mtutiger

Message is important, but I almost feel like it goes beyond that. But real commitments and real listening. Assuming he holds on against Kari Lake in Arizona (it hasn't been called yet but seems pretty likely), it would also help if Ruben Gallego became a more prominent figure within the party. His background (Male, Second Generation, military service record) is the exact kind of voter this party is struggling with the most.

Agreed, that's why I commented that my post above shouldn't be perceived as "optimistic." Particularly the longer term implications. My only point is that in the short term, he's not immune to the forces that afflict elected Presidents.... and his first term is Exhibit A

I'd be surprised if anything related to abortion got out of the House, tbh....

I'm not anymore optimistic than you are, to be honest.... but I'm also not going to pretend that trends that have existed in every single election cycle (ie. President gets elected, starts to implement agenda, public sours on them) don't actually exist. And that it didn't already happen to Trump once lol

A couple of things: Latino voters aren't a monolith - not only do they come from different places, but at this point in time in the Latino experience, many of them are pretty far separated from the immigrant experience. We have more second and third generation Latinos, and the things that appeal to recent migrants =/= to those who have assimilated into the American experience. Latino voters are more acutely impacted by economics than just about every demographic group I do think the Democrats have an opportunity to win some of this support back; Trump benefitted from the overall environment and his standing as a successful businessman, and I question whether this was about an affinity for the GOP itself. But the work needs to happen immediately, and it starts by not taking these groups for granted and not falling into the same old traps of punching down at those who may have switched their vote in this election (I trust the actual party to do this, fwiw, but the supporter base needs to wake up here)

I've seen many different theories about why this election went the way that it did, but I do think governance in blue states is a huge huge factor. Especially at the mayoral level in various cities. States like NY, NJ, IL saw pretty significant turnout drops. Cannot help but think that Brandon Johnson being way out of his depth is a big reason why IL swung even further to the right than the country as a whole did this time around, for instance...

Reagan also had to work with the Democrats more (ie. perpetual D House at the time), which is a differentiator.... Having said that, Trump's margin in the house very well could be smaller than what the Rs had in this past Congress.... which is going to cause a lot of headaches and (probably) limits a lot of what he's going to legislatively. Maybe will have some success on tax policy, but things like ACA repeal or an abortion ban are off the table most likely. And the other thing feature that people forget about American politics is thermostatic reaction: Presidents are inaugurated, start to implement what they campaigned on, and public opinion often time flips on these very same issues. Trump himself isn't immune to it, it happened to him in Round 1 (which led a 40 seat loss in the House that time). Nobody should be surprised if it happens again.

I don't think either of you guys hate any of these things FWIW.

Would you agree that Donald Trump, who benefitted from hundreds of millions of dollars during the campaign from a cadre of his own billionaires, is "the party" as well? Your logic would seem to place him there

A lot of it comes down to the fact that he needs Congress to get legislation passed, and he could have as small as a 220-215 GOP majority to work with. And a lot of these guys have things that were contained in various Biden bills (such as Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act) that contain stuff that benefits said Congressperson's district. Even if he leans on them, the ability to contain such a small majority is incredibly difficult. We learned that throughout the 118th Congress, and the 119th probably isn't gonna be any easier for Mike Johnson to corral.

Amazing how every subsequent candidate that the Democratic Party has run throughout my life has been "the worst candidate I've ever seen"... I've been around 36 years (literally today), and have can remember every election since 2000... I've been hearing the same types of people saying this **** every four years since. No real thought behind it, no nuance, just the same buzzwords over and over. Just not worth engaging, guys.

This is, unironically, a positive thing.

lol

Even beyond cretins like this guy, just from a couple of conversations I had at work yesterday, I really do think that there are a lot of normie males who take DJT's "that's a state rights issue now" way too much at face value. The lies we tell ourselves...

I hate to agree with Matt Y... But he's spot on here.

