Stidmatt's Views: 2020 elections

Showing posts with label 2020 elections. Show all posts

Monday, April 20, 2020

2020-2022 election analysis

So, there is a Wikipedia list which shows you the current political party strength in every state in these United States. I downloaded this into a Jupyter notebook today and did some Python magic on it this morning to start to understand what is really going on with the partisan spread in the United States.

First, for historical background it is really new that no matter which state you live in, the parties will be very aligned.

OK, to prevent this from being a giant historical essay, let's start by doing some real analysis into the current patterns in the United States.

This map shows the current state level Trifectas in the United States. As you can see from the map above, most trifectas are currently held by Republicans. This is a very different story from before the 2010 census.

But what this simply colored map doesn't show are HOW these Trifectas are formed. Breaking this down further, if we show only states which have total alignment (a trifecta and voted for the President of the same party in 2016) the map looks like this:

20 states do not have a split government representation when you take into account the partisan balance of both state legislatures, their governor, their Senators, their US Representatives, and how they voted for the President in the last election. There is one caveat to this, Nebraska has a technically non-partisan state legislature, so they should technically be colored red.

Every state in grey is a target for each party to expand their power.

Republicans are one step away from taking over the following states in grey:

Alabama (US Senate)
Alaska (State House)
Iowa (2 seats in the US House)
Kansas (Governor)
Kentucky (Governor)
Louisiana (Governor)
North Carolina (Governor)
Ohio (US Senate)
West Virginia (US Senate)

Democrats are one step away from taking over the following states in grey:

Colorado (US Senate)
Maine (US Senate, although Angus King is technically Independent, he caucuses with the Democrats)
Maryland (Governor)
Massachusetts (Governor)
Minnesota (2 seats in the State Senate)
New Hampshire (Governor)
Vermont (Governor, although Bernie Sanders is technically Independent, he caucuses with the Democrats)

If all of these changes occur, our map will look like this:

The remaining 5 states are the ones which are by this count the most swingy of them all.

Arizona and Pennsylvania have the closest margins in their state legislatures which makes them relatively easy for the Democrats to gain control over redistricting. All that needs to happen than in Arizona is to win the Gubernatorial election in 2022 and the Democrats will have a trifecta there. In Pennsylvania we need to pick up 4 seats in the Senate and 9 seats in the House (out of a very large State House), so these are very likely to be added to the list of Democratic trifectas in the next two and a half years if people turn out.

Michigan has a wider margin, particularly in the State Senate, but it is theoretically possible for the Democrats to win back the State House where they only need 4 more seats, and with Gretchen Whitmer as governor it is very likely that the map will be at least balanced in 2022 which means that a Democratic trifecta in Michigan in 2023 is very likely.

In Montana the Republicans are two steps away from total domination, but they have a popular moderate Democratic senator, so it is very likely that Montana will continue to not be dominated for a while.

In Wisconsin it is a similar story to Michigan. We need to pick up one of the Senate seats, and 2 more House seats to dominate their congressional representation. With a Democratic governor the map in 2022 will be at least balanced, which means the Democrats have a high probability of getting complete control in Wisconsin over the next 2 years.

Now, it is totally possible that voters will continue their divided governments in these states as well, these are just how it looks for now.

There are very few states in the US right now with close state legislatures. If we look at the Presidential margins as well we see that the only three states which do not have divided government which saw no candidate take an outright majority in the 2016 Presidential election were North Carolina and Florida.

North Carolina will have a tight US Senate election this year, the polls put both Thom Tills and Cal Cunningham in a dead heat. PaddyPower betting doesn't favor either party in winning the Presidential election either. Roy Cooper is expected to win his election this year, which will mean that North Carolina will likely have a more balanced state legislature and US House map this time around. Assuming these voters vote down ballot as well, it might be possible to pick up a few more seats in the State legislature where we need 4 in the Senate and 5 in the House to have a tie. There were 9 different races which Republicans won by less than 10% in 2016, and with the right candidates this time around, combined with the president being unpopular, it is definitely possible that Democrats could take one or both houses, forcing the Republicans to have a less gerrymandered map. This will have massive implications nationally because North Carolina has 13 seats in the House, so getting a fair map in North Carolina is important in maintaining control of the US House of Representatives.

