Will The Democrats Win The Mid-Terms? A Poll. - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Polls on politics, news, current affairs and history.

How Will The Democrats Do This Midterm Season?

1. There Will Be A Blue Wave: Democrats Will Take The House and Senate.
2
9%
2. There Will Be A Red Wall: Republicans Will Retain The House and Senate.
7
32%
3. The Democrats Will Take The House, But Not The Senate.
10
45%
4. Other (Not Sure, Don't Care, Etc).
3
14%
#14936849
We are nearing Mid-Term season fast, and I want to see what PoFo thinks will go down. Midterms have not historically been very good times for the party that is in control of the white house. So, I am curious to see what happens, what does everyone think?
#14936851
My instincts lead me to guess that any change that happens will be minimal. I'd probably bet on the GOP retaining both the House and the Senate, but if they win any seats, it won't be much. However, should the Democrats win either, their win will be minimal as well. The Democrats are more disorganized and incoherent than usual, and the GOP probably isn't doing any favors with swing voters either.
#14936854
Bulaba Jones wrote:My instincts lead me to guess that any change that happens will be minimal. I'd probably bet on the GOP retaining both the House and the Senate, but if they win any seats, it won't be much. However, should the Democrats win either, their win will be minimal as well. The Democrats are more disorganized and incoherent than usual, and the GOP probably isn't doing any favors with swing voters either.


I suppose if thats true, it should still be taken as an omen against the DNC. The out-party typically kicks ass in the midterms.

in my opinion, anything less than a blue wave should be viewed as disaster for the Democrats and as a referendum on their party by the American people.

Presidential elections are popularity contests, but mid-terms elections are about the policy of the in-administration and relative party approval in the eyes of their relative bases. Plain and simple.

It will be interesting to watch nonetheless, but the Democrats need to get some power back, since 2008 they have lost nearly the entire country and only hold a fraction of the power that Republicans do in the state and local governments. They need to get control of the Federal government or we need to have a serious conversation about whether the Dems are going the way of the Whigs in the 1850s and why this happened.
#14936857
Do you realize how you just successfully role-reversed with progressives/liberals by demanding a serious conversation about the Dems?

If the Democrats weren't so horribly mismanaged, incoherent, and in general just a complete mess, they could pull off a midterm victory. They still can, I'm just not sure they're going to be able to. They have indeed become a weak party, but a lot of that has to do with their incoherent message (they can't seem to decide what exactly identity politics means to them, and a number of other policy issues are similarly confused). As for PR, regardless of the muck the GOP drags itself in, it's pretty shameless and that's a strength for the Republicans. I have the sense the Democrats still haven't quite gotten to the point of completely forgiving themselves for rigging the vote against Sanders: we all know it's not the first time it's happened with the Democrats or the GOP, but the Democrats have gotten worse at handling their PR fallout. All of that points to a party in massive decline, and I don't see any signs of tremendous overhaul.
#14936863
I picked Red Wall, although I essentially agree with @Bulaba Jones on every point.

The Democrats are somehow even more of a shambles than the Labour Party in Britain right now. If they vanished overnight, I doubt anyone would notice or care.
#14936866
Bulaba Jones wrote:Do you realize how you just successfully role-reversed with progressives/liberals by demanding a serious conversation about the Dems?


I'm an Ancap, So I feel I can be pretty objective on this stuff if I need to be, my support for the current administration is purely pragmatic, plus I like Trump on a personal level.

Otherwise, I come from a family that was historically democrat for over 100 years, consistently. My mother's side were Southern Democrats from a line of southern democrat and my father's side were immigrant coal-miners hailing from Czechoslovakia, Ireland, etc.

There were no republicans in my family until after A.D. 2000, and no one in my immediate family voted Republican until 2012 (2016 was the first election my father and I ever particpated in directly). So I still have a sorrowful connection to the Democrat Party.

Bulaba Jones wrote:If the Democrats weren't so horribly mismanaged, incoherent, and in general just a complete mess, they could pull off a midterm victory. They still can, I'm just not sure they're going to be able to. They have indeed become a weak party, but a lot of that has to do with their incoherent message (they can't seem to decide what exactly identity politics means to them, and a number of other policy issues are similarly confused). As for PR, regardless of the muck the GOP drags itself in, it's pretty shameless and that's a strength for the Republicans. I have the sense the Democrats still haven't quite gotten to the point of completely forgiving themselves for rigging the vote against Sanders: we all know it's not the first time it's happened with the Democrats or the GOP, but the Democrats have gotten worse at handling their PR fallout. All of that points to a party in massive decline, and I don't see any signs of tremendous overhaul.


