"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

That truck thing is up there with the funniest things he has ever said.

he should just drive a truck up to his rallies and ask people to throw in their wallets and jewelry

"I should probably just take off, right? Take Air Force One to another country. Anybody know which of those we don't have an extradition treaty with? Like one of the non-shithole ones? Asking for a friend."

lol at the real clear politics guy going in

Oh what the hell, I'm not done. What hardcore NeverTrumpers will have to come to grips with after Trump probably loses is that there is no hunger for their brand of politics. 5/

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) October 26, 2020

The "'be the world's policeman'/cut social security/worst-of-all-possible-worlds-by-being socially-conservative-but-not-really-meaning it" coalition just isn't there. As I've said before, it gets the votes of three guys in think tank cubicles, two of whom voted for Johnson. 6/

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) October 26, 2020

if you want a dose of optimism about texas then check this out. NYT/sienna is the best of the bunch, but it seems like they have a systematic problem in texas.

Every final NYT/Siena 2018 poll for Texas, compared to results

Senate: R+8 / R+2
TX-07: R+3 / D+5
TX-23: R+8 / R+0
TX-31: R+15 / R+3
TX-32: D+4 / D+7

And universally they were finding Democrats doing weak with Hispanic voters https://t.co/iLwr49A4Vs

— Opinion Haver (@AsInMarx) October 26, 2020

has anyone done an in-depth look into why biden is doing poorly among hispanics?

i think the evidence for the premise (never mind understanding of the cause) is mixed, and i doubt we'll have much clarity until we have the exit polls.

I don't know exactly what they're doing, but it's not a good sign that I always know what a Trafalgar Group poll is going to say without having to open the link.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 25, 2020

the whole thread is a good takedown

Maybe when Trump said Mexico would build is wall, he meant Mexicans in Texas.

An American Mexican in Texas

i have always taken the (extremely uninformed) presumption that the conservative leaning of 1st/2nd gen texan mexican-american voters is proof of the universal ethos of "fuck you i got mine" and would love to be disabused of that notion by someone from that community.

I'm really fascinated by people of Mexican and Central American ancestry voting for conservatives. I've always thought it had something to do with religiosity?

i have always taken the (extremely uninformed) presumption that the conservative leaning of 1st/2nd gen texan mexican-american voters is proof of the universal ethos of "fuck you i got mine" and would love to be disabused of that notion by someone from that community.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Monday, October 26, 2020 1:46 PM

and many Cubans.

I remember in 2008 in CA, there were definitely Mexican families in my neighborhood who had Yes on 8 signs (aka they were against gay marriage) and Obama signs up in their windows, but of course, yard signs are a shit measure, duh

presumed religion-motivated voting is the argument for sending catholic biden (not harris or obama or whatever) to texas this week.

Yeah, I was thinking as much.

I asked my wife (who is Mexican) about this the other day and she says that Trump's tough guy persona plays pretty well among young Hispanic men

seems like he just really likes pennsylvania though

.@mikememoli crunched the numbers on Biden’s campaign travels since the convention pic.twitter.com/Lv5EFX7I8m

— MSNBC Live with Hallie Jackson (@HallieOnMSNBC) October 26, 2020

"fuck you i got mine"

This right here explains pretty much everything about the conservatives in my family.

Getting votes in western PA is very important to winning PA tbh. He's got Philly on lock, but everything around Pgh to the state border is fair game.

so best not to mention that during a job interview i guess, because holy shit, it would be hard to avoid pulling out an airhorn and blasting it

PA is also like 20 minutes away from his basement him so the opportunity cost of sitting on an airplane for eight hours is lower than texas. that map makes sense to me. xp

and many Cubans.

― Patriotic Goiter (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, October 26, 2020 1:54 PM bookmarkflaglink

otm. one of our old family friends is Cuban and voting for Trump.

she also wouldn't let her children be friends/date Puerto Ricans growing up

Also if they were conservative in Mexico before emigrating, they're not going to magically vote Democratic when they get here. A lot of Mexican-Americans come from Guanajuato which is a majority-PAN state; that party maps onto the Republican party in terms of beliefs.

i think this is a bigger gender gap than among white voters

sorry--wrong hispanic race variable there, but still similar
70-24 among women; 43-44 among men

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) October 26, 2020

Fuck you got mine doesn’t explain relative strength in the RGV, which is... not rich.

Latinx voters are younger and poorer than average IIRC. Dem centrism doesn’t exactly make people of that profile swoon.