Florida's size makes it necessary to discuss. Democrats need 4 seats to take over the State Senate (out of 40 seats), and significantly more in the States House. It is the same story for Florida as with North Carolina, but even more so because it has as many house seats as New York. Given that Trump failed to get a majority, it is very much in play. The gubernatorial election in 2022 will be very important to watch since Ron DeSantis won by only 33,000 votes, or .4% of the people who voted. But, since Democrats lost in 2018 I fully expect that the State legislature and US House districts will be fully gerrymandered after this year's census. The 2030 Gubernatorial election is going to be very important.

At first glance, Iowa is very strongly Republican right now, but this wasn't the case 10 years ago. Kim Reynolds won the election by 50.3% of the vote in 2018 and followed up by passing one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the United States. Given that the Iowa PVI is only R+3 I believe it is possible to run the right candidate against her to at least take back the Governorship in 2022. Ohio is a similar story, given that Mike DeWine won with only 50.4% of the vote. If the Democrats are able to take back the governorship hopefully we can bring the state to court to get a more fair legislative boundary map some time around 2025.

Georgia is the final state I am going to look at in this list. Stacey Abrams almost won in 2018, and if enough people turn out to vote in 2022 it is possible that Georgia could have a Democratic governor in 2023. There needs to be better oversight of our elections because of what happened in 2018 with the Governors race, ideally foreign observers. Georgia allows anyone to register to vote absentee for any reason, and the ticket to winning the Governors race in 2022 is to get as many people registered to vote absentee as fast as possible. This gets around the voter ID laws which are probably unconstitutional, and ensures everyone can have their voice count.

Based on all of this, my final prediction for what state level government trifectas will look like in 2023 as a best case scenario for Democrats is as follows:

This is assuming Democrats only see gains, and we pick up the governorships which Republicans won by under 5 points:

Florida
Georgia
New Hampshire
Iowa
South Dakota
Ohio

We pick up Senate seats in states which voted for Clinton and have a Republican Senator:

Colorado
Maine

We pick up State Senates where the margin is under 5%:

Minnesota

We pick up State Houses where the margin is under 5%:

Arizona
Iowa
Michigan
Pennsylvania
North Carolina

We also win every state in the Presidential election which Clinton lost by under 5%:

Florida
Pennsylvania
Michigan
North Carolina
Arizona
Wisconsin
Nebraska, 2nd district

This will create the following most probable best case scenario for the Democrats:

If everything possible goes right for the Republicans, the best case scenario for 2023 they can reasonably hope for using he same criteria will be:

They can pick up the following governorships:

North Carolina
Wisconsin
Connecticut
Montana
Nevada

They pick up Senate seats in states which voted for Trump and have a Democratic Senator:

Alabama
Arizona
Montana
Ohio
Pennsylvania
West Virginia
Wisconsin

They pick up State Senates where the margin is less than 5%:

Colorado
Virginia

There are no Democratically controlled State Houses where the margin is less than 5%.

They pick up states where Clinton won with a margin of victory under 5%.:

Colorado
Nevada
Minnesota
New Hampshire

This will create the most probable best case scenario for the Republican Party:

Now there are many reasons why this unlikely. Trump is polling below 50%, most betting pools are betting that Joe Biden will win, COVID-19 is showing the quality of Republican leadership and if Republicans are disproportionately affected due to the patterns of which states are opening up early, than this will definitely reduce the number of people voting for Republicans in November.

This bring us to one final map, which is where these two maps agree:

This map makes it pretty clear that most Americans live in a State which has at least one major partisan control (legislature, governor, senators, or Presidential votes) at risk in this current election cycle based on previous election trends.

