Horn2RunAgain
2,500+ Posts
Governor Black Face is reportedly ecstatic.
New York State's New Abortion Law
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It shouldn't be long before Longest moves to the state of his utopian vision, Virginia, right?
Does that actually represent the views of most Virginians or simply the views of most Virginia Democrats? This is a state that elected a lot Republicans until very recently. I doubt that we've actually had that radical of an ideological shift that fast. What I suspect is that this has far more to do with crappy branding and messaging than sincere ideology.
However, at some point, we need to start asking how many suburban voters can we afford to drive (and with nothing to show for it) before we're losing states like this all over the country. I've never heard a Trump advocate explain the strategy for the suburbs. All I've heard is whining and denialism.
I'm sure that's happening to a point. (I think Virginia's situation is complicated by being closer to Washington, D.C., but the arrival of out-of-state liberals probably makes a difference.)
However, what's the strategy for dealing with this? Who is reaching out to these voters? Somebody needs to.
Seattle Husker
10,000+ Posts
This. Trump is becoming a huge liability in nearly every suburb in the country.
Monahorns
10,000+ Posts
Deez, Virginia voting is now dominated by Nortthern Virginia which is basically DC. As the population in N VA has increased, the state has become more Democrat.
They are essentially becoming DC politically. I don't think it is Trump. This trend happened long before Trump.
Personally, if I live in VA outside of Northern VA, I would want to cede it over to DC. All those people are either career bureaucrats, government linked lawyers, think tank workers, or work for the military industrial complex. All those groups are becoming more and more Progressive.
They are essentially becoming DC politically. I don't think it is Trump. This trend happened long before Trump.
Personally, if I live in VA outside of Northern VA, I would want to cede it over to DC. All those people are either career bureaucrats, government linked lawyers, think tank workers, or work for the military industrial complex. All those groups are becoming more and more Progressive.
I get that, but the root of the problem is that they're now getting hammered in Northern Virginia. That didn't used to be the case. They used to be able to get significant numbers of upper-echelon professionals (both federal employees and otherwise) and military personnel in the area to vote GOP. That's why they held the 10th congressional district (which has a lot of Northern VA) for several decades until 2018.
To be fair, this isn't all Trump's fault. It was happening before he ran for President, but he has greatly accelerated and aggravated the problem. When I became politically active in the '90s, most professionals were conservative. Basically, if you weren't a college professor, social worker, teacher, or a plaintiff's lawyer, you were a conservative. Why? Because our ideas were right and made sense, and we actually tried to persuade people. Furthermore, we had credibility on tax and fiscal issues. In the last 20 years, we've blown that, and that is what really started the problem. But in addition to that, instead of putting sensible people who actually advocate for conservative policy at the forefront, we put a trash-talking jackass who talks like a 6th grade bully at the forefront.
Let me give you some facts, Deez. The so-called sensible people like Romney and McCain lost. Let's face it, Only Trump could win the Rust Belt states. Also, I resent you talking about the "conservative movement" when you were perfectly happy to let Clinton win because you didn't like Trump. If it was up to you we wouldn't know about the corruption coming from our intel agencies and the Supreme Court would have turned blue.
More dancing around and more proving my point.
@Garmel , let me explain the problem with your rationale, to the extent that we can call it that. You assume that because I'm not a Trump fan that I am a McCain or Romney fan and think guys like them are the answer. I'm not, and they aren't. I don't hate those guys either. They are with us far more often than they are against us, so we need them in our coalition.
What we really need to do is restore the intellectual side of conservatism. The real strength of conservative policy is that it is supported by empirical evidence, has withstood the test of time, and it is responsible. It doesn't just "feel right" or "sound right." It is right on the objective merits. That's why educated, rational people in the suburbs have generally been conservative. They see what free markets have done in their own lives and in their country and don't want it disrupted by risky government schemes that waste their money and usually yield poor results.
Once the intellectual angle is restored, then you can convince people on the merits to embrace conservative policy and candidates. You have to go out there and win the argument, and you have to keep doing it again and again and again like the left does. For the most part in the last 10 - 20 years, we haven't even been making it, and we're so out of practice that we're almost incoherent.
And you can roll your eyes about this all you want, but you also have to talk to people in a way that makes them receptive to your message. Otherwise, their minds won't be open. This is where acting like an ******* makes a difference.
We also need to restore our credibility on fiscal conservatism. I know you hate his guts, but set aside your contempt for a moment and consider a guy like Husker. Our messaging to guys like him is terrible. However, the bigger challenge is lost credibility. We used to be able to appeal to people like him on fiscal responsibility. "We disagree with you on some social issues, but we won't shove it in your face every five minutes and won't piss your money away, ruin the economy, and put your kids' generation into bankruptcy." That resonates but only if you have the credibility to make that pitch. We don't anymore, so it rings hollow when we try.
