| Jaicee said: Just as someone who's followed American politics at least loosely since the presidential election of 1992, I somewhat disagree. Usually political shifts occur on an election-by-election basis (as in they last for two-year periods) and occur almost immediately following a major election outcome. Take the 2016 presidential election, for example. The immediate result of that was the largest demonstration in American history in the form of the 2017 Women's March, followed by several large-scale follow-ups (the Climate March, the March for Science, the March for Truth, the Tax March), all attended by hundreds of thousands of people at minimum, followed by a summer of those, ya know, tea party style town hall meetings mostly organized to protest the proposed law to repeal the Affordable Care Act, all leading up to the off-year elections in the fall that saw the Democrats make their biggest single-election gains in Virginia since Reconstruction and pick up the governor's seat in New Jersey and ultimately a Senate seat even in ultra-conservative Alabama at the height of the Me Too movement (which gained nationwide traction and visibility at this particular point in history for a reason having very much to do with who was elected president the preceding year). In fact, Trump reached the lowest job approval rating of his entire presidency within that same calendar year, immediately following the defeat of pedophile Roy Moore, who naturally he had enthusiastically endorsed, for the aforementioned Alabama Senate seat. My point being that the backlash to Trump's election was immediate, building up to its peak point the same year he assumed the presidency. To further characterize how the human mind works with respect to politics though, the message the GOP got from the defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama, which was an especially stunning development that seemed to signal they could potentially even lose the Senate the next year despite structural advantages, was to finally pass a version of their tax cut bill. The new tax law was unpopular, but did have a support base in the Republican Party and this simple fact that the Republican-controlled Congress had actually passed a real law now stopped the bleeding and stabilized Trump's poll numbers at a slightly higher level above 40%, whereas they had been in a state of free-fall. This didn't dampen anti-Trump enthusiasm on the Democratic side of the aisle (as evidence by the March For Our Lives demanding stricter gun laws taking place a few months later, attended by millions), but it did shore up Republican support for the Trump Administration. That wasn't adequate to prevent the Democrats from having their best midterm cycle the next year since 1974, but you can see what I'm getting at. What we're seeing here is much more subdued than all that because Joe Biden is a much more normal, boring president than Trump was. And I suspect you're right in the sense that a lot of these shifts we're seeing could reflect recent drops in Democratic enthusiasm rather than fundamental shifts in underlying party alignments. But 2021's major off-year elections are just about three months away now and whether many people who voted for Biden last year actually switch to voting Republican this year or instead just opt to sit this year and the midterms next year out, the real-world effect is similar. Republicans typically make gains in low-turnout elections, which tells you they aren't very good at eating the Democratic base of support, but also that there is, in reality, an often unmotivated, very edible base of support there. Which mainly consists of its working class. I wouldn't predict Republican landslides either this fall or next, but I would predict Republican gains owing to an enthusiasm gap favoring them emerging, including the GOP retaking the House of Representatives next year, based on the current trajectory of things. I believe these shifts are real not only based on the polling data available, but also based on my own experience just living as a working class woman who voted for Biden. Shifts in my own thinking and focus are reflected in these surveys. I've gone from relieved by vaccines and hopeful for a "Biden blitz" of legislation I mostly support after seeing the initial raft of executive orders he signed at the outset to viewing this as a lax, weak administration that embraces a largely hands-off approach to everything from rising crime to foreign policy to border policy to kinda even the virus nowadays and mostly defers to Congress when it comes to his own legislative policies in the name of partisan and bi-partisan unity, etc. There's just an emerging theme of not really caring and pretty much just letting everything go to hell, in my observation. I suspect people who live like me may indeed think somewhat like me about this situation. I would add though that the Democrats can minimize the damage by passing laws. The infrastructure and family bills currently being considered in Congress poll twice as well as the Republican tax cut of 2017, enjoying 70 and 63% public support respectively in the most recent survey I saw. Successful passage of these bills before the fall election cycle begins in earnest next month could tilt public opinion on the major voting issue that is the economy in a Democratic direction, whereas currently Biden and the Democrats statistically tie the Republicans on the issue. In order to actually keep the House in Democratic hands after next year's midterms though, the crime rates will need to fall, the virus will need to be fundamentally under control, and it might help here in Texas if the border situation weren't as chaotic as it presently is too, I mean if we're serious about turning the state blue in the near future anyway. I have doubts about that all actually happening. Now the 2024 presidential election is another thing though. I mean, let's face it, the Republicans are so out of touch that they'll probably nominate Trump again and that probably gives whoever the next Democratic nominee is a starting advantage there. But that's 2024 and I'm more focused on the immediate term here right now. |
In regards to the Women's March, I haven't really seen anything personally indicating that this is a partisan shift. Most people's mind's weren't suddenly changed, they just got more vocal about their beliefs. This was reflected in the voting trends showing that women haven't really moved as a demographic group one way or the other since the 2016 election. Biden's results with women were unremarkable.
People tend to get really loud after elections, which shouldn't really be surprising. An election is release of a year of political tension, and when that release doesn't favor you, there is a lot of energy left in the system that often desires somewhere else to go. That doesn't mean that what we are seeing is a partisan shift post election, just the manifestation of stored energy. Mid-terms are often an expression of that same energy. Rubber-banding during midterms is excessively common because the opposing party has a lot of left over energy when they lose which drives engagement during midterms. Again, I would argue that this isn't really a partisan shift, because this does tend to be temporary, as demonstrated by the fact that almost every president loses seats during the midterms regardless of party.
That is to say, I don't necessarily disagree with your point that there are shifts which occur post-election, I just don't believe those immediate shifts can really be extrapolated into long term trends, or assumed to be larger demographic trends, especially without voting data to support it.
