Stidmatt's Views: 2018 elections

Showing posts with label 2018 elections. Show all posts

Saturday, November 3, 2018

Winning strategy 2018 and 2020 for the Democratic Party

2018 is going to be a pivotal year in American politics. The Governors which are elected this year will be able to veto gerrymandered maps following the 2020 census, meaning that the impact of this year will be felt for a minimum of a decade. Being able to take a slight majority in the Senate (getting back to the maximum of 60 seats of 2009-2010 is going to be impossible right now) is going to significantly reduce the power of Donald Trump, protecting America from his homophobic, sexist, racist, and inequality driving policies.

The most important elections this year are without a doubt the local city, county, and state level elections. 87 out of 99 State legislatures are up for election this year, either in full, or in part. Granted, there is a lot of gerrymandering nationwide, but with Trump's approval rating and being accused of federal crimes by his top staff of his campaign team, it is going to be a very hard year for the Republicans. Every person who chooses to run as a Republican this year needs to answer for the President's behavior, and why they choose to associate themselves with someone whose presidency is failing in a way we haven't seen since Richard Nixon. This gives the Democrats a massive advantage.

But, merely running as the anti-Trump party won't be enough, because once Trump is gone we will need to have something to show that we stand for, not just against. We can start by looking at issues the majority of Americans agree on, which I have already written about here.

Particular priorities the Democratic Party can take on which I think will help win elections and gain support are:

Improve the Affordable Care Act. Increase access to Medicaid, implement a Federal public option for health insurance. Make it so anyone can opt in for Medicaid or Medicare. Increase quality of Medicaid in many states by removing it from state government and make it run like Social Security Old Age Insurance where it doesn't matter which state you live in.
Paid parental leave for the first 4 weeks of a child's life for both parents and grandparents. Increase the existing tax credit for parental leave to 100% for all businesses and all income levels.
Implement the high speed train plan Obama proposed in 2009.
Significantly increase federal subsidies for local transit, and building light rail in major cities across America. Significant federal subsidies if free transit for riders is implemented.
Free community college tuition for everyone.
Fully subsidize tuition at every public college.
Significantly increase number of small business loans.
Dismantle our nuclear arsenal which wastes tens of billions of dollars per year.
Set a timeline to end our use of fossil fuels in transportation by 2030.
No new pipelines in the United States. Respect the treaties with Native American nations.
Implement a carbon tax which will increase at an exponential rate with no exemptions for any special interest group.
Have capital gains taxed as regular income. This should balance the budget.
Have tax rates be determined by an equation with 90% of households getting a negative income tax, and a top tax rate of 50%. Negative income tax for all households below $100,000 per year for a single person. Have adjustments for household size. Proposal available on my blog.
End the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction which inflates the cost of housing and has no justifiable reason for existing.
Implement a universal basic income to reduce income inequality.
Pardon all standing student loans, and pay back all interest which has already been paid since 2008.

I started to write this, and most of the tenants are already on two existing lists. They are on the official Democratic Party Platform for 2016, and on my annual post about platforms which are based on majority support. Democrats are winning the generic battle for Congress and Trump's support cannot even reach 40%. The platform is not the issue, and should not see any major changes this year or in 2020, it is already a progressive platform.

The only area where Democrats are doing worse than the GOP is in strategy. The party needs to be more supportive of local candidates first of all, and give them as much support as possible across the country at every level. We need grassroots democracy, because all politics is local, and the greatest Presidents in history start out by being great leaders of their communities.

