r/politics • u/ushaque • 8d ago

No Paywall Trump says he could be ‘last Republican president’

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6144713-donald-trump-republican-party-midterm-struggles/amp/
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u/gtobiast13 8d ago

People look at me weird when I say democrats functionally lost 2020 even while winning. 

2020 should have been a blowout election season for dems. Between the botched Covid response, economy problems, general chaos, and mounting legal issues for the Trump admin, any competent opposition should have won the White House and both chambers with a super majority, it should have been the blowout of the century. 

Sure, statistically the electoral college victory was pretty solidly in bidens favor, but somehow, after all of that, 12 million more people came out to vote for Trump than in 2016. By no means was it a landslide in presidential election history. Not to mention, dems spent almost double the amount of campaign money on Biden than Trump got from republicans and they still only won by slim margins. 

On top of that, the senate was effectively “won” by the 1 vote the VP gets. The dems lost 14 seats in the house and just clung to a majority, and dems lost another governor seat giving republicans a 2 seat lead. 

Dems came to fight with a loaded m16 against an opponent bleeding out with a shiv and they still got sliced and diced and won by the slimmest margins. 

I hate saying this but the people really made their voices heard that cycle. They weren’t happy with trump, but they really didn’t want to alter course either. 

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u/100LimeJuice 8d ago

Biden's electoral college victory was not pretty solid. As NPR's Domenico Montanaro has put it, "just 44,000 votes in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin separated Biden and Trump from a tie in the Electoral College." Source NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/12/02/940689086/narrow-wins-in-these-key-states-powered-biden-to-the-presidency

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u/Show_Me_Your_Cubes 8d ago

It's pretty solid when you consider that the Trump admin but a lot of effort into cheating the election, and still lost

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u/guamisc 8d ago

They weren’t happy with trump, but they really didn’t want to alter course either

They don't want status quo Democrats. It's why Trump was elected in the first place. We keep offering them the same bland, uninspiring gruel.

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago

Biden won the primary by a landslide. Absolutely walloped everyone else. Either progressives don't show up for primaries, or they just aren't as popular as they think they are. And I'm a progressive. (I voted for Warren in the 2020 primary.)

Democrats "keep offering" the candidate who wins the primary. That's where people need to focus if they want "to be offered" better candidates in November.

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u/pikachu191 8d ago edited 7d ago

Either progressives don't show up for primaries, or they just aren't as popular as they think they are.

I think it's the latter. The nature of the electoral college means you have to appeal to "purple" states. Purple states don't care about progressive issues as much as they do with so-called "everyday" issues. Progressive darlings like AOC or Bernie Sanders exist in states or districts which heavily favor Democrats anyways. What the Democratic establishment forgot or underestimated was the difficulty of replicating the turnout of 2020 in 2024. They ignored the precedent set when LBJ was forced out by his own party in a similar fashion to Biden. The result was a victory by Nixon, who appealed that campaign season to "law and order" and a "silent majority" (of white people) in a similar fashion to how GOP politicians appeal to campaign against "wokeness" and "DEI"; part of the "southern strategy" to peel away Democrats in the South who were alienated by LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (predicted by LBJ). They assumed that it would be easy to kick Biden to the curb, plug in a replacement candidate, and replicate Biden's appeal in purple states.

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago edited 8d ago

The nature of the electoral college means you have to appeal to "purple" states.

Well, the electoral college definitely is fucked and anti-democratic today. And functionally, the election is decided by the swing states. But it gets a bit tricky.

There's a decent argument that you win swing states not by appealing to swing voters, but by increasing your base's turnout. McCain in 2008 defended Obama from someone accusing him of being a Muslim or anti-American. You're not going to see that today. Politics is disturbingly polarized; true swing voters are rarer to find. Is there someone who voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, but is somehow open to a Democrat next month? ... Sure. I bet you can find someone who voted Trump / Biden / Trump, or even Hillary / Trump / Kamala.

But you know what's a whole lot easier? Getting some of the 30+% of eligible voters who already agree with you but just don't bother to show up to vote.

Maybe there's 100,000 people in Virginia who would vote for Trump, but with an enormous amount of work, could be convinced to vote for Bernie Sanders. But 30% of eligible voters didn't vote at all. If you want to find 100,000 voters, it's all kinds of easier to find the ones who are already on your side and convince them to spend 10 minutes voting.

I was a swing voter in the 2000s. But I can't see that now. "Democrats are satanists hell-bent on destroying America and harming your children" is a mainstream Republican viewpoint. That used to be whacko nonsense that prominent Republicans shot down, even in election season. And it goes both ways - "MAGA republicans are fascist traitors hellbent on destroying American democratic institutions" is also a prominent leftist viewpoint. (I'd say that one is true.) There's less room than ever for purple, so there's pretty good merit to the argument that appealing to Iowa has nothing to do with middle-ground policies, and everything to do with turnout and maybe state-specific issues like corn subsidies.

