Are some 2018 Democratic voters moving back to Trump?
Nearly two-thirds of Trump voters who supported Democratic congressional candidates in the 2018 midterms that flipped control of House to Democrats reported they would back the president over the three candidates currently leading in the Democratic primary, according to the Times.
Further, the new polls show Trump maintaining or strengthening his edge in the six key battleground states that swung the election in the Republican’s favor, particularly among white working-class voters who flipped to Trump after eight years of backing President Barack Obama while Democrats continue to fall behind this critical voting bloc.
“The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016…
On reading that, I’m wondering why – if they really were Trump supporters – they voted for the Democrat candidates for the House back in 2018. Did they not realize that flipping control of the House to the Democrats would be very likely to lead to the impeachment circus we have today? Didn’t that factor into their votes at all?
I think the answer for a lot of people was “no.” How many people today actually understand that when you vote for a candidate in your Congressional district, you’re not just voting for candidate A or candidate B, you’re voting for Speaker of the House and control of all the committees and the agenda? I think a surprising number of people are ignorant of that fact, although I’ve never seen a poll measuring it.
Of course, there’s also the phenomenon of Democratic candidates in a swing district promising that they won’t just vote in lockstep with the Democratic leadership. They’ll be their own man or woman. But when push comes to shove and the issue matters, they just about always vote the Party line.
And of course, whether such a candidate does or doesn’t end up voting with the Democratic Party, voting for a Democratic candidate for representative in your district is a vote for Democratic leadership of the House. Whether or not that particular representative votes with the Democrats on any particular issue, that person still helps create a Democratic Speaker of the House and Democratic majority. The majority party sets the agenda and essentially runs the show, and it’s a game of numbers in which that particular individual representative’s vote hardly matters except under very rare circumstances.
But I bet if you were to poll one hundred random people on the street, you wouldn’t get more than a quarter who understand those facts.
The same phenomenon applies to the Democratic primary. All these claims that Biden or whoever is a moderate (who knows if he is at this point) don’t really matter because all of his appointments and bureaucratic policies will be just as far left if not more so than Obama.
Then we will see the same routine as when Obama would say ‘I just learned about this from reading the paper’ or whatever his BS spiel was.
This is a very, very important point that the Republicans on all levels must hammer next year that if you hate the trans stuff or any other of the campus speech things then if you vote Democrat, no matter who, you are voting for that.
No matter what they say they ALWAYS vote with the herd.
Neo,
This:
That’s absolutely correct.
If there’s one message I’d like to get my fellow conservatives, right-libertarians, free-marketers, patriots, etc. to absorb, it’s this:
THE FIRST THING YOUR VOTE IS NOT:
Your vote is not merely or even primarily a vote for Candidate X. It has second- and third-order consequences which typically have far greater impact through others than anything which might be true about Candidate X. Your vote should be considered mostly in terms of those secondary and tertiary impacts.
THE SECOND THING YOUR VOTE IS NOT:
Also, your vote for Candidate X should never be construed, by yourself or others, as a personal endorsement of (or tribal identification with) everything that’s true of Candidate X. The mere fact that Rush Limbaugh would vote for Hillary Clinton (if it were a 2-way-race between Hillary Clinton and Josef Stalin) doesn’t mean Limbaugh endorses or identifies himself with everything that Hillary Clinton does or says. Obviously!
WHAT YOUR VOTE IS:
Your vote is an action you take which should be selected primarily in view of the secondary and tertiary consequences, since those will be the most-impactful result of your vote. But to anticipate those consequences, you have to know some things about how politics works:
1. Presidents nominate members of the judiciary. Senators confirm them. The decisions of the judiciary circumscribe the powers of the president, the legislature, the states, and the people. There is no more powerful branch of government, nor is there any branch in which bad personnel take longer to remove. Consider well your presidential vote and senatorial vote in light of this fact.
2. Personnel is policy. Don’t just vote for who you want to be president; know that that person is surrounded by advisors and associates. You are voting to empower them. Consider whether you’re voting to empower sane persons, lunatics, or scoundrels.
3. Congresscritters and junior senators generally have no power to speak of; their role is to empower their party leaders in that legislative body. If you vote for a Democratic senatorial candidate who’s to the right of Sam Nunn, you’re acting to empower Charles Schumer and Dick Durbin. If you vote for a Republican senatorial candidate who’s as moderate as Susan Collins, you’re acting to empower Mitch McConnell and John Thune. Same thing in the House, except that you’re empowering either Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Jim Clyburn; on the one hand, or Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise on the other. This is even true of more-senior members with committee assignments, except that they can often get pork to their states/districts if you’re after that.
