Which will voters remember more in 2024?

[SuperMatt]

The more I read about Youngkin’s campaign promises, the more I think he won by playing to white voters’ racial biases/fears.

1. CRT - His biggest issue. This has been covered ad nauseum in other threads.
2. Firing the parole board - A black person who killed an officer at age 24 has been in prison 40 years and was being released. Virginians could not stand for a person serving a sentence and being rehabilitated and let out in their 60s? This smacks of “Willie Horton” politics.
3. More police in schools - this has been proven, over and over, to land black kids in prison, as the cops consistently target them by race. Almost every education expert knows that cops in schools has terrible effects. But white people want those evil black troublemakers out of their schools and into the jails where they belong, I guess…
4. More charter schools - again, these have promised to help everybody, but in practice have benefitted mostly white kids. And white parents know this.

Additional reading:

What Youngkin’s parole board promise signals for Virginia’s criminal justice system

The future of Virginia’s current parole board is in limbo and looking grim for its current members.

www.wric.com

Racism and the Charter School Movement: Unveiling the Myths

Schools should be grounded upon cultural inclusiveness, social justice and economic democracy, not profit potential.

truthout.org

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I remember on election night all the talking heads/"analysts" were saying that the anti-CRT hysteria wasn't the reason for Youngkin's win. Despite the fact that on his own website his listed priorities were #1. Education with #2 Banning CRT, which is an extension of #1.

You honestly believe all his votes came from anti-CRT hysteria?

I'll give you some did, and maybe enough to decide the election, but not 100%.

 

[SuperMatt]

You honestly believe all his votes came from anti-CRT hysteria?

I'll give you some did, and maybe enough to decide the election, but not 100%.

I think it was enough to give him the election. He won by 2 percent? I bet you more than 2 percent of people bought the CRT stuff.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I think it was enough to give him the election. He won by 2 percent? I bet you more than 2 percent of people bought the CRT stuff.

That is very possible.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I think it's disingenuous to say a candidate won because of one issue and it cuts both ways. From the other side of the aisle some are saying Biden only won because Trump was so bad as a thus far effective way to block progressive legislation from being passed. Doesn’t matter what the polls say about the popularity of individual legislation line items. “That’s not what voters put him in office to do.” Is getting the overwhelming airtime in the media, even from the lefty media.

 

[SuperMatt]

I think it's disingenuous to say a candidate won because of one issue and it cuts both ways. From the other side of the aisle some are saying Biden only won because Trump was so bad as a thus far effective way to block progressive legislation from being passed. Doesn’t matter what the polls say about the popularity of individual legislation line items. “That’s not what voters put him in office to do.” Is getting the overwhelming airtime in the media, even from the lefty media.

Seems like it’s more of a sociology question. Everybody has their own reasons for voting, but as a group there are definitely trends and certain issues have larger effects than others.

Political campaigns try to figure these out and then focus on the issues they think will be most effective for their candidate.

In Virginia, Youngkin’s message was intensely focused on CRT. His campaign managers thought that issue would influence a lot of voters. Since he won, more politicians will beat that same drum. There’s no definite proof that it is the reason he won, and correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I think many politicians will embrace the anti-CRT movement, hoping it will deliver results for them.

I think Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema are 2 of the biggest reasons that Youngkin won. If Biden passed his “Build Back Better” in October, it would have boosted his support quite a bit. Hence the “With Friends Like These” thread. Those two are really hurting the Democratic party.

 

[JamesMike]

The ECONOMY! Oh, and the economy all else will go to the bottom of the list.

 

[ronntaylor]

You honestly believe all his votes came from anti-CRT hysteria?

I'll give you some did, and maybe enough to decide the election, but not 100%.

I must be confused, where did I write that "all his votes came from anti-CRT hysteria" in any shape or form? (Hint: You don't have to think too hard or long as you already answered the question with your subsequent sentence.)

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

The big takeaway is the Democrats are currently polling even lower than when they got slaughtered by the Tea Party and I don't really see them having anything in the hopper that is going to improve things.

The people in the Washington bubble who will have box seats for the civil war seem to think the answer is to go even more centrist and moderate. I predict their poll numbers will drop even further the more they do that.

 

[lizkat]

It's possible that in 2024 we'll end up with choices like Chile faces today: pretty far left vs very far right.

José Antonio Kast, Far-Right Candidate, Leads After First Round of Chile’s Presidential Election (Published 2021)

The top contenders to lead Chile out of a turbulent era are a leftist 35-year-old former student activist and a 55-year-old far-right former congressman, offering voters a stark choice.

www.nytimes.com

And yeah, it's about the economy, but also about related issues of... well... "crime" and who thinks what exactly or approximately is or should be a crime. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic. Renters, landlords, retailers, truckers, health care workers, wealthy capitalists and broke peons and all the pols who crave either re-election or a chance to prove there's a better way than "status quo".

No one's happy.

And: everyone understands (somewhat differently) our constitutional right to pursue happiness...

So the status quo is unhappiness = unhappiness with current administration.

