Politics

[flyingember]

The state/local level political game is a completely different story. The R's have seen the writing on the wall for sometime and this is likely why they have spent most of their time focusing on controlling state politics for the past twenty plus years. Much of their nationwide political success can be directly linked to their local level success.

The results of the redistricting lawsuit in the supreme court will determine the near future here.


If someone can explain how the south end of 10 and the north end of 11 couldn't trade places or the east end of 10 and the north arm of 17. Or 7 and 16 N-S arms could become a boundary running E-W instead. Or that weird arm of 16 that goes past 7 to be inside part of 6 why it exists. Or why 3 and 5 couldn't trade some land so 5 doesn't go so far west.

[kboish]

To me, this is like how the ocean recedes just before a tsunami hits.

Nothing about this election demonstrated a shift in the thinking of the american people. As always, this election was about getting your constituents out to vote. The dems have a pure numbers advantage nationally (total registered dem voters), but they couldn't get them to vote. Republicans did not see an increase in their voting numbers compared to the last two elections (they did do marginally well in certain key districts, but overall , they were down). What happened at the presidential level was the Dem's demographic did not come out to vote and still almost won (well, technically she did win the popular vote).

Demographically, at current trends, there is an eventuality that the R's will have to deal with regarding the decline of their base at the national level. There is, of course, a multitude of other variables that will affect future voting patterns (Dem ineptitude, marginalization of party politics generally, external events, etc), but generally speaking the numbers game doesn't look good for the R's.

The state/local level political game is a completely different story. The R's have seen the writing on the wall for sometime and this is likely why they have spent most of their time focusing on controlling state politics for the past twenty plus years. Much of their nationwide political success can be directly linked to their local level success.

Locally, Jackson County and StL city/County were down some 40k voters this year. All other counties were up 90k in voter turnout.

To follow up on this, the only thing the Dems needed was a candidate that didn't have a high hatability rating and they easily would have won president and likely would have retaken the senate (with increased votership). If the Dem party elite can get out of their own way, they could easily harness their current advantage.

My guess for 2020 nominee- Gavin Newsom.

[grovester]

I don't think this was a D or R election. A significant number of voters wanted "change", regardless of the prior affiliation. The fact that Trump was 2 points higher than Romney among African-Americans and Hispanics seems to reflect this.

It will be interesting to see the interaction between Trump and the GOP congress. He's a populist, not a conservative.

[kboish]

The fact that Trump was 2 points higher than Romney among African-Americans and Hispanics seems to reflect this.

No it doesn't. It reflects lower overall numbers voting Dem...not higher numbers voting Repub.

Edit: and to be more precise, those demographics didn't "switch" to vote for republicans. They just didn't vote because they didn't like their choice. This is not the same as a "revolt" against Dem ideology or a "wave" of support for the R's. No, it was Dem's apathy towards their own candidate that was underestimated, not support for the R's. As the graphs show, R's got LESS support than they have in the past. Their is a false narrative that there is some huge wave of support going towards their agenda. The real narrative is that Dems were so displeased with their candidate choice, they didn't vote.

It will be interesting to see the interaction between Trump and the GOP congress. He's a populist, not a conservative.

Indeed.

[Unknown JimmyD]

Looks like there is a desperation for change the DEMs didn't see coming, which is partly the same thing that got Obama in first time ("Change we can believe in" was his slogan) and he didn't come through after 2 terms for those struggling.

obama had the senate (or was it the house?) for his first two years, and basically spent all of his political capital on saving the economy and getting the affordable care act passed. from 2010 on, the repubs controlled both houses and put up an unreasonable wall of "no." that anything at all got done in that time is damn near a miracle. they got people looking back on his two terms exactly how they drew it up. people say he didn't really accomplish anything he said he would (except watered-down healthcare reform). well, it's hard to do anything when the branch that's actually responsible for legislating is spending all of their time either saying "no," or symbolically voting to repeal obamacare for the 60th+ time.

this isn't me claiming you're one of these people; your post just triggered that line that i've been seeing a lot lately from people who should know better. and also, this isn't to say that he's without some blame.

trump's gonna have at least two years with a very favorable legislative position. i expect the dems to lack organization and the leadership to resist, and the repubs will run rampant with turning back the clock to "the good ol' days."

[TheBigChuckbowski]

The Dems desperately need a change with the the DNC and party leadership that convinces progressives and millennials they aren't going to attempt to screw over their candidate again and they need to educate their voters into understanding that the president isn't the only important position to vote for. The left just seems to have no understanding that congress and local elections are far more important than president.