4. It is not good that persons who are, in themselves, bad moral examples, should be publicly prominent. It is a bad thing that one of our former presidents was a rapist. Having persons of bad character receive fame and adulation coarsens our society. But, had Bill Clinton been running against, say, Tomás de Torquemada, one could reasonably say that Clinton’s impact on our culture wouldn’t make it any worse than it already was; whereas Torquemada could damage it badly in fresh ways. JFK was a great philanderer; so apparently is Donald Trump; but what difference does Trump really make, in the wake of JFK and Clinton? Some, perhaps; but it can be outweighed by other factors.
Knowing all this, realize that your vote is an action you take wherein the indirect consequences are far greater than the direct ones. Keep those in mind, more than the individual, especially for offices (like junior senators and freshman congressional representatives) where the individual officeholder is generally of no consequence. Think strategically.
As somebody who is not a US resident, one thing I have observed is an American tendency to divide the control of govt. Recall how in 2010 Scott Brown won Edward Kennedy’s old seat. This district was very Democratic and Kennedy had won it by a margin of 38.8% but in 2010 Brown won it by 51.9% vs 47.1%. With a Dem president and House of Rep as well as a filibuster proof Senate, the voters in Mass. realized it was best not to let Dem have complete and total control of all branches of the govt. The 2018 election might have reflected the same thinking.
That to me makes more sense to me than they-are-stupid and “you wouldn’t get more than a quarter who understand those facts” although that might be true.
While the Kavanaugh obscenity should have been enough to disgust practically everyone (but of course it didn’t), here’s just another reminder of what Democratic voters have been voting for:
https://twitter.com/Techno_Fog/status/1200584606803775493
(Though who knows? Maybe this is precisely what they want….)
My first thought was to agree that voters do not necessarily factor in Congressional votes with the ramifications on the Senate/House leadership and committees thereof. I’m sure that’s true.
On the other hand 2018 was less than two years into the Coup and then there “bombshells” everyday, always “the walls were closing in” and Trump was to be impeached Real Soon Now. It wasn’t so obvious that the Resistance had nothing.
If Trump had had to run in 2018, I doubt he would have been re-elected.
I believe local or “local” newspapers and TV stations are another factor.
People on the right may not trust the mainstream media and rightfully so. But many don’t consider local stations and papers as part of that media, when they are often as connected to it as any other news Medium. And just as biased, in the same manner.
Think of it like a disorder similar to Crichton’ Gell-Mann Amnesia: they know the media lies about stuff, but their local paper doesn’t lie about that high school football score or that apartment fire last week. So, maybe they aren’t lying about that conservative candidate or maybe they really believe the paper is honest about that liberal endorsement.
This only occurs to me because my local paper’s editorial today was a giant gaslighting piece about how the journalists at the paper are actually politically neutral and they don’t take sides. Which is horse squeeze of course. It was written by a guy who used to be my neighbor when I was a kid and paid me well to shovel his driveway. An otherwise alright guy. But it was still dishonest and gaslighting. And other locals might still believe he’s decent when he is obviously throwing all of his papers weight against Elise Stefanik.
I can see this scenario playing out all over.
So in Connecticut, which continues downward economically while the rest of the country enjoys an economic boom, the residents again voted Democratic. From my rural town to the state level. Yet they all complain about taxes, road toll proposal, etc . By the usual definition of insanity, I guess most of the state is certifiably insane.
Some of those Democrats ran as “moderates.” They weren’t going to vote for Pelosi, they were going to work across the aisle to get things done, yada, yada. They got to Washington and voted the party line.
One local TV station here has been running left-wing editorials, and now it proudly announces it has partnered with Politifact to “fact-check” political statements. Naturally, it picks on conservatives.
Fractal Rabbit: I believe local or “local” newspapers and TV stations are another factor.
The local newspapers don’t have the resources so they simply reprint what wire services like AP publish. This sort of thing is typical of AP.
https://twitter.com/AP/status/1200788975637716993
Right now, Republicans are wielding impeachment mostly as an offensive weapon, and Democrats are generally playing defense or changing the subject as 2020 congressional races rev up.
