neroden
Model S Owner and Frustrated Tesla Fan
There is a vast split between the younger generations and older generations in this country. I try to take into account that older generations always think the young are the end of everything and we've managed to muddle through, but this time there may actually be a very deep generational rift, at least in politics..
It's a huge, huge rift, and it's right around the 1974 birth year, just so you know.
No. The "center" is mythical -- you've been studying politics, you should know this by now.What we need is a candidate who will appeal to the center and the right of center disgusted with Trump.
What we need is a candidate who is, and comes across as, honest and straightforward and a real reformer. And Biden looks this way to people who haven't bothered to look at his record. But as soon as his record is pulled out in the general election, all those right-of-center people will abandon him -- just as they abandoned John Kerry, who actually was honest but was made to look otherwise.
There is no middle of the electorate. You really haven't been paying attention to the studies on this, have you?The middle of the electorate just want the madness to end.
These are the groups:
(1) Establishment Democrats (Habitual Democratic Voters)
(2) Left-wing Democrats
(3) Left-wingers who won't call themselves Democrats because of Democratic Party corruption
(4) Right-wing Religious Fanatics (some are abandoning voting because of Republican corruption)
(5) Fascists (these are now very loyal to the Republicans)
(6) Habitual Republican Voters (these are reachable)
(7) Right-wingers who won't call themselves Republicans because of Republican Party corruption
(8) People with radical views some of which are left and some of which are right, who are in neither party -- there are actually quite a lot of these.
There is NO mushy middle. The studies make this super clear.
Jim Hightower said the only thing in the middle of the road was dead armadillos.
The people in group (8) can be won over by just getting one policy they care about right, and being *convincing about actually executing it*, because group (8) is very very cynical. Serve up an "establishment" figure, and you lose all of them. They'll vote for Sanders because of his sincerity and consistency, or for Gary Johnson, but never for a Hillary or a Biden.
Look at Beto and how well he did in Texas of all places. Did he do well by being "moderate"? Absolutely not. He did well by being genuine and grassroots.
Biden sort of seems genuine and grassroots on a shallow viewing, but as soon as his record of promoting debt slavery and helping bankers starts being noticed...
That would definitely change things.Because of this, there is a better than average chance Trump may not be the Republican candidate in 2020.
That's why Biden's a god-awful candidate.The US has the different party systems that switch every 30-50 years and the US is ripe for another one. At the end of a party system cycle there is a sense the old ideas are stale and not working anymore and people are ripe for something new, a new direction. That's happening in the US.
Yes.The midterm elections were not only a rebuke of Trump, but also a sign of that thirst for change.
I hope he manages to stop looking like The Stale Old Ideas, but he looks awfully like The Stale Old Ideas right now.If the trend continues, the next Congress will likely be more progressive than this one. Biden is a moderate, but he will likely go along with a Congress that's more liberal than what he's used to. His political career started during the unraveling of the New Deal party system and the bulk of it was during the conservative Reagan party system. He had to adopt to more conservative ideals because that's the way the political winds were blowing. But he also has evolved with the time. He embraced same sex marriage quite quickly and he says he now regrets some of his more conservative moves in the past.
My priority is a candidate who looks new. ANY of the other candidates has at least one signature plan for changing SOMETHING which everyone agrees is broken and has been broken for a long time. Whether it's Buttegieg or Beto or Cory Booker or even Harris. Several have picked healthcare -- and a majority of Republicans support single-payer according to the last polling I read!
What's Biden got? Nothing so far. That worries me a LOT.