The US Presidency 2018
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Remius said:
For reference to the discussion,
QUOTE
29 Nov 2018
The winning party's margin in votes the past 4 times the House has flipped:
1994: Republicans +6.8%
2006: Democrats + 8.0%
2010: Republicans +6.6%
2018: Democrats +8.4% and counting
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1068272303098798080
END QUOTE
kkwd said:
It seemed it was interesting and relevant enough for you to bring it up in the first place? And still interesting enough that once you got a reply you insisted on assuring us that you found it uninteresting and irrelevant? Doesn’t compute.
Anyway- Democrats decisively won the midterm, and by something on the order of 33% more popular votes that the Republicans have previously mustered for the House. Even accounting for population growth, they clearly were able to mobilize considerable interest in a midterm election where historically voter turnout tends to lag. They did something right.
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Just curious as to why people are talking about the overall "popular vote", when it is irrelevant. The vote is calculated by individual district (just as our votes are calculated by riding). We see ourselves how you can have a majority government or not with 38% of the popular vote, it all comes down to how votes are distributed amongst the ridings.
This is much like the efforts to circumvent the constitution by denying the Electoral College vote.
American commentators need to actually write about the American governmental and electoral system with a real sense of understanding.
This is much like the efforts to circumvent the constitution by denying the Electoral College vote.
American commentators need to actually write about the American governmental and electoral system with a real sense of understanding.
Thucydides said:
In my case, purely out of interest. It’s still a valuable gauge of political sentiment, particularly given the rather horrendous gerrymandering many districts have been subjected to. While popular vote does not directly turn into seats controlled, it offers some insight into fundraising, voter turnout, and hence electoral prospects, which in turn are basically blood and oxygen to representatives. It’s less interesting as point data, but more interesting when compared longitudinally. Fair to say?
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I've culled through several articles in which the recent US elections have been analyzed, and pulled the following snippets from three of them.
In short, the Republicans did fairly well overall, and much better than Obama did at the same point, and President Trump stands an excellent chance of re-election two years hence.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/244661/providing-context-midterm-election-results.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=SIDEBOTTOM&g_campaign=item_242093&g_content=Providing%2520Context%2520for%2520the%2520Midterm%2520Election%2520Results
Perhaps most critically, the 34% who specifically said they were voting to oppose Trump was consistent with anti-presidential fervor in 2014 and 2010, when Obama's party lost seats.
More than six in 10 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters (62%) said they were sending a message of opposition to Trump, similar to the proportion of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who were doing the same against Obama in 2014 and 2010 (58% each).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-the-midterms-were-a-referendum-trump-won/2018/11/09/a39cc5fe-e44f-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.13421cc18d12
After flipping dozens of seats in the midterm elections, Democrats are set to take control of the House of Representatives. Many pundits and analysts have attempted to frame the results as a referendum on President Trump. Among these, there seems to be a consensus that the president has somehow been "repudiated."
It was expected that the Republicans would lose a significant number of seats, irrespective of public opinions about Trump. Republicans had many more difficult House seats to defend than Democrats overall. There were twice as many Republican incumbents defending House seats in states Hillary Clinton won in 2016 than there were Democrats defending seats in states Trump won.
Republicans also had more than twice as many "open" House seats to hold on to as their Democratic rivals had: 36 Republican representatives chose not to stand for reelection this year because they were retiring or seeking another office. Seven others either resigned or otherwise left office before the election. As a result, Republicans had 43 House seats to defend without the benefit of a true incumbent candidate. On top of this, Republicans had three "open" Senate seats, and one more with a pseudo-incumbent (interim Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith took office in April).
Yet Democrats managed to win surprisingly few of these "open" contests. In the vast majority of cases, a new Republican was elected instead, and they tended to be even closer to Trump than their predecessors. So Trump actually cemented his hold over the Republican Party: Most of his staunchest Republican critics have either stepped down, been removed through a primary challenge or otherwise failed to win reelection. On top of this, many of the Senate Democrats who voted against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh from the states that Trump won in 2016 were voted out of office and replaced by Republicans.