When it comes to tipping point states, here is a list of states by their electoral college votes sorted by the Cook Partisan Voting Index:

State	Number to ratify	Number of States	Votes	Number needed	Vote in 2016	PVI	Number of Votes	Number needed
Hawaii		50	4	264	D	18	4	264
Vermont		14	3	261	D	15	7	261
California		31	55	206	D	12	62	206
Maryland		7	10	196	D	12	72	196
Massachusetts		6	11	185	D	12	83	185
New York		11	29	156	D	12	112	156
Rhode Island		13	4	152	D	10	116	152
Illinois		21	20	132	D	7	136	132
New Jersey		3	14	118	D	7	150	118
Washington		42	12	106	D	7	162	106
Connecticut		5	7	99	D	6	169	99
Delaware		1	3		R	6	172	96
Oregon		33	7	99	R	5	179	89
Maine		23	4			3	183	85
New Mexico		47	5			3	188	80
Colorado		38	9			1	197	71
Michigan		26	16	99	R	1	213	55
Minnesota		32	10			1	223	45
Nevada		36	6			1	229	39
Virginia		10	13			1	242	26
New Hampshire		9	4		D	0	246	22
Pennsylvania		2	20	99	D	0	266	2
Wisconsin		30	10			0	276	-8

You notice Ohio and Florida? Their votes are unnecessary for winning the Presidential election. We should still try our best to win their Governorships, because that is about 8 seats in the House we can pick up between them, and because we can. Getting more control over their state legislatures will be a really big change in terms of constitutional amendments, growing Democratic leadership for the 20s, and gaining a strong base. To get a constitutional majority to amend the constitution we will need 3/4 of the State legislatures, or 2/3 to call a convention. The states we would need to gain in order to do this on top of the states we need to win the Presidency (from the most conservative to least, again by PVI) would be Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Alaska, Indiana,Mississippi, Missouri, Louisiana, Montana, Kansas, and Alabama. In short, any amendment to the constitution will require bipartisan support.

Another bonus for the Presidential election is that Trump has a negative approval rating in every state I listed in the table above, as well as Iowa, Ohio, with North Carolina with a dead heat, given the Democrats a massive advantage to counter his incumbency advantage in 2020.

The biggest message for the Democrats this year, is go big or you will go home. We need to campaign as much as possible, candidates need to get out and talk to people nationwide, listen to their concerns, have an attitude to solve problems and then next year to succeed in following through.

Governors

The absolute most important races this year are the Governor races in a handful of states. 6 states with very Democratic PVI scores are Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, Illinois, Maine, and New Mexico. We can pick up several of these states this year, and we also have a shot at getting Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. If we pick up Governorships in every state which have a PVI which swings towards the Democrats we will have 22 states, by picking up 9 new states (yes, it is that bad). Some of the governors are more moderate and popular, Massachusetts and Maryland will be hard to pick up. This election is the Democrats to win as long as they don't screw up.

Interstate Vote Compact and State Legislatures

The best way to guarantee majority rule in the 2020 election will be to have a majority of states sign onto the Interestate Vote Compact. This will likely be the first step in eliminating the Electoral College altogether.

The good news is when it comes to the Interstate Vote Compact, the 11 most Democratic states have already signed on. We only need the 12 other Democratic leaning states to sign on in order to have a majority in 2020, forcing Trump to win a plurality of the vote in order to win, which is going to be very difficult given the Mueller Investigation which continues to pick people off of his election team faster than he can hire people. Some of these states, Delaware, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, have Democratic majorities in both houses and haven't signed the compact yet. If they sign it will add 21 votes to the compact bringing the total to 190 out of the 270 needed. The remaining states which have split legislatures are Maine and Colorado which both have 18 R-17 D in their Senates. New York has a 32-31 R split in their Senate, and we can pick up at least one Senator this year. We just need to pick up one Senator seat in each of these three states and the Governor of Maine (which we will likely get) in order to pick up three valuable Trifectas.

If we could get a few more moderate states to sign on to the Interstate Vote Compact that would go a long ways towards making it pass. This is unlikely because it is almost impossible that it will benefit the Republicans, but the reasoning is that it is better for Democracy because it makes the Presidential election a popular vote as opposed to the Electoral College.