Which, to be fair, is probably what you were getting at anyway.

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u/Murky-Relation481 8d ago

I mean get out the vote campaigns have been huge, but it just doesn't yield results. Young people are fundamentally disengaged from politics and have been for decades, and it will continue to get worse as every generation grows a slightly larger and larger cohort of parents who don't do politics and as such their kids wont do it either.

I mean I see the logic of trying to sway active voters who vote for the other side but might be considering going a different direction when you look at how much money has been thrown into get out the vote stuff with hardly any results.

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u/guamisc 8d ago

I mean get out the vote campaigns have been huge, but it just doesn't yield results. Young people are fundamentally disengaged from politics and have been for decades, and it will continue to get worse as every generation grows a slightly larger and larger cohort of parents who don't do politics and as such their kids wont do it either.

Have you tried not offering insipid, uninspired incremental nonsense that's led to the resurgent populist and fascist right wing because people are tired of useless dreck?

Or nah?

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago

how much money has been thrown into get out the vote stuff with hardly any results.

Every non-incumbent Democratic president elected in a generation has done so with huge get-out-the-vote campaigns: Obama 2008 and Biden 2020. (The only one left is Obama 2012 as a popular incumbent.)

Yes, there's a huge problem with young people voting. But when they do, they win. The fact that it's hard to get people to vote doesn't change that the winning strategy is getting them to.

And again, if you want X votes, it's easier to get them from the apathetic than from people ideologically opposed to you, somewhat.

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u/Murky-Relation481 8d ago

I wasn't trying to compare them as equal strategies just saying that get out the vote doesn't work well when you don't have an already existing strong desire for change, and at that point the reason for more people voting is going to be a lot murkier. Did Obama's get out the vote campaign yield large results due to the economic situation and Bush or was it purely because it put in more hard work than say campaigns in 2016 or 2024?

The problem is a calm status quo drives apathy because people are more willing to think about how good things are vs. how bad things could get, that is just a natural stress avoidance thing. So when you have 8 years of relatively good times under Obama its a lot harder to get people motivated than when they're actively suffering like in 2008 and and 2020.

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago

Did Obama's get out the vote campaign yield large results due to the economic situation and Bush or was it purely because it put in more hard work than say campaigns in 2016 or 2024?

A bit of both. There was an enormous grassroots campaign. I'm sure that was helped by Bush's unpopularity and the recession. But there genuinely was a lot of real-world buzz about a relatively young, very charismatic guy with the chance to be the first black president.

2016, I think Clinton's campaign thought she had it in the bag and just don't fuck it up. Of course, that makes you look bland and unpopular. Ta-da, you fucked it up. (Different topic, but obviously an election where you won the popular vote was a winnable election.)

2024 was a self-own in unique circumstances. Republicans had spent four years doing nothing but talking about how old Biden was. If he had just never ran and endorsed someone, now you have a population focused on "the age issue" and looking at Trump vs. Kamala or Buttigieg. Instead, Biden went on stage and did his best to prove the Republicans right about everything in that disastrous debate.

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u/pikachu191 8d ago

Maybe there's 100,000 people in Virginia who would vote for Trump, but with an enormous amount of work, could be convinced to vote for Bernie Sanders.

I would say Virginia is safely blue right now, considering I'm from Northern Virginia. There's a large contingent of red in the countryside, especially towards the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge mountains. But grass can't vote. And of course, DOGE affecting a lot of federal workers , which MAGA forgot live in Virginia. Then there's the MAGA candidate, Winsome-Sears, they pushed out to run for governor the other year. Aka Miss "I am speaking". Needless to say, she lost in a landslide to Spanberger. Even the pastor's wife at my church, who is very (and often inappropriately) vocal about MAGA politics kept her mouth shut about Democrats (for a while).

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u/inuvash255 Massachusetts 8d ago

That's not exactly how that time felt.

Prior to Super Tuesday, there was a wide, wide field. Biden wasn't doing particularly great, and Bernie had the plurality.

Just before ST, like days, the news was blasting about how if every Dem who wasn't Bernie or Biden dropped out, Biden would be winning 65-35. They pretty much all did. Warren dropped shortly after, noncommittally.

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u/necrosxiaoban North Carolina 8d ago

Buttigieg dropping out when he did, and the votes that went to Biden because of it, versus Warren holding on and splitting the progressive vote with Bernie -- the timing of it all was definitely what swung it to Biden.

If Buttigieg had stayed in longer, or had Warren had dropped out when Buttigieg did, it could have been a much closer result.