You may think I'm full of ****, but if you do, then what's your plan or strategy? We may have won in 2016, but we've been losing ever since. We hemorrhaged seats in the suburbs. We're not going to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin if we're losing the suburbs in the states. Even worse, we're letting Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia slip away. What's your plan for reversing that trend?
What we really need to do is restore the intellectual side of conservatism. The real strength of conservative policy is that it is supported by empirical evidence, has withstood the test of time, and it is responsible. It doesn't just "feel right" or "sound right." It is right on the objective merits. That's why educated, rational people in the suburbs have generally been conservative. They see what free markets have done in their own lives and in their country and don't want it disrupted by risky government schemes that waste their money and usually yield poor results.
Once the intellectual angle is restored, then you can convince people on the merits to embrace conservative policy and candidates. You have to go out there and win the argument, and you have to keep doing it again and again and again like the left does. For the most part in the last 10 - 20 years, we haven't even been making it, and we're so out of practice that we're almost incoherent.
And you can roll your eyes about this all you want, but you also have to talk to people in a way that makes them receptive to your message. Otherwise, their minds won't be open. This is where acting like an ******* makes a difference.
We also need to restore our credibility on fiscal conservatism. I know you hate his guts, but set aside your contempt for a moment and consider a guy like Husker. Our messaging to guys like him is terrible. However, the bigger challenge is lost credibility. We used to be able to appeal to people like him on fiscal responsibility. "We disagree with you on some social issues, but we won't shove it in your face every five minutes and won't piss your money away, ruin the economy, and put your kids' generation into bankruptcy." That resonates but only if you have the credibility to make that pitch. We don't anymore, so it rings hollow when we try.
You may think I'm full of ****, but if you do, then what's your plan or strategy? We may have won in 2016, but we've been losing ever since. We hemorrhaged seats in the suburbs. We're not going to carry Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin if we're losing the suburbs in the states. Even worse, we're letting Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, and Georgia slip away. What's your plan for reversing that trend?
The suburbs have always been flaky. Like everybody else they'll see who's putting money in their pocket and I think they will go republican again or at least not as bad as the midterms. I also think we're getting more minorities to go our way which will also help. I think we'll do well in 2020. You're acting like the world is coming to an end after the midterms in which we got creamed, which has happened to nearly every president regardless of the economic situation. I think Virginia was just something that was going to happen eventually.
I think a balanced budget would be good. I do hope Trump sees the light because we do need it. You do have some good ideas about doing a better job educating the public but your behavior and many other RINOs toward Trump is damaging the party much more than Trump ever will. The fact that you're preaching about what's good for the party and you were willing to waste your vote on a libertarian really makes it hard for me to take you seriously. You talk about being an ******* hurts the message but yet you call Trump stupid or that he's sucking Putin's balls. How does that help our side or lure people to your POV? Love ya, man but I just don't understand you.
Edit- I don't hate/dislike Husker or anybody else on this board.
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They haven't always been flaky. They were the backbone of the GOP - the voters upon which the party was most able to rely. In virtually every state, the story was the same. Liberal Democrats won the cities, though usually not anywhere near as decisively as they do now and occasionally lost. Moderate Democrats and Republicans split rural areas (depending on region and demographics). Republicans won the suburbs and usually pretty decisively. That's still true in Texas. That was true in California, New York, Illinois, and just about every state. Furthermore, virtually every state that has become blue in the last 20 years has done so because that formula broke down. Rural California is still mostly Republican, but the cities are now 80-20 blowouts or worse, and the suburbs lean blue.
Just consider Texas. It wasn't the ****-kickers in the rural areas that turned it red. Hell, until the early 2000s, plenty of them were still voting Democratic because they had trans-generational bitterness about General Sherman's March to the Sea and Reconstruction.
It started with wealthy people in Dallas and Houston. Obviously that isn't enough to win, but they built powerful coalitions in the suburbs. By the 1980s, it was enough to make Texas decisively red in national elections and lean red in statewide elections. The rural areas were a mixed bag. West Texas flipped pretty early, but East Texas was much slower and less reliable.
The formula is starting to breakdown here like it did in California. Dallas and Houston are slipping further and further away like Los Angeles did in the '90s, and the suburbs are getting closer and closer to being purple like places like Orange, Riverside, and Ventura Counties (LA suburban counties). It's not a good sign.
Are they? That didn't materialize in 2018, and even if it starts to, it won't happen as quickly as the losses in the suburbs are happening, because of the cultural pressures. Furthermore, it's hard to make the numbers work because of their relative size. A 1-point loss in the white vote hurts the GOP a lot more than 1-point loss in the black or Hispanic vote hurts Democrats.
Also keep in mind that to even things out, these minorities can't just vote for Trump because Kanye says to do so. They need to become reliable conservatives. Blacks in Oak Cliff need to go vote for Ted Cruz like the sexually frustrated women in Cedar Park voted for Beto. Very hard to picture that happening.