The truth in a few years will likely be somewhere in the middle of these two extremes, but the takeaway from this I have is that nothing is written in stone, and history is what we make it. Every single person needs to vote. The majority of Americans are liberal according to issue based opinion polls, and we deserve to have a government which reflects these values. Almost everyone lives somewhere where either their governor, representative (which I did not examine in this post), state legislature, senator, or their votes for the Electoral College are truly up for grabs.

This map also makes one error, which I am aware of. It makes Washington (my home) look like a safe state. This appears to be true, but in my data if you take an average of the partisan split in each house Washington is next to Montana in terms of how closely divided our legislature is. In fact, we are one of only 11 states where both houses have a margin of under 10% of the seats. In fact, 21 states in total have at least one chamber with a 10% majority or less. If we remove these states from our "safe state" map to get only the ultra safe states the map looks like this:

These are the only states where the following criteria are true:

The margin of victory for President was over 5%
The party in power of both state legislature chambers has a margin of over 10% of the seats
The governor won their last race by at least a 5% margin
Both Senate seats are held by the same party
Only one party dominated both houses of the Legislature, controls the governorship, and has both seats in the Senate

This is the reality of American politics today. Very few states are completely safe in every possible way. Everyone needs to vote, and you need to vote for every race on your ballot. Even if you live in a state legislative district considered safe, you should still vote, because it can still make a difference. Michigan voted for the Democrats every Presidential election from 1988-2012, but voted for Trump in 2016. The Washington State Legislature was divided for most of the 2010s, but a surge in turnout in 2018 gave the Democrats a large majority which has allowed them to pass legislation on a wide variety of issues.

Getting great people into state legislatures allows them to pass great bills which can solve real problems which effect your community. With a great slate of state legislators, it becomes much easier to win races for Congress and to have fantastic governors. We can have excellent mayors who can fight homelessness and expand transit. With these great leaders at all levels of our democracy we can then get phenomenal Presidents who can expand access to health care, increase the number of Americans who can go to college, and solve our looming retirement crisis which will only grow as long as we don't implement solutions.

But this will only happen if you vote for your state legislator. Great state legislators will only get elected if you volunteer to phone bank in your legislative district to get great leaders into positions of power where they can make our world a better place. That is the only way that we can get great Senators and Governors, which is the only way we will elect great Presidents. It will only happen if you get involved in the politics of your legislative district today.

Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Elizabeth Warren 2020

Roosevelt and Truman refused to prosecute the corporate CEOs who illegally use labor from the Holocaust. Johnson refused to prosecute Nixon for sabotaging his Vietnam peace talks. Carter covered up everything the Nixon administration did by not prosecuting the crimes he committed. Clinton refused to prosecute the Reagan/Bush administration for the Iran Contra Affair and Iran Hostage Crisis. Obama refused to prosecute the Bush administration for the 9/11 commission reports (I'll write more about that scandal later) and refused to prosecute states for violating the Voting Rights Act.

Democrats have a long history stretching back as long as the party has existed in its current form of playing nice and then getting defeated through illegal behavior in the next election through Gerrymandering, corruption, and back dealing by the Republican Party. Trying to appease brainwashed voters never works, and refusing to stand up for what is right when it comes to the quality of our government hurts every American.

Today Elizabeth Warren announced that she will set up a commission to prosecute the current members of the Trump Administration for violating the law. I believe very strongly in equal justice under the law, and it shouldn't matter who you are in the United States, if you are on American soil the law must apply to you as equally as every other person (to use the word the 14th amendment uses) on American soil. This doesn't matter if you are an average citizen, a foreigner, or even the President of the United States, all three should have the law apply to them equally. The President needs to be impeached first in order to have the full brunt of the law apply to them, but after they are removed from office they are just another citizen, and the crimes they committed in office are the second they are no longer President can be prosecuted. Likewise, if someone is on American soil, or an American military base, and they are accused of a crime, the full laws of the United States apply to them, including the protections in the Bill of Rights. Those civil liberties do not stop anyone who is guilty from being prosecuted, they only protect the innocent from being wrongly imprisoned, when they are followed.