Joe Manchin got elected to the Senate, in part, by running a TV ad where he propped a copy of the Obamacare legislation up against a tree and then he shot it with his hunting rifle. He’s his own man and would never get pushed around by the likes ofNancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. (snicker)
Ironically or cynically perhaps, Manchin along with Pat Toomey are currently best known for their gun control effort. Sigh. To be fair, I believe that fed. legislation would have no significant effect on us Californians, but folks in Wyoming probably would not like it much.
Two points; One the GOP Congress had little to brag about and the only accomplishment was a tax cut that had not yet resulted in economic progress.
Two, Scott Brown was running against a really despicable individual, Martha Coakley, who had intervened in a well known local case, the day care scandal, to try to prevent the release of Gerald Amarault, an innocent man, caught up in the mass hysteria of the day care abuse cases. In that case, a local issue may well have been a determining factor.
Andy,
I realize they lean on the AP significantly. But they do have reporters and editors who are local. And my belief is people in the middle, or even some conservatives are likely to believe local people they know. Or at least give them the benefit of the doubt.
huxley (3:49 pm) gets it right:
“2018 was less than two years into the Coup and then there ‘bombshells’ everyday, always ‘the walls were closing in’ and Trump was to be impeached Real Soon Now. It wasn’t so obvious that the Resistance had nothing.”
Two more years of Adam Schiff’s (and the mainstreamers’) blatant in-your-face lies, along with Nancy Pelosi’s dissembling arrogance, add up to an electorate somewhat more jaded now with the respect to The Coup That Ain’t Happenin’– and consequently more of a willingness on the part of the electorate to give the president and his party another shot at governing. Will it be enough to stem a blue tide in 2020? Stay tuned . . .
I don’t have the academic chops to discuss the survey but it’s difficult to give it a lot of credence.
So complicated: 2016 Trump voters, who are Dems, and who voted Dem in 2018 have the following set of opinions.
And then apply that to all Dems nationwide who voted Trump in ’16.
It’s fun to discuss but … little more than hand waving?
“But I bet if you were to poll one hundred random people on the street, you wouldn’t get more than a quarter who understand those facts.”
You’d win that bet.
If I recall the 2017 polls correctly, Democrats switching to Trump was not as significant as Democrats staying home and NOT voting for Hillary.
All of this about the lockstep consequences of voting for a Democratic US Representative are all well and good, BUT a rep’s primary job regardless of party is to represent and work on behalf of the people of his district in the House. Does that happen in Democratic districts? No. Steve Cohen, liberal white Jewish guy is the Rep. for a majority black TN district. What does he do for “his” people? What does Sheila Jackson Lee do for her black district? At least she’s black, but neither is helping their constituents by being Democrat.
With a field of candidates such as the Democrats have, and contrasted with Trump’s actual results–an economy that is really humming and a great GDP, more jobs, higher pay, less unemployment, fewer people on food stamps, reduced regulatory burdens, energy independence, steps taken—against almost universal resistance from the establishment/ruling class—to try to stem the illegal invasion across our Southern border, and to restore the rule of law, withdrawing from Treaties and Agreements that give other nations unfair advantages, taking on China’s theft of our intellectual property, acknowledging that Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel and moving our Embassy there, rebuilding our military, and trying to extract our forces from a number of endless, costly, no win wars.
Trump’s action and progress–actual things accomplished, I remind you, against a background of sabotage and almost universal “resistance”–contrasted against Congressional Democrat’s total lack of action on any one of a number of pressing national level problems, and their total, obsessive concentration on Impeachment, and the Democrat candidates promises of free “pie in the sky.”
Democrat candidates promises of free everything (including for illegal aliens), massive new benefits that they don’t want to say—lookin’ at you Warren, or can’t really say how they are going to pay for–and I can see why increasing numbers of Democrats–including black Democrats–might be going to vote for Trump in 2020.
But to add to all this, there is the fact that Biden, the candidate which many polls show as still leading the pack, is getting increasingly, visibly bat shit crazy, and that has to factor in here.
Linked below, for instance, is a small clip of Biden’s recent non-sensical campaign trail talk–talk about his hairy legs, how kids like to run their fingers over those hairs, and how his leg hairs rise up, about how “he knows about cockroaches,” and how he loves it for kids to jump into his lap”–all packed into one rambling, incoherent sentence.
WTF is that?
I’m sorry, but its increasingly obvious that ol’ Joe belongs in a Happy Acres somewhere, not on the campaign trail, and most definitely not anywhere near, much less in the Oval Office.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/joe-biden-stuns-crowd-by-talking-about-kids-playing-with-his-hairy-legs-and-how-much-he-loves-children-on-his-lap-and-roaches-wth-video/
Re: Impeachment — Democrats look like they have reached that stage in a chess game where they have effectively lost, but enough complexity remains in the position they may trick their opponent into a mistake. That’s called a “swindle.”
