Turkeys and Drumsticks 2019

Michael Siegel

Michael Siegel is an astronomer living in Pennsylvania. He blogs at his own site, and has written a novel.

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81 Responses

  1. J_A says:

    Say what you want about Johnson, at least you know where he stands.

    He stands wherever Boris Johnson profits the most, which changes day by day. He wrote two op-eds before the Brexit referendum, before deciding which one to publish, because he didn’t care about the EU, but about what position would be better for him personally. And more recently, he threw the DUP under the bus not a week later than telling them he will stand with them for a UNITED UK.

    That, of course, only makes him more of a turkey. But I can’t let than small whiff of a praise for Boris pass on under the radar.Report

  2. J_A says:

    2013: Francis I

    It took me ten minutes to understand you meant the Pope. I was trying to think which Francis I you meant, given that the last two Francis I of any note (King of the Two Sicilies, and Emperor of Austria, respectively) both died in the 1830s.

    Pedantic interlude:The numbering convention for monarchs used to be that you add the number with the second monarch of the same name. It’s Pope Francis until we get a Pope Francis II /pedantic interlude.

    Second pedantic interlude: King Juan Carlos of Spain went on as Juan Carlos I. Given that he was my own king, it grated me. Thank goodness I have a Felipe VI now as king /second pedantic interlude.Report

  3. DensityDuck says:

    Biden shouldn’t be running.

    He’s a front-runner solely on the strength of name recognition. Nobody knows who the hell any of the rest of these people are, and they don’t bother to find out, because there’s Joe Biden on the list so they pick him because they recognize the name. That. Is. All. They don’t care about his policies, they don’t care about his history, they don’t care about his performance, they care about him running as a Democrat and they recognize his name.

    Biden is sucking all the oxygen out of the room just by showing up. Nobody cares about discussion of the issues, differentiation between candidates, careful ratiocination of the subtle differences between A Public Option and Single-Payer Healthcare because there’s The Name We’ve All Heard Before up there and everybody picks that because it’s easier than paying attention.

    And…people aren’t wrong, really, to do this? I mean there’s no much to differentiate one white dude from another, and the non-white dudes and non-dude whites all sound just like the white dudes, and the only non-white-non-dude is even more focused on putting black people in jail than any of the white dudes, so, there you go. Might as well pick the name you’ve heard because they don’t let you out of the booth unless you’ve put a mark next to someone’s name.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to DensityDuck says:

      Michael Harriot at The Root wrote an opinion piece on Pete Buttigeig and I imagine that he will get a lot of pushback from people on the left for using strong and unequivocal language in his condemnation of a presidential contender.

      There.

      I rewrote the last part of that last sentence five times.Report

      • Michael Siegel in reply to Jaybird says:

        I just read that since it was trending. Not sure an eight-year old comment is going to scuttle his campaign. But Mayor Pete is going absolutely nowhere if he doesn’t turn around his polling with black people and fast. Black people are the main reason is the front-runner right now. You can’t win the Dem primary without them.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Michael Siegel says:

          There is a hypothesis that IdPol is why Trump won in 2016. (This hypothesis is popular because it allows people to not have to talk about Clinton as they discuss why Trump won.)

          If this hypothesis is accurate, it is worth exploring whether it applies to 2020 as well.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        Eh, Pete wasn’t ever going to be supported by that wing of the community regardless of what quote that they find to freak out about. The question is whether he can appeal to the rather jaded, reserved (and predominantly female) AA constituency of the Democratic party that actually votes and moves nominations. The BLM wing of the community is probably to fragmented at the moment to swing the needle since they haven’t united behind any one candidate.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

        A followup has been written.

        It’s not an *APOLOGY*, really… but if someone said that Michael walked back his fiercest criticisms, I’d say “yeah, I agree with that”.Report

        • North in reply to Jaybird says:

          That is very interesting. I don’t think this will move the wing Michael represents much but maybe it’ll cool their animus a little. About as good an outcome as Buttigeig could ask for.Report

        • DensityDuck in reply to Jaybird says:

          “And you can’t say: ‘Black kids don’t have confidence in the system’ without pointing out all of the reasons they shouldn’t have confidence in the system.””

          This is an extremely good point. The issue is not positive examples of success, the world is full of those, the issue is negative examples of people doing shit to black people and getting away with it, and that matters more. Examples of cops shooting the shit out of black guys in situations that a four-year-old child could have talked down, of black mothers getting told that they’re not allowed to send their kids to better schools because reasons.Report

          • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

            I see that argument a lot, that, for example, people should not be so critical of police, and that the media never reports on all the good things that police do! Like how they didn’t shoot that other black guy, and instead they helped him out! See, it’s not racist!