If President Elizabeth Warren is going to use the full power of the Presidency to hold the Trump administration accountable for their crimes, which no President has ever done before, and every President since Washington has sworn to do, then just imagine what is going to happen to States which violate the Voting Rights Act, police forces which repeatedly violate civil liberties through excessive force, and every single person who is currently held by ICE without a trial, which the 14th amendment and 5th amendment together very clearly show is completely unconstitutional.

Elizabeth Warren alone has a life long career of protecting the weakest in society in ways which really do matter. Millions of Americans have been able to get their money back due to the law enforcement through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She hits the right balance between stating how she will use the power of the Presidency to make a more just government, but she also has no desire to waste time if a bill isn't likely to pass through the Senate. While I of course wish we could just go make an initiative which would significantly strike at two major issues confronting our country and make it pass, I literally worked on the most progressive proposal I've ever seen, which was Initiative 732, I also learned from that the importance of building coalitions to pass legislation. Dead legislation does nothing. Compromised legislation is like a compromised vehicle.

So, we should have a President who will do everything she can to reverse all of the executive orders Trump has passed over the last 3 years to make America more just. We need a President who has a 30 year long proven track record of strategically moving forward proposals which pass and then significantly help people. We need someone who moves strategically, but who also never claims that we can't dream big and believes that we should make a world which brings the greatest good to the greatest number of people.

I have never seen a candidate in my life who more closely matches my values than Elizabeth Warren who will also successfully make a major difference by using her political power as President in a way to maximize good. If she becomes the nominee I know she will be elected. She will almost certainly use her candidacy to stump for Senate candidates in vulnerable states, which she did in 2012, raising over $1 million for Senate candidates, before she was even elected. You cannot say the same about any other Senate candidate. In 2016 Politico ran a piece Did Donald Trump Just Hand the Senate to Elizabeth Warren? when she had only been in office for 4 years. No other Freshman Senator could do that in a political piece. It is basically common knowledge among politicos that Bernie Sanders was late in announcing his candidacy in 2016 because he was expecting Elizabeth Warren to run and he would have backed her in that situation. No other politician has so much respect from their colleagues to the point that their allies will delay their candidacy to the highest office in the land because of so much trust.

In 8 years as Senator she has sponsored 9 pieces of legislation which have become law according to Govtrack.

Sanders has only sponsored 7 laws in 30 years.

Her values are pure, her strategy is proven, and I fully believe that if Senator Elizabeth Warren is elected she will have the balance between being effective in her strategy, while having a moral compass which points true, which will make America a more free country. With some major executive wins in the first two years that will give us the momentum to win the Senate in 2022, giving the brain behind the CFPB the first Democratic Trifecta in over a decade. I believe her strategy of making strategic wins against a Republican Senate will work.

I want to see that trifecta more than anything else in politics, and it is only going to happen if we have a President in 2021 who will use her strategy to mobilize voters through as many meaningful victories as possible. She will continue to stump for and support Democratic candidates for the Senate which will work yet again.

If that wasn't enough, Senator Warren endorses a carbon tax, which is known to economists as the most effective way to fight global warming. Sanders has shifted his stance and isn't talking about carbon taxes as much as he used to. Carbon taxes are actually not that controversial among candidates, as this Washington Post survey shows, Sanders and Gabbard are the only candidates who oppose it.

If you want a candidate who supports carbon taxes, ending the electoral college, and ending the filibuster, then there is really only one candidate you should vote for.

Elizabeth Warren deserves your vote.

Saturday, May 25, 2019

2020 is our last chance

In 2000 the Presidential election was stolen from President elect Al Gore by vote rigging in Florida. I fully believe based on all available evidence this is the case. Vice President Gore was going to attempt to make monumental shifts in how America was going to tackle the biggest challenge of our time, which is global warming, and instead we got an oil man from Texas, which was followed up by invading one of the largest petrostates in the world America wasn't actively buying oil from.

