Obama avoids "bitter . . cling" comment, popularity increasingly grows with rural and small town vot

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The baseline.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/

The baseline is not terrible. It’s a slow erosion of the middle class. But Obama has to address the change in order to have a successful presidency.

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Later Edit:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tan...-ground-financially-to-upper-income-families/

‘ . . . The Census Bureau’s 2016 American Community Survey . . . . . Respondents were asked to report their income . . . ’
So, self-report data, which I think we should take with a grain of salt.
 
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The moderator will get after us if we talk too much politics but:

If you ever watched or gone a trump rally, they are actually fun, he works the crowd, keeps it simple, its good retail politics. People who know him from his before life, seem to like him as well. Some people like the randomness. Makes him seem genuine.

I have seen a lot of politicians live. Jesse Jackson was one of the best, the crowd was into it. Also had good slogans, easy for people "Reagan says cut back, we say fight back." etc.

I just like politics so I can watch it all play out without getting too worked up.
 
But please understand that you or I preaching at a person that they ought not be so religious is singularly ineffective! :p

I am not judging or trying to "convert" people. I respect their rights to practice and follow a religion and hope in return they respect my right to consider them odd!

And, a significant part of the underlying rational of the 2nd Amendment...

Which, granted, was written by a bunch of dudes who lived in a time when the most advanced weapon was a musket, and could never have foreseen a world where the government has access to predator drones and suitcase nukes.

I cannot grasp how Americans do not see how unnecessary all this is. Just one example of the thousands of examples of heinous gun crime atrocities that afflict America every year would lead, almost instantly, to Parliament in the UK banning guns. Look at the response to Dunblane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre

Why are Americans not so angry about deaths on top of deaths that they DEMAND meaningful changes. instead they line up to offer thoughts and prayers!

Both Obama and Trump are likeable.

Indeed they are: by very different types of people with very differing outlooks on the world, very different lifetime experiences, very different travel histories and very differing educational levels. ( to speak broadly. It is just as Brexit is here)

If you ever watched or gone a trump rally, they are actually fun, he works the crowd, keeps it simple, its good retail politics. People who know him from his before life, seem to like him as well. Some people like the randomness. Makes him seem genuine.

He is mental but is cunning - his behavior this week over the CNN reporter and over his Attorney General is to deflect from a poor electoral result.
 
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. . . ( to speak broadly. It is just as Brexit is here) . . .
Would you feel comfortable making estimates of how much of the Brexit vote was about:

1) not enough middle-class jobs?

2) issues about immigration?

3) _______________ (3rd, 4th, or 5th motivations)
 
. . . without having access to guns either.

...and that is what I meant...
If you folks believe a gun is an end-game defense of liberty, more power to you.

I'd just ask that you not make a weapon a magic amulet. Meaning, whatever is the modern, Internet equivalent of a ham radio and a generator, that might be an equally good or better defense of liberty.

And of course, if someone doesn't pay any attention to politics at all, there's a reasonably good chance that they'll end up on the wrong side. Or, perhaps one of several wrong sides. However, since you're both members of AH, I feel that's less likely in your case. :)
 
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You'd need to avoid democrats trying to get rockefeller republicans too vote for them and aim elsewhere for votes. The easiest way to do this would be to prevent the social issues-focused "new left"/mcgovernites from taking over the leadership. HHH wins '68 and leads a new party purge, getting the mcgovernites removed would do this. Another way would be a "1980s Democratic Revolution" ATL where revived unions/a democratic party that doesn't do Carter's OTL lurch right moves things enough to the overall left.

This would prevent both Clinton and OBama, though.
 
If he didn't say that, then we could see a number of major differences happen with this little butterfly. I'm going to operate under the assumption that all the primary candidates are the same.

Lets say that this has an effect on down ballot elections across the country. Firstly, in Georgia Obama lost by maybe 5 or so points and Jim Martin, the Democratic Senate candidate, lost by 3 points. Without this in the news cycle, it could have the ramification of giving Martin the edge to win the state, even if Obama still doesn't win the state.

Franken could have won by a larger margin and been able to be seated as soon as the new Senate started.

A reach possibility would be the Senate race in Kentucky, where Bruce Lunsford lost by six points against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. It'd be more of an outcome of the chaos effect than the direct workings of Obama having never said that comment that would lead to Lunsford unseating McConnell, but the ramifications would be enormous. McConnell was the one who said that Senate Republicans' first priority is to make Obama a one-term President. His talent in whipping votes and obstructing on a massive scale has basically shaped the Senate for the last 10+ years and if he were gone, then really anything could happen.

Another thing to note is that Obama could have won in places like Missouri and Montana (which McCain won by close margins) if he is perceived all that differently by rural voters. This would boost his Electoral College win by 14, giving him 379 and tying him with Clinton in '96 as the 28th largest win ever, but I think it'd have a bigger impact in how he's perceived, and give him bigger political capital in a symbolic sense. Missouri is seen as one of the most severely racist states outside of the Deep South, and Montana is often pejoratively viewed as rural and hick-ish. Him winning there could have a monumental effect on his presidency even if it means very little in electoral terms.

In the House, giving a generic +2 point boost to all Democrats and a slight loss to Republicans when that could play a factor (which would be considerable, but just for fun) the following races would shift or be too close to call:
CA 4
CA 44
LA 2
LA 4
MN 6 (goodbye Michelle Bachmann)
MO 9
PA 6
SC 1
VA 2
WA 8

Assuming half of these go to Democrats, that'd be plus 5, bringing their House victory margin to 26 and giving them a little more breathing room.

