There is very strong evidence that Republicans could actually win elections by not cheating and instead embracing the latino's and POC vote in areas where they typically support more conservative type policies. POC around many religious issues and latinos around immigration, generally.

But it would be such anathema to a big hunk of the base who would hate sharing the room in increasing numbers with that 'type' of person.

People often ask 'is there no low, no lie, no corruption, no lack of morals, anything at all the Republicans would not do to win'??

That answer is Yes. They won't compromise to allow POC in to the party willingly. They have found a line they will not cross.

Pretty good article. Just from a macro level 1 see two main possibilities (and of course possibly a combination of both):

1. Trump himself plus the situation of Covid and who you want in charge on the recovery made the Trump/Pence ticket more popular among Latinos.
2. Assumptions about non regular voting Latinos being just as (if not more) liberal than their voting counterparts were wrong, despite all the education/income data indicating otherwise. This is possible of course because the group of regular voters its produces a highly nonrandom sample.

Interesting article about 2020 down ballot.

The Splitting of the Ticket Split: What happened to the House incumbency edge?

Obviously what we care about us what this means for 2022. The standard view is Republicans take the House and Senate is a toss up. I think it;s going to take a pretty big shake up for Dems to keep the House given they only have a 6 seat edge, the historical advantage to not controlling the White House and redistricting which has helped Republicans. GOP would potentially already control the House if you ran 2020 results with 2022 districts.

TRUMP’S DERANGED THEORY THAT DEMOCRATS WOULD REPLACE BIDEN MIGHT HAVE HELPED HIM LOSE 2020

Another 2020 book out. This one claiming the conspiracy theory that Biden was not going to be the nominee, popular here and elsewhere, impacted Trump's thinking. Not super surprising as Trump is an idiot who is capable of believing a ton of nonsense.

I mean, dude got himself impeached (the first time) trying to wreck Biden before Biden was even in particularly good shape to be nominated. Actions speak; he had to be taking the Biden threat seriously.

Oh sure. He took Biden seriously enough to offer a quid pro quo for dirt on him, but that sort of unethical behavior is not that big a deal to Trump. It's basically a free roll if you don't consider the illegality or chances of getting caught which I imagine Trump doesn't.

I'm inclined to beleice the story just because the right definitely got high on their own supply of "in 6 months Biden won't be able to remember his name!!!!". Tucker Carlson even said that he/fox made a mistake lowering the bar for Biden so much that he was easily able to clear it, so Trump believing convenient propaganda on Fox is about 100%. Even non-Trumpers were saying stuff like that here which was obviously laughable if you simply watched Biden or have spent any time with people with actual age related cognitive deficiencies.

Republicans celebrate mayoral win in majority-Hispanic McAllen, Texas
Hidalgo County, home of McAllen, went to President Biden by roughly 17 points in the 2020 election

Republicans celebrated Javier Villalobos' narrow win in the mayor's race in McAllen, Texas, on Saturday even though the race is technically nonpartisan...

..."Holy cow... Republicans just flipped the mayorship of McAllen, Texas. This was not expected and shows Hispanics in South Texas may have shifted with the GOP even post Trump,"...

..."BIG win for Republicans tonight in a border community. Biden’s border crisis has real world ramifications for communities across the country, especially in cities like McAllen,"...

The above tells me just how deep seated the racism is within the GOP base.

The party has known it needs to pivot or change in some direction to maintain any ability to win elections. The growing losses in the popular vote made that clear.

The most clear path for success for the GOP would have been to embrace POC and try to draw that vote from the Dems'. Take a more anti 'woke' position and not anti 'POC' position and try to draw off that vote thus gaining 2 votes for everyone taken from the Dems.

Instead they tripled down on the most racist end of the GOP base, thus pushing away many POC who otherwise might have considered them. For many in the GOP, embracing POC in the party, even if lead to them winning was just too tough a solution to embrace.

The GOP made gains with both hispanics and blacks in 2020, and the Democrats picked up white males-- who apparently might have just not liked HRC but were fine with Biden.
But I don't see how it follows that some hispanic Republican winning mayor in a traditional Democrat city shows the inherent racism of the GOP. There's some pretty huge leaps in logic there.
It might shock you to learn that in 2016, 75% white Abilene Texas went for Trump at like 80% and then in 2017 elected its first black mayor.
But when Trump was pushing his wall building stuff in 2017, his poll numbers were going up with hispanics.
You are ultimately right that it would have been easy for Trump to use his platform to have wide appeal and not be a divisive racist-- but divisive racism is the name of the game for "both sides". It comes more from the top and from the media than the base though I think.

The inherent racism in the GOP is exposed with the Hispanic Mayor winning as it demonstrates that republicans can and do have a path to electoral victory in embracing POC as part of the voting base that is attracted to some of the more conservative planks of the party (anti-woke stuff).

Instead the GOP has decided taking on almost all the major of planks of the Southern Strategy, which both pushes away many POC and motivates masses more Independents and 'stay at home' voters to vote Dem and almost ensures them losses, is just TOO important and is the desired path to go down.


The GOP has made a clear choice, when faced with it. Given realistic chance of winning via 'embrace and courting the POC' or 'retrench to racist roots and extremes with Southern Strategy', we choose the latter. Election losses be damned. Some hills just are worth dying over.

It remains to be seen if those increases are just trump effect though.

Why would Trump have created a temporary increase in black and Hispanic voters though? It seems like he would have caused a temporary movement in the other direction, and/or the increase was part of a secular trend.

Trump raised voter turnout up in every segment. POC and especially the men tend to be more conservative, less woke and a good number are entrepreneurial. SO if you are a POC who avoids all the culture wars stuff and tunes that out, some find a reason to side with the GOP perceiving them as better in areas that are important to them.

Star Power. Seems fairly straightforward to me. First time around--I'd say outside of standard R voters the most common reason(the only 1 really) I heard for trump from otherwise comfy middle/upper middle class people etc was we're throwing a brick at DC lol like real revolutionaries(I added the last part) And yes it cracked me up every single time I heard it. Whether we happen to agree with it or not--there was enough there for people to grab on to and give it a whirl again--I'm just not sure I see it translating back to the gop in general. And I imagine they understand that as well which is probably why they're willing to go down with the ship. It has to be absolutely killing them that they have a horse who can draw those kinda numbers while still losing.

Trump created a temporary increase in all voters. 2018 and 2020 both set 100 year turnout records. Good chance 2022 and 2024 see a decent drop off.

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nobody's gonna put one over on this guy........HE'S TOO SHARP

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a face that radiates trust

A fun thread