[grovester]

Looks like there is a desperation for change the DEMs didn't see coming, which is partly the same thing that got Obama in first time ("Change we can believe in" was his slogan) and he didn't come through after 2 terms for those struggling.

obama had the senate (or was it the house?) for his first two years, and basically spent all of his political capital on saving the economy and getting the affordable care act passed. from 2010 on, the repubs controlled both houses and put up an unreasonable wall of "no." that anything at all got done in that time is damn near a miracle. they got people looking back on his two terms exactly how they drew it up. people say he didn't really accomplish anything he said he would (except watered-down healthcare reform). well, it's hard to do anything when the branch that's actually responsible for legislating is spending all of their time either saying "no," or symbolically voting to repeal obamacare for the 60th+ time.

this isn't me claiming you're one of these people; your post just triggered that line that i've been seeing a lot lately from people who should know better. and also, this isn't to say that he's without some blame.

trump's gonna have at least two years with a very favorable legislative position. i expect the dems to lack organization and the leadership to resist, and the repubs will run rampant with turning back the clock to "the good ol' days."

I don't know about "very". He has 51 senators, not all of which are nut jobs. I don't see Susan Collins of Maine voting to take health care away from 20 million people and I don't expect Jeff Flake to vote to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.

It was very difficult for Obama to get anything done in the first 2 years, I expect that to be the case these next two years as well.

[grovester]

The fact that Trump was 2 points higher than Romney among African-Americans and Hispanics seems to reflect this.

No it doesn't. It reflects lower overall numbers voting Dem...not higher numbers voting Repub.

Edit: and to be more precise, those demographics didn't "switch" to vote for republicans. They just didn't vote because they didn't like their choice. This is not the same as a "revolt" against Dem ideology or a "wave" of support for the R's. No, it was Dem's apathy towards their own candidate that was underestimated, not support for the R's. As the graphs show, R's got LESS support than they have in the past. Their is a false narrative that there is some huge wave of support going towards their agenda. The real narrative is that Dems were so displeased with their candidate choice, they didn't vote.

It will be interesting to see the interaction between Trump and the GOP congress. He's a populist, not a conservative.

Indeed.

Good point, though I would have expected as many Republicans to sit out the election as Democrats.

[brewcrew1000]

I really wish Kander would have won, He is the kind of young leadership the Democrats need on a National level. I also think he would have been a good choice for MO governor instead of Koster.

[brewcrew1000]

Also, I don't understand the Kander/Blount election results. You have 30,000 that voted for a Green party candidate in Jonathon McFarland but in the entire state Jill Stein only recieves 25,000 green party votes. Jon Dine, recieved 67,000 votes and fred ryman recieved 25,000 votes. Were these guys plants by Blunt or were these guys wack jobs that caught on in St Louis and the Southern part of the state? Seems really fishy to me

I don't understand how people could have voted for Blunt, if that dude wasn't in Politics he defintely would have been some kind of televangelist/preacher type in Springfield

[grovester]

I really wish Kander would have won, He is the kind of young leadership the Democrats need on a National level. I also think he would have been a good choice for MO governor instead of Koster.

He's not done. He wanted that particular race, even when a lot of folks tried to dissuade him.

[FangKC]

From what I've seen, about 45 percent of eligible voters did not turn out for this election.

This is the second time in 16 years where the popular vote went to the presidential candidate who did not win the presidency.

A demographic advantage for the Democrats has no currency if almost half of all eligible voters don't turn out in the election.

[phuqueue]

Your guy may have won but at least I'll live the rest of my life knowing I didn't vote for a white supremacist.

Saw Chris Rock the other night, who joked that the thing he loves about Trump is that his existence proves black people haven't been overreacting. And he's right, although I imagine he's not laughing about it now. Conservatives in particular have argued that we're "beyond" racism because we have a black president. But it's self-evident from his own words that Trump is virulently racist. Even Republicans have called him out on this. So you voted for an openly racist, proudly misogynist hate-monger. What does that say about you?

Well, maybe you're right. After all, the left was accurate in predicting this election. So, you'd probably have a better feel for these things than I would.

Oh, and I didn't vote for Trump. Way to assume I did. Your post was just as far from reality as the left. I'm sorry Hillary didn't win. But holy cow, grow up.

