Category: Elections

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Eight reasons to stop Trump

  By 2024, Elections, Resisting Trump, Uncategorized

Is it really going to be hard to convince people leaning to our side to vote? Here are eight  lines of argument. 1. Tump’s threat to democracy. 2. Trump’s threat to abortion and other basic rights including to contraception. 3. Trump’s embrace of deep tax cuts for the rich. 4. Trump’s promise to repeal the ACA. 5. Trump’s threat to social security if he keeps deepening deficits through tax cuts. 6. Trump’s threat to student debt relief and Republican efforts to block of the student debt relief Biden promised. 7. Trump demanded that Republicans blocked their own immigration reform bill because Trump demanded it. 8. Trump’s threat to our climate and the earth as a whole. I know how deeply entrenched the Trump movement is and how insane the Republicans are. But it’s still  hard for me to believe that these 8 lines of argument aren’t enough to give Democrats… Continue reading

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No, Joe Biden is not demented. Not even close.

  By 2024, Elections

Next time you are in a conversation at a meeting, listen to how other people talk. Very few people talk in complete sentences and coherent paragraphs. Most of us start sentences, double back, often get a bit lost in the middle and then find our way to the end. We stumble over words. And our sentences don’t track in full paragraphs. Some of us, especially if we have had experience public speaking can do better. I can do pretty well most of the time, unless I’m a little tired and then it is really hard. Even Obama was not perfect much of the time. (You know who was perfect? Paul Warnke, the foreign policy specialist in the 70s and 80s. He spoke slowly and deliberately in complete paragraphs. And G.D.H. Cole, the British Socialist. That’s about the only two I’ve ever seen or heard who could do that.) Biden is… Continue reading

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Why it’s so hard to debate a gaslighting moron. And how to do it the right way.

  By 2024, Elections, Elections and Voting

Part I: Why it’s so hard to debate a gaslighting moron. I was on the debate team in high school. (I know, you are shocked!) And I was pretty successful in my first varsity year as a junior. I left high school so I never had a second year, but my former teammates were extremely successful that year. The hardest debates I had were not with the well prepared teams that made sensible, plausible arguments. I knew how to question and rebut them. Sometimes we couldn’t quite overcome them. Far more often we did. The really hard debates were the ones with teams who had no idea what they were doing. They would put forward a number of seemingly random, outlandish ideas backed not by reasons evidence but by absurd notions and false claims they pulled out of the air. Sometimes debaters who did this actually had a nice speaking… Continue reading

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Democrats: Stop the bedwetting. You aren’t helping.

  By 2024, Elections, Elections and Voting, Politics

Democrats: Stop the bedwetting. You aren’t helping. It was obviously from the beginning that Biden was not at his best. And I knew that it would freak Democrats out. Here is why. Middle class liberals really hate the fact of political disagreement. They believe that since they are intelligent and good-hearted, everyone should agree with them. And they are shocked and bewildered when they face strident disagreement. The first reaction is to deny it. So when, seven years ago, I first started to talk about Trump’s fascist appeal, most people thought I was hysterical. And then when strong disagreement continues, middle class liberals worry and lose confidence in themselves. And that happens even though poll after poll shows that on issue after issue the majority of people in this county are on our side. This is one of the reasons that Democrats in office are so reluctant to act on… Continue reading

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A missed opportunity, not a disaster; what the polls are showing about the debate.

  By 2024, Elections and Voting, Politics

Two post-debate poll results that allow for comparison to pre-debate polls. Almost no change compared to polls before the debate. Ipsos: Biden down 1.5; Trump up .4; Biden ahead by 2.8 Morning Consult: Biden up 1; Trump unchanged, Biden ahead by 1 Other post-debate polls show a very close race. No evidence that the debate cause a significant drop in Biden’s support. Data for progress Trump 48-Biden 45; no recent previous polls Survey USA Trump 45- Biden 43; no recent previous poll Polls do show most people think Trump won the debate whatever that means and more are worried about Biden’s age. But no sharp changes. Why didn’t the debate have more impact? 1. Biden’s age was already baked into the result. As I pointed out above, the real harm is that Biden didn’t do anything to change concerns about this age. But those concerns were not much greater and… Continue reading

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Would another candidate be stronger than Biden?