They need to up their media game no doubt, but I think engaging R and R leaning media more often does more good than harm and they should do it more often. Outside of Pete Buttigieg, I can't think of one upper echelon D pol that actually does that; Walz/Harris both did some of that at the end with Fox and Harris discussed doing Rogan, but going forward that needs to happen more often.

I agree, and I even like the guy. Setting aside both of our views and just looking objectively, one conundrum here as I see it is that the Democratic Party is a really big tent right now and there are a lot of cross pressures between the historical base of the party (working class, union members) and professional class (suburbanites who have recently folded into the party, tend to be white collar). The EC is a factor here too.... MI/WI/PA (overrepresented by the former type of voter) along with the rest of the deeper blue states all add up to exactly 270 today - but that won't be the case forever.... and even now, you have to compete in states that demographically are more like that latter and for which working class policies don't necessarily land the same way (particularly in GA/NC, which are historically hostile to unions). And along with all of that is the tendency of union members, frankly like most Americans, to signal on culture more than economic policies in today's day and age. The Teamsters fiasco this summer is an excellent example - President Biden did, in fact, bail out their pension fund in late 2022. Yet their national leadership (likely reflecting their wishes of membership, at least to some degree) didn't endorse anyway. I do still think that the environment mattered more than anything else here, but this (along with / in conjunction with their issues with Latino voters) are puzzles that need to be solved. And a lot of that is going to rest on raising the salience of economic issues over cultural ones... I have theories on how that may be achievable, but I'm guessing that a lot of more leftists types wouldn't like them much.

This point after the election reminds me a lot of the May 2024 Detroit Tigers where the Jeff Riger types of Tigers Twitter would just throw out "shoulda signed Matt Chapman" and recommend who needs to "PACK FOR TOLEDO" and "CALL 'EM UP", as if those suggestions were all the panacea (they weren't.... young players performing better was the panacea) I'm not saying that there aren't lessons that need to be learned, but I can tell you right now that it isn't going to be boiled all down into one neat little package that's going to fit into a 2 minute cable hit.

Cable news hits aren't exactly built for nuance, which is a big reason why cable news (left right and center) is garbage.

https://x.com/RalstonReports/status/1854564973437178206 Ralston apparently crunched the numbers for Nevada as well... Seems to line up

Lets do a little math, everyone: 2024 MICHIGAN SENATE RACE Elissa Slotkin Raw Vote Total: 2,690,782 Mike Rogers Raw Vote Total: 2,673,747 2024 MICHIGAN PRESIDENTIAL RACE Kamala Harris Raw Vote Total: 2,715,809 Donald Trump Raw Vote Total: 2,800,060 Difference between Harris/Slotkin: +25,027 Harris Difference between Trump/Rogers: +126,313 Trump [126,313 - 25,027] = 101,286 votes Margin of victory in Michigan for Donald J. Trump in 2024: 84,251 votes. --------------------------------------------------------------- There'll be a lot of questions about how Dems pulled out all these close Senate races despite Trump winning, but this is why. And again, it raises a lot of interesting questions about future election cycles... especially considering this will be the last time Trump's name will be on a ballot.

This is important - it is incredibly popular to sit and pick apart why this has happened (literally everybody and everyone applies their own prescribed reason), but if I had to place a percentage on it, this is at least 80% of why this happened (versus actual campaign tactics, flaws and / or erosion among demos). I don't think people want to discuss this though because picking apart campaign tactics, candidate flaws and / or erosion among demos provides more material for pundits and observers alike over "this environment really sucks for governing parties right now"

It was less pronounced in the Blue Wall states, but the gaps between the Senate race and the Presidential race make you think....

I'm not sure if that option is completely opened until someone is actually confirmed, but could be wrong. Either way, the smaller the margin, the harder it is for the nutters to land some of these top jobs.

Would add Thom Tillis here as well, who is up for reelection in NC in 2026 (probably one of the D's largest targets). This is why every single seat matters... losing Casey in PA hurt a lot, but it could have been so so much worse.