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The Democratic messaging sucks. The Green New Deal promises 30 million new jobs. South Texas Hispanics would get a large fraction of those jobs because Texas has both wind and sun, and the Hispanics are overrepresented in construction jobs. That's a good trade for the tens of thousands of coal and oil jobs that are going to disappear anyways, Green New Deal or not.

> The Democratic messaging sucks.

1000% agree. There was a serious of images of Fox News voter analysis polls that made the rounds in social media. The results are here: https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2020/general-results/voter... .

The vast majority of these answers show broad support for Democratic priorities. I mean "Do you favor or oppose each of the following? Changing the health care system so that any American can buy into a government-run health care plan if they want to" got 70% "strong" or "somewhat" support. 71% support giving a pathway to apply for legal status to illegal immigrants, vs. 29% in favor of deportation. "Do you favor or oppose each of the following? Increasing federal government spending on green and renewable energy" got 68% in favor.

And this is a Fox News poll. In poll after poll when you ask what policies people want, they lean strongly toward Democratic priorities.

It also comes at the cost of the entrenched business interests, both in raising their taxes and rolling back their regulatory capture, that bought all their election campaigns off.

Ultimately politicians on both sides walk a tightrope of how much they can sell out against how unpopular and unelectable they want to be. The races are always close almost everywhere as politicians optimize their corruption budget.

> let's be clear: the working and rural classes (generally) don't give 2 shits about climate change

Though I agree with you, it is very unfortunate. Climate change is going to effect the less well off the worst; we're all going to be affected. For instance: this report from Brookings goes into the effect hurricanes have on the poor, and it does not spell out a rosy picture:

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/09...

Why do you think the US is moving closer to authoritarianism? And how do you link that to Democrats losing elections?

I'm trying not to be snarky, but, with all due respect, is "Why do you think the US is moving closer to authoritarianism?" even a real question considering what is currently going on? We have a president who is completing rejecting the results of the election, while providing no evidence for the fraud he is alleging. In 2016 the margin was virtually the same, if not slightly smaller, in the other direction, and in that case the GAO gave Trump's team resources to start the transition the day after the election. More worrisome is how Trump is installing his most sycophantic cronies at multiple levels in the Defense Department.

Al Gore didn't concede until Dec 13th when he lost against Bush. He used all legal options he had to dispute the election. How is what Trump is doing any different?

Also, I don't see how the president's behavior has anything to do with a nation uniformly shifting towards authoritarianism. The president is but one person in the government, and some would argue not even the most powerful. Re-orienting an entire country's alignment requires much more than a handful of idiotic tweets.

Bush/Gore came down to a paltry number of votes in one state and a dubious court ruling. Perusing some amount of legal action there is not unreasonable.

Trump was claiming election fraud before a single ballot had been counted, repeatedly insisted that the only way he would lose the election is via fraud, and has had multiple cases dismissed due to the simple matter of not presenting any evidence.

That's how Trump is different, since you asked.

> but Trump increased his votes among both blacks and hispanics in 2020 compared to 2016.

FWIW, that's not true, or more accurately is unknown.

Those numbers come from election-day exit polling, and since many more Democratic voters voted by mail or voted early than Republican voters, exit polling skews Republican in 2020.

It would be quite interesting to see if those numbers hold up when corrected for the percentage of Democratic mail-in voters, but I don't know of anyone who has done that yet.

Wait, are we talking more black voters proportionally, or more votes absolutely? AIUI there's simply been flat-out more voters in the 2020 election on every side, so saying "more X voters voted for trump" might be technically provable today but not very useful.

Proportions are harder to pin down, as an accurate "X%" necessarily requires knowing the full set (or at least a random sample, and votes are being counted as they come in rather than in a random order).

Exit polling showed that a higher proportion of back and minority voters voted for Trump in 2020 than in 2016.

However, since exit polling only counts those who vote on election day, and far more Democrats voted early or by mail than Republicans, we don't know to what extent those numbers are representative of voters as a whole.

I'd love to see that analysis, but AFAIK no one has done it yet.

"White supremacy" narrative around Donald Trump is just a media amplification. Only the upscale white faction of Democrats, the media monopolists, rank it as critical and push it to political agenda. The same with climate change. It's just the Maslow hierarchy of needs in action.

I mostly agree, but:

> ... as the US continues a degradation of democratic ideals and moves closer to authoritarianism.

That depends on what Republican wins. Not all Republicans are Donald Trump-style authoritarians. (For that matter, Obama did quite a bit of rule-by-executive-order, too. If we want that to change, we need to fix the dysfunction in Congress. Presidents more and more almost have to rule by executive order, because Congress has become more and more unwilling or unable to actually do its job.)

> Not all Republicans are Donald Trump-style authoritarians.

Perhaps not all, but I've been pretty shocked, and dismayed, about how feckless Republican senators and congressmen have been when it comes to pushing back against Trump's most dictatorial impulses. It's like "Profiles in Cowardice". That's actually what scares me the most, how someone with such transparent disdain for democracy as Trump has managed to get the Republican congressional leadership to rollover and be his lapdog.

> That depends on what Republican wins. Not all Republicans are Donald Trump-style authoritarians.

The last week of falling behind Trump in that massive election fraud occurred (without any evidence) shows that the GOP is the party of Trump whether they like it or not.

Thinking anything else is delusional.

Only a few national political figures are backing Trump's massive fraud narrative. Most are just saying "he has the right to recounts, and let's see how it plays out." Because they know he is full of shit but don't want to piss off their voters.

So, if passing off Trump passes off Republican voters then they (political figures) are beholden to Trump...

I'm a little worried that Trump wasn't just an aberration, but rather was just first of a new breed. Thinking back on the Republican playing field in 2016, I don't know that any of the other candidates could have handled the media abuse as well as Trump did, and in failing that most first prerequisite for a republican president, they couldn't have gotten very far.

He's the new standard. I don't think his supporters would vote for someone that's more of an eloquent speaker like Mitt Romney. In fact, I believe Alex Jones has a better chance of winning the primary and I'm completely serious

I don't honestly think they are worried about elections. They have them firmly in control. Case in point, this group from MIT recorded a zoom analysis yesterday showing algorithmic tendencies of the vote counts. Why are vote totals stored as decimal? They dig into this and analyze four counties in Michigan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztu5Y5obWPk&feature=emb_logo

"This group from MIT"

You mean this total, fraudulent tool who claimed to invent email long after it was in widespread use, and spread completely baseless bullshit conspiracy theories in the past?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_Ayyadurai