Historically speaking, Democrats delivered a thoroughly average result in their first round as Trump's opposition. Going all the way back to the Civil War, there were only two instances when a new party seized the presidency but didn’t lose seats in the House during their first midterm elections: Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 (during the Great Depression), and President George W. Bush in 2002 (in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks). Even including these outliers, the average attrition during a party's inaugural midterms is 35 House seats; excluding these two exceptions, the average loss is 41. Regardless of which number we run with, Trump could end up performing better than average in preserving his party’s influence in the House. He performed much better than his last two Democratic predecessors: Bill Clinton lost control of both chambers in the 1994 midterm elections. Barack Obama saw historic losses in the House in 2010, and lost seats in the Senate as well - the most sweeping congressional reversal in 62 years. (Sixty-three House seats, and nine Senate seats, although a couple of sources had a different number of Senate seats lost - Loachman)
Yet, not only did Trump suffer far less attrition than Obama or Clinton in the House, his party will gain in the Senate. This may not be surprising given the slanted map against Democrats. It is also somewhat typical overall: Between 1862 and 2014, the president's party picked up seats in the Senate during their first midterms 56 percent of the time, lost seats 37 percent of the time and broke even once. In other words, there did not seem to be a thorough rebuke of Trump. In fact, there was little exceptional in the results at all, beyond the fact that they were so very normal.
This reality should make Democrats deeply anxious because, as I've demonstrated elsewhere, if the 2020 presidential election similarly conforms to historical tendencies, the odds are roughly 8 to 1 that Trump wins reelection.
Indeed, the president's inaugural midterm results are eerily similar to those of another entertainment-star turned political game-changer: Ronald Reagan. In 1982, his party lost 26 seats in the House - but picked up one seat in the Senate. He, too, faced a split Congress. His approval rating going into those midterms was also in the low 40s. He went on to win reelection by a landslide in 1984.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-approval-rating/
Despite the overwhelmingly negative coverage of his administration, President Donald Trump's approval rating is as high or higher than half of the previous six presidents at this point in their first terms.
(But) according to the Gallup Poll, Trump's approval rating as of his 632nd day in office was 44%.
Is that good or bad? That depends on the context. Trump has never polled well. Gallup had his approval rating at 45% the day he took office.
The mainstream press focused intensely on Trump's initial rating, which was well below those of any president since Gallup first started tracking this in 1945.
Even Gerald Ford's approval rating 90 weeks into his accidental presidency was 71%.
But the press lost interest in such comparisons as time went by.
Perhaps one reason is that, by this point in their first terms, approval ratings for most presidents had declined. Sometimes sharply.
As a matter of fact, Trump's approval rating is now higher than, or tied with, three of the past six presidents at this point in their first terms.
He's currently tied with Obama (at 44%), and above both Clinton (41%) and Reagan (42%).
Obama's approval rating on day one was 67%, but steadily declined as his economic policies failed to re-energize the economy, despite the massive stimulus, while he forced through the highly unpopular Obamacare.
Clinton's eroded after he broke his promise on tax hikes.
At this point in Reagan's first term, the economy was in a painful recession, and unemployment was above 10%.
Needless to say, each went on to win re-election handily.
But look at who scored higher than Trump: George W. Bush (67%), George H.W. Bush (56%), and Jimmy Carter (49%). W. was coming off his sky-high approval rating in the wake of 9/11, which peaked at 90%. He ended his second term at 34% approval. George H.W. had just started building up troops in preparation for liberating Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. Carter had recently signed the Camp David Accords.
What does all this mean?
First, it means that anyone who thinks Trump's low approval ratings today are a problem for his re-election prospects is mistaken. There's no correlation. Three presidents with ratings as low or lower than Trump's served two terms. Two with much higher approval ratings at this point ended up as one-term losers.
In short, the Republicans did fairly well overall, and much better than Obama did at the same point, and President Trump stands an excellent chance of re-election two years hence.
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/244661/providing-context-midterm-election-results.aspx?g_source=link_NEWSV9&g_medium=SIDEBOTTOM&g_campaign=item_242093&g_content=Providing%2520Context%2520for%2520the%2520Midterm%2520Election%2520Results
Perhaps most critically, the 34% who specifically said they were voting to oppose Trump was consistent with anti-presidential fervor in 2014 and 2010, when Obama's party lost seats.
