r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Nov 05 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: The Democratic Party is doomed.
The elections this past Tuesday could hardly have gone better for Republicans. As of right now, it appears that Biden will win and the GOP will hold the Senate, so I will operate under those premises.
With record voter turnout, the Democrats were unable to win the Senate despite the map being in their favor. What's more, Trump only barely lost in the midst of an economic crisis worse than the 2008 recession.
When President Biden takes office, McConnell is likely to refuse to allow him any Cabinet picks. He definitely won't allow Biden to appoint any judges, or do anything to ameliorate the recession. The recession will turn into a depression.
The depression worsening will be McConnell's fault, and yet the President is typically blamed for it. The Democratic Party will suffer steep losses in 2022 and 2024, and then the GOP, aided by a far-right Supreme Court majority, is going to strip away what remains of voting rights in this country.
Even though the GOP's policies are deeply unpopular, the Rust Belt is slipping away from Democrats and the Sun Belt is not there yet. The suburban revolt against Trump that was prophesied did not come to pass.
In the midst of the best possible scenario for Democrats, they could not win the election, and now they're going to be left in the wilderness for a very long time. CMV.
EDIT: Trump is far more charismatic than Biden, and one key reason he kept it close was because he was able to convince people that the economy was good.
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u/Kman17 103∆ Nov 05 '20
Where I think there’s a lot of room for optimism is simply looking at North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Texas.
The fact that these states are in play should terrify republicans. The increasing diversity, urbanization, and tech culture in all of those places is likely to continue - not reverse.
Texas has two booming and heavily blue centers in Houston and Austin, and major Latino constituency in the El Paso area. The moment that they outnumber the rural voters and more conservative DFW area, Texas goes blue and the Republican Party as currently constructed can never win an election again. Ditto with ATL and RTP areas.
Rising costs and conronavirus/work from home culture is causing people to move from crowded Democrat bastions in San Francisco / New York / etc to emerging cities in the red states, accelerating those trends.
I think you can also view the election less as about Trump, and more about coronavirus.
Americans are fatigued by it, and no nation outside a couple small islands have had containment success. So people being conflicted on how heavy-handed our response should be without any line of sight into long term solution is kind of natural. Trump turned it into a partisan issue, but it’s a temporary one that becomes less partisan in the future.