In the last 50 years, only three midterm election losses were bigger 2010, 1994, and 1974. It wasn't just an ordinary midterm. However, the bigger worry wasn't the size of the defeat but of its location. Losing swing districts stinks, but many of our losses came in districts that had recently been reliable districts that were largely immune to the normal electoral swings. The reason why that's a problem is that it often suggests a political realignment is taking place rather than a short-term swing. For contrast, the 2006 election was largely a swing election. Lots of swing districts flipped blue but returned red in 2010. However, the 1994 election saw large numbers of districts that had been blue for decades or even a century flip red. Most of those never flipped back even in blue years. 2018 looks more like 1994 than 2006.
They were all just going to happen eventually. We need to learn how to stop having Virginias, Colorados, etc. Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are getting scary, and if Texas "happens," we're dead.
You talk about it like it's just a nicety - sorta like having a car with heated seats. It's more like having a car with a transmission. We don't just need it for fiscal health. We need it to restore our political ideology's credibility to tens of millions of people. Frankly, at this point, I'd be happy with a little effort. Right now, we're not even trying.
First, I'm not a RINO. Second, the mindless RINO-bashing is stupid. If someone is a moderate who's willing to vote for your party despite having some disagreements, that is a good thing, not a bad thing. Third, Trump critics within the GOP are not hurting the party if they're doing it right (Ben Shapiro, Jonah Goldberg, etc.), and I'll admit that some (Max Boot, Jennifer Rubin, etc.) are doing it wrong. I align much more with the first group than the second.
That has nothing to do with it. Blindly voting for the party doesn't suggest more concern with the party's strategy and viability.
I said he licks Putin's balls, not that he sucks them. And keep in mind that I'm a guy on the internet commenting on a place where I can be honest. What I say here just isn't very consequential beyond my fan base. In a different forum, my rhetoric would be different though the gist of it would be the same. Nevertheless, the fact that he acts like an ******* and licks Putin's balls hurts him far more than my talking about it. If I didn't say it, that wouldn't make it not so.
Because not denying what people know to be true gives me credibility that a denier of those facts wouldn't have.
Lol! And of course, he answered your call! Poor @OUBubba must feel left out!
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LOL! No offense but your track record since the election hasn't been that good. For people to accept what you're saying as fact you're going to have to get a WHOLE lot better with the accuracy, man.
First, you have nothing to rebut my points, so you resort to ad hominem. That's not a strategy.
Second, my track record has actually been pretty good. What happened last year pretty much jives with what I predicted would happen with Trump as the face of the party.
Third, my record isn't the point. The point is that if you're trying to convince someone who has abandoned the party to return, denying what that person knows to be true doesn't help. It makes matters worse.
Let's make a friendly wager if you're that confident in your beliefs. I say Trump wins and we make gains in the House. Loser pays to the winner's charity. If not that, how about just for bragging rights? Bet?
If you want to make some kind of bet, that's fine. However, this issue isn't about who's the better fortune teller. I'm trying to figure out the Trump strategy for holding onto the suburbs. I don't need to bet to do that.
Nevertheless, before any bet can be made, we need to know who the Democratic nominee is. That's obviously a huge factor, because though I don't think Trump can , the Democrats definitely can lose. And if you win, is charity really what you want? Do bear in mind that I have access to some pretty fantastic booze of all kinds - legendary beers from Germany and Belgium, great French or Italian wine, port, liquors of all kinds, schnapps, etc.
Nah, I don't drink. I do appreciate the offer though. Okay, we'll wait until the dems nominee is known.
Are you sure you don't want to start?
I used to drink but I was never been big on it even then. I don't drink or smoke. I'm kind of a boring perv.
According to what I've read that the suburb problem is only in the biggest cities. On top of that the rural areas are turning even more red and will easily offset the suburbs. I guess we'll see.
Seems to me the dispute between @Mr. Deez and @Garmel comes down to the long view (taken by Deez) and the short view, the next election, (taken by Garmel). As I read Deez' warnings, he is essentially recommending Republicans not whistle past the graveyard. That that Trump phenomenon, like all political waves, will not last forever. Thus the need to educate and articulate conservative principles, and for politicians to put them into practice.
Garmel seems to be enjoying the hell out of riding the Trump wave (admittedly, it's been fun for me too), and I'm not reading any longer term strategic planning to turn back America's lurch towards socialism in his posts.
Garmel seems to be enjoying the hell out of riding the Trump wave (admittedly, it's been fun for me too), and I'm not reading any longer term strategic planning to turn back America's lurch towards socialism in his posts.
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I told Deez that he was correct on this issue. Our disagreement is that he thinks we're doomed because of the suburbs and I don't agree with that.
Trump is going to win because of the black and Latino vote. The rural voters mostly sit out the midterms. Deez dataset is small where you have an energized Dems, even in the burbs. When Trump leaves politics, so does the energy for the Dems. Don’t see how you can extrapolate this small dataset beyond Trump.
Over the longer haul, I'm concerned that he is correct.
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