I think this analysis is all correct and I think there is a big chance that the two-party system will evaporate into a fractured system of several serious parties more like you see in Europe.

The Republicans will split into at least two parties; one which is a populist-nationalist party not unlike the European Far-Right, but a bit more moderate, built around Trumpian style Tariffs, etc., the other party would be the Tea-Party types and will likely merge with the Libertarians.

The Democrats should split between Social-Democrats (Admitted Socialists) along the Cortez/Bernie lines and merge with the Green party while the rest of the Democrats (neo-liberal clinton types) should merge with the stragglers of more progressive neo-cons who can't find their place between the Trumpian and Tea-Party segments.

So, Four New Parties (purely speculative I admit, but we may see something like this in our lifetime:

The National Party of America. [Nationalists/Populists]

- Formerly Republican Mainly.
- Trumpian, Nationalist, Populist, Pro-Tariffs, Anti-Immigration.
- Also Supported By Outcast Blue-Dog Former-Democrats.
-Strong Military, Generally Anti-Intervention though.

The American Liberty Convention. [Libertarians/Constitutionalists]

- Formerly Republican Primarily.
- Tea Party Types, Free-Trade, Free-Markets, Low-Reg. Civil Liberties.
-Merged With Constituionalists and Libertarians as well.
- Anti-Intervention and Anti-Military spending.

The Democratic-Republican Convention. [Moderates/Globalists]

- Formerly Democrat, Primarily.
- Corporatist, Hawkish, Pro-Capitalist but in a New Deal way.
- Globalist, but Pro-Intervention and Big military.
- Socially progressive, but not to identity politics level.
- Also made up of more socially progressive Neo-Cons former-Republicans.

The Social-Democratic Party of America.
[Socialists/Leftists]

- Former Democrat Party Primarily.
- More openly socialist, single-payer programs.
- Identity politics, open-borders, non-interventionist.
- Merged with Green party and smaller socialist parties.

We'll see what happens.
#14936868
Beren wrote:In which case Trump will be impeached, I guess.


If they take the house, they would still need to have a sufficient majority to push impeachment on the grounds of high crimes or misdemeanors. I doubt 100% of House Democrats would do this if the Mueller probe comes up bunk, which it likely will

So even if they take the house, its still relatively unlikely this would happen, but even if it did, that is still only the first step of the process and President would have to be tried by the Senate with the chief justice presiding. Assuming republicans are in control of the Senate, Trump, like Clinton, will remain in office in spite of the first step of impeachment happening in the house (the charge being approved by majority).
#14936870
They'll impeach him if Rosenstein asks them, which he has the right to do, as far as I know, but if you try to google it you only find results about Rosenstein's possible impeachment. :lol: Trump's impeachment is even more probable if he remains in office anyway, and I wonder whether it would make him resign or politically dead, even if it made his "base" even more desperate.
#14936900
The Democrats are more disorganized and incoherent than usual, and the GOP probably isn't doing any favors with swing voters either.


Sadly this is true. The democrats have millions of people in the streets and are doing a poor job of cashing in on it.

Here's what will happen. At the last minute the Koch brothers, et all, will step in with millions of dollars to paint democratic candidates a left wing radicals. I do not see a counterbalancing funding source for the democrats.

If the democrats can pull off taking the house they will take the presidency in 2020. Why? Because they will be able to humiliate the republicans with the results of the Russia scandal.

Will they impeach Trump? Only if the evidence is incontrovertible in which case a republican held house would too. If the democrats are smart they will not impeach him. They will let him continue his destructive political behavior and force the republicans to own it. They do not want to run against Pence in 2020 rather than Trump.

If the democrats should take the house and the senate, Trump with just morph into a centrist. He will claim that he is the most "bipartisan president in history" and sign everything the democrats send his way. He will appoint a centrist Supreme Court justice and turn back on some of the Obama stuff he turned off. If he doesn't he will be lucky with impeachment.

The republicans do not fear Mueller getting Trump. They fear the collateral damage. In a senatorial special election in Ohio, O'Connor (D) trails Balderson (R) by one point. This in a bright red district that went to Trump by over 11 points. If that falls democrat the Senate will certainly be in play. And Trumps SCOTUS pick will be in jeopardy. If O'Conner wins in four days, I will completely rethink my position.

