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NDN News - Notes on the 2020 Election, US Politics

Dear Friends, 

Some notes on where things stand the first day of the GOP Convention: 

The horserace– In 538’s general election average Biden leads 51.4%/42.2%, 9.2 pts.  This is not only one of Biden’s best showings of the election, but Trump enters his Convention one of the weakest incumbents since polling began.  The number to watch now is Biden’s.  At some point, he will just have too many votes, his lead will be too great, for Trump to make the race competitive.  Even if Trump were to win every undecided voter now and make the race 51.4 to 48.6 – a 3-point race – Biden will almost certainly still win the Electoral College. Our view is that Trump has to get to 49% to have a shot at the Electoral College – so every tenth of a point Biden moves above 51% is a problem for the President.   

In the Senate, Democrats lead in 5 GOP held seats – AZ, CO, IA, ME, NC – that if they hold will means the Senate flips.  Democrats are also running competitive races in GA (2), MT and even perhaps SC.  The Senate outlook remains very promising for the Dems.  

Wednesdays at NDN– For the remainder of the election we invite you to stop by and join us every Wednesday at 2pm ET for a deep dive on the 2020 elections. Our Wednesday presentations live on Zoom, will rotate between our new signature presentation, “With Democrats Things Get Better” and our 2020 Poll Roundup.  This week we will be doing an updated “With Democrats.”  Learn more, sign up here.  And invite friends – all are welcome.  

Watch the fundraising totals- The Biden-Harris campaign has announced staggering sums of money raised since Senator Harris was picked.  We will know more soon but it’s possible the campaign has raised close to $200m in the last two weeks, an amount so big that it could start to change the race itself. As much of this money has come from low dollar donors the money will keep coming over the next few months. Coupled with the big numbers Democrats are raising in the Senate and House, it is likely Democrats will outspend Trump and the GOP in the homestretch; and these resources will allow Democrats to expand the playing field both demographically and geographically.  

The reinvention of our politics– The successful Democratic convention was a profound event in American politics, one which will be written about, discussed and emulated for years to come.  We are going to have more to say about this in the coming weeks but watch how what the Biden campaign learned is integrated into the current campaign, and how the kind of intimacy we all felt watching the Convention is used to keep the millions of Americans now supporting the campaign, giving, volunteering, working their networks moving forward.  

Will Friday night with Joe and Kamala become a thing for example? So much is possible now – it is a time for political innovation….

All The President’s Cheating– As his electoral prospects fade, the President is clearly exploring ways he can stay in power without winning a traditional free and fair election.  NDN’s been working this really important part of the 2020 election hard these last few months – find quotes from Simon in a new front page Washington Post story out this morning, in Ron Brownstein’s recent Atlantic piece, and in this extended interview with Salon. See also our piece on how we must rise up and fight the sabotage of the postal service, and the President’s broader efforts to cheat his way to power, once again.  

WTF Happened to the Party of Lincoln and Reagan?– The descent of the GOP into the dangerous white supremacist illiberal mess it’s in today is a deeply consequential story, perhaps the most important political story of our time.  It is one we address head on in our “With Dems” presentation, one we warned about eight years in this long magazine piece, “Forward or Backwards?”; and one Simon discusses at length in his comprehensive new sitdown with Salon. 

What we can’t see now is how the GOP reboots from this moment.  The drift from the Republican Party’s most important historic achievements – abolition, Reagan’s anti-Communism – makes Trump’s party one that really can no longer can claim lineage from the GOP that came before. It is easier for us to imagine the starting of a new center-right party then trying to fix the one Trump – and others – have turned into a dangerous and malicious force, one flirting with authoritarianism and extremism, one that is leaving America far poorer and less able to fend for ourselves on the global stage.  

The dissolution of what we’ve known as the Republican Party has also been evident in all the prominent Republican leaders who are now supporting and working for the Biden-Harris ticket including John Kasich, Susan Molinari, Christine Todd Whiteman, Colin Powell, Meghan McCain and the slew of others who endorsed today.  This degree of crossover support for a ticket of another party is unprecedented in the modern era of American politics.  

Best,

Simon, Georgia, and the rest of the NDN team


 

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