I think Rab is right. We should just ignore Eric because looking at his last post he is still clinging to bullshit debunked Dominion voting conspiracy theory. You might as well bang your head against a brick wall trying to talk reason in to such a person. To clarify here are the type of people we are dealing with.

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/14/934833214/conservatives-flock-to-mercer-funded-parler-claim-censorship-on-facebook-and-twi

"The success of Parler is partly because people understand that they're getting censored," Bartiromo said, while conducting an interview with Matze on her show. "Have Twitter and Facebook gone too far?" she asked."  Once you start content curation and you start fact checking, you're introducing bias," Matze replied."

(1) I disagree with your stancce, that Biden and Clinton are the same candidate except for the sex. Clinton was acting way less inclusive towards the left than Biden did, his moderate stance is at least talking to them and be open to their ideas (although it may make no real difference in the end in real politics). And there is the point of foreign policies: Clinton clearly supported more aggressive foreign policy with inclusion of military force as an political option. Many people are fed up with these endless wars, so I wouldn't count them as similar. I said it in the primary thread and others did too before even one vote was cast in the primaries: every candidate of the democrats including Biden was better than Clinton (Bloomberg only joined later).

But there is another factor that probably has more impact than the differences between Biden and Clinton. And that is, that 2020 people now have four years real experience with a Trump presidency. And that can shift their votes, even if they see Clinton and Biden as basically the same.

(2) Funny how you explained the improvements in the male vote with sex differences, the improvement in the female vote with a general trend. My explanation of four years Trump reality would apply as much to women as it does to men. So both changes could be explained this way.

I am generally not so sure though, that women trend more democratic in general. The republican party has awoken to women as a voter group, and although they are behind democrats in that regard I think the shift will show results in future elections. I point for instance to initiatives like E-PAX and Winning for Women: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/more-women-than-ever-are-running-for-office-but-are-they-winning-their-primaries/

Generally speaking: no demographic group is a homogenic block, they all are made up of individual people with individual goals and wishes, so the oversimplifications like women breaking for democrats may be misleading. Which we will see in a moment.

(3) The results among voters of color are the most baffling for me personally. Because in reality, it seems Trumps actions as president were really bad for voters of color. But in that I may have fallen victim to an oversimplified view as I talked just before: maybe different people in that very diverse group see things differently. And some things Trump may have done had positive impact for them. So I would like to see more analysis of that result, but at this point it already is a reminder, that things are never *that* simple.

(4) This is also a very interesting result, and I agree with your analysis that with many rights implemented people in groups that profit from these rights tend to become more conservative. But I would also point to another thing, that also includes that this group isn't at all a homogenic one. In the past years political rifts inside the LGBTQ-community arised with some issues. That is most clearly shown by the emergence of the term TERF (trans-exclusive radical feminist). Whatever side you take in this discussion, it is clear that the group isn't always working in the same directions. So maybe fighting for trans rights (at least some specific rights) might eventually alienate some other members of the group. Also these discussions are led with more and more toxic aggressiveness, leading even to the cancellation of trans activist Contrapoints by other trrans activists. That may not sway many, but I wouldn't be surprised if some members of this diverse group feel disillusioned and don't care anymore voting for democrats in the process. I may be wrong about this, that this has an deep effect on the results, I just think it might also be a reason. Besides the one you named.

(5) Well, this aren't the primaries anymore with Seth Moulton, Pete Buttigieg and Tulsi Gabbard. This was an election of old dude vs. old dude. I don't think the younger generation had much interest in either of them specifically, so more general reasons like four years Trump reality took over.

"Who likes it? Pandering white politicians, who mistake twitter for real people."

Ouch!

