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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Nov 6

For those waking up in US, bewildered in Europe, what happened?

Have been on air for last 12 hours pouring over the data

Here it is

There's no silver lining for Democrats. Trump won everywhere. He's going to win the popular vote. He did better across the demographics. He grew his coalition, better with black voters, Latinos, young voters. The US become less racially divided by party. Harris underperformed Biden virtually everywhere.

Trump improved on his 2020 margin in 2,367 counties. His margin decreased in only 240 counties.

Trump didn't just sweep up in the swing states, and none of them are going to be that close. He closed the gap on Harris in a tonne of blue states. She turned out anaemic victories in New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota. He expanded his margins in red states to take huge generationally big victories in Florida and Iowa. He flipped Miami Dade county, winning a heavily Latino county Hillary won by 30 points by 10. He drove down Harris margins in big urban centres everywhere, including Chicago, New York, Austin etc.

This feels a far more devastating loss for the Democrats, even than 2016.

2016 the Dems had plenty of things to console them. A massive popular vote victory. A narrow electoral college loss in a few places. A rock solid ethnic minority coalition which looked like a solid electoral map of the future. Roe was intact. The Supreme Court was still balanced.

They have none of that now. They're staring down the barrel of a transformed Republican Party and a sustained inability to know how to deal with Trump and Magaism. In policy terms, they also have nowhere to go. In Biden's term they governed exactly in line with their own instincts. It's been soundly rejected by the electorate.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Oct 23

Extraordinary intervention from Donald Trump’s own former Chief of Staff John Kelly. The fmr general says Trump meets the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator and has no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.

nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/…

Kelly says: “Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Kelly says Trump would not want to be pictured with amputee veterans saying that “it wouldn’t look good for me.”

Kelly confirms Trump spoke positively of Hitler as president.

“He commented more than once that, ‘You know, Hitler did some good things, too.”

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Aug 27

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1828362636100042965

Thoughts on Starmer speech

Self-evidently highly political. Little in the way of policy, instead a framing of politics to come.

But there’s a paradox to it all

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1828362636100042965

As predicted, Labour are trying to suggest things are worse than they knew. There’s a bit of truth to that though broad contours of state of economy/public realm were known.

We’re clearly in for more pain. Just like, checks notes, the past 14 years.

That itself is an idictment of a generation of policymakers and politics. Voters might be forgiven for thinking they’ve heard all this before. Indeed they have, since George Osborne in 2010. Ernie Bevin said he wanted to be at the Ministry of Labour til 1990, ie to set the terms of thinking on industrial relations for a half century. It sometimes feels like Osborne will be Chancellor til 2050, no matter bow many times his vision of politics/political economy fails. You have to wonder how much more tolerance for it there’s going to be.

If nothing else, politically it was a huge contrast with the politics of optimism at last week’s DNC- instead now we have things are going to get worse before they get better.

Strongest sections of the speech were his diagnosis of the problems of populism and how Tories fell into that reap. Was authentically him and convincing.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Jul 16

The story of the last time a former president was shot and lived to tell the tale🧵

In October 1912 President Teddy Roosevelt was running for an unprecedented third term in office. He'd left the presidency four years before. On the 12th he was campaigning in Milwaukee.

Roosevelt had left the Republicans to found the Progressive Party, also known as the 'Bull Moose' Party.

On the night of the 12th October he was dining at the Gilpatrick Hotel, owned by a supporter. After eating he left to give a speech at the Milwaukee auditorium.

En route he was approached by a man called John Schrank, a German-American tavern owner, originally from Bavaria.

Shcrank opened fire on the former president with a Colt revolver. He was quickly wrestled to the ground but not before a bullet penetrated Roosevelt's body.

Fortunately, the bullet hit something else first- TR's glasses case and the folded up copy of his speech, some 50 pages long entitled "Progressive Cause Greater Than Any Individual"- both of which in his coat pocket.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Jul 15

NEW: Donald J. Trump is officially selected as the Republican candidate for president at the RNC in Milwaukee.

He becomes the first person since FDR in 1940 to win his party’s nomination three times on the trot (though unlike Trump he won each time).

The GOP has travelled a long way since those early Never Trump days. It’s indisputably his party now, in personnel, in ideas, in culture and the way it does politics.

That’s despite his refusal to accept the outcome of a presidential election, which led to an insurrection, and the fact he’s been convicted of a crime. It is a political journey without parallel, both personally and for his party.

The selection of Vance again shows the grip on the Republican party Trump now enjoys. In 2016 Trump was forced to choose a more establishment VP (Pence) to try and unite the party behind his candidacy. In Vance he chooses someone in his image, a prodigal son of America First.

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Lewis Goodall

@lewis_goodall

Jul 14

The assassination attempt on President Trump is the 1st attempted attack on a presidential candidate for 52 years.

Political violence has a long pedigree in America's history. It haunted its politics in the 1960s. The landscape is darkening again and has been for some time.

Goes without saying that the attempt on Trump's life is heinous and deplorable. There is a lot of blame to go round for the now toxic nature of American politics which long predates Trump personally. However, while the descent of American politics towards renewed political violence did not begin with him it can't be denied he has his own significant part to play. His politics has always been predicated on the idea of existential threat. Of American enemies within and without. He mocked the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, downplayed the kidnap plot on Gretchen Whitmer. And then there is the big lie and January 6th which continues to fray the bonds of American democracy.

In other words, Trump has been part of this change in US politics, of the turn to extreme aggression in US politics, which will probably outlast him. It doesn't justify anything in any way, but it does help to explain part of the context of a democracy which increasingly feels a couple of wrong moves from complete disaster. You can't understand that without Trump and the unique way he does politics.

In the meantime, with only four months to go until the US election, this will reframe everything, especially with the RNC about to get underway.

Trump's position within the Republican Party will be solidified even further. That picture will become a symbol of political martyrdom.

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