More than six in 10 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters (62%) said they were sending a message of opposition to Trump, similar to the proportion of Republican and Republican-leaning voters who were doing the same against Obama in 2014 and 2010 (58% each).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/if-the-midterms-were-a-referendum-trump-won/2018/11/09/a39cc5fe-e44f-11e8-ab2c-b31dcd53ca6b_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.13421cc18d12
After flipping dozens of seats in the midterm elections, Democrats are set to take control of the House of Representatives. Many pundits and analysts have attempted to frame the results as a referendum on President Trump. Among these, there seems to be a consensus that the president has somehow been "repudiated."
It was expected that the Republicans would lose a significant number of seats, irrespective of public opinions about Trump. Republicans had many more difficult House seats to defend than Democrats overall. There were twice as many Republican incumbents defending House seats in states Hillary Clinton won in 2016 than there were Democrats defending seats in states Trump won.
Republicans also had more than twice as many "open" House seats to hold on to as their Democratic rivals had: 36 Republican representatives chose not to stand for reelection this year because they were retiring or seeking another office. Seven others either resigned or otherwise left office before the election. As a result, Republicans had 43 House seats to defend without the benefit of a true incumbent candidate. On top of this, Republicans had three "open" Senate seats, and one more with a pseudo-incumbent (interim Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith took office in April).
Yet Democrats managed to win surprisingly few of these "open" contests. In the vast majority of cases, a new Republican was elected instead, and they tended to be even closer to Trump than their predecessors. So Trump actually cemented his hold over the Republican Party: Most of his staunchest Republican critics have either stepped down, been removed through a primary challenge or otherwise failed to win reelection. On top of this, many of the Senate Democrats who voted against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh from the states that Trump won in 2016 were voted out of office and replaced by Republicans.
Historically speaking, Democrats delivered a thoroughly average result in their first round as Trump's opposition. Going all the way back to the Civil War, there were only two instances when a new party seized the presidency but didn’t lose seats in the House during their first midterm elections: Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 (during the Great Depression), and President George W. Bush in 2002 (in the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks). Even including these outliers, the average attrition during a party's inaugural midterms is 35 House seats; excluding these two exceptions, the average loss is 41. Regardless of which number we run with, Trump could end up performing better than average in preserving his party’s influence in the House. He performed much better than his last two Democratic predecessors: Bill Clinton lost control of both chambers in the 1994 midterm elections. Barack Obama saw historic losses in the House in 2010, and lost seats in the Senate as well - the most sweeping congressional reversal in 62 years. (Sixty-three House seats, and nine Senate seats, although a couple of sources had a different number of Senate seats lost - Loachman)
Yet, not only did Trump suffer far less attrition than Obama or Clinton in the House, his party will gain in the Senate. This may not be surprising given the slanted map against Democrats. It is also somewhat typical overall: Between 1862 and 2014, the president's party picked up seats in the Senate during their first midterms 56 percent of the time, lost seats 37 percent of the time and broke even once. In other words, there did not seem to be a thorough rebuke of Trump. In fact, there was little exceptional in the results at all, beyond the fact that they were so very normal.
This reality should make Democrats deeply anxious because, as I've demonstrated elsewhere, if the 2020 presidential election similarly conforms to historical tendencies, the odds are roughly 8 to 1 that Trump wins reelection.
Indeed, the president's inaugural midterm results are eerily similar to those of another entertainment-star turned political game-changer: Ronald Reagan. In 1982, his party lost 26 seats in the House - but picked up one seat in the Senate. He, too, faced a split Congress. His approval rating going into those midterms was also in the low 40s. He went on to win reelection by a landslide in 1984.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-approval-rating/
Despite the overwhelmingly negative coverage of his administration, President Donald Trump's approval rating is as high or higher than half of the previous six presidents at this point in their first terms.
(But) according to the Gallup Poll, Trump's approval rating as of his 632nd day in office was 44%.
Is that good or bad? That depends on the context. Trump has never polled well. Gallup had his approval rating at 45% the day he took office.
