention above. So it does seem that candidates of the opposing party are automatically seen in a negative light regardless of who that candidate is. Polarization at work.

Definition of partisan
1 : a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person
especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance
political partisans who see only one side of the problem

I strongly disagree with the premise that the root problem is hyper partisanship “on both sides”. RR is Exhibit A. I am Exhibit B. I don’t especially like the Democratic party - in my opinion it is not very open to innovation or pragmatic creativity. But I suppose any party needs a certain level of compromising boundaries that shave off the wild hairs in order to achieve a critical mass of votes.

I do think we can label today’s Republican party as Ultra Hyper Partisan (see definition above), though it isn’t devotion to any principles or beneficial political platform. Trump has amassed it all to himself, but it has been coming for decades. There has been an embrace of dishonesty as a prime tool of advancement - as someone put it recently, we are in a post-fact, post-truth, post ethics era. Many Republicans have been forced into complying because if they step out of line, they will be incinerated by a flamethrower of lies. Fear now rules the Republican party, and it is going nowhere good.

It’s not partisanship, it’s corruption. You know when you used to get an error message, “file corrupted”, on your computer? That meant something had gone wrong with the programming that couldn’t be fixed in order to recover the file. That’s a good analogy for what has happened to the Republican party.