So last night, I discussed my 2008 and 2012 predictions at the time, which i didn't write down as this blog existed, but I do recall how my predictions fared vs the reality of the situation. That said, today, I'm going to discuss 2016 and 2020 again, and then wrap this up by looking at how it relates to the 2024 situation.
2016
So, my 2016, memorialized for all time, is here on this blog. This is the first election cycle that I actually recorded my election predictions on this blog, and I like to brag that even if I didn't call it right, i probably had it more right than almost anyone else.
I had Clinton winning incredibly narrowly. I had a 272-266 lead, with it coming down to New Hampshire, which was at 0.6%, and gave Clinton a 56% chance of winning the election, and Trump a 44% chance. Most people didn't even give Trump the benefit of the doubt here, and just arrogantly assumed it would be a clinton SWEEP. I remember corporate media was going on about how not only is the rust belt not on the table, but Clinton was gonna advance into the deep south, winning places like Georgia and Arizona. I even warned people that they were way too cocky the day before. I always knew that trying to win the south in this regard is nuts. It's the one stronghold the republicans had. It was the bible belt. It was the area of conservatism. Arizona had hard### Sheriff Joe Arpaio in charge and he was infamous for mistreating prisoners in his prison in the Arizona desert. He was as tough on crime as they came. John McCain was still a senator there, ya know, the republican 2008 guy. Georgia? Not even OBAMA won that in 2008. I mean, quite frankly, the result was always going to be further right than 2008, and for the most part, most predictions up until the very end seemed to mirror a 2012 Obama vs Romney victory.
What Clinton was trying to do was foolish. She basically took rust belt voters for granted, thinking they would vote for her anyway, despite being in that weird 2-4% range for her where they could flip but probably wouldn't, and went on the attack down south. Her politics mirrored her approach of the electoral map. She was a die hard centrist, in the same mold as her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and she saw the democratic party primarily as centrists and minorities. On economics, she would run to the center, continuing the Clintonesque (yes, she's married to THAT clinton) triangulation strategy, basically saying we can't do anything blah blah blah. But then she went hard into identity politics, which I see as the kryptonite of the left. It's annoying, it's abrasive, and while it might appeal to certain groups of voters (those who are of the identity groups she mentioned), it would offput others. But that was HER southern strategy. Shore up moderate suburban voters in places like Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston (in Texas, yes, she was trying to fricking win Texas), Raleigh Durham, etc.
Same thing up north. Heck her rust belt strategy could be summed up in a single quote:
For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.
--Chuck Schumer
Yeah. Same thing up here. Appeal to all the rich suburbanites in Philly, and screw all of those white working class voters in the middle of the state. And you can repeat that in the rust belt. So yeah. She went hard with the centrism, and then played identity politics to pick the minority voters back up. But in doing so, she basically just alienated the white working class, who went for Trump.
And that's what happened. The white working class abandoned her. I personally voted for Jill Stein, knowing that Trump was a complete fraud, but I do know people who went Trump. And I understand it. I mean, in PA, and even more so in NJ and NY, Trump's name used to mean something. He was always seem as this dude who was on top, and he knew what he was doing, and he could be going bankrupt one minute and the next he would come back. he was seen as this glorious job creator and successful businessman, and he really tapped into the populist anger here.
A lot of democrats will make the issue about race, and yes, it was part of that too. He appealed to the latent racism and xenophobia and combined it with his economic populist appeals, but let's face it, the reason why that narrative is emphasized is because is because the democrats don't want to talk about the class stuff. They made their bed on what their brand is gonna be, and it's centrism and identity politics, so of course they're going to call everyone a racist for not voting for them.
That and scream about Russia, and James Comey, and I'm not saying they aren't factors, but what really sealed the deal for me is the fact that most voters probably went into that voting booth pissed at Clinton, and chose the candidate they hated less. It was like Alien vs Predator, whoever wins, we all lose.
But yeah. Let's look at the map in detail here, and the predictions. So, at the last minute, we did see a red shift that made the race anyone's game. While Clinton was the favorite all along, things shifted in the past week or two to reflect a different reality, and I could see, as the final polls came in, that Clinton seemed FAR weaker than she appeared. Don't get me wrong, I still thought she would pull it off narrowly, BUT...even I still had her as the favorite. It was narrow, 56%, barely better than a coin flip, but still possible.
