Please share this with your MAGA friends and family—it’s a real eye-opener! 👀👇👇 I’ve already helped change a lot of minds with this piece, and it’s gaining momentum. 🇺🇸💙
Normally, yes, one point is enough and you don't need a 10- point margin. However, given the GOP's obvious plan to challenge (or sabotage) any and all Trump losses, a larger margin is kind of needed everywhere, especially the swing states.
Great analysis, Stephen. Very thoughtful and detailed, highlighting how the Harris camp is working hard to drive the vote and trying to avoid past mistakes.
Final note: I won’t rest until Stephen has won his goal of 1,000 subscribers. His insights are invaluable in these tumultuous times. - Signed, Anne Bancroft impersonator Mrs. Robinson
Tell me gerrymandering wasn’t an issue when you had two fine people in Feingold and Barnes and babbling idiot Ron Johnson still won. That fool needs to be permanently resigned from ever holding any office.
How would gerrymandering affect a statewide race? Not that gerrymandering can be defended--it cannot--but Feingold and Hillary losing Wisconsin in 2016 couldn't have been affected by that.
From the Brennan Center: Gerrymandering has a real impact on the balance of power in Congress and many state legislatures.
In 2010, Republicans — in an effort to control the drawing of congressional maps — forged a campaign to win majorities in as many state legislatures as possible. It was wildly successful, giving them control over the drawing of 213 congressional districts. The redrawing of maps that followed produced some of the most extreme gerrymanders in history.
I think what happened to Hillary Clinton was a confluence of events, starting with James Comey… and Donald Trump (who as a decades-long criminal and Russian asset never should have been allowed anywhere near the White House, let alone the presidency). One purely anecdotal quibble: I listen to a national progressive talk show, and in 2016 multiple callers from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan said that the campaign went MIA from those states. That they were begging for signs, bumper stickers, more volunteer consultation, etc. And… nothing. I’m not an expert, but I do think that Howard Dean’s ‘50 state strategy’ was instrumental for Barrack Obama in 2008.
Obama won friggin' Indiana, which would not have happened without a fifty-state strategy. No Democratic pundits would have dreamed it was going to happen.
Yes, my sources on the ground in 2016 agree this was an issue. I am hardly a Stein defender, but I do think Dems have focused more on third party defectors than on issues with mobilization, which in a close election could have at least resulted in a narrow win. I do think that Trump's victory wasn't destiny. It's possible we could have had a 2020 situation where the Democratic victory is far closer than we might've expected but I would've gladly taken a close call to a loss.
I completely agree. I also don’t even want it to be a ‘close call’ for this election. I think Kamala Harris and the campaign team are doing everything right, and in such a compressed time frame. But my fear is that a close margin tips the scales for everything the Trump sycophants and malcontents are doing behind the scenes to contest this election. I want to see her stomp him into the ground, backward (scratch)… forward and in heels.
I still think 2016 is best explained by one word--complacency. For many people, including Trump and Hillary themselves, and Obama, and Comey, and Loretta Lynch, and the media, and the voters--they just assumed Hillary would wipe the floor with Trump because surely voters couldn't be so stupid. And thanks to that assumption, a lot of decisions--what news items to cover, whether to vote or vote third party, or whether to assign Comey to take the email thing seriously, or whether Comey should in fact take it seriously, etc.--that all culminated in a close loss.
Yes, the rhetoric was far different than in 2020/2024. Democrats treated Trump like a joke. Obama said the American people would never even consider Trump, and Pelosi openly mocked the idea that he could win. This wasn't confidence. It was complacency, as you say (like something from REVENGE OF THE SITH).
Democrats took McCain and Romney more seriously, even though the stakes of their victory was far less catastrophic than Trump. But Obama was *popular.* People wanted to vote for him. He was the equivalent of a blockbuster movie. You want to be there on opening weekend to be part of the experience.
Complacency is dangerous when your candidate has historic levels of unfavorables (fair or not).
Yep--it got to the point that they assumed the (too) close polls were overrating Trump's support, that it was just angry voters telling pollsters they would vote for him, but that of course no one would do so because he was just that unserious a candidate. Oops!