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u/IllllIIIllllIl Florida 8d ago

I also think it isn’t terribly more psychologically complex for the average Dem voter than Biden representing a continued Obama era, which is still seen as an optimistic hope-filled presidency after the Bush era. It’s why despite showing no interest or political enthusiasm for it, Michelle Obama was a major name being fronted in summer 2024 before Kamala was given the candidacy, with varying degrees of seriousness.

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u/Galxloni2 8d ago

Conveniently leaving out bloomberg who pulled exclusively from biden vs Warren who also pulled primarily from Biden

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u/necrosxiaoban North Carolina 8d ago

I had to look that one up, looks like Bloomberg didn't enter until Super Tuesday, which is probably why I didn't remember him. That and he evidently didn't have much impact.

Also a shout-out to Amy Klobuchar who also had dropped out with Buttigieg, tho her #s were much smaller.

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u/Galxloni2 8d ago

Bloomberg had an almost identical vote total to Warren

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u/Murky-Relation481 8d ago edited 8d ago

I mean yah, there was a lot of candidates with the same general platform as Biden, at the end of the day the calculus amongst campaigns was "we're not going to win on our own and this will get drawn out, but if the majority of us as a platform is popular lets go with the person we think has the best brand recognition" and that was Biden. Also Sanders was not as particularly novel in 2020 as in 2016 since he was basically able to dictate the party platform to a large degree after the backlash to how his primary was handled in 2016 in an attempt to bring more potential voters who hadn't been excited about the party until Sanders into the fold.

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u/Galxloni2 8d ago

You guys always make the same bad argument. Your entire argument relies on Bernie "deserving" to win with 30% of the vote because the 70% who has the same platform were splitting the rest of the vote

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u/inuvash255 Massachusetts 8d ago

I'm not even making an argument. I'm not even saying it's unfair.

That's just what happened. They consolidated around Biden.

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u/Galxloni2 8d ago

you very obviously were making an arument. dont try and pretend you weren't

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u/guamisc 7d ago

The argument is that the party and primary voters keep putting up bad choices who keep letting shittier and shittier Republicans win.

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u/teplightyear Nevada 8d ago

Kamala didn't win any primaries.

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago edited 8d ago

You might want to re-read the comment thread and see what year everyone was talking about.

Even if you want to change the topic to other years else, it shouldn't need to be explained to you why 2024 was an exceptional circumstance. It's exactly what would have happened if Biden had been incapacitated. (Which arguably is basically what happened anyway.) "They won the primary" is true of every modern democratic primary, anyway.

Edit: The old reply-and-then-block, signature move of the thinnest skin around. Makes me wonder if they're a bot.

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u/teplightyear Nevada 8d ago

You said "Democrats "keep offering" the candidate who wins the primary." I showed an instance where that wasn't true. Point/counterpoint. I read the thread just fine.

Also, did Biden die? No. Did he resign the office of President? No. Was the 25th amendment invoked? No. He was alive, had a bad debate, and the DNC establishment decided without any input from the electorate that Kamala should be the candidate instead. It was a tremendous break from how our leaders are chosen.

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u/MountainMan2_ 8d ago edited 8d ago

Did you... Pay any attention to the 2020 primaries? The corporate Dems cleared the field for Biden and left a spoiler in warren on the progressive side to ensure Bernie didn't win. Then, conservative ass south Carolina voted Biden and the entire establishment told everyone to go home. At the same time, Republicans put 30 times the pressure on Bernie as they did Biden throughout the dem primary, and the Russian investigation came back that they WERE MEDDLING in 2016 but the corporate Dems hushed it immediately.

The level of pressure corporate Dems and Republicans put on the progressives to shut us up is incredible. If they treated us like part of the same damn party as the corporate Dems instead of literally a higher priority target than the Republicans, we'd have a hundred house seats. Don't pretend like this is all on us for losing. We have tried the corporate option. We have tried neoliberalism. It got us trump. The fact donors and party insiders are still hemming and hawing over whether to support progressives after 2020 signals a party that is more interested in being the minority in a dictatorship than sticking their neck out and pushing something new. Remember, MLK said his biggest opponent in the civil rights movement was the complacent voter. The one who thought that Jim crow was wrong but wasn't going to vote about it. At some point dem leadership needs to stop trying to be the perfect centrist and start pushing a narrative. That's what the Dems refuse to do and it's why the Republicans always have the edge. I guarantee you, 8 years ago not a single Republican could name a trans person in sports, and that shit pushed probably 10 million votes in 2024. The corporate Dems took that chance to introduce new issues and spent it finding the scientifically most average position possible until it was too late to actually stand for anything. They need to find common ground with their own party or get out of the way, because the progressives are the only side pushing new issues at all anymore. You can't argue numbers when you don't even have a platform beyond the status quo, that's like arguing about the decorations on the 53rd story of a skyscraper that's currently a parking lot.

