Emerson just released three battleground state polls for Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Trump is tied, down 3 (within m.o.e.), and supposedly down 5. I more or less accept the OH and PA estimates, since Emerson had good showings in the primaries and are not a transparently media-driven BS outfit. Someone else can check out OH and PA, though, just to be sure.
But ever curious about Trump converting solid blue states, I looked at the Michigan data and noticed a whopper of a rigging attempt -- they made nearly half of their sample aged 75 and older! Michigan may not be the youngest state in the union, but half of the electorate there is not going to be in a nursing home.
Moreover, the cross-tabs show that this elderly group is demographically unlike Michigan overall in the most anti-Trump way -- they are far more Democrat, far less Republican / Independent, more female, less educated, far more black, and more likely to live in the Detroit area.
In other words, the only people who are bitterly against Trump in all of Michigan are elderly black church ladies and white tone-policing grannies from Detroit, so the pollster stuffed the sample with enough of them so that the overall result was Clinton up by 5.
Here are links to the review of all three states' results, and the full spreadsheet for Michigan, which are also available at their website.
Did they rig the OH and PA samples to be composed of nearly half elderly folks? No, because the true results are probably more favorable to Clinton in those states (more or less tied). In fact, both OH and PA have the same breakdown by age groups, and only 9% were aged 75+. The age composition for both OH and PA is:
18-34 -- 25%
35-54 -- 37%
55-74 -- 29%
75++ -- 09%
In Michigan, the age composition was impossibly older:
18-34 -- 16%
35-54 -- 21%
55-74 -- 18%
75++ -- 44%
Way, way, way off. They under-sampled young, middle, and old by 10 points or more, and replaced them with the elderly Trump-haters.
Here is Trump support by age group in MI:
18-34 -- 45
35-54 -- 52
55-74 -- 48
75++ -- 28
I took Trump's support among the various age groups in MI, and weighted them by the age composition of the accurate OH and PA samples. What was the result?
Surprise: Trump 47, Clinton 38, Johnson 8, Stein 3, Unsure 4.
Looks like the original home of the "Reagan Democrats" is stepping up to the plate to Make America Great Again.
Of course the true picture could be a closer race than Trump 47 to Clinton 38 -- I'm just weighting their age groups properly. But if they sabotaged the sample that badly, it may be a garbage sample overall and not worth studying, whether properly or improperly.
Still, the fact that they took such a great bald-faced risk to bias their results suggests that Trump truly is ahead by at least several points.
If you're on Twitter, ask Emerson Polling why they stacked the deck with 44% elderly in MI, vs. only 9% in OH and PA? These shills deserve to have their public reputation trashed, especially when they brag about how well they did in the primaries.
Emerson released a NC poll, and it shares the age composition of OH and PA:
ReplyDelete24%
37%
31%
8%
The only one they've clearly rigged is Michigan -- meaning that's the blue state conversion that the public is not supposed to know about. First, to demoralize Michiganders, and second, to provide cover if the Establishment wants to commit election theft there.
Their other three polls seem believable. We already knew they would be close races based on past elections. They can't make up that Clinton would be ahead by a large amount.
But if the average person is not expecting Trump to be close, let alone up, in Michigan -- why, then they can lie all they want without setting off the alarm bells.
So, subject the blue state polls to greater scrutiny, and the swing state polls will be more in line with reality.
"Of course the true picture could be a closer race than Trump 47 to Clinton 38"
ReplyDelete-----------------
None of this takes into account the masses of Trump supporters who lie when polled.
Nope, the only way Hillary can win is by doing the same thing she did to Sanders.
Cheating her ass off.
And that's exactly what she'll do.
Prepare for MASSIVE voter fraud this November.
The NC results are very encouraging, especially Trump's support among independents and whites. Actually it's shocking how racially divided it is, but the 16% support from blacks can easily grow and seems to be on he upswing. We will see what the FBI releases tomorrow about Crooked H.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that the support for Johnson was so high from males (12%). It could be that the poll oversamples over-educated males who support a third party candidate just to be different, for a sort of hipster cred.
