It wasn’t Philadelphia itself that won Pennsylvania for Biden. Trump, in fact, gained four points there from 2016. It was the Philadelphia suburbs, where four counties swung two or three points against Trump. A similarly strong suburban shift appears to have happened around Atlanta, according to this handy USA Today map, which shows county by county swings of three or more points across the nation.
Also, the ideas that Trump’s base wouldn’t grow from 2016, and that a candidate like Biden couldn’t drive turnout to overcome that base, seem to have been ... off base.
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone believes, in retrospect, that Sanders or Warren would have overcome the growth in Trump’s support, and for what reasons.
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone believes, in retrospect, that Sanders or Warren would have overcome the growth in Trump’s support, and for what reasons.
I can only believe that Warren, and to an even greater degree, Sanders, would have only GROWN that support, exponentially. Trump would have won, convincingly.
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone believes, in retrospect, that Sanders or Warren would have overcome the growth in Trump’s support, and for what reasons.
I can only believe that Warren, and to an even greater degree, Sanders, would have only GROWN that support, exponentially. Trump would have won, convincingly.
I'd agree with that. Remember the main attack line against Biden was that he is a dangerous socialist, which nobody believes. It would have been a much more efficient weapon against Sanders or Warren.
And for the record, I do not believe that being called a socialist is actually a bad thing, but many US voters disagree with me on that unfortunately.
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone believes, in retrospect, that Sanders or Warren would have overcome the growth in Trump’s support, and for what reasons.
This is going to be a big arguing point for the next couple of years.
I don't know how many Centrist Republicans voted for Biden. That's a good starting point to figure out the answer to this question.
Leaving aside the futility of speculating about an alternate reality scenario, there are a few points we can make that seem reasonable. First is that even when I was expressing concern last winter that Bidinger might not be able to drive turnout, I did admit that anti-Trump sentiment might be sufficient to get Democrats out for any candidate. The literal dancing in the streets yesterday suggests an awful lot of the vote was about defeating Trump. Another important point is that Biden himself embraced Bernie and moved left after the devastation of the pandemic. It was the right thing to do from a moral standpoint but probably also politically smart. So to some extent the Biden who campaigned this summer wasn’t exactly what Warren supporters might have expected from him last winter.
perhaps most importantly, who predicted a pandemic that would be exacerbated by every flaw of Donald Trump? If the country was healthy and unemployment was 3%, would Joe have been giving a concession speech Tuesday night? We can’t know that any more than we can know if Elizabeth Warren would have beaten a post-pandemic Trump. Part of me thinks Americans’ misogyny would have defeated her. But in the time of COVID, who knows?
I’d be interested in hearing if anyone believes, in retrospect, that Sanders or Warren would have overcome the growth in Trump’s support, and for what reasons.
This is going to be a big arguing point for the next couple of years.
honestly I don't think it's going to be a discussion at all. Biden won after all. The discussion on the left is going to be about whether or not Biden follows through where he can on climate change, the environment, and other issues that don't need Mitch McConnell's sign off.
honestly I don't think it's going to be a discussion at all. Biden won after all. The discussion on the left is going to be about whether or not Biden follows through where he can on climate change, the environment, and other issues that don't need Mitch McConnell's sign off.
Do you think Biden can reassemble the same winning coalition in 2024? If a different Republican gets the nomination, Biden may lose a key voting bloc.
But then again the pure Trumpist voters might not come out for a non-Trump candidate.
For these House districts Republicans flipped, do we know if that was due to ticket splitting -- eg the majority of voters in that district voted for Biden AND the Republican congressional candidate? Or is this an indication of how gerrymandered districts are -- eg there was little ticket splitting in the districts, and Biden's margin in the state overall was greater than his margin in the district, and Democratic candidates received a greater number of raw votes but that did not translate to a greater number of districts?
Put another way, which of these two stories do the numbers tell us -- voters rejected Trump but not Republicans, or voters rejected both Trump and Republicans but the anti-majoritarian firewalls held at the district level and not at the state levels?
It wasn’t Philadelphia itself that won Pennsylvania for Biden. Trump, in fact, gained four points there from 2016. It was the Philadelphia suburbs, where four counties swung two or three points against Trump. A similarly strong suburban shift appears to have happened around Atlanta, according to this handy USA Today map, which shows county by county swings of three or more points across the nation.
Also, the ideas that Trump’s base wouldn’t grow from 2016, and that a candidate like Biden couldn’t drive turnout to overcome that base, seem to have been ... off base.