In 2008 President Obama was elected, and he did everything he could to fight global warming, but given opposition from his own party, and the lack of proper messaging from the Democrats, the Republicans won in 2010 by portraying the Affordable Care Act as a socialist takeover, and the Democrats rolled over. Any chance of significant accomplishments to fight global warming at a national level ended on that day in 2010 for a decade.

In 2016 I worked with a group of young activists on what is to date the most progressive plan to fight global warming to date, and we were defeated by millions of dollars of money from big polluters and a large number of "environmental groups" and our Governor who opposed us and urged their supporters to vote no.

In 2018 the same environmental groups proposed their own plan which exempted the exact same companies who bankrolled the opposition to the initiative I worked on.

I don't believe in coincidence in politics as a rule.

In 2019 the same governor who opposed the initiative I worked on signed a 100% clean electricity bill which will cut up to 10% of Washington State emissions, and a few other bills with the most Democratic legislature in over 70 years.

2020 is the most decisive year for fighting global warming. The oil companies who opposed 732 are literally in high ranking government positions. The administration is rolling back as many environmental regulations as they can. We must stop them.

In Washington State we have an opportunity to pass a significant bill to reduce global warming emissions from every industry, an opportunity which will not come back for at least a decade. Democrats will probably lose seats next year. At the Federal level we need to ensure we have the best leaders we possibly can, because the clock is ticking. We need a President who firmly supports a carbon tax and has a long record of supporting it.

For Carbon Washington, Audubon society, and Citizens Climate Lobby, we have to present in the legislature through our allies and members a real significant proposal to reduce global warming causing emissions without exempting the worst polluters in America. We will force the hand of those environmental groups to put forward a counter proposal immediately, because we now know the main difference between 732 and 1631 was not where the money was going to be spent, but in who was not going to pay the tax AT ALL under 1631. Our opponents will HAVE to have a counter proposal, and if they don't we can point at how they were not transparent about their process, postponed their proposal as long as possible, until after Governor Inslee's bill had failed, not giving voters the information they needed to make an informed decision. This is a corrupt tactic. In 2020 if we put forward a proposal they will be forced to put forward a counter proposal immediately which all people who care about the environment will be able to see side by side, or assume they still want a proposal which fully exempts the largest polluters in Washington, which is unethical, counterproductive, and regressive.

If I am angry, it is because I love my planet. If you are not angry at this point, you are not paying attention.

2020 is probably the last year to put forward a real plan to fight climate change. Other environmental groups will have to support it or have a counterproposal ready, and with Governor Inslee running for President he will have to support it or drop out of the Presidential race.

In terms of the Presidential race, we need a candidate who fully supports an exemption free carbon tax, and the only candidate running who unapologetically supports such a policy who is either a sitting or former governor or Senator is Senator Bernie Sanders, and he deserves your vote. See also my political platform post I made from opinion polls, which is what he has been working for since before I was even born. No other candidate has the record of support for fighting global warming close to his, and many have had the opportunity. No other has both supported such proposals consistently AND openly state it on their platform.

If your car is compromised, it means it doesn't work. Politics is no different.

When it comes to how two carbon tax initiatives have failed, they failed because the mainstream newspapers in this state didn't accurately represent them, the estimates the Secretary of State published were incorrect according to independent reviews, and corruption from long existing self declared environmental groups betrayed their supporters and lied to voters. The majority of people in America support such a plan, the issue is we need messaging and have to fight corrupt organizations more effectively.
I urge you to work with us, so we can do what needs to be done. If we force Governor Inslee to support it I fully believe we can succeed, but we can probably only do it in 2020, and only with the best proposal we can possibly write.

I will be working over the next few months to build this policy with my crew, and talk to the legislators I know about how I believe this is our last and best chance.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Status of the 2020 election, Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2019

The 2020 election is ramping up right now, and the candidates are lining up, and there are multiple fantastic candidates right now.

The Republican Nomination will almost certainly go to Trump in 2020, but on the Democratic side of the aisle we have several really amazing people running, or who are almost certainly going to run.

