So I created this blog to talk about policy. Yes, from time to time that also means talking about politics as a necessary evil. For the last four years, we have had only politics and very little actual policy happening. That is also why this blog went silent for a few years. I am publishing this on 10/31, the Saturday before the election.

So let’s talk about 2016. There are two way you can view the outcome in that election: Trump won or Clinton lost with the truth somewhere between those two. That election was more of a Clinton loss then a Trump win. Fundamentally, this is because Clinton was and always has been a weak candidate. First, Clinton has only won a single election which was for the New York Senate Seat in 2000 and while she won that it was by a smaller margin then other Democrats had won a New York Senate Seat. This was with the advantages of coming out of a popular Clinton presidency from her husband, high name recognition, a wealth of support from other liberal groups, and the proven Clinton election team supporting her. On the New York ballot in 2000 she got 55% of the vote for her senate run while Gore got 60% for his presidential run. Second, the Democrats got it right in 2008 in selecting Obama over Clinton. Third, Bernie Sanders was always a strange political outsider but went toe to toe with her in the primaries for fairly deep in the nomination process. When given a chance to vote for Clinton or someone else, people consistently look for someone else.

And this is without taking into account poor campaign management and marketing decisions that were made again and again during her 2016 campaign. They regularly spent time/resources in solid blue states, running up the score in the popular vote, while ignoring battleground states or shoring up the light blue rust belt. When your opponent directly and exclusively targets a specific group in your base, you have to go defend that group. Trump talked immigration, trade, and little else in terms of policy. That hits the union vote head-on and Clinton ignored it. Clinton deserved to lose that election, and god bless Trump he did his best to hand her a win but he was unable to make that many scandals that quickly.

A note on the polls in 2016. First, go listen/read/watch 538 and their various content. The polls where right in 2016, people were not reading them correctly. Clinton never really had the lead because there was a larger than normal amount of undecided voters. Traditionally those voters split evenly, this time they splint massively in favor of Trump. Once again, when given a chance to vote for Clinton or someone else, people consistently look for someone else. The media was taking polls like “Clinton 46%, Trump 40%” and calling that for Clinton without trying to figure out what was happening with the other 14%. On a normal election year undecided voters would have been closer to 4% they would split evenly at the election. Thus pundits would evenly split the 14% of undecided voters evenly and thus the projected results would be “Clinton 53%, Trump 47%” within a specific state. On the actual election those turned into “Clinton 49%, Trump 51%” which is within the projected results. Also note that while Trump’s win was a surprise to a lot of people, it was not a blowout. If Clinton would have done 2% better across the board she would have won.

Here is my view on 2020 in a nutshell. Clinton was awful, Trump is bad, and Biden is meh. My money is on the meh. Both Trump and Biden are known quantities and there are very few undecided voters this year. Biden is at or above the 50% mark in polls in enough states to win. And yes, that 50% is an actual 50% without any assumptions about how undecided voters will turn. There are many paths for a Biden victory if you map out all the possible routes. There are very few, and frankly odd looking, paths for a Trump victory. Things can go bad for Biden on election day and he still wins. Things must go near perfect for Trump for him to pull out a victory.

So that means we have a liberal government again right? Well…

Let’s talk about the Senate. With the presidency and house firmly in democratic hands, it is up to the Senate to slow things down. Senators have a long history of being independent and bucking their party on very specific issues, so expect moderate democrats to act as the brakes on anything too liberal. Most moderate democrats have specific issues with local resonance that they go conservative on. The real question here is how many democrats get senate seats. A 55-45 split is far more likely to push heavily liberal bills through since they can lose a few democrats along a the way while a 51-49 senate will pass the more pragmatic things without an issue but force the democrats to pick their battles on a number of policy fronts. Expect the Supreme Court to act on the most extremely liberal bills… but with a side note. Of course the republicans still have a chance of holding on to the Senate outright, specifically multiple routes to 48-52 favoring republicans, making the Senate an outright blocking body. While the democrats have the edge at the moment, it is a much smaller lead than seen elsewhere and many of these races are legitimately too close to call.

This difference between the 55 senators vs. 51 senators vs. 48 senators does a better job explaining Democratic spending and efforts right now then just Biden trying to run up the score or being extra careful in swing states. Yes, Biden is targeting swing states, but swing states are also where the senate is in play.

Side note on the court, I actually think people have over stated the importance of the new 6-3 conservative court. Roberts believes in voting to preserve the institution and other conservative justices have their own unique pet issues. That creates a quick path from a 6-3 court to a 4-5 court on controversial issues. Much of their conservative legal agenda is specifically pitted against legislating from the bench. While rights issues can and will come into question, broader tax and spend style policy choices seem to be clear of their aims.

So that is where I think we stand heading into the election. Congrats to Biden for the Presidency. Congrats to Pelosi for staying Speaker of the House. Congrats to Mitch McConnell and Republicans for locking down the Supreme Court. Now let’s all watch the Senate races to learn what kind of government we are actually going to get.