The legislatures with the slimmest Republican majorities (by percentage in both houses) are:

Virginia (48% D)
Maine (47.6% D)
Illinois (47% D)
Minnesota (46% D)
Nevada (42% D)
Arizona (42.5% D)
Alaska (42.5% D)
Iowa (40.9% D)
Mississippi (38.58% D)
Montana (38.5% D)

In order of number of seats we need to pick up in State Houses:

Virginia (1 seat)
Arizona (5 seats)
Maine (5 seats)
Michigan (8 seats)
Montana (9 seats)

In order of number of seats we need to pick up in the State Senates:

New York (1 seat) and TRIFECTA
Colorado (1 seat) and TRIFECTA
Maine (1 seat)
Minnesota (1 seat)
Virginia (1 seat)
Arizona (2 seats)
Nevada (2 seats)
Wisconsin (3 seats)
Alaska (4 seats)
Iowa (5 seats)
Florida (5 seats)
Texas (5 seats)
West Virginia (5 seats)
South Carolina (5 seats)

I believe if we do this in the next 3 days, Democrats will win this week, and if we continue to push we can win a trifecta in 2020.

Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Wish list 2019

We are possibly going to see the largest Democratic landslide in the Washington State legislature since 1940 this year, as a response to Donald Trump and the general liberaliation of America. If Democrats do as well in the General as they did in the Primary, we will win between 66 and 68 seats out of 98 in the House of Representatives, and have a about 30 seats out of 49 seats in the Senate. This is going to give us the chance to make real substantial change in Washington State for the forseeable future. Here are my key issues I hope we will see:

Abolish the death penalty
Replace the Sales and B&O taxes completely with a combination of a progressive income tax and a carbon tax modeled after I-732. Fund the Working Families Tax Credit. Sales and B&O are regressive, and carbon taxes need to be raised to wean us off of fossil fuels as efficiently and quickly as possible. The carbon tax will be more progressive than the tax proposed by the alliance if modeled after the one I fought for in 2016.
Fully fund K-12 education.
Reduce college tuition as much as possible.
Get on schedule to have state employees salaries get back to being on par with private sector employees over the next 10 years after the 14 year long pay cut (which they erroneously call a pay freeze) which lasted from 2000 to 2014. Over the next 10 years give state employees back the 30% of their pay which is missing due to the pay cuts. People shouldn't need to choose between a competitive salary and public service.
Ensure everyone in our state has access to health care. There are multiple ways to do this, Germany, France, Canada, and the UK all achieve this and do it in different ways. But it needs to happen.
Implement ranked voting.
Upgrade AMTRAK Cascades to high speed rail, expand MAX to Vantucky, and speed up the ST3 timetable. This will reduce congestion and emissions.
Get us on track to be carbon neutral by implementing tax advantages for businesses which provide either hydrogen for fuel cells or electric car charging stations. Larger benefits for superchargers. This can be done most efficiently through an income tax.

It is now up to our legislators to succeed in doing the right thing.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

2018 elections

The US Senate is a dire tossup this year, and the House will almost certainly go Red, but this is the last time the Democrats can pick up enough Governorships to have a majority of Governorships in the country and they will also have veto power over redistricting plans for Congress and their State Legislatures for over 10 years from now. This is where money and votes can make a gigantic impact this year, the impact of which will be directly felt until 2030. Simply being able to veto gerrymandered maps will make a gigantic impact for a generation to come. This November will determine the outcome.

There are no fewer than 8 easy Governor pickups for @TheDemocrats this November. This is our last chance to get a majority of Governorships until 2022. Go #VoteBlue2018! Governors have the ability to veto unfair redistricting maps. Get Democratic Governors this year, get the House of Representatives and numerous legislature pickups in 2022. Otherwise, we might not get control of Congress again in the next decade. The two most important easy pickups this year are in Michigan and Wisconsin, so we can pick up a bunch of seats there. Florida and Ohio are both toss ups, which together send 43 Representatives to Congress, almost 10% of the House. Between Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, and Ohio, the winners of these blue/purple states will sign off on the redistricting of 65 seats of the House of Representatives, 15% of Congress. #VoteBlue2018

The 8 states Democrats can fairly easily get the Governor's mansion are Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Potential New Democratic Governorships

If Democrats win this year in these 8 states, we will have a very good shot at taking the House of Representatives and several state legislatures in 2022. The Democratic Party is likely to take a majority of the vote in every House election until the Republican Party becomes less extreme, given how the Democrats have a stance far more in line with most Americans on almost every issue.