Declared Candidates

I am going to break them down by their current role, ordered by likelihood of getting the nomination, with their number of twitter followers on their most followed account:

Sitting Senator

Elizabeth Warren, 2.2 million
Kamala Harris, 2 million
Kirsten Gillibrand, 1.33 million

Sitting Representative:

Tulsi Gabbard, 242,000

Former Representative:

John Delaney, 12,500

Former Cabinet Official:

Julian Castro, 169,000

The other candidates should run for congress or to be governor before they run for president, since they don't have a record they can point to.

This race looks like a dead heat between Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris. They both command over 2 million followers on Twitter, and have very strong progressive credentials. Neither have more followers than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she is unfortunately not old enough to run for President, or even Senator yet. I expect she will move up quickly. She will likely succeed whoever wins this year if she pays her cards right, which I expect she will. Of course, none of them have the 104 million followers President Obama has, and it would take a historic level of legislation for another President to do that.

Back to the Presidential race of 2020, not 2028. It seems to be a dead heat between Senators Harris and Warren when looking at their popularity on Twitter. If we search their names on Google right now, Kirsten Gillibrand has 10.1 million hits, Kamala Harris has 38.9 million hits, and Elizabeth Warren has 175 million hits. For comparison, President Obama has 219 million hits. Elizabeth Warren has been in the Senate for a longer time than Senator Harris, which gives her the upper hand.

When it comes to their policies, they are all strongly liberal identical from what I can tell from Govtrack's data, and we would do just as well with any one of them. Kirsten Gillibrand started as a Blue Dog in the beginning of her career, but has become significantly more progressive over her time as a member of Congress since 2007. She used to be a Blue Dog, but now her voting record is the most progressive of the three candidates. Senator Warren is the most centrist of the three Senators in the race right now according to her voting record.

Senator Harris is currently 54 years old, Senator Gillibrand so average for a Presidential candidate. Senator Warren is currently 69 years old, and if she wins the election she will be only a few months younger than when Trump was inaugurated two years ago. Senator Harris will be almost exactly as old as the median age for Presidents upon inauguration.

Gillibrand and Warren as I write this at 9:00 Pacific Time on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day have not formally announced their candidacy yet however, but this doesn't really matter in these first few months. Senator Clinton announced her candidacy a month before Senator Obama, but lost by a slim number of delegates despite winning the popular vote.

I will probably support Senator Harris in the primary from this point on. She doesn't compromise her principles, is standing for badly needed police reform, opposes the death penalty, and has a flawless track record stretching back over a decade as a Federal Prosecutor. We will do very well if she wins the election. She is my top result when I fill out my answers on isidewith giving me affirmation she is indeed a candidate who shares my values, on top of observing her decisions in Congress.

Bernie Sanders and his supporters

There are already articles popping up online on sites like Jacobin criticizing issues with existing candidates for not doing enough, this article about Senator Harris is one example, and while they are fair criticisms from her record as a prosecutor, we live in an electoral system in every state except for Maine which punishes people for voting third party. The spoiler effect is a very real problem which must be addressed.

We deserve to have a robust debate in the primary with the candidates who are running and fully examine their records. But, at the same time the number one goal of 2020 is to ensure Trump leaves office and that the Democrats recapture the Presidency and hopefully the Senate as well. We made very important progress in 2018, picking up governorships in Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Illinois, and Maine. This will make a tremendous effect on the federal House of Representatives for the next 12 years since the governors of those states have the authority to veto gerrymandering, which will make a much more competitive House. We now need to continue that progress into 2020 and get the first Democratic federal trifecta in a decade.

Senator Sanders might run in 2020. If he won he would be the oldest President in history at 79 years old on inauguration day. He would be 83 when he would run for reelection, or in all honesty, more likely retire. He will not live forever, and we need to foster new candidates like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez who have his level of integrity and service to our country.

Any of the candidates I listed at the top of this piece would be fantastic presidents, and none of them are perfect, but no one is. We need to fight like hell for what we want and deserve, and remember that the idea of production possibilities frontier is very much part of politics as much as it is in economics. It can only be reached by fully striving for what you want, realizing you probably won't get everything, which is the optimal strategy.

