Pennsylvania GOP implosion could make a Trump reelection impossible - Polidicks

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/17/pennsylvania-republicans-trump-2020-election-1067074 PHILADELPHIA — A GOP implosion in Pennsylvania has Republicans alarmed about President Donald Trump's reelection prospects in a state that proved essential to his 2016 victory. The enfeebled state party — still reeling after a devastating midterm election where Republicans lost three congressional seats and whiffed gubernatorial and Senate races by double digits — is tangled in a power struggle messy enough to capture the attention of the White House. The chaos threatens the president’s chances in a state where there’s no room for error. Trump, the first Republican presidential nominee to carry the state since 1988, won by less than a percentage point. Since Trump’s stunning 2016 win, Pennsylvania Republicans have gotten almost exclusively bad news. First, Democrats in the Philadelphia suburbs flipped seats in 2017 local elections for the first time in decades — and in some cases, in history. Then came an election year from hell, beginning with Democrat Conor Lamb’s House special election victory smack dab in the middle of western Pennsylvania’s Trump Country. A #MeToo scandal ended one congressman’s career. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court blew up the state’s gerrymandered congressional map and redrew it to the Democrats’ benefit, leading Costello to announce he wouldn’t run for reelection. Then Nov. 6, 2018, happened. Republicans haven’t hit the panic button just yet. A top Pennsylvania political operative with close ties to the Trump campaign said “you may not get the door-knocking out of the party apparatus in the suburbs like you used to,” but “there’s still plenty of time to address those issues” before the presidential race.

If they just continue to sweep the problems the party has under the rug instead of actually trying to address anything, the plausible deniability of everything they do and everyone who still supports them will get lower and lower. People will be unable to ignore the writhing mass of a trash mountain under their favorite rug, and the only ones left will be the ones that can still justify not caring, and those people will just make the trash build up even faster. We've known for a while that the GOP is obsessed with the now, that they want it now no matter the consequences for others, the country, or even themselves. Stuff like this is the end result of that, it's a self destructive way to view the world and your work, and eventually it can no longer support itself. I just hope that the damage they do can be fixed by the time their little escapade is over.

A title this sensationalist is irresponsible if you know anything about how the Democrats lost the 2016 election.

Don't place bets yet

They lost because Clinton didn't campaign enough in the midwest and assumed it was a lock, all those states went Dem in 2018 so as long as they pick someone better then Clinton and campaign smartly, it should be smooth sailing barring Russian interference. Also I thought the original title was crap and needed something different.

That's all true, but don't forget how big a role "ehh hillary's definitely gonna win so i don't need to vote for her" played. Her unpopularity definitely fed into that, but it's really shortsighted to go proclaiming the "impossibility" of another Republican win.

99.9999999% chance that HILLARY WINS TRUMP WINS

Dewey defeats Truman

Look Pennsylvania going Democrat makes Trump winning a very high uphill battle. We don't even know if he'll be on the ballot in 2020, but nothing is impossible.

he's also not locked up arizona or north carolina which if flipped democrat would make him have to pick up more than just pennsylvania, wisconsin, ohio and minnisota.

Another thing to remember is if Hillary doesn’t run again, Trump will lose. Hillary was so arrogant and unlikable that she was the only person Trump could win against.

I feel like a lot of outlets were trying to discourage Trump voters, but instead ended up making Hillary/Anti-Trump voters complacent. The clear bias in their polling with political ends also tarnished the reputation of outlets that engaged in that, and humiliated them when their gamble didn't pay off and their "1% chance" candidate won.

I think the last thing we need to do is underestimate Trump's chances of re-election. Depending on who the Dem nominee is, it's totally possible.

Weeks before elections, Pennsylvania was considered to be in Clinton's bag. So no, fuck off, I won't believe till I see it.

I looked this up, literally every pollster gave Clinton a lead, even Republican-leaning ones like Rasmussen. wtf happened.

This isn't how this works. If you think the candidate you want to win is more likely to win, you're more likely to vote. Enthusiasm has proven to increase turnout. Confidence is associated with increased turnout Obviously this is the 2016 election but this shouldn't skew the underlying psychology involved that is sourced and proven.

How big was the lead? Three points is usually within the margin of error, and it can flip either way ie. Clinton can be anywhere from six points up to six points down in the actual results. Honestly what happened in most places was two-time Obama voters flipping and stronger turnout. Most polls also only poll likely voters and not the entire district.

Underpolled, probably. People were more interested in states like Georgia and North Carolina.

Polling isn't always indicative of turnout either. There was also some anomalies that could of skewed results, a lot of people who voted Trump where too embarrassed to admit it, for example.

The DNC knows how to play itself better than its opponents, I'm sure they'll find a way to fuck this one up.