Southern blacks are more assimilated into middle American culture since they've been rooted there for centuries, vs. being transplants up North and out West. More extensive family ties, their own communities, businesses, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn Cleveland, Chicago, Baltimore, etc., they're more dependent on government hand-outs because transplants have less family to support them, and the ghettos they were herded into are like zoos being kept in operation by white taxpayer funding.
The best thing for everyone is for blacks to move back down South. They wouldn't be transplants, but reverse transplants -- with mostly black communities already there for them to plug into. Not living in Midwestern zoos where they resent their keepers.
That's basically how Northern cities are portrayed in almost every Tyler Perry movie -- Northern cities are cold and hostile places, Southern towns are warm and welcoming places with established networks of family and friends.
ReplyDelete"Meet the Browns," with Rick Fox and Angela Bassett, is about a black single mother in Chicago who inherits a house from a forgotten uncle in the Deep South. It's a fascinating movie because her Southern relatives are warm, welcoming and supportive, while Chicago is portrayed as a dystopian hellscape. The woman's teenage son flourishes in the South while in Chicago he is hounded by gangs.
The really interesting part of the movie is that it is a study in the psychology of black people living in northern ghettos. Halfway through the movie, Angela Basset MOVES BACK to Chicago, basically because she is so screwed up, psychologically, from living in the Chicago projects for the last 30 years that she cannot accept it when good things happen to her. So she make the self-destructive decision to move back to Chicago. Her loving family down south is patient with her and eventually coaxes her back to the sleepy southern town. Along the way she meets a handsome basketball scout (who IIRC doesn't suffer from her problems because he is also from the South) and lives happily ever after.
It's a really fantastic movie. All of the Tyler Perry movies are great but this one is like a cinematic portrayal of Agnostic's theories on rootedness and transplants.
Best thing for everybody except southern whites.
ReplyDeleteSouthern whites are totally segregated from blacks. Their territories do not overlap.
ReplyDeleteUp North and out West, either the black area overlaps the white area, or it is surrounded by the white area. Meaning too much confrontation and pressure-cooker social dynamics.
Blacks are more spread out and have they own areas in the South.
Plus, Southern whites brought blacks here in the first place. Not our fault.
Emerson just put out a New York poll, and it too has only 9% being age 75+, not 44%.
ReplyDeleteThey only tortured the data to confess in Michigan -- the revival of Reagan Democrats is something Americans were not meant to know about.
MN state fair report:
ReplyDeleteSaw 3 Dem. (or DFL as it's called here) locations; a small one for Amy Klobachar (I believe), another smallish one for Al Franken, and the last and biggest is a sort of HQ with big DFL signage.
A small booth (with legalize pot leaf shirts) for Gary Johnson/the libertarians.
Didn't see any other partisan stuff. The state fairgrounds are quite big. I probably missed some stuff. The state fair website's vendor list doesn't even list the DFL stuff though stuff like the ACLU and Fairvote (a run-off advocate) are listed, go figure.
Visible supporters: One Hillary for prison shirt, worn by a Gen X-er hardass who I imagine didn't get much shit. One pro-Hillary button worn by a frail old woman. The fair is so tightly packed with huge crowds that it's gonna be tough to see everything. Still, the number of people brave and enthusiastic enough to wear paraphernalia was shockingly low. Hell, I would've grabbed something pro-Trump and worn it if I could've found it. No luck. The good news is that even in MN the majority of people find Hillary embarrassing.
The MN GOP showed it's true colors. I'm sure that the party hacks didn't want to deal with Trump questions. So they probably dodged the fair altogether. It's fair at this point to say that the GOP (to the extent that they even exist in very blue states) has a lot to answer for. If they gave him adequate support and endorsement he'd win easily. But this kind of cowardice in blue states is only going to continue to doom them as a hapless me-too party desperate to fit in with the cool kids.
There's a vastly different flavor to this election cycle. In 2004 there were a lot of bumper stickers. In the blue collar areas there were quite a few Bush ones. 2008 and 2012 saw less enthusiasm. But the angst back then is dwarfed by the resigned bitterness today.
