There is obviously no way to know, but I would bet Cheney and Elise Stefanik don't actually disagree with what happened in 2020. MTG sure maybe, but she's not a mainline GOPer.

This is completely uninteresting and has nothing to do with Scott. Every election progressives/liberal strategists speculate that democrats should shut up about social issues to lessen the margins by which they lose rural voters.

Dick and Liz do.

But to be fair that is largely due to decades of decline in voter confidence in their elected officials, due to seeing them as completely vacuous and lying when it comes to what they often offer them in campaigns versus what they get (or don't get) after the party has won.

Once you give up on actually being able to get any real or substantive change as promised and all you are offered is a 'two sides of the same coin', 'lesser of two evils' choice that both represent the same corporate interests it is far easier then to only focus on the culture war stuff.

And both parties shoehorned voters into that position and choice very deliberately. Both were very happy in them having no real choice and thus neither party being forced to really cater to voters. And this now is the blow back to that.


Biden is trying to change that now by trying to say to Americans 'government can work for you' and we will see if it can work. If even GOP voters will notice some benefits and think 'I want to keep voting for that'.

Hope and Change v2.0

This is not the same thing. Its one thing to avoid talking about issues you disagree about so that voters will vote for you based on the issues you do agree on. Its quite another to depend on someone voting for you BECAUSE of a stance. you vehemently disagree about. That's why its interesting.

V20

Across the world "hope and change' is the battle cry for politicians to try and entice voters out of their beaten up stupors. Even the GOP uses it, that is how much they know that is what voters really want as they are just increasingly checked out due to the lies and 'lesser of two evils' gambit they are forced into.

I have said before that EVERY ornganization goes through a cycle where once they aree established and have power, theyy seek to disconnect themselves from all their accountability from their stakeholders.

Corporations continually seek to weaken gov't and citizne accountabilty through lobbying.

Unions, when they hit peek power, tried to eliminate their accountability to the broader corporate stakeholders and even the employees themselves.

Not for Profits and Charities sought to avoid accountability to donors, leading to backlash.

Government parties did not want voters to be able to really reject them based on things like promises or platform and thus created the lessor of two evils gambit which basically makes those things irrelevant.


It is quite natural for an entity to seek ways to not be accountable but it is also then quite natural to hit a point where those you need to support them to rebel and take a 'f*ck it all approach' to everything.


But that is why now we see this increasing pattern of younger and younger Politicians taking power. "Experience' is being rejected as a positive and a willingness to 'gamble' on something new and hopefully outside the box is the result. That is what got us Obama and then Trump and many more around the world. The 'lack' of a deep resume.

Seems pretty dam close. You are speculating that people who are uncomfortable with a black man might make up a larger % of dem voters than normal, but not because Democrats flat out say "Well, you know Scott is black so....". Dems can pick up racist votes by avoiding talking about race. That's your view, I totally disagree this dynamic can play out because of the status of minorities as leaders in the Dem party and the status of racists as leaders among Republicans.

i think we can all agree there's zero chance of scott winning the nomination cause you know the saying about once you go black you never go back

But he might become president because Trump reads this thread and picks him for vp.

More black people voted against Trump in 2020 than any other candidate in history. One of the most important rules in politics is it's really hard to get people who voted against you once to vote for you another time. I doubt Tim Scott as VEEP will somehow overcome those headwinds.

Trump picked up black males in 2020 compared to 2016. Link here: Trump Is Losing Ground With White Voters But Gaining Among Black And Hispanic Americans.
That's based on pre-election data but exit polling also shows it.

That doesn’t contradict what I said; it’s actually a corollary

I wasn't being that serious. You keep talking about the real world and somehow don't realize that I am only interested in the odd symmetry breaking that occurs when one side can pitch racial bias and the other side can't. I thought symmetry breaking was in your neck of the woods.

I doubt Trump can run in 2024.

He is no where near as fit as Biden physically and despite the right trying to pretend Biden is senile, Trump had exponentially more gaffs and senior moments.

At that age you do really have to have a high baseline of fitness to be functional with the type of work load and stress the job entails. It is more important than ever.

Makes sense if the argument is that turnout picked up in 2020. I'm finding 60% black turnout in 2016 vs 63% in 2020.

It is....and to borrow language from gauge theory, in order for a symmetry to be broken, there must be a scale at which it is restored. My claim is that Scott won't break any symmetry because dems are already very mindful of how racists will vote, whether they admit it or not. This was a big reason why Biden held off Booker and Harris in the last primaries or why Obama doing well in the 08 Iowa caucus was so important. Obama could not have won by losing badly in 2 very white states and crushing with black voters in the SEC like Biden did because those black voters would have had concerns about whether Obama could do "well enough" with white voters that they didn't have with Biden.

Right. Pretty much all demos set turnout records in 2020, local records in terms of % and all time records in terms of aggregate votes.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...ampaign-485860

In response to the OP...

Assuming the following premises: A percentage of voters cast their ballots based on identity politics. A Presidential candidate can get these voters to vote for a party they wouldn't otherwise vote for because of their tribalistic allegiances.

Yes, a black Republican can siphon off votes from democrats in much the same way that Jimmy Carter siphoned off the votes of white evangelicals from Republicans in 1976.

In the case of a Tim Scott general election candidacy, the Republican response to Carter's Presidency in 1980 may provide a blueprint for Democrats should Scott win the nomination. In 1980 Carter was painted as a sellout who didn't stand for evangelical values, most especially in regard to abortion. In 2024 Democrats could paint Scott as a sellout based on gun control, closeness to Trump, or some other issue.

I agree that courting white identity-politics would not be a good strategy for Dems because that would turn off other members of the Democratic voting block. However, I also think that Democrats won't have to do anything to get white racists to avoid voting for Scott. The tribalism of these voters is imo enough to get them to either A) not vote, B) vote 3rd party, or C) vote Democrat.