We will break Republican Trifectas in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, and if we get lucky and win both toss ups we will break the trifectas of both Ohio and Florida. We will gain trifectas in Illinois by gaining the governorship.

Broken Republican Trifectas

We must pick up two seats in the Colorado State Senate this year in order to gain a Trifecta.

We need to pick up one seat in the Connecticut State Senate in order to gain a Trifecta.

We need 6 seats in the Iowa State Senate and 10 seats in the Iowa State House of Representatives, along with the governorship to make a Trifecta. It will not be easy, but it is doable.

We could take a trifecta in Maine by flipping one seat in the State Senate. Gaining the governorship as well (which is likely) will make a Democratic Trifecta.

We can gain the Minnesota Senate this year by taking one seat. The House will be more difficult where there is a 77-56 Republican lead.

We can gain a Trifecta in Nevada by maintaining both houses and taking the Governorship.

New Hampshire will need 4 pickups out of a 24 seat Senate, and 43 pickups in the House out of a 400 seat chamber.

Gaining the governorship of New Mexico will deliver a Trifecta.

We need to gain the Senate in New York, only one seat flipping will deliver a Democratic Trifecta.

Maintaining the Governorship of Pennsylvania will allow us to gain a trifecta in 2022 by having fair legislative maps.

Republicans have a 2 seat majority in both chambers in Virginia. We could make a Democratic Trifecta in Virginia this year.

We MUST maintain our majority in Washington State.

We could potentially gain the Wisconsin State Senate, we only need to pick up two more seats to accomplish that. Gaining the Governorship as well will mean that in 2022 we only need to pick up the State Assembly to gain a Trifecta.

If we succeed in this, the map of trifectas in 2019 will look like this, dark colors are currently held, light colors are pickups from gaining governorships and legislatures.

Potential new Trifecta Map

These 10 new Democratic Trifectas and 2 new Republican Trifectas which are fairly easy to get will have a direct effect on 90 House districts for the Democrats and 19 House districts for the Republicans. 74 House Districts will be put in a position where they will now need to have some agreement between both parties as opposed to one party unilaterally choosing the boundaries for legislative and congressional districts, which usually ends up hurting the other party significantly. These numbers will of course change slightly because of the new 2020 Census, but they won't change too significantly.

Takeaway message:

The big message of this post is that yes, the Federal Government is going to stay in the hands of the Republicans. We might be able to barely break the Trifecta by getting a one seat majority in the Senate, but this is going to be very difficult. The big battle this year is in the states. Democrats can make huge substantial gains in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. The biggest state we must defend is Washington State, because the trifecta hangs by a thread. The outcomes of the elections in these 16 states will have massive implications for the outcomes of elections for the next 20 years. This is where people who have money to donate need to be putting their money, this is where people who wish to volunteer need to put their time. This is a huge battle this year for the soul of America, let's hope that the side of equality, opportunity, and freedom wins.

On top of this, there are elections going on in cities and counties across America right now. Vote in your local elections, because that is where great leaders begin.

Remember also that in 1994 a 33 year old man was elected to the State Senate in the South Side of Chicago. he served for 10 years and then became the Senator for Illinois in the 2004 election (his second run for Congress), and in 2008 Barack Obama became the President of the United States.

Your State legislature is the major source for Federal politicians, and your governor and other state executives ultimately determines how the elections of your state are run (along with the Federal Courts, but those cases can be delayed by 5 years or more.). They determine if polling places are easy to get to, if you have mail in voting, how long polls are open, whether your state uses ranked voting or first past the post, and the outcomes of these elections determine massively important issues regarding our health care, education, infrastructure, net neutrality, access to natural areas, environment, and many many more issues. All of this is at stake in November. Every part of this matters.

Remember to vote.

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Swing States

A series of maps to illustrate swing states, defined as states which have not voted for the same party for the preceding 4 Presidential elections.