The mainstream press focused intensely on Trump's initial rating, which was well below those of any president since Gallup first started tracking this in 1945.
Even Gerald Ford's approval rating 90 weeks into his accidental presidency was 71%.
But the press lost interest in such comparisons as time went by.
Perhaps one reason is that, by this point in their first terms, approval ratings for most presidents had declined. Sometimes sharply.
As a matter of fact, Trump's approval rating is now higher than, or tied with, three of the past six presidents at this point in their first terms.
He's currently tied with Obama (at 44%), and above both Clinton (41%) and Reagan (42%).
Obama's approval rating on day one was 67%, but steadily declined as his economic policies failed to re-energize the economy, despite the massive stimulus, while he forced through the highly unpopular Obamacare.
Clinton's eroded after he broke his promise on tax hikes.
At this point in Reagan's first term, the economy was in a painful recession, and unemployment was above 10%.
Needless to say, each went on to win re-election handily.
But look at who scored higher than Trump: George W. Bush (67%), George H.W. Bush (56%), and Jimmy Carter (49%). W. was coming off his sky-high approval rating in the wake of 9/11, which peaked at 90%. He ended his second term at 34% approval. George H.W. had just started building up troops in preparation for liberating Kuwait in Operation Desert Storm. Carter had recently signed the Camp David Accords.
What does all this mean?
First, it means that anyone who thinks Trump's low approval ratings today are a problem for his re-election prospects is mistaken. There's no correlation. Three presidents with ratings as low or lower than Trump's served two terms. Two with much higher approval ratings at this point ended up as one-term losers.
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Brihard said:
For anyone unfamiliar with how Gerrymandering works,
QUOTE
"Cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).
In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African-American or other racial minorities, known as "majority-minority districts". Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents.
http://www.redistrictinggame.org/learnaboutmission2.php
Manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.
•achieve (a result) by manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency.
END QUOTE
FJAG
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mariomike said:
Wikipedia has a good article on the whole thing as well here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering
In fairness one or another of the various processes have been used from time to time by both parties since the term was first coined in Boston in 1812.
:subbies:
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FJAG said:
REDMAP has been described as, "Gerrymandering on steroids".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REDMAP
QUOTE
REDMAP (short for Redistricting Majority Project) is a project of the Republican State Leadership Committee of the United States to increase Republican control of Congressional seats as well as state legislators, largely through determination of electoral district boundaries. The project has reportedly made effective use of partisan gerrymandering, by relying on previously unavailable mapping software such as Maptitude to improve the precision with which district lines are strategically drawn.
The strategy was focused on swing blue states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin where there was a Democratic majority but which they could swing towards Republican with appropriate redistricting. The project was launched in 2010 and estimated to have cost the Republican party around US$30 million.
END QUOTE
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The Democrats have a new tool for stealing elections called ballot harvesting which was used to flip 6 California House seats. It is illegal in most States but it was enacted recently.Of course the Republicans in California could use the tactic as well. I remember when Cali and most of the west were red.Youtube of the entrance by the Trumps and how the Clintons snubbed him at least the Obama's were polite.
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-trump-shakes-hands-with-obamas-doesnt-greet-clintons-at-bush-funeral/
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/watch-trump-shakes-hands-with-obamas-doesnt-greet-clintons-at-bush-funeral/
tomahawk6 said:
You’re referring to third party collection of absentee ballots for deposit at a polling place, which as you note is legal in California. So you claim that this is used to “steal” elections despite saying it’s legal in the state where six seats flipped. So how does that figure? Sounds like one party has clued into a technique for voter mobilization that was underutilized by the other party, and it may have contributed to victory in that state. That cannot be called “stealing” an election if what was done was expressly legal. Can you clarify?
FJAG
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Unlike California where ballot harvesting is legal, in North Carolina (where it is illegal) it was done by the Republicans who are now in a dust-up over the election for a Republican house of representatives candidate whose campaign people did it under allegedly suspicious circumstances.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alleged-ballot-harvesting-in-north-carolina-house-race-may-wipe-out-gop-win
:subbies:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/alleged-ballot-harvesting-in-north-carolina-house-race-may-wipe-out-gop-win
:subbies:
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Not remotely.Brihard said:
Such awkwardness would require an acceptance of culpability, an admission that facts are both real and important, and an understanding that moral judgements of acceptable and inacceptable behaviour have to be applied equally.
