Congrats on a great launch. Your blog is required daily reading for me! Happy Holidays to the whole Downballot team. And Scott Brown? Really? Again? Sheesh.
Just wanted to say that I’m deeply grateful for The Downballot – and not just five days a week. It is one of the sources that I strongly recommend to all friends and acquaintances that care about American democracy and our elections.
Strangely enough, I have never seen a complete American presidential election result. And by that I mean an overview that includes and specifies the number of provisional ballots for each state, and gives a full accounting of these – without having to go to 50 individual state-specific sources.
I have searched and asked around, but no-one can point me to an overview that has this key state-by-state data.
Unless it already exists, I hereby suggest that The Downballot make such an overview, starting with the 2024 Presidential Election!
Every public library has a book in the reference section called 'The Almanac of American Politics'; it has literally everything you ask for here (and so much more)..👍
Back in the day, it clearly really annoyed Trump to Steve Bannon referred to as President Bannon. Quite a few people were also sending cards and letters addressed to "President Bannon, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenu".
Not long after that, Steve Bannon was no longer part of the White House.
Question: The National Mall is run by the National Park Service. So if there's a government shutdown, the Mall too will be closed. Doesn’t this mean Trump’s inauguration has to be held elsewhere – and at a much-smaller venue, e.g. the White House Rose Garden?
Americans worship billionaires. They just elected two to the Presidency and the errand boy for another to the Vice Presidency. Half the cabinet is going to be billionaires and they haven't said "boo". I don't think that will be a very strong attack, unless we've had a recession.
People seem to get fatigued quickly though and Trump blowing up everyones phones everyday will have an effect. I think Cook mentioned today that we've only had one election (2012) since 2004 where at least one of the House/Senate/White House didn't flip. I'm not sold that it will be a magic bullet but can see it being an effective attack by 26/28 we'll see.
Americans (and especially Trumpers) may admire wealth, but resent being reminded how powerless they are in the face of wealth. Telling working class Americans “look at all these billionaires in charge of everything, is this really what you wanted?” is a sound play. The unsubtleness (is that a word?) of this moment can work to our advantage.
Yup. It seriously offends people that billionaires pay a far-lower tax rate than hard-working Americans who may need two jobs – and who are still struggling to make ends meet.
Americans admire wealth and do not fault people for being rich/successful.
Americans DO dislike the 'elite'.
Americans do not automatically consider someone 'elite' because they are wealthy though.
Democrats have thus far failed as a Party to connect Trump to 'elitism' simply because of his wealth.
Whether they can do it to Musk remains to be seen.
Sanders is the only public figure besides maybe AOC who has proven somewhat effective at tapping into anger over 'wealthy elites' but he is a horrific messenger who is self-tainted with the word socialism. Hopefully the actual Democratic Party, to which Sanders does not belong, can take this message and run with it.
Clearly after the UnitedHealth shooting there is an undercurrent of anti-eliteism in the country. Not seizing on that and using it to tie profits and wealth to elitism would be political malpractice.
This is the road Democrats need to follow out of the wilderness.
And he’s only “effective” because he’s never in his life had to pander to people who don’t look, think, and act exactly like him. But yes, if all Americans thought wealthy = “elite” FDR and JFK never become President.
Tbf, the Roosevelts were absolutely elites, there is no definition of elite that could exclude an old money Dutch family that had been living in New York since it was called New Amsterdam.
I forget if anyone here on The Downballot brought this data up in previous discussions but I just looked at the percentage of the votes which the third party Senate candidates in the WI-SEN race got.
It appears Tammy Baldwin was helped not by one third party candidate but two:
Phil Anderson - Disrupt the Corruption Party, although he's had a history of being a Libertarian. Got 1.2% of the votes.
Thomas Leager - America First Party (you guessed it, is a full Trump-supporting party) even though he challenged GOP Senate Candidate Eric Hovde. Got .8% of the votes.
When you take into account that Baldwin got 49.4% of the votes and Hovde got 48.5%, Hovde could have gotten 49.3% of the votes if Leager didn't run. That means Baldwin essentially would have won the Senate race in a real nail biter.
Of course, if Anderson didn't run in the race along with Leager, it's possible Hovde might have eeked out a narrow win.
Baldwin was fortunate to have been elected in spite of the fact that there were two third party candidates running.
