Thread by @PalmerReport

One definite mistake we made in 2020: we baited ourselves into pouring huge money into passionate red state Senate races (KY, SC, TX) that in hindsight were never in play. If we had dumped that money into a boring Senate race like North Carolina instead, we'd likely have won it.

This continues the trend from 2018 where we fell in love with Beto so we dumped huge money and resources into the Texas Senate race, which in hindsight wasn't winnable, while largely ignoring the more boring Senate races in NV and AZ (which we got lucky and won anyway).

One possible answer for next time: steer all Senate donations into a PAC that distributes the money to Democratic candidates based on their realistic likelihood of winning.

In fairness to us, the polls were insanely out of whack in these red/purple state Senate races. Maybe it was just impossible to accurately poll people in a pandemic / lockdown election. I don't know.

But we should note that over the past couple elections, whenever the polls have said a Senate race is tied, we usually lose it. GOP voter suppression can take 2-3% off any election, which would explain why we always lose the polling dead heats.

So the key to retaking the Senate in 2022 could be to resist temptation when it comes to any "inspiring" dead heat Senate races, tempting as they may be, and focus more on running up the score in the Senate races where we lead by a solid few points.

As for the House, 2018 and 2020 would have been the first time in nearly a century in which Democrats gained as many as 40 seats, and then gained even more seats the next time. In my opinion it's not a failure that we lost a few House seats – just a failure of polling.

As for the presidency, if Biden wins the electoral college by any margin, and the popular vote by, say, five million votes, that's a blowout win for us – just not the kind of blowout win we expected and hoped for. Another polling failure.

Imagine if the polls had accurately told us that FL, OH, TX, etc weren't in play. We'd have just ignored those states tonight, and waited for PA, MI, WI, and AZ – and we wouldn't have such a doomsday feeling right now.

On a societal level, it's horrifying that ANYONE would vote for Trump in 2020.

But we'd basically have the same societal problem if Trump had lost with 40% of the vote, or if Trump loses with 47% of the vote.

The problem wouldn't be "fixed" if Trump had only gotten 40%.

Considering Trump has spent four years abusing the power of the presidency to try to criminally rig this election in his favor, I'll take any election result that puts him out of power and stops his damage. Then we work on fixing what's inherently wrong with the nation.

By the way, if both Georgia Senate races go to a runoff, then we still have an outside shot at the Senate being 50-50. Warnock is going to a runoff; Ossoff is unclear. We'll see.

Keep in mind the national polling averages were only off by 2% in 2016 – within the margin of error. This disproved the "shy Trump voter" theory. No reason to believe there were any shy Trump voters this time. Probably just impossible to poll in such a weird pandemic election.

I keep seeing replies accusing me of “optimism.” I’ll never understand that. I just said we’ll likely lose the Senate, and 47% of the voting public are monsters. That’s not optimism.

But if you’re a hopeless fatalist, any evidence-based analysis feels like “optimism” to you.

If you really want to fix things, stop staring at MSNBC all day every day. All they do is pump you full of doomsday fatalism to keep you tuned in for the sake of ratings, and eventually you become addicted to fatalism – making you unable to even think about how to fight and win.

Staring at cable news all day every day for four years isn’t activism – it’s lethargy. Unless you actually worked to try to change the minds of voters or drive turnout, you didn’t do anything. Watching MSNBC all day is just the political equivalent of masturbation, nothing more.

You know what republican voters never do? Sit around wasting time fretting about possibly losing. They just go for it, man. They’re awful, morally wrong about everything, but they fight like they’re going to win – which is a big part of why they win more often than they should.

Even sitting around lamenting how 40% of the voting public are terrible people, is a waste of time. Yes they’re terrible. So what? How are we going to outnumber them and win? This is about winning. We can whine or we can win. No time for both.

When Trump “won” in 2016 by negative three million votes, he and his supporters didn’t waste one minute lamenting how many votes went the other way. They didn’t care how they got into power. They just started carrying out their agenda. Why should we care how we get into power?

Our problem is we’re the good guys and we know it. We care about the country. They don’t. But we can’t do shit for the country unless we’re in power – which requires being as calculated and ruthless as they are. This isn’t a feel-good exercise. It just isn’t.