no, option C.

Trump in 2016 was better at mobilizing a fringe by way of right place right time and surfing in on disenfranchised voters, mixed with god awful messaging by the Democrats who went too woke.

Biden in 2020 avoided such wokeness, and appealed to some of the same disenfranchised voters who realized Trump didnt deliver. and the party chose Biden because of his bland centrist appeal to corporate elites and wallstreet, the same corporations who reveled in Trumps general environment of deregulation.

and yet in both cases fringe right wing and fringe left wing voters are still a minority in each party, severely, and neither holds much power to elect a candidate who will realize their platform. guess what, no wall, guess what, china still gon be china, etc. the fringe right got leftist tears and little more. look at the damn scoreboard not the message board.

In terms of actual policy and agenda? No doubt McConnell. However, Trump is so powerful that Republicans can't even admit that he lost. The GOP is so worried about Georgia that they are scared shitless to say the truth. IMO, if you have sway over voters, you have actual power.
Because American voters aren't rational? Trump wasn't kidding that he could literally murder someone and he'd still have a very real chance of winning. I think about 70% of the electorate will see an (R) or a (D) and vote for them NO MATTER WHAT. A candidate could fuck a child and they'd rationalize it by saying, "well at least he's not a racist!" or "well at least he's not a socialist!" You don't win elections because of your accomplishments. You win elections because the other candidate is worse than you.

In San Diego, we had a mayor named Bob Filner who was a Democrat. He was accused by multiple women of sexual assault and the Democrats supported him for weeks after that. Only when he smiled and you could smell his teeth did they see the writing on the wall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Filner

Mmmh, okay, you got a point. It must still be kept in mind that Biden was on the ropes after the first 3 primaries/caucuses. Bernie was the clear front ronner. Biden was barely able to hang on and turn things around, with concerted support from Clyburn, Obama and the DNC. Large parts of the party and its activists were not happy. So yes, the party came to its senses in the end, but only barely. And let's not forget that Biden was subsequently pushed to the left in terms of his platform; even Democrat-aligned media acknowledged that he was running on the most liberal platform since McGovern in 72.


Trump was never gonna win MI again. WI was far too close for comfort, and frankly shouldnt have been as close. The only state where Biden kinda exceeded my expectations is PA, a state for which Biden is clearly a good fit. Nonetheless, I still think that Biden would definitely have lost WI without the pandemic, and probably also PA.



We're probably both biased here. Your outlook on the Biden admin is overly optimistic and rosy, mine is probably too pessimistic. Anyway, I don't think that the Democrats are in for 4 years or calm, stable governing. The various factions in the party are already at each other's throat, and it's only gonna get worse when actual policy comes up. If Biden seriously tries to ram through stuff like amnesty and carbon taxes on EOs like he has promised to do, that's immediately gonna supercharge the political right and harden the opposition against him.

"Competent" leadership is a matter of opinion and not an electorally meaningful metric. Ultimately, it will come down to whether people like his policies. No swing voter or moderate will come to the polls thinking "he's implementing all the policies that I hate, but at least he's doing so in competent fashion - he got my vote"

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Dec 8 2020 02:58pm

I think both need the other. A charismatic, populist president cant get very far without institutional support or support from Congress. McConnell is the guy pulling these strings on the GOP side. But on the other hand, McConnell's personal agenda isnt popular enough to ever win elections. He relies on the president to bring in the support of evangelicals and populists, without these votes, McConnell is not in a position of power.

Also, going far into hypotheticals: if Trump had played his cards right after 2016 and improved his approval ratings to something like 52-43 instead of his usual 42-54, he could have put public pressure on McConnell to greenlight parts of Trump's platform which went against McConnell's interests. At the end of the day, the president commands the bully pulpit, and if he's cunning and competent enough, he can force other power centers of his party in line. A president mired in scandal and murky approval ratings was obviously never gonna do that.



Case in point: Roy Moore.


Maybe in America. Not here in Europe, at least not to such an extent.

Isnt this quite a sad state of affairs? Isnt this a guarantee for American politics to turn into a race to the bottom? There has to be a breaking point...

It's how first past the post systems always work. You're better off voting against things you don't want than voting for things you want. Europe has pretty much better everything because if you vote for a third party you don't waste your vote. In America if a third party breaks off it dooms them and their most similar party to perpetual failure.

Yes, it is a sad state of affairs which is why I want politics to be "boring again." Too many people define themselves by their political identity and that's very dangerous. When you can't have a beer with someone without getting into an argument, that's a problem.

I agree with you that Trump had an insane amount of potential. There were populist things that Democrats could get behind and the GOP could have been completely transformed from a policy perspective. Alas, Trump is Trump.

The majority of the people in this country wanted trump to succeed, which is why victim mentality a portion of the population has taken is laughable/annoying. The potential he had was incredible

When corona first occurred and he started the task force etc I initially thought he was cementing his 2020 election with this. Unfortunately like u said he tripped over himself. I liked his China stance even if I disagreed about the implementation of how to be anti China like tariffs.

Proportional representation has its problems too. For example, it can lead to situations where the government party sits at something like 30% of the vote, yet it's realistically impossible to actually vote this party out of government. (This was the situation in Germany before covid.)
Fun fact: from the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, it took almost half a century, until 1998, before a government was voted out of office. Over this timespan of 49 years, there were only two occasions on which power fundamentally swung from right to left and then back again based on one of the parties of the governing coaltion being replaced.



Imho, an instant runoff system like in Australia is quite a good system which allows for the emergence of new parties and for voters to express their dissatisfaction with the major parties.

A plurality party of 30% isn't that big of a deal. You just form a coalition depending on the direction you want to go. In America, our coalitions are fairly static and occur during the primaries.

Vladimir Pootin