  By 2024, Elections and Voting

Data for Progress–a really good pollster I’ve worked with a few times in the past–has a new poll showing that no other Democratic candidate does any better against Trump than Biden. Two important notes: 1. The undecideds go up a both D and Trump drop a bit with other candidates. Many of the alternatives to Biden are not well known. So they would have a a greater opportunity to pick up more support among undecideds than Biden does. If Democrats chose someone I think is a really good candidate, like Gretchen Witmer, I think that as she became better known (and assuming no skeletons we don’t know about) she’d win by five points, despite the handicap of being a woman. (Most sexist aren’t voting for Democrats no matter what gender they are.) 2. Trump’s support is pretty static. He tops out at 48%. That suggests that those undecideds are not… Continue reading

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What Happens If Biden Steps Down

  By 2024, Elections, Politics

I mentioned in a previous post that whether it makes sense for Biden to withdraw depends on what we think the process of replacing him will look like and who the likely candidate would be. Here are my thoughts about that first part. To begin with, the only way the nomination is opened up is if luminaries like Obama and Clymer, along with Jill Biden can convince the president to withdraw. I think that’s unlikely. If that does happen, then there is going to be a wide open process involving 6 or 7 candidates that will likely involve some debate as well as many meetings with groups of delegates over a six to eight week period. I imagine that Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsome, and Gretchen Witmer will run. Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Amy Kobuchar and Elizabeth Warren may run as well. Who knows, maybe Bernie Sanders will jump… Continue reading

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PBPC Statement on PA House Elections 2022

  By 2022, Elections, Pennsylvania

While we are still waiting for final election results in a number of districts, all indications point to the Democrats taking control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. If they do, Rep. Joanna McClinton will become the Speaker of the House, the first Black woman to do so. For the last twenty years, gerrymandered legislative districts have enabled the Republicans to control the PA House of Representatives even though, in most of those years, a majority of votes for state representative went to Democrats. Republican control of the PA House of Representatives has stood in the way of enacting a great deal of legislation that has broad, and in many cases, bipartisan support, including raising the minimum wage, fixing an unfair tax system in which families in the top 1% pay taxes at half the rate as families in the middle, fully and fairly funding pre-K and K-12 education, making… Continue reading

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Memo: Another Blue Shift Coming

  By 2022

TO: Editorial Board Writers, Columnists, and Other Interested Parties FROM: Marc Stier, Director, Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center SUBJECT: Another blue shift coming in PA election returns DATE: November 7, 2022   In late October of 2020, we released a paper titled, “2020 Election Expectations: High Numbers of Mail-Votes and the Blue Shift.” We explained that due to Democrats being far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, the initial count of the votes on Election Day would show Republicans ahead in many state-wide and local races—but that as mail ballots were counted, there would be a “blue shift” as vote tallies showed Democrats’ number of votes catching up to, and in many cases surpassing, the Republicans’. We warned that Donald Trump and his followers would use the blue shift to buttress their claims that the 2020 election was rigged—claims that began long before Election Day. Our predictions about… Continue reading

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If you do your part, things are looking good for Tuesday

  By 2022

I’m not at all certain about what is doing to happen on Tuesday. But I’m becoming more confident that IF YOU ALL DO YOUR PART–knocking on doors and getting out to vote yourself–the results will be good. Two strong pieces of evidence. First, a recent poll of people 19-29 , shows that people that age (1) say the will turn out at rates equal to 2018 and, in battlegrounds states like PA, at rates 5 points higher than 2018. And they support Democrats for Congress by a 2-1 margin. Second, to judge by who are the new voters, and who sought and are returning mail ballots in PA (and elsewhere) women are coming out to vote very heavily to save abortion. I know the polls are close everywhere. But the results of polling in close elections at this stage of the game are heavily dependent on estimates of who is going… Continue reading