            Completely missing the obviousness of, not shooting a person and actually helping them out is (or at the very least, should be) the basic level of service that is their fecking job! No, the media is not going to report on water being wet (one would hope, maybe it’s a slow news day), because news reports on things that are outside the norm.

            Of course, the media also fails to regularly report all the little, and not so little, ways the police/the system fails to help, and causes undo harm instead, but which doesn’t rise to the level of being news worthy.

            And PS, I use police as an example, but you see this in relation to other government agencies as well, not just the ones conservatives prefer. Police are just one of the most visible (and one of my Hobby Horses).

            I find it frankly disturbing how readily people want to make examples of basic human decency into shining examples of selflessness and courage, and what I would call appalling displays of cruelty and callousness become normative and not worth worrying about.Report

            • DensityDuck in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

              I think it is absolutely okay to celebrate good deeds.

              The pathology comes from using those good deeds as some kind of karmic balance. This is how abusers work. “I know I get mad and yell and sometimes I hit you but look how much fun we have together, look at all these good things I do for you, doesn’t that mean something?”Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

                Yes, thank you, that is pretty much what I meant.

                Relatedly, you ever notice how when an officer is in the news for a bad act, they are refereed to as a “Decorated Officer”, which implies that they’ve gotten a number of awards and citations for bravery, without ever explaining just how often PDs give out such awards for acts which are maybe just a bit above what is expected of the job of a first responder.

                It’s a known issue in the military, where commanders would put in for awards and ribbons for every little thing because if their troops were getting awards, the commander would look good for leading such top notch people (and the troops would hopefully love and respect the commander more). Obviously the brass tends to frown upon such things, because it breeds Trumps.Report

  4. Michael Cain says:

    A quibble with classifying Minnesota as a “large” state. Using the 2019 population estimates they’re #22, having fallen a place from the 2010 census (Colorado passed them). Minnesota is on the bubble to lose a House seat after the 2020 census.

    When I was on the legislative staff in Colorado, I lost track of the number of times I was speaking with some member and said something like, “With all due respect, Colorado is no longer a poor-ish small-population state with an economy based on agriculture and extraction. We’re a rich-ish medium-population state with an economy based on tech and services.”Report

  5. Oscar Gordon says:

    Regarding the Candidate Field – Even my wife, who is a stalwart Democrat, is resigning herself to 4 more years of Trump because every candidate sucks.Report

    • I no longer consider myself competent to judge the national situation. The whole thing probably comes down to five states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. I don’t know enough about any of them to understand what’s happening there.Report

    • greginak in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

      I think this is all perception and mood. People want a dominant candidate with transcendent skills and the clearly perfect message. Maybe that comes out over time but not usually this early. In any case the insanely long campaign means every candidate gets beat up and questioned to hell and back. We havn’t even had one primary yet. Strong candidates comes out of the primaries not the endless poo storm of a year of pre primary jockeying.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to greginak says:

        More just a lack of interest in any of them. She was really excited about HRC, and she will most definitely vote for whoever wins the primary, but if the WA primary was held today, she’d have no clear idea who’d she’d want to vote for.Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

          That’s exactly what I’m seeing (or feeling?): the majority of Dem voters are resigned to voting for whoever comes out of the Dem primary but are so uninspired by those candidates they don’t really care who it is. Personally, I’m not sure there’s a platform a Dem could run on that would capture the zeitgeist of the moment the way (say) Obama did back in ’06, which is an indictment of what the party has effectively become. Most Dem voters, I think, are pessimistic not only about America’s future but also about the ability of liberal Dem top-down solutions to actually work at the scale they’re being sold.. Biden, on the other hand, is a loony and pretty gross old man. That leaves Buttigeig, the one unknown quantity in the Dem field who is also, imo, the best retail politician in the field. But … but he’s a 37 year old gay tiny-town mayor who African Americans don’t like. (I also don’t know a single plank of his platform, which is to his credit!) Can Mayor Pete beat Trump? Can he inspire enthusiasm? He’s currently being absolutely gutted by the lefties…Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Stillwater says:

            The prospect of the gallows has a way of sharpening enthusiasm for the alternative.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              Well, we’ll see. If the Democrats want to run 2020 on an anti-Trump/anti-GOP platform they should be airing TV and other ads in heavy rotation starting, like, yesterday, cuz the problem right now isn’t that people think Trump and the GOP aren’t corrupt but that they think the GOP is no more corrupt than the Democrats. Shifting that perception is a hard sell. 🙂Report

              • North in reply to Stillwater says:

                I’ve not seen that many election cycles but in the few I have seen I haven’t ever seen the Dems purity politics ever have much legs or take much of a bite when there’s a Republican in the White House. Was it different in 1996 or earlier?Report

  6. Chip Daniels says:

    I think the term “weak candidate” needs to be retired.