Hillary also had the bad luck of being a very establishment candidate at a time when voters were very anti-establishment (hence the Bernie surge), and two terms of her party in the White House generally leads to that third term itch problem--your own supporters losing their pep, your opponents being more fired up, and swing voters more willing to give the other party a chance (by forgetting what they hated about the other party, less fresh in their minds). Add those fundamentals to a "they can't REALLY vote for Trump" complacency and it affected every little decision made by every key player that year.
Trump was—and still is—a joke. As a reality television personality. A complete and utter fraud that Mark Burnett (Mr. Roma Downey) perpetrated on the American people. Obama was—and still is—popular (and I will add he had the benefit of the financial crisis, with McCain theatrically ‘suspending’ his campaign—as a Hail Mary after the disaster that was Sarah Palin—to go to Washington and vote to shut down the entire auto industry to reinforce Republican austerity economic ‘policy’). If the voter registrations and fundraising for Harris are any indication, they will hopefully transcend polls and the lazy media and the very real notion of traditional complacency.
Great write up, Stephen. My feeling is that Harris will win, and decisively; furthermore, Dems down ballot will as well, giving her majorities in both the House and the Senate. Locally and statewide, Dems will do well, yeah, it could be a Blue wave election. Lots of things go into the wave elections, some are out of the candidate's control, others are not, but it's important for the candidate to know which is which and to campaign accordingly. It seems that VP Harris is aware of that, and isn't taking any chances. I like how she claims to the underdog, which is true in a way - trump has been campaigning for years, and she's been campaigning for months, and the legacy media still likes trump, although there are a few signs that they are souring on him. She does have momentum, enthusiasm, and money; all of which helps with the ground game. Confidence is important, but complacency has no part in a successful campaign.
I went to college in Wisconsin in the mid-‘90s, and every year had a bit of culture shock starting classes after a summer in Chicagoland. Madison is liberal - REALLY liberal - and the faculty and students and people on the street skew leftward, even the conservative people. But the assumptions of other students were not my assumptions. No one in Chicago would suggest college-educated women wouldn’t work after marriage or that it would be insulting to a woman’s husband to suggest she would have to, for instance. And plenty of people were willing to talk about encouraging poor single moms to move to Madison because the benefits were better than in neighboring states. The casual racism against Hmong people, a group I had never heard of, never ceased to shock me. So I wasn’t too surprised when the state slid to the right after I graduated. I was surprised that my Wisconsin-dwelling family left after that rightward shift. They’d never struck me as politically aware, or even particularly liberal, but they were quite vocal about being unhappy about what was going on in state government. Taking away same-day voter registration, gerrymandering, and messing around with the governor’s powers were bridges too far.
All that to say - Wisconsin is swingy, full of stubborn people with traditional liberal values but also traditional conservative values, sometimes within the same person. And D/R doesn’t always hew to an urban/rural divide like elsewhere. Scandinavians and Germans who’ve been there for generations still think of themselves as tightly linked to their ancestors’ homelands and religious principles. They get really ticked off when their leaders are unethical even if those leaders are on their political side, and the Republicans in Madison certainly deserved their ire.
I hate the “Hillary’s loss [of the EC] was her own fault” narrative. It’s no more her fault than it’s the fault of Democrats to allow zoning an area for a megachurch that will encourage members to vote Republican. Forseeable but not ethically fixable.
Gerrymandering in Wisconsin killed off Dem enthusiasm for a while, but I think people are energized again. At least, I’m hoping so.
Good piece overall, but your last comment is grotesquely incorrect in the current context. Harris needs to win big. The courts are on Trump’s side and will be looking for excuses to hand the election to him; bigger margins will discourage that. Also, a big presidential margin will improve the odds of the Dems holding the Senate.
I believe my point applies there. A narrow win in WI will be in danger of being overturned. I know their SCOTUS (fortunately!) is no longer GOP-owned, but the federal judiciary is of course thoroughly Trumpified. The only protection is margins large enough to intimidate GOP judges into not interfering.
VP Kamala Harris will not rest until she is made President of the United States on January 25, 2025.
Amber Nicole Thurman, SAY HER NAME!!!! Ida C. Craddock, SAY HER NAME!!!
Bring it on, my fellow Wisconstanites! We can do it!
She/we will win 💙🇺🇸😘🙏🤗👍🏻🫶💯
This Wisconsinite will be voting for Harris!
