DiscoGary wrote:
Thing are getting very bad. You Liberals better come to your senses fast.
Here are the bottom line senses:
It would be one thing if Trump won with 56%, during an era in which all the long term demographical trends worked in his party's favor. In that case all the chirping from white men wearing their Great Again hats would make a great deal of sense.
In fact he won with 46%, during a period in which all the trends were spiraling away from his party, and now his own actions and low approval rating are merely accelerating that decline of the Republican Party. Long time Republicans no longer self identify with the party. First time registers are overwhelmingly Democratic or non-partisan. Percentage of newcomers registering as Republicans is at an all time low in modern history.
There is not going to be an accelerating growth of rural areas. That territory is spoken for. Big cities are liberal strongholds and more and more big cities are forming and expanding all the time. Republicans have dominated states in which there either are not enough big cities, or the big cities already in place did not hold the population sufficient enough to overcome the rural red areas. But that dynamic naturally shifts, creating more Democratic strongholds. Nevada is a prime example. Clark County (Las Vegas) was previously not enough to trump the so-called cow counties. Then came the growth and population explosion of the past few decades, to the point Clark County dictates to the rest of the state. Sorry, Pahrump, you've been outnumbered.
The same applies to states like Arizona, which registered an amazing 27% self-identified liberals in the 2016 exit poll. That number alone means Arizona will become a blue state within a decade or so. The trends do not reverse, not when the demographics cooperate. Republicans can only rescue states with high percentage of whites and not many minorities, like Ohio and Iowa.
Many of those old white conservative males are my friends. When I moved to Las Vegas in 1984 I was shocked at what I was hearing. The sports betting scene was flooded with white male transplants, many from the South, and they were incredibly scared and paranoid, and hateful of anything related to the Democratic Party. Nothing in my background had prepared me for that. On liberal sites I warned about that crowd in 2016, emphasizing that Hillary had low upside and was anything but a cinch. Frankly, if Republicans had nominated a more normal candidate I don't think they would have needed help from Russia or James Comey.
Hillary after 8 years of Democratic rule always figured to be a narrow defeat. If Democrats had been smart they would have nominated Hillary in the friendly terrain of 2008, when any Democrat would have cruised with Bush at extended 35-40 approval rating in 3+ years since Katrina, and saved unblemished Obama for the more difficult 2016 landscape. I argued that point fruitlessly on several Democratic sites in spring 2008. Unfortunately, situational impact is never a strength of my party, so the stupid masochistic ordering was preferred, and led to Donald Trump.
Those old white males may live a long time. But the reality is the Republican Party is being hoisted by the so-called Silent Generation born 1928-1945 and predisposed to think like Republicans due the politics when they turned 18 years old. If that oldest generation were pro-Democratic and feeling the realities of mortality, then Republicans could feel a bit better about things. But since the most heavily red age block of all is toward the end of their lives, that is merely one more variable that siphons a vital percentage point or two away. Donald Trump's electoral margin of victory in 2016 is now dead. GOP strategist Mike Murphy made that point on CNN recently.
Trump can win in 2020. Democrats don't have an ideal candidate. Incumbents have surreal advantage and Trump will have no shame in upping it to 90% lies or nearby. He probably owns greater opportunity if Democrats take over the House this time and begin impeachment proceedings. But the logical fortunes of both parties are crystal, and only one owns the vast majority of advantages looking ahead.
Sports message boards like this own skew white and conservative, so that type shows up in abundance and expects to hear the same fear-based simplistic drivel as from their own kind. It is hilarious when they think they can shovel words like taxes and liberal, and the rest of us are supposed to shake and run away.