It comes down to this. Can the democrats get out their vote? I am not so sure they can.
#14936911
Trump's fate seems to hang on the midterm elections. If the GOP can keep their House majority, it's going to stabilise Trump, even if they lose some seats, but if the Democrats take over the House, impeachment quite probably happens, in which case even Congressional Republicans could abandon Trump, if it becomes really ugly and he's an obvious liability. If it goes super ugly, they could even replace him with Pence, but even if it doesn't, Trump's chances of getting reelected will decrease drastically and even a challenging primary is possible.
#14936920
Win the house but not the senate.

Just the basic math of mid term swings and the current generic ballot and special election results suggest the house is within reach, the senate map this year is shit however and i'd be a hell of a swing to win the senate when almost all the senate races up are incumbent democrats.

For those saying the party doesn't have a coherent message, that's a very national way of looking at whether or not they'd win the house or senate. If this were a presidential race that would be more important but these races, and particularly the house races, all have to play into their own areas and messages.

It's not that surprising that without a unified national race to force the party to create a coherent message around that they are just letting local candidates go with whats best for their areas, which creates a lot of incoherence nationally, but is probably the best thing for those candidates particularly when they are on the defensive in a lot of red state senate races this year where the incumbents (joe manchin for instance) can't get too tied to national messaging about abolishing ICE or whatever (which is why republicans tried to push the abolish ICE bill a while back so they could force names to it and create drama in the democratic base).

Whether or not there is coherent messaging nationally probably isn't all that important generally in american politics anyway, and is usually a proxy for being annoyed that there isn't more ideological unity, but that's not really how american electoral politics works.
#14936923
There's a fundamental message of opposing Trump, though, without anyone else being opposed that much by the other side. But who knows if QAnon can be even better, although such a real embodiment of true evil as Demoness Hillary must be hard to replace with some unhinged conspiracy theory.
#14936926
Mike said: For those saying the party doesn't have a coherent message, that's a very national way of looking at whether or not they'd win the house or senate. If this were a presidential race that would be more important but these races, and particularly the house races, all have to play into their own areas and messages.


OK. This is fair enough. As someone said, "all politics is local".

The value of a concerted national message though is to attract money. For the past two days I have been bombarded with money requests from the Ohio democratic candidate even though I am a republican. (At least in name anyway.)

We need people to cross party lines to affect change and a national message helps that.
#14936927
Perhaps, but you run different risks that way. With political tribalism as strong as it is right now you are liable to lose more of your base (which makes up a lot of the very neccesary volunteer work and a big chunk of small dollar fundraising) than you gain in peeling off moderates of the other side. The democratic base nationally is just made up of so many different groups with different priorities that it's just very very hard to unify the national message under anything that isn't very vauge touchy feely Obama stuff which requires a singular charismatic person to push it to be effective which we also don't have.

Basically the party nationally is walking a tougher tightrope than the republicans nationally since the republicans have so few groups that really make up their base.

Tl;Dr It's a very hard problem and I don't have any good answers.
#14936929
Drlee wrote: In a senatorial special election in Ohio, O'Connor (D) trails Balderson (R) by one point. This in a bright red district that went to Trump by over 11 points. If that falls democrat the Senate will certainly be in play. And Trumps SCOTUS pick will be in jeopardy. If O'Conner wins in four days, I will completely rethink my position.

It comes down to this. Can the democrats get out their vote? I am not so sure they can.
. I currently reside in Ohio , and there is no special election for U.S. Senate . You must be thinking about a congressional election , in this one district . https://ballotpedia.org/Danny_O%27Connor_(Ohio). What I find to be so confusing about it is that both the Democratic candidate , and the Libertarian candidate , have the exact same surname , O'Connor . I would find it to be a pathetic pity if a number of voters were to get confused and vote for the wrong candidate by mistake . P.S. Incidentally , for the first time in my life , after reviewing the candidates websites , I plan on voting a straight Democratic ticket . I sure hope that an effective counterweight can be made to Pres. Trump . However I will not be holding my breath either .
#14937048
I don't really see why it matters, the Democrats are just as mental and right wing as the republicans, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were both Bush II style neo-cons. Obama was only controversial as he was half black and this annoyed lots of yanks. In political terms with was 8 more years of Bush style republican government. It's charming how Americans think their parties are meaningfully different. The would have a stroke if they had to move to somewhere like continental Europe and looked at the choice of parties there. :lol:
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