I haven’t spent much time in western PA but the little I did reminded me a hell of a lot of West Virginia

First PA poll to have Trump in the lead since May, and it's not Trafalgar or Rasmussen, in case you've been counting unhatched chickens or just need something to worry about: https://overland.amgreatness.com/app/uploads/2020/10/PA-POll-Oct-25th-.pdf

I asked my wife (who is Mexican) about this the other day and she says that Trump's tough guy persona plays pretty well among young Hispanic men

― frogbs, Monday, October 26, 2020 5:58 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm not hispanic and have no special insight but the machismo / misogyny angle always seemed like the most plausible reason to me

xpost Well, I mean, West Virginia is right there! Even a state like Illinois, reliably blue, almost definitively Midwestern, me personally I'm just a four and a half hour drive from Kentucky - the distance from Philly to Pittsburgh - and I'm all the way up north. Missouri is another one that's sort of half Midwestern, half southern. Or Ohio.

Trump's *tough guy persona* plays pretty well among young Hispanic men

i like to think i can set aside personal biases enough to comprehend opinions that fall pretty far outside of my own worldview, even some i might find personally abhorrent. but Trump being a "tough guy" simply is not one of them.

xxxp that poll is from the Center for American Greatness, the leading voice of the next generation of American Conservatism.

Yeah I was about to say, automatic roffle at the source.

i have always taken the (extremely uninformed) presumption that the conservative leaning of 1st/2nd gen texan mexican-american voters is proof of the universal ethos of "fuck you i got mine" and would love to be disabused of that notion by someone from that community.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Monday, October 26, 2020 1:46 PM (thirty-five minutes ago)

in my experience growing up in SoCal a lot of these 2nd generation mexican-americans look down on new immigrants and treat them like shit so Trump is right up their ally in that regard.

Oct. 26: Election day is in 8 days. Here's how polls looked on this day in...

1980: Dem margin +0 (actual = -10)
1984: D -19 (-18)
1988: D -10 (-8)
1992: D +8 (+6)
1996: D +14 (+8)
2000: D -3 (+0)
2004: D -1 (-2)
2008: D +7 (+7)
2012: D +0 (+4)
2016: D +5 (+2)

— On this day in the polls... 🤖 (@todayinpolls) October 26, 2020

The machismo appeal argument seems like lazy stereotyping to me.

Pennsyltucky

I mean we’ve covered this before, there is no such thing as “the latinx vote” or “the hispanic vote”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB_I1YBAozE

Pennsyltucky

It's been said before, but pretty much an hour or two outside most major cities will get you to Redneckistan.

lol American Greatness. they're a favorite source of RealClearPolitics, and their articles are dripping with "WELL ASKHULLY, LIBERALS, U R DED"

Stepping back to the NYT Texas poll and getting earlier results wrong, Cohn has thoughts, starting here and looking at other states:

Well, we certainly did underestimate Hispanic turnout/vote in '18. And it's possible we'll do so again. Hispanic voters are challenging everywhere, but this is a state where there's no real record of competitive races, no party registration, etc https://t.co/i3hwt8JKS4

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) October 26, 2020

The machismo appeal argument seems like lazy stereotyping to me.

We are talking about Biden's "weakness" in a group of voters he's winning almost 2/3 of! I think the lazy stereotyping is the idea that Latino voters "should" be Democrats.

I think I already posted this when it was published a couple of weeks ago, but here is an article about Trump's tough-guy appeal among young Hispanic men: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/trump-macho-appeal.html

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/az-patriots-leader-jennifer-harrison-charged-with-identity-theft-11504481

"In a swift turn of fate last year, Jennifer Harrison went from chanting "Respect our laws!" at a Tucson City Council meeting to being arrested on suspicion of breaking the law against identity theft. Now, the founder of AZ Patriots has been charged in connection with that arrest."

"Enablement: The tortured self-justification of one very powerful Trump-loathing anonymous Republican."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/anonymous-republican-donald-trump.html

Meanwhile, I give to you a motley crew

A bunch of major QAnon people are suing YouTube to get their accounts back, an effort that seems likely to fail. From their press release: pic.twitter.com/53eMEUXYkP

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) October 26, 2020

I think 'I like Trump because he's real tuff and I'm real tuff, also, grrr' is a sentiment shared by Trumpists regardless of race or nation of origin. And I think it's fair to paint all of those idiots with the same stereotypical brush.

i like to think i can set aside personal biases enough to comprehend opinions that fall pretty far outside of my own worldview, even some i might find personally abhorrent. but Trump being a "tough guy" simply is not one of them.

I'm honestly surprised to hear you say this -- Trump does not come off as a tough guy to me, but just being in the world I feel like I've encountered many, many people who deploy the kind of "toughness" Trump has to offer, and seen that plenty of people indeed see someone yelling a lot and not listening and self-aggrandizing as being tough. If being a loud whiny asshole didn't work, there wouldn't be so many loud whiny assholes!