    There isn’t any way to differentiate it from “candidate I don’t care for” and it is always deployed as a way to make a subjective opinion sound like fact.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      See also: “strong candidate”.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

      Oh, I bet one of our election stats wonks can come up with a polling standard that differentiates a weak and a strong candidate.Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Not in the way the terms are used in common discussion.

        Consider how it is used in this essay.

        Michael tells us the Democratic field is weak, then goes on to say “I really think these dopes are going to get Trump re-elected. ”

        Which is a pretty common thing to see online, but no less astounding for its premises.

        A personal opinion is offered as an objective fact, then is followed by a conclusion where half the electorate is stripped of any agency or responsibility for their actions.

        Do the Trumpists vote because of their own willful choice? No, of course not!

        They were compelled against their will to do it, by the inability of the Democrats to provide a better alternative!

        The danger of this line of illogic is that it prevents us from facing the stark truth that for about 30-40% of the electorate, open fascism and white supremacy is perfectly acceptable, and for a subset of that number, is the only choice they will accept.

        Its possible that Democratic candidate could cobble together a coalition of Never-Trumpers and Democrats in enough strength to win. I certainly hope so.

        But that requires people to think more in terms of rejecting Trumpism, rather than pining for a superhero who will save us.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          I think you need to re-read that whole paragraph about Trump being the Devil.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          Seen on twitter:

          Report

          • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

            Has anyone bothered to ask them which moderate Democrat they would choose, over Trump?

            Its not like there is a scarcity of moderate Democratic candidates, right?
            Bloomberg, Swallwell, Gabbard, Bennett, Hickenlooper…none of these guys caught their fancy?Report

            • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

              If I had to guess, I’d say “Yang Fan”.

              But he’s not one of those who thinks that everybody else must be like him and therefore would also pick Yang if only they had access to the closer-to-perfect information that he has.

              He’s one of those who knows that most people don’t agree with him and yet tries to model their thoughtprocesses in such a way that he can get closer to understanding them anyway.

              And from there reaches conclusions.

              If I had to guess.

              Want me to see if I can get him to show up in comments?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Jaybird says:

            Here’s another take on that same article:

            That said: if this is the Democrats’ election to lose, they should do what they can to not lose it.Report

        • Pinky in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          Presidential elections follow 5 steps:

          Primary candidates of both parties declare
          Stuff
          Candidates chosen
          Stuff
          General election

          Each of these steps is affected by the previous ones, and each of them is affected by expectations about the subsequent steps.

          Given all that, a strong candidate is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition. The judgments are subjective (or at least driven by expectations), but there’s no sense in which they diminish anyone’s agency. For example, It’s foreseeable that a qualified but boring candidate would be weaker than a qualified and interesting candidate; that doesn’t deny that people should be able to make better decisions.

          And I personally don’t use the terms “weak” or “strong” candidate because I have no confidence in my ability to predict elections, but I’m not going to criticize anyone for using the terms.Report

          • Stillwater in reply to Pinky says:

            Given all that, a strong candidate is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition.

            I’d say that process broke down pretty significantly in 2016, when Trump was chosen by the Republican electorate primarily as a repudiation of the GOP. No one except for Michael Moore and the Dilbert guy thought he would actually win in the general.

            The positive moral of the Trump story, if there is one, is that primary voters should vote their conscience and take their chances and the general election will take care of itself.Report

            • Pinky in reply to Stillwater says:

              Maybe I should have said that “the definition of a ‘strong’ candidate” is someone at Step 1-2 who is expected to do well in Step 4-5 against the expected opposition. I was looking at the meaning of the term, not the success rate of any perceived group of candidates. In any multi-stage game, the expected outcome of the later stages is going to be part of the calculation in developing a plan in the early stages of the game. No guarantees are given, however.