Ergo Biden/Harris have an uphill slog for re-election and the mass media on both left and right are busy ensuring that everyone (well, everyone in mass media or on social media) believe that Biden is too old

yeah he was too old already, yes? but the point for Dems in nominating and then electing him was that "he is not Trump!!" but that's worn off now, so he's "the status quo" AND he's too old.​

And mass media want us also to know that they (mass media and social media) believe that whether as a VP again or as a stepped-up prez, Harris is also a goner in 2024, because take yer pick: she's incompetent

(why, because she does what she's supposed to do which is whatever the prez wants her to do instead of whatever else she might be inclined to do including draw positive attention to herself? well hey, say hello to Mike Pence and every other VP in American history)​

or more commonly and only maybe sotto voce, Harris was never moderate enough, never progressive enough, so certainly socialist AND corporate Obama-2 BUT never black enough AND not having been born in Kenya or even India or Jamaica, certainly a paler shade of not quite white, in short truly impossible.

Oh, and Harris is a woman, almost forgot about that problem. In the USA? Yeah, a problem.

So in the horserace-crazy wildest dreams of the mass media and social media perspectives on American politics, the contest in 2024 will be Dems going for a leftie progressive (Buttigieg, anyone?) vs some Trump stand-in who is definitely not Mike Pence. In this fever dream, the Rs would run an anti-"crime", anti-tax, anti-"socialism" proponent of "keep what's yours") who manages to dance the old timey coded white-guy-is-right-guy dance like Youngkin managed to do in Virginia. Not sure that can translate to a national effort though. The entire RNC and most state Republican committees are loaded with pols still wanting to coast on the too-narrow shoulders of very vocal pro-Trumpers.

Time will tell, but the upcoming race in Chile sure reminds me of a possible parallel of extremes here in 2024. One disgusted seamstress was quoted in the Times piece as suggesting she'd cast a spoiled ballot rather than a valid vote for either of the choices she'll be facing.

In the USA what happens when candidates are polar opposites is also sometimes a reduced turnout, or else a massive turnout against one or the other of two candidates when both are seen as extreme but one is ultimately viewed as more dangerous. We can expect a nasty set of campaign ads in the fall of 2024.

And the outcome in either Chile or the USA? Don't ask me for predictions. If I were a pollster I'd be like a lot of pols on both sides of the aisle in the legislatures, i.e., contemplating retirement ahead of not knowing how to predict the votes of a dismissive electorate.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Dems Are Giving The GOP Another Political Bailout

By demanding new tax breaks for the rich, Democrats are again helping Republicans portray them as elitists just before a midterm election.

www.dailyposter.com

 

[lizkat]

Dems Are Giving The GOP Another Political Bailout

By demanding new tax breaks for the rich, Democrats are again helping Republicans portray them as elitists just before a midterm election.

www.dailyposter.com

It's about Dems trying to secure suburban votes, which in the off-year elections appeared to be drifting to the right.

So the Dems look to be no more about actual policy nowadays than are the Republicans? What a surprise...

The candidates and their campaign committees are all trolling for votes --to remain in power or appease factions of their own respective major parties. Votes on legislation now in the Congress, and potential votes from the prospective midterm electorate.

In the longer run, all that blurring of overarching policy (in favor of specific sops to this or that faction) really accomplishes in the end is reduce allegiance to party out in the electorate. The "independent" bloc would be even larger by now if so many states didn't still have primary elections in which only registered party members can vote.

But in the short run, It's just another step in the eventual failure of a political system impossibly linked to "money as free speech" and yet to the will of the overall American electorate as far as who nominally gets to write the laws.

Big bucks in either major political party never wanted that SALT (state and local tax) deduction knocked off the tax-lowering menu anyway. The complaints were formulated as hitting the middle class taxpayer, but really the objections were communicated to Congress by people who own multi-million dollar properties.

Still, it is pretty spectacular that the Dems are willing to suggest the reinstatement of this tax deduction since it would retroactively make the previous administration's unfunded tax cut even more unfunded, and of course give the Republicans a chance to say to the potential 2022 electorate

1) how hypocritical the Dems are about fiscal prudence, and​

​

2) "shut up, take the money, come back and vote for the GOP which only killed the deduction to begin with because the Dems were going to filibuster the tax cut bill without that sop... and you know we voted against it before we reluctantly voted for it."​

 

[SuperMatt]

Inflation taking up a lot of airtime now. Regardless of the cause, that coupled with not passing any meaningful (and widely popular) economic relief legislation isn't going to land well with voters.

Wages are up. Unemployment is down (this week we had the lowest number of claims in 50 years) . An economy that was in suspended animation for 2 years due to the pandemic is thawing out. People want to buy things more than they have in a year or two, and supply cannot keep up. These are all factors that I see causing prices to go up. Other than the supply chain issues, all of these are good news.

Also, the Fed has not done anything to raise interest rates yet. I know Fox will hammer on inflation, but the fact is, with employment and wages going up, the increase in prices does not seem to be a major hardship for most people at this time.