Please share this with your MAGA friends and family—it’s a real eye-opener! 👀👇👇 I’ve already helped change a lot of minds with this piece, and it’s gaining momentum. 🇺🇸💙
https://open.substack.com/pub/donovanwashere/p/15-clear-signs-that-youve-either?r=13lrsx&utm_medium=ios
Normally, yes, one point is enough and you don't need a 10- point margin. However, given the GOP's obvious plan to challenge (or sabotage) any and all Trump losses, a larger margin is kind of needed everywhere, especially the swing states.
50 state strategy; concede nothing!
Nor will she stop until all Palestunians are dead.
Great analysis, Stephen. Very thoughtful and detailed, highlighting how the Harris camp is working hard to drive the vote and trying to avoid past mistakes.
"That’s what wins elections, not polls."
Indeed.
Final note: I won’t rest until Stephen has won his goal of 1,000 subscribers. His insights are invaluable in these tumultuous times. - Signed, Anne Bancroft impersonator Mrs. Robinson
Keep spreading the tapes! (Forgive the dated reference.)
Tell me gerrymandering wasn’t an issue when you had two fine people in Feingold and Barnes and babbling idiot Ron Johnson still won. That fool needs to be permanently resigned from ever holding any office.
How would gerrymandering affect a statewide race? Not that gerrymandering can be defended--it cannot--but Feingold and Hillary losing Wisconsin in 2016 couldn't have been affected by that.
From the Brennan Center: Gerrymandering has a real impact on the balance of power in Congress and many state legislatures.
In 2010, Republicans — in an effort to control the drawing of congressional maps — forged a campaign to win majorities in as many state legislatures as possible. It was wildly successful, giving them control over the drawing of 213 congressional districts. The redrawing of maps that followed produced some of the most extreme gerrymanders in history.
I think what happened to Hillary Clinton was a confluence of events, starting with James Comey… and Donald Trump (who as a decades-long criminal and Russian asset never should have been allowed anywhere near the White House, let alone the presidency). One purely anecdotal quibble: I listen to a national progressive talk show, and in 2016 multiple callers from Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan said that the campaign went MIA from those states. That they were begging for signs, bumper stickers, more volunteer consultation, etc. And… nothing. I’m not an expert, but I do think that Howard Dean’s ‘50 state strategy’ was instrumental for Barrack Obama in 2008.
Obama won friggin' Indiana, which would not have happened without a fifty-state strategy. No Democratic pundits would have dreamed it was going to happen.
Yes, my sources on the ground in 2016 agree this was an issue. I am hardly a Stein defender, but I do think Dems have focused more on third party defectors than on issues with mobilization, which in a close election could have at least resulted in a narrow win. I do think that Trump's victory wasn't destiny. It's possible we could have had a 2020 situation where the Democratic victory is far closer than we might've expected but I would've gladly taken a close call to a loss.
I completely agree. I also don’t even want it to be a ‘close call’ for this election. I think Kamala Harris and the campaign team are doing everything right, and in such a compressed time frame. But my fear is that a close margin tips the scales for everything the Trump sycophants and malcontents are doing behind the scenes to contest this election. I want to see her stomp him into the ground, backward (scratch)… forward and in heels.
I still think 2016 is best explained by one word--complacency. For many people, including Trump and Hillary themselves, and Obama, and Comey, and Loretta Lynch, and the media, and the voters--they just assumed Hillary would wipe the floor with Trump because surely voters couldn't be so stupid. And thanks to that assumption, a lot of decisions--what news items to cover, whether to vote or vote third party, or whether to assign Comey to take the email thing seriously, or whether Comey should in fact take it seriously, etc.--that all culminated in a close loss.
Yes, the rhetoric was far different than in 2020/2024. Democrats treated Trump like a joke. Obama said the American people would never even consider Trump, and Pelosi openly mocked the idea that he could win. This wasn't confidence. It was complacency, as you say (like something from REVENGE OF THE SITH).
Democrats took McCain and Romney more seriously, even though the stakes of their victory was far less catastrophic than Trump. But Obama was *popular.* People wanted to vote for him. He was the equivalent of a blockbuster movie. You want to be there on opening weekend to be part of the experience.
Complacency is dangerous when your candidate has historic levels of unfavorables (fair or not).
Yep--it got to the point that they assumed the (too) close polls were overrating Trump's support, that it was just angry voters telling pollsters they would vote for him, but that of course no one would do so because he was just that unserious a candidate. Oops!