I'm skeptical that you can simply add third party votes to the ideologically closest main party when considering hypotheticals. Third party voters have a variety of motivations, and many would otherwise leave that line blank.
Exactly.. it's simplistic to just add 3rd party votes to either side..voters don't always follow logical patterns (as a matter of fact, voters are often what Spock would call, very 'illogical')
This is merely a hypothetical but I don’t discount that it could have been a lower percentage of votes Hovde could have picked up.
Maybe it could have been a 0.2%, 0.4% or even less than 0.1% in votes that Hovde could have gotten if Leager didn’t run. We do know that Hovde either did not win over this 0.8% of voters, they may have cast their votes for the America First Party simply because it sounded like it was a vote for Trump OR that the of voters were enthusiastic towards Leager.
Aren’t we arguing at times that third party candidates can in fact take votes away from either Democratic and Republican candidates? That’s the overall hypothetical I’m arguing here.
Eric Hovde isn’t far off from Trump in his political ideology. As far as I can sense, the America First Party is a third party at least registered in WI and its ideology is clearly all-in for Trump and his agenda. Why does the GOP need two Senate candidates in the general election who support Trump?
Congrats on a great launch. Your blog is required daily reading for me! Happy Holidays to the whole Downballot team. And Scott Brown? Really? Again? Sheesh.
Thank you so kindly, Jessica! And I know, right? 🤪
Just wanted to say that I’m deeply grateful for The Downballot – and not just five days a week. It is one of the sources that I strongly recommend to all friends and acquaintances that care about American democracy and our elections.
Thank you for your always-stellar work!
You are incredibly kind, ArcticStones! I really appreciate your evangelism on our behalf. Happy holidays!
SUGGESTION FOR THE DOWNBALLOT
Strangely enough, I have never seen a complete American presidential election result. And by that I mean an overview that includes and specifies the number of provisional ballots for each state, and gives a full accounting of these – without having to go to 50 individual state-specific sources.
I have searched and asked around, but no-one can point me to an overview that has this key state-by-state data.
Unless it already exists, I hereby suggest that The Downballot make such an overview, starting with the 2024 Presidential Election!
Every public library has a book in the reference section called 'The Almanac of American Politics'; it has literally everything you ask for here (and so much more)..👍
This is the type of messaging that can break through. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1004317024856404?fs=e&fs=e
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1113073277261600?fs=e&fs=e
Calling Elon President Musk and Felon 47 Vice President Trump
We gotta start somewhere!
Back in the day, it clearly really annoyed Trump to Steve Bannon referred to as President Bannon. Quite a few people were also sending cards and letters addressed to "President Bannon, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenu".
Not long after that, Steve Bannon was no longer part of the White House.
Question: The National Mall is run by the National Park Service. So if there's a government shutdown, the Mall too will be closed. Doesn’t this mean Trump’s inauguration has to be held elsewhere – and at a much-smaller venue, e.g. the White House Rose Garden?
I'm thinking I like Mark Gordon🤔
New GOP slogan:
"Government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires."
– Dana Milbank, Columnist at Washington Post
I can see the 2028 Dem ads already with "JD Vance is for billionaires, Josh Shapiro (or whoever) is for you".
Americans worship billionaires. They just elected two to the Presidency and the errand boy for another to the Vice Presidency. Half the cabinet is going to be billionaires and they haven't said "boo". I don't think that will be a very strong attack, unless we've had a recession.
People seem to get fatigued quickly though and Trump blowing up everyones phones everyday will have an effect. I think Cook mentioned today that we've only had one election (2012) since 2004 where at least one of the House/Senate/White House didn't flip. I'm not sold that it will be a magic bullet but can see it being an effective attack by 26/28 we'll see.
Americans (and especially Trumpers) may admire wealth, but resent being reminded how powerless they are in the face of wealth. Telling working class Americans “look at all these billionaires in charge of everything, is this really what you wanted?” is a sound play. The unsubtleness (is that a word?) of this moment can work to our advantage.
I think we should absolutely give it a shot but I think we misunderstand the American people.
Give it some time. That’s assuming that the Democrats hammer it.
That's quite the assumption. They wouldn't want to upset their donors.
Harris proposed a tax on unrealized capital gains. Oh those evil rich dems who control everything the party does!