What happened was most of those states (minus nevada) that went red did stay red. She won New Hampshire, but still, Trump then came out of nowhere and broke the blue wall like the kool aid man, OH YEAH! Pennsylvania was admittedly in a relatively good place to flip. I only had it at a 69% Clinton victory, something that should be noted when I give Trump a 72% chance today, BIDEN CAN STILL WIN, IT'S NOT OVER, IT'S JUST NOT LOOKING GOOD. The real surprises were Wisconsin and Michigan. I had Michigan at only a 20% chance of flipping. Wisconsin was only down to 5%. That was WILD. We saw the polls be massively off in the rust belt. And it's not measured here, but I do wanna point out something. You realize we also lost Minnesota too? We did. It only went like +1 Clinton. Minnesota is actually following the trends of the rest of the rust belt. It just has Minneapolis/St Paul anchoring it and keeping it barely left enough to win. That and their democrats are different there. They have this "democrat farm-labor party" which is distinct from the party in the rest of the country, and actually is a labor oriented party. So the democrats, while they are going red too, were a bit more resilient there.
As for what went wrong, and whether Clinton could've turned it around. I absolutely think the democrats could have. I'm not sure CLINTON could have. She was really just a slimy candidate that no one wanted, and who was incredibly unlikable. She was just arrogant and ran this "vote for me or else" campaign.
Could Bernie have won? Yes. He wouldn't be winning the sun belt any time soon and their relative conservatism, but he would've maintained the rust belt. Maybe even kept Ohio maybe. And that's enough. All we needed to do was to replicate Obama's 2012 map roughly, and we won. Clinton threw it away. Because she was arrogant, she ignored the rust belt, she decided to go down into the deep south and try to win down there, and her strategy backfired, big time.
I keep saying it, but Clinton deserved her loss. I know dems try to blame third party voters and stuff, but we were like 1% of the vote, and honestly, we were just a symptom of the problem. The dem coalition is not in a good state, it's alienating its voters, and people were pissed off, and they were willing to risk it with Trump. I kinda can't blame them at the time, i got the appeal, I just didn't fall for it because Im too policy oriented and knew Trump offered nothing in that regard. But I do understand why he won. Again, just read the chuck schumer quote. That basically sums up the entire story of 2016.
....and we may pay for it for a long time, unfortunately.
2020
Original prediction: 351-187 Biden
SO...uh....YIKES. I was WAY off. What happened here? Well, before getting into anything else, I was to own up to my own failures here. My prediction was way off, because I threw out a lot of right leaning polls. Why did I do that? Because there were these conservative leaning polling companies that seemed to be leaning into the so called "shy trump voter effect" in which they basically assumed that because the polls were off in 2016, sometimes majorly like in the rust belt, that they would just add points to the trump side in their analysis to account for the fact that trump voters were shy and didn't want to publicly express their views, so polling was off and we needed to add points to Trump to reflect what the real result would be.
The concept was relatively unscientific, and those polls were used to feed trumpers' egos about how they had this in the bag and look at how great their fuhrer was doing. And yeah. I removed those polls. I literally thought Biden had it in the bag, and had Biden at an 88.5% chance of winning, and Trump at a 11.5% chance.
Then I watched in horror as state after state like North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio went FAR more red than expected, and how it really did come down to the margins. We sat there for 3 days wondering if Biden was gonna pull it off, with it taking that long to count all the PA, AZ, and NV votes, but yeah, he did, with a 306-232 margin, far narrower than predicted.
This election was my biggest shame in my predictive abilities, and I own up to it. If I had counted those polls, even if I had deemed then unscientific, the results would've been far more accurate. As such, let's do this prediction AGAIN, this time with the actual data.
It should be noted Michigan is off in that chart as I accidentally reported its actual result instead of the polling one, it was actually at Biden +4.2, so take note of that. But this is what the map actually SHOULD have looked like.
It's still not perfect, but it's better, and reflects a reality closer to the actual result. Florida went red, Georgia went Blue, and Maine CD2 went red, but other than that, it was pretty close, more in line with the other predictions. We seem to get polls get around 47ish states right per election cycle, and this was a lot closer to reality. It still didnt always get the margins right. Texas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, and Florida were all WAAAAY more right leaning and less in play than indicated. The results in Michigan and Wisconsin were quite a bit narrower than reported here. Still, they held for Joe. Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona ended up relatively close to where predicted, and that along with Wisconsin were the four swingiest states that held firm for Biden.
Still, the polls were off, like 2016. And those right wing polls were actually more accurate.
So...what happened here? How do I interpret this election now?
