WaPo: There’s no such thing as a Trump Democrat

[Virginiá]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-trump-democrat/2017/08/04/0d5d06bc-7920-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html

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[Virginiá]

That is a pretty vague statement, ahugecat. Wrong about what? Their national tracking poll was actually pretty accurate. It was off by about 1%, well within the MoE.

[Virginiá]

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Well to be fair, I went through I think all of those (I may have missed one or two) and none were by the author of this article. Further, I'm not a big fan of the "well, they got that thing wrong, so that naturally means they will always be wrong" reasoning, which is pretty much a fallacy on its own. It was widely believed that Trump would lose, except maybe among many partisan Republicans and Trump supporters who would naturally believe he would win. October had so many surprises that it's hard for me to fault people like WaPo.

People didn't want to believe someone as ridiculous as Trump could win, and all the constant drama surrounding Trump I think legitimately did put him far down in the polls, it's just that he always rebounded and was helped by Clinton having non-stop drama with her own issues. The election ended on a low note for her, which was convenient for Trump, who experienced an amazing number of scandalous revelations in October.

For the record, I don't really like the argument being put forth by the article. I just posted it because it was a take I wanted to see some discussion on.

[Virginiá]

Now the Washington Post is doubling down and saying "There's no such thing as a Trump Democrat." It's like being wrong the first 200 times wasn't good enough for them, so they're going to continue being a treasure trove of stupid during the 2020 election.

Well all I have left to say about the WaPo stuff is, is it the Washington Post saying this, or is it Dana Milbank? This article is even filed under "Opinions." If their editorial board authored it, that would be one thing, but they didn't. It's just like how if Bret Stephens started writing some stuff on NYT about how climate change is no big deal, I wouldn't be like, "well the NY Times is now denying the seriousness of climate change." However to your point, on account of their election coverage, it wouldn't be unfair to be more skeptical of some of WaPo's pieces, at least until they redeem themselves. I certainly don't like Cillizza after 2016, that's for sure.

HOWEVER, I do think the battle for 2020 will be fought out over the 2016 third party voters. 2020 will be unlikely to get the third party turnout 2016 did (I am expecting only 2% of votes to go third party compared to 6% in 2016). So I think the Democrats can semi-"ignore" the Trump Democrats and try to get Romney-Republicans who went third party.

That, and I think a modest number of soft Trump supporters - those voters who didn't like either candidate but voted for Trump in the end. There were lots of them, and if they didn't like him then, there is a chance they won't support him this time around if Democrats put up a good candidate. Either that, or they don't turn out at all, which is still a plus.

[Virginiá]

It's the WashPo trying to get Dems to only focus on suburban professionals and rich donors. The county maps from 2000, 2004 along with 2016 prove there is a significant number of Obama Trump voters who also voted for Gore and Kerry. These voters are winnable again to an extent, Biden would have probably gotten plenty of them.

Or just reporting on an inaccurate study done by the AFL-CIO.