              As for 2016, a lot of people supported Trump because they thought he’d be a good match-up against Clinton. He was seen as a repudiation of both parties, as I recall, and I’m fairly sure he did better in open primaries than in primaries of the exclusively-Republican electorate.Report

  7. Pinky says:

    Hong Kong didn’t get a drumstick?Report

  8. PD Shaw says:

    I’m not sure how Boris Johnson could be seen as a failure in this election because it was an election that he was seeking. He inherited a party that had repeatedly failed to pass a withdrawal agreement as promised in its manifesto. He needed and wanted an election and the Fixed Term Parliament Act generally prevents a minority government to call an election. Withdrawing the whip from rebel Tories, proroguing Parliament, and demonstrating a willingness to accept a no-deal, got him his election with the media’s helpful outrage. In the process, he unified his party and to a large extent the leave vote. If he gets a twenty seat majority in the next Parliament, it will be an accomplishment.

    Also, interesting that both major parties have committed to repeal of the Fixed Term Parliament Act in their manifestos.Report

    • Marchmaine in reply to PD Shaw says:

      Well said… If, and I say If at this point, Boris returns with an outright Majority it will be a political masterstroke worth studying in the future.Report

      • PD Shaw in reply to Marchmaine says:

        Also, pretty big given Conservatives have been in power since 2010, so they could be in control for 14 years.

        One of the things that stands out to me is that when Boris was challenged about his claim that the UK could spend the 350 million pounds per week now being sent to the EU on the NHS instead, they decided to stick by their figures. Not clarify or backtrack. The media went all out on establishing the more accurate net figures of somewhere btw/ 275M to 160M per week as if it defeated the underlying points. (The UK sends a lot of money; and we can spend it on things we like) This is about navigating social media driven election coverage and getting it to pay attention where you want it.Report

    • North in reply to PD Shaw says:

      Yeah, I mean he deserves the Turkey because of who he is and what he’s after but he’s a very opportunistic and capable politician running a very risky play.
      The Trump in Britain is the execrable Corbyn despite how Trump and he basically are diametric opposites in personality.Report

  9. Jesse says:

    Meanwhile, outside of the Ordinary Times bubble, actual Democrat’s are satisfied with their choices.

    https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/do-you-buy-that-democratic-voters-want-a-new-2020-candidate/

    “First, Democratic voters are extremely happy with the field as is. According to a July poll by the Pew Research Center, 65 percent of Democrats rate their field as “excellent” or “good.” That’s essentially tied with 2008 for the highest enthusiasm Pew has ever found among Democrats:

    And the numbers may have only improved since then — a HuffPo/YouGov poll conducted last week found 83 percent of Democrats were satisfied with their choices.”Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Jesse says:

      Checking to see what the numbers were in 2016…

      Huh, Looky there.

      Anyway, this is an interesting poll and thank you for sharing it.

      He’s higher on Warren than I would be, but both Biden and Sanders would win two out of three of MI, WI, PA so they’d pretty much both beat Trump.

      So far, so good.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        I think a better comparison is 2008. In 2016 the Dems had a “strong” candidate and the official line was that they were rigging the contest or putting their eggs all in one basket. Though even in 2008 I suppose there was already a “strong” candidate assumed to win.

        But I do agree with Jesse. I think it’s ludicrously early to be pronouncing the Democratic Candidate field as weak or strong.Report

        • Jaybird in reply to North says:

          In 2008, there were a couple of things going on.

          ANYBODY would have beaten the Republican candidate. Friggin’ *ANYBODY*.

          That said, during the primaries, I had the idea that Clinton was a juggernaut and Obama was a juggernaut and, holy crap, these were two juggernauts fighting each other.

          The sainted Gorilla Monsoon would have said “the unstoppable force versus the immovable object!” as part of the buildup to this match.

          And, dang, they beat the crap out of each other. By some measures, Clinton won the 2008 primary (to conclude that, you have to ignore certain shenanigans in Michigan which, seriously, should have caused a bigger ruckus than they did and should have been a bigger warning about 2016 than they were).

          This time? Well, I don’t get the feeling of there being several candidates that are equally juggernauting amongst themselves.Report

          • North in reply to Jaybird says:

            No, there’re no obvious juggernauts I suppose unless one counts Bidens oddly gaffe proof campaign.
            I also remember the presence of those juggernauts being cited as a sign of the paucity of the Democratic Party’s feebleness. Now their absence is a sign of Democratic Party malaise.
            This, I note, coming from a conservative who’s own party had a deep bench of conservative politicians who then got whupped by a grifter reality TV star. This cycle the Democrats closest equivalent (Williamson) is barely a footnote.

