Are you seriously calling 46-47% of the elctorate "fringe demographic votes"?

According to you guys, Trump was "the most corrupt, incompetent, nasty and unbearable" president in modern history, who presided over the worst recession in 90 years and the worst public health crisis in a century (on which he completely dropped the ball), purportedly had no real accomplishments beyond judges, and had the deck stacked against him like never before (not even in 2016 was there such a concerted propaganda and censorship effort against him) - yet he still expanded his vote share compared to his first election and came awfully close to winning again.


Either your assessment of the Trump presidency is wrong, or the "idiotic, deplorable voters" who fall for such a guy are not a fringe demographic and actually make up almost half the electorate. Can't have it both ways.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 8 2020 01:59pm

I don't think they believe that everything is "fine" again. There's an immense amount of work to be done and the entire first year will be devoted to vaccine distribution and economic recovery. I think the lesson we should all learn is that people are highly susceptible to being grifted by charismatic candidates. Frankly, there are no short-term solutions to solve this so we have to be delicate with messaging on both sides.

I still remain unconvinced that Trump would have a guaranteed win if the pandemic didn't happen. Clearly, the pandemic did something very strange (or perhaps Trump's response to it to be more accurate) to the American electorate where the electorate became even more polarized. In addition, Trump's rhetoric caused immense distrust in our electoral system which further radicalized the population. Hyper-polarization makes it really difficult to predict turnout accurately which can give false signals. For months, I shit on people for saying that "rallying the base" is the way to go for the Democrats because it's much harder to replace swing voters through GOTV efforts. It seems that I was correct from the Democratic side but boy was I wrong for the Republicans.

The fringe demographic is the coalition that pushed Trump over the edge in 2016. Without Trump, will those same voters be there? They certainly weren't in 2018.


McConnell is the king of several portions of the coalition, that's for sure. But Trump is the SPIRIT of the Republican party.

i called him aggressively mediocre, try to at least stay logically consistent to who/what you're responding to.

it makes sense for Euros to be scared shitless of the leftist fringe, but America has a system of checks and balances, and is run by corporations. we dont need to make continent wide alliances just to still struggle to beat 250 year old countries at the game of Monopoly. We are the gold standard in a world of scared shitless silver.

Actually they did learn the lesson... that's why they chose Joe Biden as the nominee. He won back PA, WI, and MI. He won the popular vote by a large margin.

After Trump's 4 chaotic years, ending with coronavirus and economic hardship, I don't see how 4 years of competent, stable Democratic leadership is going to necessarily produce a populist backlash. Who knows... you might even see some of the right-wing populists jump on board for some legislation that helps people.

Maybe not the political strategists, but people like IceMage seem to think this way.


The same also applies to Reagan, Clinton and Obama if we're being honest. Charismatic candidates who didnt live up to their promises.



Trump lost the tipping point state by 0.63%. Do you seriously think that his mishandling of the pandemic did not cause at least 0.32% of the electorate to swing R->D? I do not think that the pandemic lead to an asymmetrical mobilization in favor of Republicans.

Imho, both sides were energized as fuck and turned out at roughly equal rates. The Dem coalition was a tad bigger to begin with, and then there was maybe a 3-4% swing against Trump in the suburbs and among college-educated whites, but at the same time, there was a 1-2% swing against Democrats among hispanics and, to a lesser degree, young black men.

I agree with you on Reagan, Clinton, and Obama. Candidates can never live up to their promises because translating vision to policy is absurdly difficult in a diverse country. Someone is always going to be upset.

I don't think turnout on either side would have been as high without the pandemic response. I don't think anyone really has an idea how people would have reacted given that polling was so far off in some of those states. Like I said, it's certainly possible that Trump would have won but it's not a guarantee. At the end of the day, his approval rating just didn't change much from the pandemic so I don't think we can be making guarantees.

McConnell is the leader of the party apparatus, but Trump is the leader of the base.



That the energy is higher among the supporters of the opposition party in a president's first midterms is normal. Reagan in 82, Bush in 90, Clinton in 94 and Obama in 2010 all lost their first midterms by 7-8% as well. GWB in 2002 was an anomaly based on the aftermath of 9/11. The losses in 2018 were a perfectly normal midterm backlash by historical standards.



Doesnt change my actual argument: you claim Trump's presidency produced no real accomplishments beyond judges, and you simultaneously claim that his coalition hinges on fringe demographic votes. Why was he getting to 47% of the vote (expanding his share from 2016) in spite of glaring weaknesses and huge blunders, a lack of achievements and a coalition which relies on fringe voters? Either he must have done more right than you give him credit for, or there are far more "fringe" voters than you want to acknowledge.

We both know which one has the actual power. (hint: It's not Trump)

Every candidate turned president overpromised and underdelivered. It's just the way it is. No voter(except me) wants to hear the truth about what someone can accomplish.

This post was edited by IceMage on Dec 8 2020 02:43pm