Oldgateboatdriver
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There is no resolving issues like this between you folks, since you all view things from radically different perspectives on the very same facts, not unlike in the following clip. Hang on! It comes at the end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dqvXyx84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dqvXyx84
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There's an excellent piece in theFinancial Times about the dissonance that runs through the administration. The author, Edward Luce, says "A pig is still a pig no matter how much lipstick you apply. The same goes for the law of the jungle with a diplomatic philosophy smeared on ... [and] ... Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, is the latest of President Donald Trump’s officials to try."
Mr Pompeo gave a speech in Brussels in which he said, basically, Russia and China are the biggest threats to the established, liber, world order and the best way to fight them is to dismantle the tools ~ like the WTO ~ that make it hard for them to tear down that world order. In Mr Luce's words: "There would be little point in Mr Pompeo — or Mr Trump — making the nationalist case in Moscow, Beijing or Pyongyang, for example. Their rulers already agree wholeheartedly. These are the countries that pose the biggest threats to the global order, according to Mr Pompeo. The best way to confront such adversaries is to abandon multilateralism, he said."
"Mr Pompeo did the world a favour this week," Mr Luce writes, "he crystallised the dissonance that runs through the Trump administration. Mr Trump’s aim is to contain China’s global rise. He also wants to remove the tools with which to blunt China’s rise. He offers with one hand what he removes with the other."
President Trump seems, to me more naturally aligned with Kim, Putin and Xi than he is with e.g. Marcon, May and Merkel et al. His blind pursuit of what he thinks America's very short term self interest might be it seems, to me, to blind him to the fact that Putin is either an adventurous opportunist or an opportunistic adventurer, take your pick, who is searching, like Trump, for short term gains whenever an opportunity presents itself while Xi is a long term, strategic thinker with a plan for equaling America in wealth and power by 2050 and displacing it as the world's dominant power by the end of this century. Donald Trump seems, to me, to be thinking about the next quarter's results, not the middle of the century.
Mr Pompeo gave a speech in Brussels in which he said, basically, Russia and China are the biggest threats to the established, liber, world order and the best way to fight them is to dismantle the tools ~ like the WTO ~ that make it hard for them to tear down that world order. In Mr Luce's words: "There would be little point in Mr Pompeo — or Mr Trump — making the nationalist case in Moscow, Beijing or Pyongyang, for example. Their rulers already agree wholeheartedly. These are the countries that pose the biggest threats to the global order, according to Mr Pompeo. The best way to confront such adversaries is to abandon multilateralism, he said."
"Mr Pompeo did the world a favour this week," Mr Luce writes, "he crystallised the dissonance that runs through the Trump administration. Mr Trump’s aim is to contain China’s global rise. He also wants to remove the tools with which to blunt China’s rise. He offers with one hand what he removes with the other."
President Trump seems, to me more naturally aligned with Kim, Putin and Xi than he is with e.g. Marcon, May and Merkel et al. His blind pursuit of what he thinks America's very short term self interest might be it seems, to me, to blind him to the fact that Putin is either an adventurous opportunist or an opportunistic adventurer, take your pick, who is searching, like Trump, for short term gains whenever an opportunity presents itself while Xi is a long term, strategic thinker with a plan for equaling America in wealth and power by 2050 and displacing it as the world's dominant power by the end of this century. Donald Trump seems, to me, to be thinking about the next quarter's results, not the middle of the century.
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I disagree.No doubt that China is viewed as a threat one reason Trump wants to stop the theft of intellectual property. I think that's how China has reversed engineered military equipment based on western designs. They have poured money into their Navy and Air Force making them a real threat in the Pacific. Right now the competition is peaceful but its a question of time before that changes but I guess that would depend on who is in the White House. The historical counter to Chinese power has been Japan. A strong Japan makes a great ally for the US. A strong PI would also help counter China,but I think that will require change in Manila.
FJAG
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In what way?tomahawk6 said:
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