            I just am noting that the the Democrats potential roster is always bad; the reasons its bad change like a rolling slot machine screen but you never have any doubt what the prognosis will be.Report

            • Jaybird in reply to North says:

              This tweet got a lot of play last week. It’s marginally insightful.

              I just am noting that the the Democrats potential roster is always bad

              I’m saying that it’s not. In 2008 it wasn’t. That a million years ago, true, but those were two heavy hitters.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Funny, I recall a lot of people saying it was bad in 2008. Nothing on the field but corrupt ol’ Hillary Clinton and a bunch of also-rans.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                You don’t remember the excitement over Barack Obama’s speech in 2004? (When he won in Chicago and defeated the carpetbagging Alan Keyes?)

                You don’t remember *THIS* energy:

                ???Report

              • Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird says:

                Ultra right-wing partisan makes snippy tweets at Democrats, Jaybird swoons as if it were gospel truth that does not need to be weighted, Franco is still dead.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

                I swooned over Andrew Yang promising to get rid of Daylight Saving Time.

                This is merely me saying “huh, yeah”.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                Before Obama blew up, the critiques were common and gusty. After Obama blew up the critiques were deeply skeptical- note how even AA’s didn’t begin switching over on Obama until he had his success in Iowa. Once he beat Hillary then all talk was about PUMA’s and then got increasingly shrill and desperate until his landslide victory.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                Maybe I am too close to an enthusiast but Maribou happened to have been in Chicago in 2004 visiting friends when Obama got elected to the Senate.

                And she sang his praises there for a good, long while.

                So my take on enthusiasm for Obama may be skewed, I admit.Report

              • North in reply to Jaybird says:

                S’why I try and keep about half my reading in conservative outlets.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to North says:

                I was at Red State at the time! (full disclosure: banned, etc)

                They were attacking him back in 2004. (“B. Hussein Obama” was the big one that Moe Lane (remember him?) called “Low Rent” and got called out for it.)Report

    • George Turner in reply to Jesse says:

      I would question what the poll is really getting at. What it might be measuring is simply “Do you think the folks in the current field can beat the opposition’s candidates?”

      Back in 2008 they may have been worried that Americans wouldn’t turn out to elect a black candidate or a female candidate (Obama and Hillary), and there were no other options on the table. But a majority of them figured either Obama or Hillary could probably beat some Bush replacement (which turned out to be McCain/Palin). I don’t know if the question was even polled in 2012, but 2004 might be a better basis for comparison.

      What I fear might skew this poll is that it might be measuring a different question, “Do you think any Democrat with a pulse can beat Trump?” I would expect that at least 65 percent of Democrats, especially CNN viewers, would answer “Yes!”

      It might be hard to drill much deeper, even though there’s plenty of polling on head-to-head match ups, because what’s being sampled is what Democrat’s think other Democrat’s will do if their candidate is ‘X’. That’s a bit indirect and fraught with problems. Most respondents might assume that all the Bernie Bros or Yang folks would rally behind ‘X’ even if that wouldn’t really happen. Or most supporters of ‘X’ might answer that if X isn’t the candidate, X will fail to rally the party, all the fringe supporters will bail, and Trump will win, which is the argument a candidate’s supporters will often make to try to sway people who are supporting someone else.Report

  10. LeeEsq says:

    What’s happening with the Democratic Primary is that the invisible primary is now visible. This means that a lot of formerly hidden chaos is open for people to see.Report

  11. You say ” die-hard San Francisco liberal” as if it were a bad thing.Report

  12. Also, how did you not give Erdogan a Turkey?Report

  13. Burt Likko says:

    I would nominate for a Turkey of the Year a group of Republican Congressmen who may be called the “Trump Minions” or some other similar name. These include such notable figures as Devin Nunes, who minionized himself with repeated re-broadcast of already-debunked and not-particularly-coherent conspiracy theories; Matt Gaetz, whose protests over “star chamber” hearings upon which his own colleagues were sitting culminated in an unauthorized entry into a secured room with an unsecured cell phone; Jim Jordan, who did not let his implication into covering up a sustained practice of rape while he was coach of the Ohio State wrestling program, or his failure to have purchased a suit jacket, stop him from making emotionally powerful but factually sparse questions during the impeachment inquiry; and most of all, Kevin McCarthy, whose twenty-minute interview on 60 minutes contained so little cogent argument it raised real questions about his sobriety and intellectual capacity. Mick Mulvaney, no longer a member of Congress, also gets the biggest Cabinet-level Turkey nomination in l’Affaire d’Ukraine for being the first one to just blurt out “Of course there was a quid pro quo, we do that sort of thing all the time around here. Deal with it.” Turkey awards all around, if you ask me.