The question starts with, who are the best candidates in 2020? Of the top 10 sitting Senators in 2017 (excluding Al Franken), both Harris and Gillibrand are on that list. Only Sanders (VT), Merkley (OR), and Markey (MA) are more progressive than Kirsten Gillibrand. Van Hollen (MD) and and Reed (RI) are between Gillibrand and Harris. We already have two of the most progressive senators in America in the race, so not voting for one of them for not being progressive enough would be counter productive. Based on my knowledge of biology which I have learned from working in a lab and being around biologists for the vast majority of my life, I oppose GMO labelling because it is fear mongering, which is one of a handful of issues I disagree with Senator Harris on. But this doesn't mean I will oppose her and stomp my feet and cry about it, because I agree with her on the vast majority of issues. We already have two of the best candidates America can offer today.

Other potential sources of Candidates

What about Governors however? Well, currently if we take a list of current Democratic Governors who have been office since at least 2016 (since it would be very unusual for someone to be elected with only 2 years of experience) and will be less than 70 then Governor Cuomo of New York has the most Twitter followers with 848,000 followers. No Governor has the level of familiarity and popularity they will need to successfully win the candidacy. Governor O'Malley's record in Maryland was as close to stellar as you will ever find, massive reductions in police brutality given reforms he signed into law, college tuition was going down, and the quality of life in Maryland is one of the best in the country. That was not enough to win the Presidency however. The next President will almost certainly come from the Senate.

This is why I am expecting it will be a dead heat between Senators Harris and Warren. they are extremely similar candidates, Harris is to the left of Warren according to GovTrack data, and Warren is still a very progressive politician. Harris already has donations from every state in America to her campaign and will win the Presidency if she is nominated.

Going Forward

With two outstanding progressive candidates with two of the best records you will ever find, the big question now is how do we get candidates down ballot in every race in the country and ensure our election system is fair.

The most important reform right now which is needed is ranked voting for as many races as we can possibly get. America cannot afford another spoiler effect. We deserve a political system which fulfills the three goals of politicians working together to solve problems, a civil body politic, and rewards candidates for being true to what they say. Ranked voting does both of these, by punishing candidates who simply bombast another candidate with no merit so they don't get the second choice votes from other candidates, and ensuring there will likely be a likely challenger from all sides for moderate candidates. Single Transferable Vote also fixes gerrymandering as long as you have at least 3 candidates per district, while also not giving the power to the hands of unelected party elites. Some will argue that it fails the participation criteria, which is true, but given the choice between the mutual majority criterion (the candidate who wins must win a majority of the vote) and the participation criterion, I believe the mutual majority criterion is more important, particularly after living through the Presidencies of both Bush and Trump.

This year and In 2020 we are going to have legislative races in every state, local races all across America, and that is where great leaders are born. the current status of partisan trends is as follows (from Ballotpedia):

Democratic Trifectas (14) - Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine
Republican Trifectas (24) - Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida
Democratic Governor, Republican Legislature (8) - Montana, Kansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia,North Carolina, Louisiana,
Republican Governor, Democratic Legislature (4) - Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maryland,

We finally have fewer than half of the states in the United States under a Republican Trifecta, however 27 million more Americans live in states with and Republican Trifecta than a Democratic Trifecta.

Due to the fact that states range in population so much, despite Republicans holding 27 governorships in the country, Democrats have won more votes for governor over the last election for every state, according to the data I have collected from Wikipedia. Unsurprisingly, Democrats wasted almost 3 million votes in California in the last election, as well as 1.2 million in New York. The only state where Republicans wasted over a million votes was unsurprisingly in Texas. However, when you add it all up Democrats have received more votes despite not controlling a majority of governorships.

The closest governor's race which went to the Republicans in the last elections with margins of less than 2% of the vote were in Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and South Dakota. We are going to have to wait until at least 2022 to get back Florida, and Georgia which are the two states which really matter. The way to do this is to fight election fraud in the courts by using the justice department to enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This will only happen if we win the Presidency in 2020 which will likely happen. We are unfortunately too late to do this in time for the redistricting after the 2020 census, so these legislatures are lost until 2030. Oh well, #Jillnothill.