Well, Bernie ran again, but the dems didn't want him. They wanted Biden or another centrist. However, they DID learn from their 2016 mistake that they couldnt just ignore progressives and white working class voters, so they did this "hello fellow kids" thing with candidates like Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Kirsten Gillabrand where they kinda went left on policy, but not TOO left to upset their donors. And inevitably, they probably chose Biden in a smoke filled back room, incentivized everyone to get out, and crushed him.
Going into the general, they kinda tried both the Obama strategy AND the Clinton strategy. They signaled to donors that "nothing would fundamentally change", and that they were largely trying to be inoffensive and centrist, which pissed me off as a bernie bro, and came off as fake to me. But they did shift somewhat left on policy to do some Bernie lite stuff. i didn't buy it at the time, but in retrospect, biden tried to thread the needle coalitionally where he could try to win back the rust belt and alienated bernie supporters and white working class voters, while continuing the suburbanite strategy.
And his strategy...kinda worked. He ended up winning kinda narrowly, but to be fair, by this updated map, Biden had a 62% chance of winning, and Trump a 38% chance, so nothing was too out of the ordinary. Biden pulled it off, but Trump actually almost won again. And that kind of scared me.
You see, I kinda viewed 2016 as a fluke. I knew the dems had the stronger coalition, the GOP's avenues on the electoral map were waning, and I kinda viewed Trump 2016 as a last gasp for conservatism as we knew it, only made possible by Clinton's insane hubris. I thought we were achieving a lock on the electoral map that would lock the GOP out, and ensure semi permanent democratic control of the executive branch for the foreseeable future.
But having Trump come as close as he did scares me. Because it shows that people actually liked that psychopath. In 2016, I was more willing to roll the dice on a Trump win with my third party gambit knowing he would suck and figuring the backlash to him would be so hard and last so long that it would destroy the GOP as we knew it. But if anything, Trump breathed new life into the party. We almost lost the rust belt again, and while we did win some parts of the sun belt due to Biden building on the clinton strategy and demographic shifts, the states that shifted barely did so while the states that didn't still went hard red.
I didn't think too strongly about it at the time, but I did kinda tell some smarmy centrist libs that I was pretty confident Biden would lose in 2024, because let's face it, no one actually liked the dude, they just wanted Trump out, and because if we look at every 2 term president, their second win was normally more narrow then the first. They win fewer states by slimmer margins, and it's like coalitions eventually run out of stream. They start strong and get weaker.
I also kind of knew Biden just didnt have his finger on the pulse of America. The public has been yearning for change, for something different than what we've been having. Centrist neoliberalism doesn't keep coalitions together, it actually causes them to fall apart. The democratic coalition has this issue of being too ideologically broad, and needing to bring out too many groups who think radically differently from one another, and it ultimately fails to do so. it has tried to use privilege politics and social justice as a rallying cause among voters, but let's face it, most voters are too self interested for that. And while it might work among a lot of the base, it's more offputting to the groups the dems have been having trouble with like the furthest left progressives, white working class, etc.
Other cracks in Biden's coalition have been apparent since the 2020 elections were known. BECAUSE they appeal to identity politics, they count on strong support from the aforementioned identity groups turning out reliably for them. The problem is that many of them dont even buy the dems' BS themselves. Latinos in particular were expected to go Biden by wide margins in 2020, but they did so far more narrowly than originally predicted, which is one of the reasons they did so badly in a lot of sun belt states like Florida and Texas. Turns out a lot of latinos, especially the young men, can buy into cultures of machismo, and who is more macho than a convicted felon who craps his pants but who somehow comes off as an alpha male because he likes to yell over everyone? I know I know, I kinda made a joke, but yeah, he has this macho energy a lot of those types go into.
So, Biden's coalition has always been somewhat unstable. And it really had nowhere to go but down. Which is where we are now. So let's revisit 2024 now, and do another mini update with no chart, while I walk us through what situation we're in.
2024
The map as it stands now: 226-312 Trump
We're in trouble. The sun belt is almost completely closed off. The rust belt is turning red. We're losing on both fronts and Trump is looking to dominate both fronts. BUT, if we have a chance, it's this. We Keep NE2, Minnesota, and Virginia in our column, and put it all on the rust belt. That will give us exactly 270. The sun belt is virtually out of reach. Most of those pink states are +4.x or +5.x for Trump. Florida is at +8. We're narrowing where NJ is +7, NY is +8, Washington is +8. I mean, we're in trouble. This is NOT a good map to have. This is actually a really bad map to have. It's the worst map for democrats arguably since 1988. Ya know, when the tank guy ran. Even then looking into it, he seemed okay until he did that photo op.