Will we see lesser turnout in MN and other "jilted" states? Or are people (especially in the Lutheran belt) just shy and/or disappointed but still willing to get their butts to the polls? Given how high MN turnout is, I do wonder if the combo of the crook vs. the mean racist will either goose 3rd party voting or cause some to just not show up at all.
I'm receptive to a populist candidate. How many others are there? For all the talk of Trump's brashness turning people off, it's not like Hillary is the prototypical modest candidate either. And I know that Romney's Wall Street elitist vibe rubbed some people the wrong way here. Hillary packs even more of that toxic stuff. Interesting times ahead....
FYI, the state fair logo is green and blue. As is a lot of imagery used at the state and local level. Kinda reinforces the out West culture. If we really felt more American, why not use more red, white, and blue? Instead of venerating anything man-made, social, or political, it's retreating to the bosom of Gaia instead. The hippie thing has always resonated more the further out West you go anyway. Thus, the popularity of green and blue (Seattle's baseball team changed their colors to green and blue in the 90's).
Whoops, I did find a listing for the GOP at the fair. Wish I could've seen how much, if any, pro-Trump stuff they had. Also, how many officials/volunteers were present. Would've been fun to mention Trump and see if they would squirm. "Hey, time to get work on that wall". The un-PC awkwardness possibilities.....
ReplyDelete"Whose dick do I have to suck to get anywhere with you? Does the closeted party elite need more young virgin butts to skewer in dimly lit basement orgies?"
"Taking it up the butt literally and figuratively sure seems to age you guys fast. Didn't your buddy Pat Buchanan once say that decadent societies become dominated by fags?"
If people really found out Michigan is now in play for Trump, it would spread a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) among the Democrats. Michigan is assumed to be a Democrat base. After all, Rick Snyder personally poisoned schoolchildren in Flint with lead. To hear of that state going for Trump would be too much for the delicate hothouse flowers that makes up the modern left.
ReplyDeleteSanders whipped Clinton in the caucus. Any babes still wearing their Bernie shirts? Or are they demoralized that their favorite band quit, sold out, and went into hiding?
ReplyDeleteNo Bernie stuff. At all. I think he's a pariah now. The Dems never liked him and exploited him, and he sold out his base. So much for inspiring young people.
ReplyDeleteWhat we saw with Bernie is an old commie Jew who couldn't bring himself to do ANYTHING that might aid a right wing (or quasi right wing) populist. Had he done anything to encourage non-Dem voting, he'd have been tarred by the ABR (anyone but the Republican crowd) which 16 years ago spat venom at Ralph Nader.
We still have way too much fragmentation and partisanship. The fags who bitched about Nader wouldn't deign to admit that Al Gore would've still been firmly of the establishment and a globalist. Maybe not as aggressive as the Bushes, but not that much better. Back in the last remotely positive decade, lots of Dems crossed over after Carter was a dud. It's only been since the early 90's that this cultish devotion to muh party has reached such a ridiculous level.
Nader and Sanders, their timing and their approach. Two non-founding stock Silent Gen Americans who oddly cared more about America than their Waspier opponents. I really think that Nader would've had a terrific shot in this cycle. 2000 was way too early for a non culture war candidate. And Nader had a much sturdier record of service and accomplishments, though not as a politician per se. Nader parallels Trump more than Sanders in that regard.
Nader stuck to his guns despite much obstruction and criticism. Much like Trump. Unlike Bernie.
Guess what? Nader and Trump aren't held back by Jewish reservations about populism. I think that's what ultimately killed Sanders. Too much shivering about electing a blonde alpha goy.
Supposedly Trump's speech in Everett, Washington was one of the biggest rallies he's ever held. All of the out of work Boeing employees and displaced IT workers who got bumped by H1B visas were there in person or spirit.
ReplyDeleteI'm not naive enough to assume Washington will go to Trump but it's definitely looking to be more competitive than anyone likely hoped.
Trump's visit to Mexico today should also act as a salve for all the angst the cucks have had about Trump. He's taking a lot of risks to make him look Presidential and his gambles have been paying off well in recent days. Trump is stepping up his game and Hillary's plan of just holding on until the clock runs out (per a recent Politico article) is looking less and less realistic by the day. All in all, the media's attacks have become self-neutralizing because everyone thinks it's just partisan garbage.