I didn't watch the whole Dore video, as it is a bit long for the moment, and he didn't yet had come to the part about Maher. But generally speaking I despise the more conservative direction of Maher and support the more progressive turn of Jimmy Dore. But Maher has a point, if he says democrats are by many (not all) conflated with talk about how to correctly address a group of people (that Latinx example) or who has to apologize for what or get even fired. The reality is: this doesn't really matter to people. If an actor said some bullshit on some podcast or tweeted the wrong words, that doesn't impact people. But seemingly the democratic party is the umbrella for that. What people do care for is universal health care, minimum wage, debt free student loans and keeping their young people out of foreign conflicts, because that impacts their live. So Latinos probably do profit more off of universal health care, than on being addressed the most inclusive way possible. But while the democratic party at least partially is open to discuss correct wording or behaviour on Twitter, they are fast and relatively strict to block attempts at progressive policy. Embracing universal health care instead of the Latinx descriptor would net them votes. And if the most urgent personal needs like health are addressed, than it makes much more sense to discuss words.

EDIT: Oh, I see Dore didn't cover the current Maher bit, Dores video is a year old.

In defense of my previous analysis...

(1) Biden and Clinton ran on essentially the same platform, have essentially the same voting records (yerp, including on the Iraq War!), a similar volume of 'corruption scandals'/questionable behavior hanging in their backgrounds, similar problems communicating effectively, and Biden is even older. You really think their sex isn't the principal difference between them? Because it's definitely the main one I see.

(2) I think you're ignoring the difference in degrees of improvement. Biden fared 7 points better than Clinton among white men. Among white women, their female counterparts, he appears to have fared marginally worse than Clinton. Democrats definitely have a problem with white women and the Republicans see an opening there that will indeed likely benefit them going forward, as I think we can see by the fact that Republicans did even better among white women down the ballot (i.e. for Republican candidates who weren't Donald Trump).

(Speaking purely for myself, personally I could do without "Karen/Becky" memes and the term "white feminist", whatever that means, in the future.)

(3) In my observation, it seems to be specifically some wealthier people of color who switched to supporting Trump in this election, perhaps owing to like his tax cuts for rich people and his aggressive economic reopening strategy at the cost of rampant Covid transmission, that sorta thing, coupled with his advocacy for and signing of the First Step Act (which I think many of us forget about).

(4) You're right about the additional points you make here. I mean speaking for myself, I don't really think of myself as "LGBT", I think of myself as lesbian specifically. You know what I'm saying? A lot of the gay rights type policies that Democrats have advocated that might tend to positively affect my life and aspirations -- like marriage equality and adoption rights and such in case I'm ever so fortunate as to find that special someone -- really do feel like they're pretty settled in the legal arena now and unlikely to be reversed. When it comes to other stuff, there's not necessarily as much unity and consensus in the so-called LGBT community as is often portrayed. I definitely don't share the same goals as say transwomen (as we call them) for example and don't consider myself a supporter of the transgender movement. (I'm often described as a "terf", as I think everyone here knows by now, being the resident radfem and gender abolitionist. It may be worth pointing out though that nobody actually calls themself a terf except sarcastically. It's a pejorative, not a factual descriptor.) With certain basic issues surrounding the rights of non-heterosexual people feeling pretty settled, other issues where "LGBT" people agree less may now start to come more to the forefront.

The thing is that...*sighs*...you know, I see the Log Cabin Republicans as basically an advocacy group for gay men and like the Human Rights Campaign as mainly an advocacy group for transgender "women". I don't see a lot of concern in either party for the particular interests of the actual women of this "scene", like lesbian and bisexual women. Not in this country anyway. Like we talk about AIDS, which disproportionately plagues gay and bisexual men and doesn't affect lesbians, but we rarely talk about say the sexual objectification of lesbians (specifically sexual portrayals of lesbians being by far our main form of media representation as yet) or how offensive and dangerous many of us find it to redefine heterosexual relationships, like between a woman and a transwoman, as "lesbian" ones, that sort of thing. I feel like my particular interests as a gay woman are largely ignored by everyone. Anyway, all this leaves me with I guess fewer partisan loyalties that it seems like progressives and liberals expect me to have.

(To be clear, again, I voted for Biden. I'm just saying. Just pointing out why some "LGBT" people might make different decisions and why I might make a different decision myself in the future as well should the political match-up be ripe for it.)

(5) Yeah, I agree with you on this point about younger voters.

Here the problem for democrats.  Cultural issues is an advantage for republicans because of how people on the right view them vs people on the left. What I mean is that people on the left will vote financial over cultural. People on the right is much more likely vote culture over financial.