As Chuck said, it wasn't "the left" that got this wrong. All of the nonpartisan polls missed on this. The GOP thought they were going down in flames -- in the past few weeks we've seen Republicans arguing either that they should have gone ahead and confirmed Garland before Hillary could appoint somebody more liberal or insisting that they wouldn't approve any justice under Hillary. I didn't see the specific 7PM thing that Chuck referenced but I saw a report that said as of 5:30 PM on election day Trump's camp was sure they were going to lose. It was a genuine shock, it wasn't just the left living off in some little fantasy land like Romney was in 2012. There is going to be a lot of post-mortem on these polls to figure out how they got it so wrong.

I don't really care who you voted for. If you're gloating over a Trump victory then it's apparently something that's fine with you. And you're entitled to hold that opinion, but I'm entitled to point out that, by the way, that dude you're gloating about is a white supremacist.

To me, this is like how the ocean recedes just before a tsunami hits.

Nothing about this election demonstrated a shift in the thinking of the american people. As always, this election was about getting your constituents out to vote. The dems have a pure numbers advantage nationally (total registered dem voters), but they couldn't get them to vote. Republicans did not see an increase in their voting numbers compared to the last two elections (they did do marginally well in certain key districts, but overall , they were down). What happened at the presidential level was the Dem's demographic did not come out to vote and still almost won (well, technically she did win the popular vote).

It's true that Dem turnout was down but I think it has to be viewed in proper context, not just as Dems being unable to get their constituents out to vote, but also Dem constituents not being able to vote. This is the first presidential election since the VRA was gutted by the Supreme Court and GOP state legislatures took advantage by dramatically reducing early voting sites, in a lot of cases down to the bare minimum required by law. Voter ID laws also reduced Dem turnout -- I read that the number of registered voters in WI who couldn't comply with strict voter ID requirements was something like 11x Trump's margin of victory. That doesn't mean every single one of those registered voters was interested in voting and would have if they'd had proper ID, and that's only one state (one that was necessary but not sufficient for Hillary's cause), so you can't necessarily pin the victory entirely on the Republicans' voter suppression efforts, but it's clear that they played a role. There's going to be a temptation to say that Dems weren't interested in voting for Hillary, and for some Dems that's probably true (anecdotally, all of the committed Bernie people I know, who spent the entire election cycle complaining about Hillary, condemning her for praising Kissinger, etc ultimately grudgingly "endorsed" and voted for her and are as mortified by this result as anyone else, but that's just what I'm seeing around me), but that's not the whole story.

[AllThingsKC]

I don't really care who you voted for.

So you brought up the topic of who I voted for and wrongfully assumed who I voted for. But you don't really care who I voted for. Got it.

[bobbyhawks]

My dad heard a presentation from a Republican pollster in KC on election day, and the guy was speaking to a mostly Republican crowd. Even there, he said that the elections in Missouri would all be close and that the odds were not in Trump's favor nationally. He mentioned that if the margin of error was in Trump's favor and he had legs, things would be good in Missouri for the Republicans. He was right, but I think it is revisionist history at this point to think that any unbiased pollsters and even most of the biased ones had Trump as a likely winner.

[aknowledgeableperson]

Not sure about the MO vote but there was a pollster or two that projected for Trump.

http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/nat ... /93613218/

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsmax-Tv/trump ... id/747001/

[grovester]

And a lot of them had Clinton's lead in swing states at or below the margin of error. It was not likely Trump would win, but certainly statistically possible. Even Trump thought he was going to lose.

[flyingember]

Had turnout been closer to 2012 Trump would have lost

The polls weren't wrong, people just didn't vote.

[AllThingsKC]

One reason why people didn't vote was because they thought the election was over... because of the polls. It's a double-edge sword.

[phuqueue]

I don't really care who you voted for.

So you brought up the topic of who I voted for and wrongfully assumed who I voted for. But you don't really care who I voted for. Got it.

Man, it's almost like I said more there that provided actual context and made my point clearer, but I guess if that had been the case you surely would have quoted the whole piece honestly and responded to it appropriately, so I guess you got me there.

It's funny, I've noticed a lot of conservatives I know acting really cagey about this -- gloating about the win, as ATKC here, but then running to "I never said I voted for him, how dare you jump to conclusions!" You did vote for him. You didn't vote for him. Either way, if you're celebrating the victory, you're celebrating a white supremacist. Feel free to actually answer that if you want to. Or you can just selectively quote one sentence to respond to and ignore everything else, as is your forte.