If Trump can just hang on like this for two more months, he will have a nice victory.
About time you talked to Kevin Grace, don't you think? (if you haven't already) You ought to be feeling a little aggressive now. I know I do.
ReplyDeleteNo nagging. I do feel good about things, but am also busy going through data on the impact of new voters over history, and making visuals for it. Worth talking about that anyway, which I could not if I didn't know what the patterns were.
ReplyDeleteEmerson just released polls for Virginia and Iowa, where people aged 75+ are 7% and 13% of the sample -- not 44%.
ReplyDeleteThis shows that it was only the Michigan poll that they doctored. The other ones look respectable. If you only go by the Michigan doctoring, and infer that "polls mean nothing," you're going back into Romney delusion mode and will kill yourself if Trump wins with less than a landslide.
Worth noting about non-Trump primary voters -- Cruz's people have basically come around, with a solid majority going for Trump, no defection to Clinton, and the rest hanging out in Johnson land.
ReplyDeleteWe ought to blitz the hell out of Johnson's social-cultural libertine record just to remind the Cultural Right hardliners who they'd be voting for -- legalized drugs and prostitution on every street corner by entrepreneurial 16 year-olds. Compared to the Supreme Court Justices that Trump will appoint, using the Heritage Foundation as a guide.
Rubio's people have been good, too -- high rate of migrating to Trump, no defection to Clinton, and some other saying Johnson. They actually could end up voting libertarian, since they're not so conservative.
But they also wanted their cosplay statesman performance -- and Gary Johnson is the goofiest and most embarrassing non-leader we could ever have. Trump is light years more Presidential than that.
The worst are the Kasich voters -- no surprise there. I wonder how many were hardcore Democrats who infiltrated the Republican primary simply to get two liberal globalist Democrats into the general election. Not even a majority are going to Trump, somewhere around 30-40% are supporting Crooked Hillary, and the rest are Johnson supporters. Nothing can be done there, as Johnson is the new Kasich, in substance and style.
We can keep hating on Lyin' Ted all we want, but his voters are at least doing the right thing. Kasich, on the other hand, poisons everything around him, including his voters. Yet another reason to vote against Rob Portman if you're in Ohio (Kasich loyalist).
And yet another reason to suspect election theft in Ohio -- not just Kasich himself, but a good amount of his voters wouldn't mind literally stealing the election on behalf of Crooked Hillary in order to stop Trump.
He'll be the first to sign up for free helicopter rides next January.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/29/this-may-be-the-last-presidential-election-dominated-by-boomers-and-prior-generations/ft_16-08-26_votinggenerationsturnout-1/
ReplyDeleteBoomers (who are far bigger supporters of Trump, and far whiter, than younger generations) need to step up to the plate. It looks like they've never been quite as engaged as previous generations. Well, now's the time to get involved to pull us away from the cliff that we've been getting pushed towards over the last 25 years. Pussy X-ers and Millennials who can't get past "Trump's a mean racist" will hopefully be discouraged from showing up at all.
The bummer of Bernie's sell-out, and general cynicism of "they're all the same, nothing will change" ought to keep at least some of them away and younger people are less likely to vote anyway. Interestingly, Millennials (even when using the generous Pew definition of "born after 1980") didn't even turnout that much for the Obama era elections, further validating the fact that the weak-ass one-two punch of McCain/Romney alienated white Boomers who were the key factor in Obama's election. If said Boomers get off the bench for '16, there's not much reason to think that they will have declined in relevance for today's or tomorrow's elections. Especially in light of the fact that Millennials are frequently either too young, too cynical, or too Mexican (they of the 30% voting rate for 2 decades) to show up reliably. X-ers have gotten more active recently, but then again there just aren't that many of them so they likely will never have the sustained impact on elections that the Boomers did (perhaps not as much as Silents/G.I.s either given that the pre-Boomers were more enthusiastic voters than subsequent generations).