If this all also butterflies the Tea Party Movement, or at least kneecaps it, you probably wouldn't see 60+ House seats and 6 Senate seats go over to the Republicans in 2010. They could end up limited to maybe 20-30 more House seats (comparable to what the Democratic Party had gained in each of the previous elections) and flip 3 Senate seats (Arkansas, North Dakota, and Indiana seemed pretty likely to flip).

This would spiral into an unrecognizable Obama Administration. Interesting stuff.
 
Probably would've costed him Indiana and North Carolina.

And it's completely contrary to Obama's character to wage that kind of cultural war. In fact after he made the "cling to guns and religion" comments Obama apologized for having offended anyone. It's also why in many cases he made a point of remaining "above the political fray" and never aggressively confronted the Republicans on major issues.
 
Add in this as well and it's no wonder the inner South swung more Republican in 2008.

I think a general problem that Obama had was he had trouble articulating to the American people just why his policies were necessary and how they were working. At least a couple of histories of the Obama years, including one by Jonathan Alter written during Obama's first term, that I've read have touched upon this point.
 
This entire thread is based on a false premise supposing that it was an error of Obama's that led rural, right-wing people to believe poorly of him. The truth is, if Obama hadn't said this particular phrase the right-wing media would have jumped on something else that no one paid any attention to in OTL. The point being that there has been an entire media apparatus for 20 years designed to make even the most moderate Democratic politician look to the left of Stalin, so nothing Obama could have done would have actually mattered when it came to avoiding a "huge gaffe". People were still screaming about "57 states" in 2016 for Christ's sake.
 
What states do you think he would have carried without that remark that he did not in OTL? (You will probably reply by giving a bunch of states he didn't come close to carrying in OTL and that had voted Republican in presidential elections for decades before and after that remark...)

BTW, I also think that Romney's 47 percent remark cost him very few votes in 2012 and even Gerald Ford's premature liberation of Poland in 1976 didn't hurt him much.

Basically, these "gaffes" are used as an excuse to vote against a candidate by people who would have voted against the candidate anyway.
Well, meet one person at least. I have voted Republican in every Presidential race since I could vote in '92. I voted in primaries, donated money, went to rallies etc, voted the straight ticket, and even went to Lincoln Day Dinners.

That 47% comment (and the doubling down of picking Paul "let's kill Social Security" Ryan) so infuriated me that not only voted for Obama, I campaigned and donated to that campaign. I am still furious about it.

By the same token, the 2016 "basket of Deplorables" comment pissed not only me but about everyone I knew off. I have a friend that owns a t-shirt shop in Gatlinburg, TN. One of his best selling shirts to this day says "if you're deployable, you're deplorable"

As far as the Obama comment? Honestly, not a big deal, it just was a confirmation to those of us he was referring to what we already figured he thought about us. Out of the 3 comments I think that his was the least harmful, Romney's the most harmful.
 
You'd need to avoid democrats trying to get rockefeller republicans too vote for them and aim elsewhere for votes. The easiest way to do this would be to prevent the social issues-focused "new left"/mcgovernites from taking over the leadership. . .
I’ve read that movement conservatives kicked out John Bircher conspiracy nuts in the 1950s, and I think a couple of other groups as well.

But as far as liberals, issues such as gay and lesbian rights are increasingly popular and well accepted as we move into the future. For example, Bill Clinton in the early ‘90s used calls for wider LGBT rights as a way to build his political coalition and increase his popularity, at least it seems that way to me.
 
I agree.

I think it’s well possible Obama could have had a considerably higher trajectory as president.

Unfortunately, throughout his presidency Obama gravely underestimated the power and fervor of his right wing opposition. Even after McConnell declared his intent to destroy Obama's presidency, Obama always thought he could compromise and work with Congressional Republicans. That's why the Obama administration was so shocked when McConnell refused to join them in calling out Russia in 2016, even though this was completely in his character and in line with every single act of sabotage he'd taken to undermine Obama.

Perhaps had Obama realized from the get go that the GOP was hell bent on destroying him, he would have not only been a more aggressive policy maker but he would've made sure to maintain a strong Democratic Party infrastructure nationwide. Had he done so, he could've accomplished a lot more.
 
This entire thread is based on a false premise supposing that it was an error of Obama's that led rural, right-wing people to believe poorly of him. The truth is, if Obama hadn't said this particular phrase the right-wing media would have jumped on something else that no one paid any attention to in OTL. The point being that there has been an entire media apparatus for 20 years designed to make even the most moderate Democratic politician look to the left of Stalin, so nothing Obama could have done would have actually mattered when it came to avoiding a "huge gaffe". People were still screaming about "57 states" in 2016 for Christ's sake.
Not to mention a culture that sees living out in a small town full of white people as the ultimate ideal.
 
Add in this as well and it's no wonder the inner South swung more Republican in 2008.
Thank you for including this.

Sen. Obama should have emphasized that the carbon tax is a tax on genuine harm to the environment, and that the idea has a lot of Republican supporters. And he should not have used the word bankrupt.

In fact, an interesting question of what you should do with coal plants already built, and whether you should grandfather them?
 
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