That's because the DNC leadership is filled with corrupt establishment politicians who support their own kind, everyone else be damned. They wanted Clinton from the moment she started running. I have no doubt if she ran again, they'd still want her. And since she most likely isn't, pick the slimiest neo-liberal establishment politician whose name has been thrown around as a possible contender, and you can bet your ass some DNC fucks are already formulating strategies regarding how to ensure said candidate get the nomination. (It's probably Corey Booker, god help us all.)

Every serious candidate except Sanders is part of the establishment really except Sanders, Harris and Brown would probably be the least establishment-y. Beto just hides it with fantastic charisma, until 2018 he was a no-name backbencher with a centrist voting record who took tons of fossil fuel cash.

Yeah, but for some reason the DNC leadership seemingly wants the slimiest of establishment Democrats. Like, some of them wanted Clinton all the way back in 2008. They just didn't get their wish because Obama steamrolled the primaries.

National polls are pretty good, state polls vary in frequency and quality. Also I'm sure the comey letter had a big effect.

Correlated polling errors and an inherent bias to the electoral college. I don't think we've really figured out what it was, even two years later, but pretty much all the polls were off by about 2%. Not in any specific place, or any specific polls. Take all the national polls, average them, they were off from the actual popular vote by 2%. Which isn't really that inaccurate. Indeed, that's about average for polls in the modern era. Polls aren't magic - they're subject to inaccuracy. Most pollsters made the mistake of assuming polls were independent measurements, free from any correlating bias. That was a bad assumption - even polls from separate pollsters can have correlated errors. The famous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline came because the all the polls over-represented people who owned telephones, making them easier to poll but also generally richer. There was probably an error of that sort this time. What the precise error was, AFAICT, is still up for debate. That combined with a deliberate design feature of the Electoral College to not be a perfect representation of the popular vote, instead biasing towards smaller states. Remember, Clinton won the popular vote, by a pretty large margin for someone losing the electoral college. Trump won a lot of smaller states, who have a disproportionate influence on the election. This is why I continue to sing the praises of FiveThirtyEight. Their prediction algorithms explicitly include the chance of a correlated polling error. Going into election day, they gave Hillary a 71% chance, and even gave 10% odds she'd win the popular vote but lose the election. And as anyone who's played XCOM knows, a 70% chance to hit is still pretty good odds of missing.

its not like they were wrong, the pre election polls predicted that hillary won correctly. then the electoral college happened

Wtf is this muh establishment shit, its so baseless. Do you care about policy or just how loud and obnoxious a politician is? If its the latter then sure go Sanders I guess, but if you care about things beyond blind populist appeal Sanders is pretty bad and a lot of the potentials support his positions/intentions. Like please define establishment for me here, because you seem to envisioning this monolethic entity of "other" over every democrat that isnt St. Bernard who wants to...do what exactly? Why? Please tell me what this establishment is.

Look, I wasn't even the one who claimed everyone other than Bernie was slimy-ass establishment. While that's technically true, I'm aware there's more variety between the other potential candidates than some people would make them out to be. They're not all bottom-of-the-barrel choices, and while none of them are perfect, neither is Bernie. The problem is the DNC leadership's track record at picking the best among them has been absolute abysmal. Everyone with half a brain could have told you from the beginning that Hillary was a god-awful choice... well, except for ultra-pro-Hilary drones, but you can't expect reason from them. But the DNC only threw their fully support behind her, they actively worked to sabotage Bernie's chances. I suppose you could call me bitter - but keep in mind that unlike a lot of people here, I still identified as a centrist back around 2016. (The post -Trump fallout was what made me fully turn to the Left and away from my former religion.) And yet even then I understood why people loved Bernie so much, and were so fucking mad when the DNC decided to play favorites and did everything they could to make sure Hillary slid right into the nomination.

What news headlines where said anything like that?

the .9999 is sarcasm, I thought that was obvious enough, since that would clearly be ridiculous to actually show MSNBC actually went full retard, 'Hillary Clinton Still Has 100% Chance Of A Win' being in their title. The actual contents of the video is just babbling and "It'll be close she could win by amount or amount". Clinton has 90 percent chance of winning HuffPost Forecasts Hillary Clinton Will Win With 323 Electoral V.. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/716/655d59ee-a124-42d2-ba2c-7abad8525494/image.png News headlines like this are going to reduce voter turn out because people assuming that 5% = impossibility of trump win, or think that their vote won't matter anyways. "We are going to win anyways, who even cares" Obviously even 1 in a billion is a chance, I can see how silly that way of thinking is, but the average Joe doesn't understand or care about this. That being said, she still won popular vote, and her loss was in the electoral. I don't think this is some huge game changer.