Per Pew, much of Johnson's support is from Millennials. Makes sense because younger people are poorer judges of character. They don't get how nerdy and alien Johnson is. He's spent the majority of his life in the West. He gives uninspired, bland, long-winded answers and talking points. Plus he gets caught up in culture war nonsense (how much has he blathered about gay rights issues?). I don't think blasting Johnson about insane levels of cultural anarchy will do much good. People in general have been getting progressively more liberal and glib since cocooning and PC took off after 1991. Younger voters especially have no frame of reference for a healthier period. If you talk about the values of that era you might as well be talking about the middle ages.
Now I do think that in a conventional election, people would just roll their eyes at the libertarian and move on. Thing is, so many people are scared by Clinton the crook and Trump the racist that they're now being seduced by the wishful thinking that ANYONE would be better than the two party candidates. Suddenly, cold fish Johnson is cool. The true believer libertarians are going to be fooled into thinking that "hey, our party is finally getting in the spotlight, getting momentum". Nah ah. When the worriers of this cycle come back to their senses in the aftermath of the election, they'll again realize how suicidal and mercenary the libertarian thing is. There have never been many libertarians for a reason.
The Emerson poll has Trump up by five points in Iowa and down by one point in Virginia. Not bad, especially for Virginia, which I hear is out of control, demographics-wise, especially in the northern section. I file it personally under "nice to have" for a victory but flipping Michigan and Oregon would be amazing to witness. Virginia would be less shocking.
ReplyDeleteMost Cruzlims have already moved on from the primaries and are Trump backers because are these people really going to vote for Hillary Clinton, the person that their personal heroes (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc.) have been railing against for 25 years? No way, this is their opportunity to shut down the Clinton machine for good. I really suspect the number of #nevertrump cuckservatives number only in the tens of thousands at this point and will dwindle down to nothing in the coming weeks. Maybe some pockets of holdouts in Utah, Idaho, and Colorado. Jeb Bush can go pout on November 8 while his son George Prescott pulls the lever for Trump.
Boomers peaked as a share of the electorate back in 1992, the election of "feel your pain" and "the personal is political".
ReplyDeleteBy 2012, they were outnumbered by X-ers and Millenials together.
The main generational change is the decline of identity politics, culture war, values voters, etc. -- just in time to block the aspiring first female President.
Not going to nag you, but I really would love to have you on the Grace & Steel podcast. Please let me know when (and I suppose if) you want to do it. You can contact me at kevingrace@shaw.ca
ReplyDeleteYesterday, Donald Trump went to a black church...in Detroit. Makes me wonder if blacks in Michigan were interally polled to be more receptive to Trump's agenda than say Milwaukee. Could be entirely coincidental of course but given what we're seeing from Michigan, bringing back industrial jobs will benefit black people who want to work and see Detroit revitalized (rather than the Democrat strategy of importing Syrians).
ReplyDeleteThe meeting supposedly went well too. I don't expect Trump to win the black vote of course but if he gets something like 10%, I'd consider that an accomplishment, especially if it helps to tip the scales in places like Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. I definitely believe white working class outreach will get him there better than appealing to black voters but it can't hurt to take multiple approaches.
For all their faults, I dread what our country will be like when the boomers die off. I say that as a Gen Xer. The millennials scare me because they are so thoroughly indoctrinated.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago Agnostic had a great idea that Trump could attract Sanders supporting millennials by forgiving student loans. That isn't going to happen and millennials are stuck in the "Trump is a racist" mindset. They don't have the intellectual curiosity to think beyond this or to question if globalist, liberal policies have actually helped minorities.
Unrelated to this article but relating to your series on cocooning vs outgoing periods is an interesting extract I found from Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid describing how odd people in fifties movies were "Movies of the fifties were of unparalleled excellence. The Blob, The Man from Planet X, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, Zombies of the Stratosphere, The Amazing Colossal Man, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The Incredible Shrinking Man were just some of the inspired inventions of that endlessly imaginative decade. My mother and I never went to these, however. We saw melodramas instead, generally starring people from the lower-middle tiers of the star system—Richard Conte, Lizabeth Scott, Lana Turner, Dan Duryea, Jeff Chandler. I could never understand the appeal of these movies myself. It was all just talk, talk, talk in that gloomy, earnest, accusatory way that people in movies in the fifties had. The characters nearly always turned away when speaking, so that they appeared inexplicably to be addressing a bookcase or floor lamp rather than the person standing behind them. At some point the music would swell and one of the characters would tell the other (by way of the curtains) that they couldn’t take any more of this and were leaving." http://www.rulit.me/books/the-life-and-times-of-the-thunderbolt-kid-read-209893-14.html
ReplyDeleteProblem is, Hillary has an unbeatable ally: the Diebold voting machine company.
