Brian Leeland, a 79-year-old Democratic voter in Detroit, had enough. Frustrated by the way the US media covers this febrile political era, from Donald Trump’s Washington to political campaigns across the country, he contacted the Guardian.
“Your decision to frame the race here as a simple progressive versus establishment choice is overly simplistic verging on lazy,” he wrote to this reporter, after our coverage of progressive Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign in the Democratic US Senate primary in Michigan. “As an electorate, we are not binary for the convenience of the media.”
His was a complaint I heard often as I traveled across the midwest to cover a host of contested Democratic primaries. So I called him up.
Leeland’s list of frustrations is long: grifters, liars, the two-party system, money influencing elections, the US’s standing in the world, the growing national debt and a fixation on cultural issues, not just the larger problems that plague the country.
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Wait, what? We had a massive blue wave in '18 and '20.
More whether they decide to show up or not.
I also don’t like the framing of this being just trump and not the whole republican party and AIPAC dems
In 2020 congressional incumbents won 96% of their races. The “massive blue wave” flipped 2 senators to D and 13 representatives to R.
You’re ignoring that Congress people often resign before they can lose. You always get a wave of resignations preceding a wave year. Politicians see the writing on the wall and quit so they don’t have to suffer the career setback of losing a race. If you think you’re likely to lose, you’re better off resigning before the election to “focus on your family.” Then a few years later, if the political winds shift again, you can run again without the smell of a loser on you.
That’s why I included the seat flip, too. In the supposed “massive blue wave” of 2020, Democrats lost 13 seats in the House.
Something looked kooky about your numbers. I figured it out. You’re trying to analyze 2020 as a blue wave year! That was never a blue wave year. It was just a regular election that Democrats won. Biden was a milquetoast candidate that barely beat Trump, even with the pandemic helping him. It was absolutely not a blue wave year. The grandparent post was just wrong on that point.
For a blue wave year, see 2018. In that year Democrats gained 41 seats in the House. This is more likely to reflect what 2026 will look like. 2020 was not a blue wave year. It was a pretty balanced election. Both parties had unpopular old men at the top of the ticket.
Your argument about 2020 is with UnderpantsWeevil, not tburkhol.
The 2020 presidential election enjoyed the highest turnout rate for any national election since 1900. Democrats turnout out 8% more voters than Republicans overall. But, obviously, this matters less in a segmented wta election system.
Nevertheless, this was historic Dem turnout.
It was also historic GOP turnout.
Had either flagged, it would have been a landslide for the other party.