I am seeing quite a number of opinion pieces about what the Democrats need to do to win the 2020 presidential election. What the Dems need to do to win rural areas. What the Dems need to do to win the suburbs. What the Dems need to do to win the middle. And so on. So far I have found all of them unsightful and lacking in an understanding of basics which is why I’m not citing them here.
I daresay that a majority of the Democratic leadership believes they can win the 2020 presidential election without rural areas, suburbs, or the middle—solely on the basis of urban cores. IMO that is foolhardy and risky for a basic reason. The Democrats need a high turnout by black voters to win and they can’t just take black voters for granted. It’s less that they should worry about black voters suddenly becoming Republicans en masse. It’s that black voters may not turn out in numbers sufficient to ensure victory.
By 2020 in all likelihood a majority of the black vote will either be rural, suburban, or in the middle. I think that people will be shocked at what the 2020 decennial census reveals. For example, here in Chicago I predict that the number of blacks living in the city will have fallen below 30%, whites will be a majority, and the total population of the city will have fallen sharply—probably below 2.5 million. It may even have shrunk to a point where Houston is larger.
I believe 2020 is shaping up as another McGovern campaign. The radicals are in the saddle and riding hard. If Trump can properly position himself, he can win in a landslide. He main vulnerability is the Republicans, who will stab him in the back. If they succeed, we will get a socialist dictatorship and the full Green New Deal.
Democrats really need to focus on meat-and-potato issues IMO, but so far that’s been lacking. Of course, I realize that’s necessary because candidates currently have to appeal to primary voters. I don’t think we’ll get a firm idea of what the Democrats will actually run on and how they will frame the campaign until next year.
Black voter’s litmus test, reparations.
“If they succeed, we will get a socialist dictatorship”
On vacation in California and first stop was San Francisco. Didn’t see a singly communist flag. Went to the Cathedral for the evening service, really enjoyed the Evensong service, and it was sung in English, not Arabic and we didn’t have government thugs come in and try to break up the service and deprive us of our religious liberty. In the heart of of socialist country. Who can believe it?
Back on topic, I dont think any Democratic leader thinks they can win without the suburbs. Would like to see that in writing from some of them. Heaven knows there was tons of stuff written about suburban mothers in the last election.
Steve
I don’t see black turnout being decisive in the Presidential race (unlike specific state and local elections), because blacks are generally concentrated in swing states. You can argue that Florida and Pennsylvania were close enough in 2016 that black turnout matters, but those states are close enough that usually anything matters.
A way to prove that is to go state by state, starting with the states that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 most narrowly and then reduce the black turnout by 1%, then 2%, etc. That won’t matter much in California but it sure will in New York, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, and Nevada.
The prevailing wisdom right now is that Hillary Clinton didn’t win outright because of reduced turnout among black voters. It seems likely that she lost Michigan and Wisconsin at least partially due to not high enough turnout among black voters.
Clinton was a mediocre candidate who ran a tepid campaign in the wake of Obama. Everyone thought she was going to win. It’s unknowable how much this affected voter turnout. Regardless, it’s very hard to believe that after four years of Trump turnout will be worse than in 2016 or that the Democrats are only targeting only the cities.
It’s possible, IMO, that this election will be very anti-climatic. To a point. The polls will show the Dems ahead. No one will believe it. Then they’ll win, just like what was supposed to happen in 2016. What happens next is beyond me. Trump is clearly in some stage of dementia. No one pays any attention to him now as he raves about his missing TV friends, but by the fall of 2020 it’s going to be a huge problem. And if he loses, there’s no telling what happens.
Dems know that they win by demographic replacement. They’re just running on the assumption that it will be enough by 2020, especially now that felons can vote in Florida. They’re not working hard for the votes that FDR won, because they don’t think whites matter anymore, save as sources of resentment.
Working from memory, about 6 million Obama voters switched to Trump in 2016 and a further 4+ million Obama voters did not vote at all in 2016. The portion of those that are black might have put Clinton over the top, but she had much bigger and more fundamental problems.