ReplyDeleteTalk Talk: "art" (more like sterile exercise in technique) is about inane gimmicks (the over designed and turgid EPIC sci-fi/horror stuff, lugubrious biblical stories etc.) and aesthetically spartan gab fests in cocooning times. There's little to no memorable images, or lines, or characters. The audience is too clueless to realize that their time is being wasted. They don't really care anyway since cocooners think that they've got all the time in the world to soak things up. Why expect (let alone demand) more exciting product?
ReplyDeleteIn addition, cocooners become cerebral to a fault. So they actually get turned off by things that literally and figuratively move them, as well as add character and impact. Like vocalists using heartfelt wide ranging vocals, instead of the drab mumbling, aloof crooning, or insistent show-offey yodeling. Or making music more tribal/danceable (as was done in the 70's and 80's) rather than a dull series of plodding notes with simplistic or no melody, or chaotic noise (ala mid century jazz or much post 1992 "dance" music) that never becomes musically interesting or well developed thus never truly gripping you.
A lot of 80's music is, at times sardonically, called "ballads" or "power ballads". As a matter of fact, 80's music did have a lot of build up and subsequent release with distinct intros, verses, choruses, and bridges. The depressing fact is that outside of low cocooning periods like circa 1967-1992, most music is dreadfully lacking in "eighties" style. Which is to say, the artists are too lazy and self-conscious to write songs with a well realized beat or distinct sections that cohere well together. Whenever you hear people talk about 80's movies, the sheer amount of original, energetic, and hooky songs used (sometimes written specifically for that movie) usually comes up. Gen X-ers used to really love goofing on how passionate and un-self aware later 80's pop and arena metal was, but I sense that as cocooning thaws, as we distance ourselves from the ghastly 90's, we will gain some appreciation for the spirit of the 80's.
Jason Steiner: Yeah, there's a bemusing reversal of the 60's going on right now. In the 60's young people fought the system for a variety of reasons. Not necessarily just the hippie type stuff which wasn't THAT common, some bellicose Boomers were at least in the early days of Vietnam more enthusiastic about the war than preceding generations. Hell, it was war-weary G.I.s and Silents who created legitimate draft dodges that didn't exist before the 60's. As we saw with Stallone and Milius in the 80's, many Boomers actually believed that they weren't "allowed" to win Vietnam by timid G.I./Silent leaders.
ReplyDeleteNowadays, Milennials are mostly following the scripts written by Gen X cultural warriors. It's still the mid 90's, apparently, when economic and national security issues were ignored in favor of PC race/sex/gender idolatry. The grip of the culture war remains very tight on too many people. You might think that the collective horror of stuff like the OKC bombing, 9/11, the Orlando massacre, etc. might end PC's reign given that terrorists are the biggest champions of the culture war and the way terrorists become endemic to unstable multi-cult societies. Also, shouldn't the level of indiginities foisted on low-middle class Americans arouse more compassion? I guess not.
The allure of status one-upmanship remains strong. The folly of the culture war is that it never really accomplishes anything. It really is more about the conceit of showing off one's superiority. Since Gen X-ers never had the same economic security or opportunities that the Boomers did, a lot of Gen X-ers (and me-too Millennials) unfortunately base their status on presumed philosophical/intellectual superiority. Note to people born after 1965: shallowness comes in more forms than striving for a big house and a nice car; it's also writing off huge swaths of the population as dumb losers because they don't think and feel like young coastal/urban/"progressive" elites. If I had dollar for every time a Gen X-er made fun of the competitive materialism of Boomers, without ever noting the positive traits of the generation. Like creativity, correctly assessing the hubris of G.I.s and the cowardice of the Silents, leading the charge for greater spiritual authenticity first and, after maturing in the 80's, spearheading a clean-up of a Silent led culture that had neglected kids and family for years (people, Boomers included, became more disapproving of infidelity/divorce/drugs in the later 80's).