Democrats are playing for the swindle.
P.S. –There is a lot of weird shite going on with Biden, and the MSM has to keep covering for him, trying to make that weirdness seem like its normal.
Linked below, for instance, is Biden biting the fingers of his wife as she is making a campaign speech, at the start of Biden’s “No Malarkey”** bus tour of Iowa.
Tell the truth, now.
Haven’t we all–at one time or the other, especially out on the campaign trial, on the podium—wanted to express our love for our partner, and just had to surrender to the overwhelming urge to express our love by nibbling on her fingers as they passed in front of our mouth?
To give her a “Luuve bite.”
Sure we have. Everyone on campaign does it. No biggie. And they say chivalry is dead.
** Paging Victor McLaglen, paging Victor McLaglen to explain.
See http://www.stationgossip.com/2019/11/video-joe-biden-bites-wifes-finger-at.html
You can not forget what you dont know…
Often i read and it sounds like babies trying to understand what adults do
and without any reference other than the adults they see…
More offended that someone would claim the truth, than upset it IS the truth…
“The Whole of Their Lives” – Ben Gitlow described the Communist movement as a devilish machine for transforming idealists into criminals.
In revolutionary politics the personal ambitions of leaders play an important role. The altruistic souls motivated by high ideals and principles are common in the rank-and-file and rare in the leadership. The struggle for power in the communist organization proceeds as bitterly as it does at royal courts. – Gitlow
thus we spend all our time trying to see something yet refusing to step back and look
so nearsighted, the farsighted sit frustrated waiting for the obvious that comes too late
and so, its never prevented, not ever…
Its a road, like time, in which going back is not possible
Some people spend the whole of their lives sitting waiting for one train, only to find they never even made it to the station
Joann Harris
on a changer that neo doesn’t cover (the old ones that knew more and could teach you a lot more by their experience than the ones she looks at who have yet to experience and thus are entertaining, but have nothing much useful to share) : Max Forrester Eastman, who believed in a communist utopian plan, who came to be devout anticommunist when he confronted the truth.
Max Eastman noted this: In forward of a book titled “the whole of their lives” by Ben Gitlow:
Moral civilization is in peril. those consecrating themselves to communist must not only cast out truth, mercy, crime and self abasement, they must endorsed such maxims as these:
We do not believe in eternal principals of morality — communist morality is identical with the fight to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat. we must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, lawbreaking, withholding and concealing truth, we can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, scorn, and the like towards those of different opinion.
It seems obvious to me now – though I have been slow, I must say, in coming to the conclusion – that the institution of private property is one of the main things that have given man that limited amount of free-and-equalness that Marx hoped to render infinite by abolishing this institution. Strangely enough Marx was the first to see this. He is the one who informed us, looking backwards, that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms. It never occurred to him, looking forward, that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market.”
? Max Eastman
-=-=-=-=-=-
A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener’s mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn’t expect to go.
Artfl,
Don’t you know I’ve already got more books that I have to read than I can conceivably read before I shuffle off in 2300 A.D.? And now you bring up this Gitlow number, which, going by that great quote from Max Eastman, is a Must-Read…. 😥 😀
Very interesting. Thanks. :>))
Here in the collar counties of Chicago Republican Reps who voted for SALT limits ALL lost.
Voters around here were really upset their Federal Income Taxes were higher because they could no longer deduct their 5 figure property tax bills. So they voted in democrat reps.
Some of them are upset with the way their NEW reps have supported impeachment, mass entry of illegals, abortion and gun control. They will likely vote for President Trump and, perhaps, boot those new reps out of office too.
The ‘unintended consequences’ of the SALT limits should have been expected by the RNC. I guess they were too busy partying with their DNC buddies to THINK.
Thanka, Artfl.
Explains it all, concisely.
Sociopaths leading true believers aka suckers.
Bill and Hillary surely fit that mold.
The ‘unintended consequences’ of the SALT limits should have been expected by the RNC. I guess they were too busy partying with their DNC buddies to THINK.
Tuvea: To win the war you may have to lose a few battles. I doubt the RNC or the Trump administration were oblivious.
In the big picture I would say SALT is more just and it’s a kick in the pants to Big Blue states to keep an eye on their high taxes.
