I’m just going to lay this down now so it’s on record:

Trump’s campaign has used the exact same strategy it used in 2016: smear his opponent; attempt to demotivate their base; and actively attempt to prevent or obstruct them from voting.

It is a push-down strategy.

1/
In 2016, didn’t win because he made a winning case to a big enough population.

He won because his opponent’s turnout was pushed down by a full-court press that tapped everything from misogyny to poll tampering.

2/
He is trying to run the exact same playbook against Biden.

But it isn’t working because:

1) We now understand it

2) Many who were effectively suppressed last time have had four years to see what that cost

3) Biden isn’t susceptible to the same illegitimate biases

3/
And 4) Many people who first engaged with politics because of Bernie are now well past the “...or Bust” vibe of 2016 and are now solidly active progressive voters

The media, pundits and analysts never fully reckoned with the extent to which Hillary’s vote was just suppressed.
4/
Instead, they overestimated Trump’s strength.

Trump only won by smothering just enough of his opponent’s support.

Some of the voters who that succeeded with in 2016 are vehemently un-smotherable this time.

5/
And what is left is an electorate that will look quite changed since 2016 in ways that are all bad for Trump.

Trump is a one-trick pony: depress the other guy’s votes. It worked in 2016. The whole system helped.

The media loves to hate Hillary too much to fully admit that.

6/
It not only isn’t working in 2020, it has ignited a vigilance among some who were taken in by it.

Trump is going to lose. It isn’t going to be a nail-biter.

And the post mortems will go right on missing the fact that Trump never, ever held the backing of enough ppl to win.

7/
I am already pre-annoyed by the breathless post-election analyses of the “startling” extent of Trump’s defeat, the “unpredicted weakness” in his support.

It was always right there to see.

8/
I did the same yelling into the abyss about Bernie’s hard ceiling in the primaries while David Plouffe and the other professional talking heads were swooning over momentum that wasn’t.

It is right there to see.

9/
Trump is no different than he was in 2016.

His support is no different.

It wasn’t enough then. It isn’t enough now.

It took a perfect storm in 2016.

Now he can’t even rustle the drapes.

And that was always right there to see.

But boring races don’t sell ad space.

10/10
As I was saying...

Right. There. To. See.

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More from @TheRealHoarse

3 Nov
So, in Trump’s narcissistic cycle, there is a predictable sequence of phases that play out whenever he is facing a public humiliation.

1) Double Down Donnie
2) Loco Lawn Sprinkler
3) Sad and Silent
4) Hunting for Scapegoats
5) Riding the Excuse Train

1/
Whenever Trump is facing a public embarrassment he sees coming, he first doubles down on all of the stupid shit that put him in that hole to begin with. He has no other tools.

Then he frantically spins like a lawn sprinkler desperately spraying unhinged nonsense.

2/
The worse the pending embarrassment, the more unhinged the nutbaggery out of his mouth.

See: the past week.

It has been just a firehose of industrial-grade batshit.

3/
Read 12 tweets
3 Nov
In 2016:

- 57 million people voted early, absentee or by-mail.
- 80 million voted on Election Day

So far in 2020:

- 100 mil voted early, absentee or by-mail

The two big questions:

- how many of those 100 mil are new/unlikely voters?
- what will today’s turnout be?

1/
In a way, Trump is already in a lose-lose situation.

1) He needs a very big turnout today

Thanks to his rhetoric about mail-in voting, his base overwhelmingly skews toward in-person voting this year

2/
But...

2) If today’s turnout exceeds 40 mil votes (only 1/2 of 2016’s Election Day total), 2020 turnout will have exceeded 2016 turnout.

And that favors Biden.

There are only so many white male/no college voters in the country and that’s the only demo DJT is winning handily.
Read 6 tweets
2 Nov
Join me for a second in how karmically perfect it would be if the election story ends up being:

1) Trump bungled the COVID response

2) Republican governors went along with him

3) So, pandemic was still raging as the election neared

1/
4) Therefore, voting access had to be expanded from largely in person on a single weekday to also by mail or in-person early

5) And that enabled many who could never vote in person on a Tuesday to vote

6) And that was enough to flip multiple states in the presidential race

2/
7) ...and also flipped races for the Senate and House

8) ...and flipped state races in places like Texas before redistricting

9) ...and that cost Republicans seats for the entire next decade.

Just savor the possibility of that scenario for a moment.

It is a possibility.

3/
Read 6 tweets
1 Nov
This is the moment in the polling cycle I hate the most.

I worked with consumer data for years and years. That requires some science but also some judgment and wisdom.

When you see someone adamantly defending the science alone, take their judgment with a grain of salt.
When a poll is an outlier, there will be a pool of people who rush to defend the methodology, the pollster, the business of polling itself...

And there will be a pool of people who dive into the poll to look for reasons why it was an outlier.

Listen to those latter people.
I find Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) to be very good. My type of analyst. Provides sound macro-level and dives into the specifics when helpful to illuminate the data.
Read 6 tweets
31 Oct
Since it’s a quiet Saturday morning and we’ve all done enough doomscrolling, let me slip in a personal aside.

I’ll try to keep it short.

1/
As many of you have heard before, I never had an interest in Twitter before the last election.

I joined when a friend pulled together a small group to try to combat some of Trump’s massive advantage here.

Figured I’d post occasionally, do my part and that would be it.

2/
I was just a dude on a sofa typing on his phone.

Then I posted a thread about Trump’s narcissism and suddenly I had a bunch of followers.

And then another thread kind of took off and I had a bunch more.

And then it just became this inertial insanity leading to here.

3/
Read 16 tweets
29 Oct
Joni Ernst apparently likes to tell folks back in ultra-white Iowa about the “developing neighborhood” where she has a humble weekday abode in D.C..

There was a drug murder on the street, she says.

It’s too rough a place for her opponent, she suggests.

1/
My goodness, where is this urban war zone?

It’s a shame Ernst can’t afford somewhere safer... It’s so very brave of her to tough it out.

Maybe Ernst really IS a farm girl unaccustomed to the mean streets of the big city humbly making do with only a mere cubby in D.C..

2/
Yeah, about that...

I looked up Ernst’s neighborhood.

Average home price is about $1 mil.

I was under the impression hardscrabble gangland would be more affordable.

Inflation, I guess.

Anywho, a mere $800k gets you a 1,200 square foot, 2-bedroom near the Senator.

3/
Read 8 tweets

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