History didn't have the large voting block of millennials who all think the same. They gave us Obama and as they grow as a larger and larger % of total voters I can't imagine a Republican ever winning again.
ReplyDeleteMy one hope is since millennials were never excited about Hillary to begin with they just stay home on election day and play on their snapchat or whatever they do. Before Obama the norm was low voter turnout among young people.I very much want to see us return to that historical norm.
Every piece of conventional wisdom about how Obama won is wrong (more or less).
ReplyDeleteTurnout among 18-24 year-olds in '08 and '12 was high only relative to '96 and '00. Peak youth turnout was '04, the attempt to dump Bush. Didn't work.
Obama's new voters (could have voted last time but did not) were Gen X-ers, not Millennials.
He got massive crossover -- among Obama '08 voters who had voted in '04, 25% of them were Bush voters.
And of course most of those people were white.
The high turnout and support of non-whites, and young people, certainly padded his victory a little bit. But the '08 election was fundamentally a rejection by white middle America of the neo-conservative agenda in general, and the Bush dynasty in particular.
If demographic and other trends were so irreversibly dooming, then why didn't Obama widen his lead in '12? Because the dumping of the Conservative Movement (TM) had already been achieved, so white middle Americans could go somewhat back to the Republicans. Just not nearly enough for Romney to win, since he was still pretty neo-connish -- if not as much as McCain, but who is?
If people keep sticking their heads in the sand about how Obama won, they will continue fielding candidates like Romney, Ryan, Jeb, etc., and keep getting killed at the national level.
Thank God that Trump knows the score on how Obama won, and Kerry nearly won, and Gore won the popular vote. No more bullshit from Conservatism, Inc. and no more deference to the propaganda machine.
Another thing: we can't hold it against those who "gave us Obama" in 2008. Who the hell else were they supposed to vote for?
ReplyDeleteWith McCain, you were going to get amnesty for illegals, ramped up immigration, economy controlled by the Chamber of Commerce, more manufacturing sucked out of the country, cucking on race issues, another closeted homosexual -- plus perhaps also another Iraq War, WWIII with Russia, or whatever else would have struck the cosplay Yosemite Sam as a brilliant idea.
And BTW, just four years after his run, he founded his own imitation of the Clinton Foundation, which also takes in millions in bribes from Saudi Arabia.
I didn't vote in '08 (or '12 or '04), but if someone held a gun to my head and made me choose, I would've voted for Obama over McCain without thinking about it, simply for the chance that our foreign policy wouldn't be as ruinous and impoverishing as it had been under Bush.
When there's no real difference on the major issues, and if anything a slightly less insane candidate on the Democrat side, we can't blame voters for choosing Obama. Otherwise we're simply blaming them for being on the liberal side of the issues that do truly distinguish the two.
Why don't we go back to 1992 and ask George Bush Sr. how well it worked to attack the "carping little liberal Democrats" on social and cultural issues?
Making Republican campaigns about "blame the liberals" is turning politics into a war over whether or not the government will be a Western-flavored theocracy. It's a stupid idea, destined to lose every time, and would not even change the social-cultural symptoms that it does not like -- which have deeper economic and political causes.
On the other hand, voting for Crooked Hillary Clinton when Trump is the alternative, is in fact being a brain-dead partisan, and we can't excuse that this time around.
ReplyDeleteStill, the better attitude is to brush it off as them being airheads, and trying to win more of the non-partisan voters. Then, by not waging such a partisan war where we blame liberals and Democrats, that will grow the non-partisan population over time, giving us even more to win over.
When we win without New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts, the response should just be, "Yeah, well whaddaya gonna do?" We'll soften them up over the next four years by not waging a partisan or anti-liberal war, and they'll be more open-minded to vote for whoever is better, rather than mindlessly choosing sides in a glorified Super Bowl.