It just never stops.
Now comes the report that “Macho Man” Joe Biden–he of taking Trump back behind the high school gym, and his epic, mano-o-mano parking lot confrontation with gang leader Corn Pop–as Biden tells it, Biden’s chain wrapped around his fist vs. Corn Pop’s rusty straight razor (cue the West Side Story music)–comes Biden’s claim that major world leaders know who he is and know that he can’t be pushed around and, to illustrate this point, he talks about how he’s “spent a lot of time with Kim Jun-Un.”
The only problem, says the story linked below, is that Biden has reportedly never even met Kim Jun-Un.
See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/what-is-wrong-with-grandpa-joe-biden-falsely-claims-he-has-spent-a-lot-of-time-with-kim-jong-un-video/See https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/12/what-is-wrong-with-grandpa-joe-biden-falsely-claims-he-has-spent-a-lot-of-time-with-kim-jong-un-video/
Tuvea: To win the war you may have to lose a few battles. I doubt the RNC or the Trump administration were oblivious.
There are no policy changes which don’t have losers. Some of them may be people who are otherwise inclined in your direction. The only way around that is to leave all extant rent-seeking arrangements in place.
Snow on Pine: Biden strikes me as yet another pol who imagines he can pull off Trump’s moves without having the faintest.
Don’t look at me. I don’t know how Trump does it either. Luckily it’s not my job. It’s kinda like some guys can wear aviator glasses and some can’t.
Who could have seen this mash-up rocking the world:
“‘Rocky’ Trump in Hong Kong — what a weird world it is”
https://nypost.com/2019/11/30/rocky-trump-in-hong-kong-what-a-weird-world-it-is/
That’s the Stallone “Rocky” poster photoshopped with Trump’s head. The HongKongers love it. Heck, I love it.
I’ll bet the Dems moving back to Trump, love it.
Well, I must say, that’s a ringing endorsement.
Obama said the other day that, no matter who emerges as the Democrat nominee, no matter if you don’t like him, or what he is proposing, forget about all that and, just vote Democrat.
Seems to me that this is, in essence, an admission that the whole Democrat field of candidates–each and every one of them–stinks.
See https://pjmedia.com/election/obama-i-dont-care-whether-youll-like-the-nominee-just-vote-democrat/
It has often been pointed out that those on the Left—and none more so than far Left Democrat politicians, and the almost entirely Leftist MSM–are indulging in one great act of “projection,” as they attribute, they “project” all that they themselves are thinking, saying, and doing–all that they supposedly revile—on to their ideological enemies, those on the Right.
In fact, those on the Left are often described as being in a “bubble,” in which they ignore most of the outside world and the people in it, and what is going on “out there”–especially in “flyover country”–and, instead, face inward, gather information from the same news sources, talk only to each other, and exchange and reinforce the same world-view and ideas, often expressed in exactly the same words and phrases; they’re all reading from the same script, and believe that their brand of “realty” is the actual reality.
Given their daily propaganda memes to parrot by their high profile “influencers,”–given the “party line”–they go out and parrot away.
It comes to me that this is a species of what the psychiatrists term a “folie a doux”–usually a situation in which just two people with close relations share in the same delusional system, often the same hallucinations but, in this case, a shared delusional system writ very, very large indeed.
A situation in which, in this case, thousands of Leftist “influencers” all work together to create and (perhaps, some percentage of them, actually believe in), then pass on to the millions they influence down the road, the same grand, multi-faceted delusion, one that is contrary to observed reality.
Here is MSNBC’s Joy Reid, saying something that triggered this insight, when she compared Trump supporters to “a racial and religious cult of personality.”
See https://dailycaller.com/2019/12/01/msnbc-joy-reid-trump-religious-cult/
But I bet if you were to poll one hundred random people on the street, you wouldn’t get more than a quarter who understand those facts. –neo
But William F. Buckley would still prefer those hundred random people in the Senate than a hundred random professors from Harvard!
“…Obama said the other day…just vote Democrat.”
Well, he always a serious “issues” guy….consistently taking the high moral ground as he plied the mullahs with billions, pledged to Putin who knows what and using the levers of government to undermine those he viewed as threats, nimbly pirouetting, plie-ing, leaping, somersaulting and arabesque-ing his way through office for eight years, ably supported (and protected) by his partners in the corps de ballet that was the MSM all the while helping to destroy his own party with his piss-poor precedents and petty pieties:
“Yes we can-can!!?”
Should be “…he always was…”