What then happens is poor people who the left policy might be more beneficial for them will vote republican because of cultural reason and middle class/rich who more concern about there taxes since they already got decent health care and food on table will also vote republican even if they might agree with the left on cultural issue. This not a 100% thing but it enough of this going on is why I believe elections are soooo close always because many working Americans that agree with the left financial policy vote republican.

See Florida where Minimum wage passed easily but trump also won the state by multiple percentage points (but still significantly less then what Minimum wage increase passed by).

I like Bill Maher, but in this case, he's buying into the right's narrative.

First off, he's acting like this is a thing only the left does, and it simply isn't. President Trump is now railing against Fox News, and a lot of his followers are going along with him. There are republicans trying to cancel Fox fucking news. Let that sink in. 

Of course, this is also the group that wanted to boycott Starbucks for not having enough snowflakes on their coffee cups, Cheerios for having interracial families in their commercials, the NFL because the players didn't love the flag enough, Facebook because they want to factcheck things, Frozen because it maybe sort of has a pro lgbt message, etc.

Granted the left is far better at it. A) Because they tend to be in a more profitable demographic that advertisers care about. B) Because more people agree with them. And C) because while they can't unify for anything that's fucking important, they can unify for this shit.

Point is though that this isn't a left thing... It's a people thing.

Second though is the narrative that this is actually what is driving people away from the left. In my opinion, it absolutely isn't. It's the excuse given. The actual reasons are the desire to maintain the status quo that they feel advantage them, to maintain their religion's position of authority, the desire to keep guns, the desire to ban abortion, to throw shade at gay people, to ignore inconvenient truths like climate change/Covid etc. 

If the left stopped doing this (which I think they generally should, because it becomes a boy who cries wolf things and they are not taken seriously when there is a legitimate issue), then the people ranting about libtards would find some other rationale. 

What the right is doing is pointing to the loudest most obnoxious people on the left. What Bill isn't quite getting is that the people who spend their time bitching about woke culture/cancel culture/political correctness/whatever label they want to use tend to be the loudest most obnoxious people on the right. Call me idealistic, but I think the people who are genuinely in the middle are more interested in actual policy issues.

I think the problem for the democrats is that they have to cover so much, from (by international standards) center-right all the way to the left (not far-left, those guys got the PSL), something that would be covered by at least half a dozen different parties over in Europe. Of course they can't cover all the needs and desires from the people anywhere in between those ends and thus many do feel left out.

In other words, the amount of issues is getting larger and larger, but more and more of those can't be covered in the US due to having only 2 parties of any real significance. Which makes updating the hopelessly outdated voting systems in the US even more urgent than it already is.

I see this brought up a lot and it not that I disagree but it not going to happen so I rather focus on stuff that in the realm of possibility.  I mean there a very off chance we could one day get popular vote for president if enough states agreed but even that will have a ton of legal objections in the courts if enough states passed it.  I would still bet against it anytime in the next 20 years or maybe more.

Changing the constitution in the current climate is basically imposable.

Doing it on a state by state basis does not work.  An example of what I mean is if California agreed to break there electoral college votes up proportional but no red state did then all you did was make it way easier for republicans to win and nothing else.

There is 0 path for major reform of the kind people talking about.  People are welcome to try but I just don't see how it possible with the state of politics in the USA and the mind set of many Americans when it come to these kind of things.

Changing the constitution is not absolutely necessary - all that's needed is that the electoral votes don't go winner-takes-all, which can be decided at state level. Maine has actually changed to Ranked Choice Voting for the 2020 election, which means putting a third party or independent candidate as your first choice is not wasted anymore, though the winner still takes it all. But since Maine is cut up into districts, that only affects Maine at large's 2 EVs.

There's nothing that could hinder a state to switch to a more proportional distribution of their electoral votes if they wanted to implement this. That would already be a huge step forward, especially for smaller parties, as they would get some representation and 270 could only be reached with a coalition most of the time, which would remove the animosity between the parties. I mean, you never know if you maybe need them after the election to form a government, so better not tell them off and then be barred from a possible coalition because of it...