    The Sane Republicans may have won an award in 2018; after Flake’s retirement, Kelly’s and Mattis’ firings; McCain’s death, Sasse and Snowe’s capitulation, and Amash’s defection to independent status, I’m not sure who counts as a “Sane Republican” anymore. I might once have said Nikki Haley but, no, she disqualified herself last week.

    As for a Golden Drumstick, I would nominate the 2019 United States Women’s National Soccer Team, who won their eighth (!) World Cup with panache, dominance, and a tremendous show of personality. Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Julie Ertz, Tobin Heath, and most of all Megan Rapinoe showed the world a level of soccer dominance once reserved for players with single names from Brazil. Way to go!Report

  14. Saul Degraw says:

    1. The rest of the United States continues to vastly overestimate the extent to which San Francisco politics is really far to the left or radical. Generally it is the moderate politicians who win election in city-wide races. London Breed (supported by property developers) won election against the more radical Jane Kim, as did upzoner and development friendly Scott Weiner. Chesa Boudin barely won his reformist race for San Francisco DA compared to typical DA candidate Suzy Loftus thanks to many rounds of ranked-choice voting, etc.

    2. With all due respect, your politics are still pretty far to the right, and this causes you to have “I can’t give the Democrats and/or liberals any breaks or credit” as a default thought status. I can think of this as being true for a bunch of posters here because the posters here tend to be older white or white enough dudes. All the polling so far shows that the Democratic candidates easily lead against Trump. The 2017, 2018, and 2019 elections were all very favorable to the Democrats. Republicans lost counties that they held for decades and sometimes over a century (Delaware County, Pennsylvania). Yet there is a still a certain kind of right-leaning older white guy who still can’t give Democrats any credit and would rather undergo unnecessary chemotherapy and surgery (without anesthetic) than give Democrats a lick of credit. It is quite a fascinating knee-jerk reaction.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      San Francisco isn’t radical leftism anymore. It’s hypercapitalist technocratic/philanthropic libertinism.

      You’d think that it’d be more popular among the rubes in flyover.Report

      • North in reply to Jaybird says:

        The “rubes in flyover” aren’t libertarian, they aren’t capitalist or technocratic nor are they libertines so why would they like San Francisco?Report

      • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

        The janitorial staff, the retail clerks, the city maintenance workers in SF, are they rubes, hypercapitalist technocrats, or philanthropic libertines?

        The manager of a Con-Agra facility in Nebraska living in a McMansion; which one is he? The women’s studies professor in Iowa? The blogger who wrote that angry article about Mayor Pete? Rubes, or snooty liberal elitists?

        As long as I have this power to dispel tired cliches, can I wish this “coastal elite vs flyover proles” stuff to the cornfield as well?Report

        • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

          Oh, they’re populist as hell. Remember when they were attacking the Google shuttles?

          I think that they’re populist left rather than populist right, though… so I suppose we could see how they’re on the same “side” as Google, but I doubt the people on the buses thought they were.

          The people who were throwing bricks sure as hell thought they weren’t.Report

      • Michael Cain in reply to Jaybird says:

        Interestingly, Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska — as flyover as you can get — are doing quite well with the capital and tech stuff. Granted, the tech has a somewhat rural lean, which is not being met by the “coastal elites”, who are not interested in, eg, all of the ways that GPS and cheap processing power can make farming more efficient.

        I was in Kansas last month and had a very interesting conversation with my BIL about which GPS-based services were worth the money and which weren’t. The very expensive GPS-plus-inertial-guidance that let the tractor make the turn at the end of the row on its own was not; the GPS-plus-soil-samples that let him correct for someone else’s years of mistakes in soil treatment to bump yields up significantly was.Report

    • Jesse in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Silly Saul, no elections happened between 2016 and now in Jaybird land.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jesse says:

        Saul’s comment was to the OP.

        The election that I care about between now and 2016 is the 2018 one which was, indeed, a blue wave (that is to say: it exceeded what I figured “regression to the mean” would look like and it wasn’t close).

        But, no, I’m not willing to use the last election to conclude that the Dems have it in the bag.

        And if the left thinks that 2018 and the handful of off-year elections in 2017 and 2019 means that they have it in the bag, they’re going to be wearing similar facial expressions on election night 2020 that they wore on election night 2016.Report