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u/Zuwxiv 8d ago

Did you... Pay any attention to the 2020 primaries? The corporate Dems cleared the field for Biden and left a spoiler in warren on the progressive side to ensure Bernie didn't win

God, I'm sick of these "secret shadow people rigged the primary." It's just liberal Qanon.

In the 2020 primary, Biden got a majority of votes. Biden had almost twice as many votes as Bernie Sanders. Biden got more than 1.5 times as many votes as Sanders and Warren combined. This schtick got old in 2017. People didn't show up to vote for Bernie.

I don't know how you reconcile supporting democracy and having a huge problem that Biden, who got >50% of overall votes in the primary, won the primary. If it was Biden 37%, Bernie 35%, Warren 28% then you'd have a point. But Bernie just flat out won a majority of votes. Nobody stopped people from voting for Sanders (or Warren, for that matter).

There's a million things you can blame Democratic leadership for, but "Biden was genuinely more popular and got far more votes than everyone else, so he was our candidate" is not one of them.

Remember, MLK said his biggest opponent in the civil rights movement was the complacent voter. The one who thought that Jim crow was wrong but wasn't going to vote about it.

This is one of my favorite MLK quotes, so I think it's worth being specific. It wasn't about complacent voters. It was white moderates who agree with the principle, but find issue with the time or methods of seeking justice. Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White citizens’ “Councilor” or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direst action” who paternistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Changing gears: The reason Dems ran away from trans women in sports is because it's broadly unpopular with the population, including Democrats. Maybe "discretion is the better part of valor," and Democrats can pull an Obama on same sex marriage: Oppose it when running for office, but once you have power, work to protect rights.

Or maybe people should get more comfortable with holding an unpopular opinion when they believe it is just and right.

the progressives are the only side pushing new issues at all anymore.

100% agreed.

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u/Galxloni2 8d ago

You clearly do not remember that primary clearly at all, or you just were never paying attention in the first place

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u/guamisc 8d ago

The level of pressure corporate Dems and Republicans put on the progressives to shut us up is incredible.

It's incredible victim blaming. Just amazing the level of bullshit that gets flung for people that refuse to introspect at all.

No, it's the children who are wrong apparently.

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u/teplightyear Nevada 8d ago

Even more important: they didn't want a candidate foisted on them by the DNC without a primary. We do primaries in this country. We don't let the party heads pick the candidate. That was 100% of the reason Kamala lost.

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u/guamisc 7d ago

No it wasn't. It was a reason, not the reason.

The reason, if there is one, is that Democrats keep trying to get back to the status quo everyone fucking hates.

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u/wintersmith1970 8d ago

It was obvious that prior to Covid, the Democratic party wasn't expecting to win the presidential election, and were just trying to stifle any progressive candidates from getting the nomination. If Trump had properly handled the outbreak and the protests around the police he wouldn't have lost.

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u/Key_Inevitable_2104 New York 8d ago

I agree.

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u/Gekokapowco Washington 8d ago

2020 was really the "51% ice cream and a blowjob, 49% painful torturous death for yourself and everyone you know" voter split

the choice should have been extremely obvious but people vote against their own interests, and the stupidity x propaganda injection is simply too strong to overcome

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u/MoonBatsRule America 8d ago

Plenty of division was sowed prior to the 2020 election. Primarily:

  • "Masks are oppression unless I am trying to hide my identity when I invade the capitol!"
  • "We should have been like Sweden and just given everyone herd immunity!"
  • "We should have let the kids get infected, they would have been fine, and if their grandparents who take care of them die, well, that's a black thang!"
  • "Those people who died didn't die from COVID. They died from things like heart and lung failure, and just happened to have COVID at the time!"
  • "It was a lab leak!"
  • "Ivermectin! The government is stopping me from using horse medicine!"
  • "I'm a pureblood, I will never get the vaccine. In search of single white unvaccinated female".

A lot of people took the side of the morons. Yeah, some of the stuff was overblown in retrospect. Masking outdoors was dumb - but given the uncertainty of the disease, why not err on the side of caution a bit?

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u/No_Fairweathers Pennsylvania 8d ago

Well when you factor in Trump was probably right about voter fraud in 2020... FOR him, the results make more sense that they weren't a blow out.

He's pissed that he cheated and still lost. That's why he can't get over it.

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u/tomphammer 7d ago

No one was excited about Biden. There were maybe a tiny minority of people who managed to deluded themselves into thinking they were, but he was a choice in resignation.

With a candidate that amounted to a heavy sigh and “alright” at the top of the ticket, why would Dems win down ballot races?

They never had a shot

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u/brundlfly 7d ago

Behold, the power of the media to sway opinion. Other reasons too, but large swaths of the country don't even look at anything but Fox.