10th November 2020, 4:50 PM
We'll need a new politics thread soon, but I say keep this one until Trump is actually gone.
On the one hand, the ongoing COVID-19 tragedy boosted turnout among Democrats and turned more moderates against Trump. It helped us defeat him for sure, and seeing how close the election was in the states that matter the most, we needed all the help we can get.
On the other hand, due to COVID, Democrats did almost no door-to-door campaiging and GOTV (get out the vote) operations; instead, GOTV was mostly phone and internet-based, which are much less effective. It is hard to get many more Dem-leaning constituencies to vote, such as minorities, immigrants, etc; without GOTV efforts, even with how horrible Trump is some probably did not vote who would have in a normal year. I really do think that the lack of GOTV hurt Democrats nationwide.
The question is, which of these forces is the stronger one? Did we only win because of COVID, did it help us, or was is kind of a wash in the end as the loss of GOTV hurt us as much as the Trump administration's disastrous pandemic response hurt? I suspect the answer is that it helped more than it hurt, but I'm sure there will be analysies of this question in the future.
Quote:I did say that Biden would not beat Trump, but this was before COVID-19 came along, and I feel that the numbers from this election make it very clear that Donald Trump would have won if China hadn't forced him to fuck up literally everything about pandemic management and crater the economy.) This election makes me breathe a sigh of relief, and I do feel that Joe Biden will definitely be a better president, I think the Democratic Party got a gift from god and the left have earned their place at the table, because we are absolutely necessary to your future success and there's no denying it now. But, if we are into more lying to ourselves, we will look at this as a rejection of Trumpism and the alt-right. Clearly, the Democrats' strategy of "hoping good republicans will change parties" did not work at all. Trump earned almost 8 million more votes than he did four years ago, and his popular vote total is second-best of all time. If the Democrats move to the left with vigor, running aggressively on progressive policies while framing them to appeal to moderates, they will grow and win. If they do anything else, they will be lucky to survive another loss.On this issue, here's the big question: there are two forces at work here, which is stronger?
On the one hand, the ongoing COVID-19 tragedy boosted turnout among Democrats and turned more moderates against Trump. It helped us defeat him for sure, and seeing how close the election was in the states that matter the most, we needed all the help we can get.
On the other hand, due to COVID, Democrats did almost no door-to-door campaiging and GOTV (get out the vote) operations; instead, GOTV was mostly phone and internet-based, which are much less effective. It is hard to get many more Dem-leaning constituencies to vote, such as minorities, immigrants, etc; without GOTV efforts, even with how horrible Trump is some probably did not vote who would have in a normal year. I really do think that the lack of GOTV hurt Democrats nationwide.
The question is, which of these forces is the stronger one? Did we only win because of COVID, did it help us, or was is kind of a wash in the end as the loss of GOTV hurt us as much as the Trump administration's disastrous pandemic response hurt? I suspect the answer is that it helped more than it hurt, but I'm sure there will be analysies of this question in the future.
Quote:I also think that winning the two runoff elections in Georgia would make Kamala Harris, the effective tie-breaking senator in a 50-50 party split, the most powerful vice-president in American history, as well as (perhaps) the most powerful woman on earth. It would not be wise for the party to emphasize this fact in Georgia.Heh, maybe not. I think we go into these runoffs probably more likely to lose than to win, but if we do win it will lead to a dramatically different next two years, so whatever we think will help should be done...