Hillary also had the bad luck of being a very establishment candidate at a time when voters were very anti-establishment (hence the Bernie surge), and two terms of her party in the White House generally leads to that third term itch problem--your own supporters losing their pep, your opponents being more fired up, and swing voters more willing to give the other party a chance (by forgetting what they hated about the other party, less fresh in their minds). Add those fundamentals to a "they can't REALLY vote for Trump" complacency and it affected every little decision made by every key player that year.
Trump was—and still is—a joke. As a reality television personality. A complete and utter fraud that Mark Burnett (Mr. Roma Downey) perpetrated on the American people. Obama was—and still is—popular (and I will add he had the benefit of the financial crisis, with McCain theatrically ‘suspending’ his campaign—as a Hail Mary after the disaster that was Sarah Palin—to go to Washington and vote to shut down the entire auto industry to reinforce Republican austerity economic ‘policy’). If the voter registrations and fundraising for Harris are any indication, they will hopefully transcend polls and the lazy media and the very real notion of traditional complacency.
Great write up, Stephen. My feeling is that Harris will win, and decisively; furthermore, Dems down ballot will as well, giving her majorities in both the House and the Senate. Locally and statewide, Dems will do well, yeah, it could be a Blue wave election. Lots of things go into the wave elections, some are out of the candidate's control, others are not, but it's important for the candidate to know which is which and to campaign accordingly. It seems that VP Harris is aware of that, and isn't taking any chances. I like how she claims to the underdog, which is true in a way - trump has been campaigning for years, and she's been campaigning for months, and the legacy media still likes trump, although there are a few signs that they are souring on him. She does have momentum, enthusiasm, and money; all of which helps with the ground game. Confidence is important, but complacency has no part in a successful campaign.
My personal opinion is these pollsters have yet to reckon with Dobbs. There's 100 million women primed to vote and they ain't voting gop.
I went to college in Wisconsin in the mid-‘90s, and every year had a bit of culture shock starting classes after a summer in Chicagoland. Madison is liberal - REALLY liberal - and the faculty and students and people on the street skew leftward, even the conservative people. But the assumptions of other students were not my assumptions. No one in Chicago would suggest college-educated women wouldn’t work after marriage or that it would be insulting to a woman’s husband to suggest she would have to, for instance. And plenty of people were willing to talk about encouraging poor single moms to move to Madison because the benefits were better than in neighboring states. The casual racism against Hmong people, a group I had never heard of, never ceased to shock me. So I wasn’t too surprised when the state slid to the right after I graduated. I was surprised that my Wisconsin-dwelling family left after that rightward shift. They’d never struck me as politically aware, or even particularly liberal, but they were quite vocal about being unhappy about what was going on in state government. Taking away same-day voter registration, gerrymandering, and messing around with the governor’s powers were bridges too far.
All that to say - Wisconsin is swingy, full of stubborn people with traditional liberal values but also traditional conservative values, sometimes within the same person. And D/R doesn’t always hew to an urban/rural divide like elsewhere. Scandinavians and Germans who’ve been there for generations still think of themselves as tightly linked to their ancestors’ homelands and religious principles. They get really ticked off when their leaders are unethical even if those leaders are on their political side, and the Republicans in Madison certainly deserved their ire.
I hate the “Hillary’s loss [of the EC] was her own fault” narrative. It’s no more her fault than it’s the fault of Democrats to allow zoning an area for a megachurch that will encourage members to vote Republican. Forseeable but not ethically fixable.
Gerrymandering in Wisconsin killed off Dem enthusiasm for a while, but I think people are energized again. At least, I’m hoping so.
Good piece overall, but your last comment is grotesquely incorrect in the current context. Harris needs to win big. The courts are on Trump’s side and will be looking for excuses to hand the election to him; bigger margins will discourage that. Also, a big presidential margin will improve the odds of the Dems holding the Senate.
I’m referring specifically to Wisconsin,
I believe my point applies there. A narrow win in WI will be in danger of being overturned. I know their SCOTUS (fortunately!) is no longer GOP-owned, but the federal judiciary is of course thoroughly Trumpified. The only protection is margins large enough to intimidate GOP judges into not interfering.
I think if a a court is corrupt enough to overturn a win, it will do so regardless of the margin.
You may well be right, but I think it would be much easier with a narrow margin, with Bush v Gore being the classic example.
When the hanging chad vote decides and election, it was too close.