Yep. Not to mention the fact that both she and Walz very much DID discuss issues on the stump. Voters simply didn’t care.
They don't hate billionaires, but they don't think they deserve special favors. Raising taxes on the rich is overwhelmingly popular.
Yup. It seriously offends people that billionaires pay a far-lower tax rate than hard-working Americans who may need two jobs – and who are still struggling to make ends meet.
Congrats to The Downballot for finding a solid home.
Thank you so kindly, Justin! We still have a ways to go, but we're on a good path. Happy holidays!
CO-Gov/CO-SoS: No charges for Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) or anyone else in the password leak scandal.
Source: https://bsky.app/profile/kylec.bsky.social/post/3ldrb25y7622m
2024 proved thus:
Americans admire wealth and do not fault people for being rich/successful.
Americans DO dislike the 'elite'.
Americans do not automatically consider someone 'elite' because they are wealthy though.
Democrats have thus far failed as a Party to connect Trump to 'elitism' simply because of his wealth.
Whether they can do it to Musk remains to be seen.
Sanders is the only public figure besides maybe AOC who has proven somewhat effective at tapping into anger over 'wealthy elites' but he is a horrific messenger who is self-tainted with the word socialism. Hopefully the actual Democratic Party, to which Sanders does not belong, can take this message and run with it.
Clearly after the UnitedHealth shooting there is an undercurrent of anti-eliteism in the country. Not seizing on that and using it to tie profits and wealth to elitism would be political malpractice.
This is the road Democrats need to follow out of the wilderness.
And he’s only “effective” because he’s never in his life had to pander to people who don’t look, think, and act exactly like him. But yes, if all Americans thought wealthy = “elite” FDR and JFK never become President.
Tbf, the Roosevelts were absolutely elites, there is no definition of elite that could exclude an old money Dutch family that had been living in New York since it was called New Amsterdam.
As far as I know, Democrats have never made an issue with Trump being wealthy so much as his character.
That said, the message should be - Stop focusing on Trump all the time as it's not enough to expand the base and get more elected.
Quote of the day:
"X is just a swastika, sans serif."
WI-SEN:
I forget if anyone here on The Downballot brought this data up in previous discussions but I just looked at the percentage of the votes which the third party Senate candidates in the WI-SEN race got.
It appears Tammy Baldwin was helped not by one third party candidate but two:
Phil Anderson - Disrupt the Corruption Party, although he's had a history of being a Libertarian. Got 1.2% of the votes.
Thomas Leager - America First Party (you guessed it, is a full Trump-supporting party) even though he challenged GOP Senate Candidate Eric Hovde. Got .8% of the votes.
When you take into account that Baldwin got 49.4% of the votes and Hovde got 48.5%, Hovde could have gotten 49.3% of the votes if Leager didn't run. That means Baldwin essentially would have won the Senate race in a real nail biter.
Of course, if Anderson didn't run in the race along with Leager, it's possible Hovde might have eeked out a narrow win.
Baldwin was fortunate to have been elected in spite of the fact that there were two third party candidates running.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/wisconsin-senate-results
I'm skeptical that you can simply add third party votes to the ideologically closest main party when considering hypotheticals. Third party voters have a variety of motivations, and many would otherwise leave that line blank.
Exactly.. it's simplistic to just add 3rd party votes to either side..voters don't always follow logical patterns (as a matter of fact, voters are often what Spock would call, very 'illogical')
This is merely a hypothetical but I don’t discount that it could have been a lower percentage of votes Hovde could have picked up.
Maybe it could have been a 0.2%, 0.4% or even less than 0.1% in votes that Hovde could have gotten if Leager didn’t run. We do know that Hovde either did not win over this 0.8% of voters, they may have cast their votes for the America First Party simply because it sounded like it was a vote for Trump OR that the of voters were enthusiastic towards Leager.
Aren’t we arguing at times that third party candidates can in fact take votes away from either Democratic and Republican candidates? That’s the overall hypothetical I’m arguing here.
Eric Hovde isn’t far off from Trump in his political ideology. As far as I can sense, the America First Party is a third party at least registered in WI and its ideology is clearly all-in for Trump and his agenda. Why does the GOP need two Senate candidates in the general election who support Trump?
RIP Rickey...Legend