2020 is not going to be a really big year for picking up seats in state legislatures unfortunately, but 2022 is going to be the year where we are going to have a gigantic slate of new progressives running in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Minnesota, potentially turning them into Democratic Trifectas. If we get the Presidency in 2020, than we can use the justice department immediately to go after gerrymandering in Ohio, and Florida which will make competitive state legislatures in both of those states. We need to go after gerrymandering of the Congressional Districts at the same time. The big issue here is that there are going to be a whole bunch of judges who were appointed by Trump in the district and appellate courts who will likely stop any effort to overturn illegal gerrymandering in a partisan manner. Oh well, #Jillnothill. We are going to need to get the Presidency for a full 8 years in order to be have any chance at all to replace one conservative justice on SCOTUS. Our only possible way out is if it turns out that Donald Trump's Presidency is unconstitutional (which it probably is) then every decision he has made is also unconstitutional, and we might be able to make all of his decisions null and void under the constitution. This has never been tested before because we have never had a situation like this before in American history. If that is the case than the appointments of both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh are unconstitutional, and their place on the court is null and void. This would give the winner in 2020 two SCOTUS appointments from day 1 and also the ability to appoint successors in their place. This is probably the easiest way out of our current constitutional predicament given how yuong Kavanaugh and Gorsuch are. The other option is to increase the court size by 2 which would effectively nullify their appointments. We then just have to make sure United Russia does not take back the Presidency any time in the near future so we can keep them on the court for a while. We could do this in 2021 assuming we take the Senate as well.

Speaking of the Senate, that was beyond a mess. Democrats pulled 59.3% of the vote and lost two seats. Losing North Dakota was a bummer, but even more disappointing was losing Florida by 0.2% of the vote (10,000 votes), especially considering the voter discrimination going on there. Indiana was another particularly close election. We need to fight voter discrimination as much as possible.

In next year's Senate elections Democrats have two good pickup opportunities, in Maine and Colorado. Alabama will probably be lost which will put the Republicans at 52 seats and Democrat sat 46. In 2022 we will have opportunities in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. The earliest probable date for a Trifecta at the moment given the losses last year is going to be 3 January 2023. This is less than ideal, but the best realistic shot we have.

In order to win, Democrats need to run in every race in the United States, adopt proportional representation as part of the national party platform, and continue to stand for the principles of justice, science, and progress. Democratic Candidates in every race need to be well supported and we need good principled people running everywhere to accurately represent their communities and make a better country. It can only start at the local level by getting fantastic people into state legislatures. Occasionally an incredible candidate like Representative Ocasio-Cortez will come out of the woodwork to the national spotlight in no time, but this isn't true the vast majority of the time. President Obama spent 10 years in the Illinois State Legislature before being elected Senator in 2004, which is a much more normal progression. The Congressional Research Service has excellent statistics here. Presidencies are won in legislative districts. If the Democratic Party does this well, it will control government for decades to come given how out of touch the Republican Party is today with American values. We need to move the Overton Window to be more focused on justice and equality.

Summary

We have about as progressive a slate of candidates as possible for 2020.
Democrats need to hold together as a voting bloc in 2020.
After gaining the Presidency the new President needs to push as hard as possible to fight voter disenfranchisement across America.
Democrats need to take control of the Senate after the 2022 elections.
The Democratic Party needs to support candidates in every legislative district in the country and fight for control at every level.

Thursday, April 5, 2018

More evidence points in the same direction

Today I was wondering about betting pools for various political issues, and at the top of the page for the 2020 Presidential election I saw this:

Disregarding my nerdy tabs and applications, Kamala Harris is currently projected as the most likely Democratic Nominee for the 2020 Presidential Election. #2 is long-time favorite of mine, Elizabeth Warren.

Unless if someone else comes out of nowhere in the next year, a Kamala Harris candidacy just looks more and more likely.

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.