The Trump Presidency

Ok. Gillespie's MS-13 ads, which started to run in late September? What exactly are we talking about? And, again, the final margin....

You're saying "psh, Breitbart," but posting an article primarily sourced to Steve Bannon as evidence

I'm saying "psh, Breitbart" because that's your boogeyman. They are not even in my peripheries in terms of interest or popular relevance.

Here are more articles intimating the same exact thing. I have no idea why you are being a stickler about a Bannon quote, as if an article featuring a quote by him discredits the entire piece.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/us/politics/virginia-governor-northam-gillespie-race.html?_r=0
http://ijr.com/opinion/2017/11/2670...nter-stage-tight-virginia-gubernatorial-race/
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/12/16439948/ed-gillespie-ms-13
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_..._attempting_a_trump_maneuver_in_virginia.html
 
What exactly are we talking about?

We're apparently still at loggerheads (and don't blame me, my position here is pretty simple) over:

a) Whether Gillespie engaged in Trumpian identity politics at the tail-end of his campaign
b) Whether the race tightened over the course of the past ~month (which just happens to coincide with an obvious change in Gillespie's approach)
 
Scheiße, that NYTimes article has a quote by Bannon. But it's still worth referencing, Breitbart be damned.

This onslaught over issues of culture and identity, a mix of the Trumpian tactics of today with the unvarnished appeals from the past in a state defined by race since Jamestown, has appalled Democrats in Virginia and beyond.

The gut-punch approach has left even some Republicans wincing over the spectacle of a former Republican National Committee chairman and New Jersey native trying to win with earnest vows to guard emblems of the Lost Cause and with warnings about menacing Hispanic gangs.

Yet Mr. Gillespie’s strategy has brought him within a few points of Mr. Northam in both public and private polling. A New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll, released on Sunday, showed Mr. Northam with just a three-point lead over Mr. Gillespie, 43 percent to 40 percent.

That has forced nervous Democrats to confront the reality that race, immigration and crime can be a potent mix even in a rapidly suburbanizing state where Hillary Clinton won by more than five points last year and where, overall, the president remains deeply unpopular.

“I don’t think it will work in Virginia, but I just don’t know,” said Representative Robert C. Scott, Virginia’s first black congressman since Reconstruction.

Should Mr. Gillespie win or narrowly fall short, he will have handed 2018 candidates in competitive races a playbook for Trump-era campaigns: deploy the president’s politics but avoid Mr. Trump himself.
 
Are/were there poll numbers or tracking numbers relating to the Danica Roem race ?

That might explain the "tightening" of the Gov race
 
That tightening in the polls based on Trumpian tactics was real, but the final tally outstripped the closest average polling by how much? So the polls that had it close (R commissioned plus Rassmussen) and brought the average down were right, but then election day happened.
 
That tightening in the polls based on Trumpian tactics was real, but the final tally outstripped the closest average polling by how much? So the polls that had it close (R commissioned plus Rassmussen) and brought the average down were right, but then election day happened.

What are you saying here, that the tightening never actually happened? That it was just a result of Republican commissioned polling? And Rasmussen?
 
What are you saying here, that the tightening never actually happened? That it was just a result of Republican commissioned polling? And Rasmussen?

Is it possible that Gilmore's change in tactics helped produce both the tightening of the polls in his favor and the movement of late-deciding voters in his opponent's favor? The exit polls seem to show a sharp break in late-deciding voters against Gilmore.
 
I mean, are we talking participation trophy here, or what?

We're talking about an honest assessment of whether or not the elections yesterday were a true referendum on Trump and his policies/agenda. You've chosen to cherry-pick Virginia's margin of victory as an example of 'energy and grass-roots support' for the Democratic party (while conveniently ignoring the results of the vote in New Jersey). I've pivoted to an analysis of the vote in Virginia and how measures of public support fluctuated over the course of the final weeks of the election (note: not the final week itself, which I'm content to chalk up as an empirical normalization of sorts).
 
Is it possible that Gilmore's change in tactics helped produce both the tightening of the polls in his favor and the movement of late-deciding voters in his opponent's favor? The exit polls seem to show a sharp break in late-deciding voters against Gilmore.

Yes, it's absolutely possible/plausible. There's a number of ways that you could read it, at least superficially.
 
Sweet! More socialists winning.

Venezuela, here we come!

Leftists are organizing and running for office--and sometimes winning--while you are simultaneously claiming that your chosen ideology reflects the will of the people and that voters are dumb. So how did Libertarians candidates do yesterday?
 
Not meant that way but conventional polling might have overlooked non mainstream blocs.
Guessing Roem's opponent never saw what hit him

I think that what you see in places like Manassas is more radicalization (galvanization?) than unification. This is a good thing for progressives, TBD as to how it portends for the Democratic party itself going forward.
 
Leftists are organizing and running for office--and sometimes winning--while you are simultaneously claiming that your chosen ideology reflects the will of the people and that voters are dumb. So how did Libertarians candidates do yesterday?

Not well... as we celebrate more socialism, I say with greater confidence how dumb the voting public is
 
Since Jacobin is now Hawk-approved, how about this:

[tw]928354901482180609[/tw]

What's your read on this? Should Democrats embrace this particular shift left (noting, of course, that it largely wasn't a right-left shift, but a left to 'lefter' shift)? Or is what we saw just extremeness born out of a poignant, categorical rebuke?

Despite all evidence, some will continue to insist that Democrats need to “move back to the center” and follow the nineties-era recipes of Third Way thought. If the past year’s developments weren’t enough to dispel that notion, last night’s results should. Whether the Democratic Party leadership draws the right lessons is anyone’s guess.
 
Back
Top