So, what's going so wrong for Biden? I mean, i discuss it a lot, but what are the exact reasons he's failing so hard electorally? Well, a lot of it is as I said, his coalition had nowhere to go but down. He's down 4-6 points compared to where he was in 2020, this map reflects what that looks like. The rust belt flipped red, the sun belt is almost out of reach. Old bellweathers like Ohio and Florida are more or less gone (despite being the same color, Florida might as well be dark red).
What's going wrong coalitionally? Well, a lot of the white working class people are still on the trump train. We lost them in 2016 and many don't seem to be coming back. The dems went all in with identity politics and alienated them. So that's causing us to lose the strength of the obama coalition: the rust belt. We're also losing suburbanites on the flip side, so no one really seems to want us. Progressives never cared for Biden in the first place with a vocal minority going all in on palestine. I dont think it matters much in the grand scheme of things, but yeah, he just never was what they wanted. latinos are continuing to gravitate toward trump, and now the black vote the dems circlejerk about so often is starting to defect.
The fact is, economically, we're not great. Inflation is/was raging, even if it's technically subsided, people still feel the effects from it. Combine this with the fact that most of Biden's agenda fell through due to an uncooperative and hostile congress. He doesnt have much he can take to the american people to say "i helped you' at this point. What help he gave early on has long since run out (pandemic era stuff) or has been repealed. On immigration, he's facing attacks from the right, while they simultaneously obstruct him from doing anything. Story of his presidency. And he's old. He's very old. he looks sleepy, trump has capitalized on this, and now the public is looking at trump and biden and they're going "I'll go with the guy who was in when prices were cheap." The phrase "are you better off then you were 4 years ago" is very salient, and a lot of people simply can't say that they are.
A lot of people on the left are looking at how congress will pass war funding, but not stuff for them, and they're pissed about that, and Biden is just getting that weird uncanny valley of not being able to do anything or claim to have solved much (other than covid itself, and we're still reeling from the effects of that), while people kinda want him to do stuff, but simultaneously complain when he does.
As I always say, inflation is the bane of democrats' existence. The textbook answer is austerity, and austerity is unpopular among the left because who wants to cut social services or throw people out of work. But Biden also cant expand that stuff, without being accused of contributing to inflation.
Basically, Biden is dead in the water, and darned if he does and darned if he doesn't. He can't do anything either way. He's just screwed. Full on screwed.
I'm trying to support him this time. He aint my ideal candidate, but I look at this electoral map and realize we're in deep crap. Biden literally struggles to find a path to reelection, his best path being the rust belt, winning WI/MI/PA while keeping everything in his column, and even then there's zero room for error. If Trump can flip minnesota, virginia, or even NE2, it's all over. He wins.
And I really do fear for the future and what this means for dems electorally. Will people like trump if he gets back in? Will he be able to pull a reagan and sell the country on his vision for a generation? Are dems screwed? Will he even do something crazy like overturn democracy? Who knows. All I know is that it doesnt seem in our interest to mess around and find out. We DONT want trump to win again. That could be very bad for us.
Ideally, people finally get tired of him and then we can run AOC in 2028 and come back, but doesnt that sound exactly like my 2020 prediction with bernie? yeah. Look at how that turned out. The fact is, trump actually is popular, and his coalition will remain enthused about him for a while. We might be looking back in the 2050s with republicans still worshipping this guy like they did reagan as recently as the 2012 election. It can happen. Meanwhile, we're stuck being the "moon" party that has to run to the center and struggle to remain relevant because the electoral map is so screwed for us that we can't do anything.
Honestly, Obama really unlocked something here. We had a good thing going with the rust belt. But the dems threw it away in 2016, 2016 is potentially a realigning election. In 2020, Biden kinda tried to play it both ways, he succeeded then, but is failing now. And the future is uncertain.
Idk where we're going from here. Maybe I'm just a doomer for no reason. But this isn't a good position to be in. And we need to try our best to keep our guy in office here. This is why even though i protest voted in 2016 and 2020, Im pro Biden in 2024. In 2016 and 2020, the goal was to shift the dems left to expand on the obama coalition with economic progressivism. In 2024, the goal is survival. We're basically in that last level in halo reach where the goal is just "survive." That's where we're at right now. Try not to lose, because the damage could be disastrous for us long term.
And yeah. That's where we're at. And that's why I will never forgive clinton for her brain dead 2016 campaign. She screwed everything up. And we still suffer from her hubris.
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