Joe Biden's coalition is whiter, wealthier - and will not stick around

[DonCoquixote]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/11/joe-biden-voters-republicans-trump

Read the article, and it says a truth, a lot of the people who are enevr trump, be it the suburban soccer moms or mitt romneys, still want to pursue an agenda where they get the meat and the rest get the gravy. This is why Biden needs to work with the non suburbans. The black and browns have stood by him, turning that blue wall blue once again, whereas the suburban "i am not a racist but" types are the backstabbers who handed trump the election, probably after having a latte at starbucks with their "lIbreal" friends and hiding what they did.

[LisaL]

1. I wouldn't start assuming that coalition isn't going to stick around 4 years from now.

NT

[AmericanCanuck]

2. It is actually a new coalition of center-left independents, Democrats, POC and moderate republicans

It will endure .. although some on the far left may not like it.

America is a centrist country which abhors extremes.

[Klaralven]

3. 52% of the US is suburban, 27% urban, and 21% rural

The geography of America is shifting. Population and job growth are happening faster in suburbs than in urban neighborhoods. At the same time, crowded urban neighborhoods are getting richer and their housing is getting more expensive. There are clear statistical differences among Americans living in urban, suburban, and rural parts of America when it comes to voting patterns, attitudes on social issues, labor and economic outcomes, and health outcomes. The distinction between urban and rural matters to the federal government, and there is an abundance of official federal definitions of urban and rural. And yet among these definitions, none includes a third category: suburban.

The lack of an official federal definition of suburban means that government data are not reported separately for suburban areas. That makes it hard to measure the reach and impact of federal programs and to produce vital statistics about Americans and their communities.

Much of America looks suburban, with neighborhoods of single-family homes connected by roads to retail centers and low-rise office buildings. For the first time, government data confirm this. According to the newly released 2017 American Housing Survey (of nearly 76,000 households nationwide), about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-majority-suburban-but-doesn-t-define-suburb

Political opinions are most likely Gaussian distributed, like most other natural phenomena with large numbers. It is only artificially made to appear bimodal by the two party system in the US. In some jurisdictions, non-affiliated registrations are larger than party registrations.

The central bulge of the political distribution is the majority of Americans who are in the suburbs.

[Dem2]

10. Excellent post

A lot more level headed and informative than the O/P

[JI7]

21. I said this during the campaign that a lot of people live in the suburbs because they can't afford

to live in the urban areas where they can be closer to bars, cafes, restaurants, shopping , etc .

[LuvLoogie]

31. Population density and infrastructure probably predicts

political leanings more accurately. The closer you are together, the more you have to share space, infrastructure, and resources, the more liberal the population becomes.

Cooperation becomes key to survival.

[quickesst]

4. I suppose we all have....

.... our own spin on projecting confidence in a Joe Biden presidency although I am a little perplexed on this particular strategy. 😐🤔

[JI7]

5. There are black/brown people in the Suburbs also . And i'm glad for White people that are turned off

by Racism.

[Klaralven]

7. Hispanics in the Rio Grande Valley are mentioned in the article. There aren't any urban areas there

McAllen is about 130,000 population. 2300 people / square mile. On the map it looks like one suburb after another for miles.

[JI7]

11. Yup, it's not the 1950s anymore

[BannonsLiver]

6. Maybe. Maybe not.

It’s a fool’s errand to try and predict the future in these times. Even for folks at the Guardian.

[Thekaspervote]

8. I used to really like the guardian. Now all they have to say is shit like this.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

13. This was an individual opinion piece, not a Guardian editorial.

The guy does appear to have some credentials in analysis of election data:

Ben Davis

Ben Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Guardian is still my No. 1 daily go-to paper for news on coronavirus and international politics. They were my refuge in 2015/2016 and was the only paper I know of that called out Trump's lies during the election.

Don't know of any other English international paper that is left-leaning that covers such a wide range of subject matter.

Take a look at their opinion page today, there's not much there not to like IMHO.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/commentisfree

KY

[mr_lebowski]

24. +2 The Guardian is Legit ... nt

[Princess Turandot]

9. The (brief) bio link of the author of this opinion piece..

Ben Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America

[JI7]

12. Thanks, That explains a lot .

[sheshe2]

18. +1

[Princess Turandot]

22. Indeed!

[betsuni]

30. Yes.

[Cha]

14. uh huh.. I figured.. I say Balderdash

to Ben Smith.

[cwydro]

17. Lol.

There ya go.

[uponit7771]

29. oh, explains it

[MrsCoffee]

38. Well that figures all the way around.

[Spazito]

41. Certainly explains the vitriol toward Biden in this article...

thanks for the info.

[GulfCoast66]

15. Sounds like more pants pissing that moderation won.

If anything we did worse because some recent events, with huge republican propaganda, tried to tie the Democratic Party to the far left. Defund the police. Having a self identifying socialist as a player to the party. Even if not in the party.

I’m a liberal democrat. But I realize I am more left of most of my neighbors.

President Elect Biden, in his victory speech touched on this. Change is slow. America is not going to look like Sweden in 4 years. Or even 20. We are a center left/right country depending on current events. But we are not a leftist country.

As a party we have a decision to make. Do we want to win and get the gains where we can? Or go like the British Labor Party in the 80’s and early 90’s and cling to ideology above having any power?

I know many here will disagree. But I think the evidence is clear. Others may disagree.

[Cha]

16. Ah. the Doom & Gloom starts while Biden

is out there Fighting an attempted trump coup.. from DSA ben smith.

[DFW]

34. Exquisite timing, wasn't it?

I always thought being for abortion rights applied to women, not Democratic presidencies.

[msongs]

19. sounds like the right wingers yakking about starbucks and lattes nt

[DonCoquixote]

43. no

I was talking about people who act liberal, wanting to fit in to the world that liberals made, but still hiding trump tendencies.

[csziggy]

20. That doesn't fit with the article I posted earlier

Meet the three people who will define economic policy for the next four years
By Nicole Goodkind
November 7, 2020 2:28 PM EST



Jared Bernstein

Bernstein served as Biden’s chief economist and economic adviser under the Obama administration, and it’s expected that he’ll take on a similar role now that his former boss has the top job. A progressive and advocate for laborers’ rights, Bernstein is currently serving as a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.



Heather Boushey

Boushey has served the Biden campaign as an unofficial top economic adviser to the President-elect. She currently works as the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which seeks to diminish inequality by creating economic growth, and she was tapped to serve as the chief economist of Hillary Clinton's would-be presidential transition team in 2016.



Ben Harris

Harris is another economist with deep ties to Biden. He replaced Bernstein as the chief economist and chief economic adviser to the vice president from 2014 until the Obama administration ended.

Harris, who currently sits on Chicago’s COVID-19 Recovery Task Force, will likely be responsible for crafting immediate COVID-19 economic recovery policy. He has been advising Biden through the campaign and is a core member of the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, which is intended to bridge the gap between progressives and the more moderate wing of the Democratic party.

More: https://fortune.com/2020/11/07/biden-economic-advisors-recession-unemployment-coronavirus/

More on Heather Boushey:

Heather Boushey is the President & CEO and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which was launched in 2013. She is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and a leading economist who focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. Her latest book, Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It (Harvard University Press), which was called “outstanding” and “piercing” by reviewers, was on the Financial Times list of best economics books of 2019. She is also the author of Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, and co-edited a volume of 22 essays about how to integrate inequality into economic thinking called After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality.

The New York Times has said that Boushey “is at the forefront of a generation of economists rethinking their discipline” and called her one of the “most vibrant voices in the field.” Politico twice named her one of the top 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics.” Boushey writes regularly for popular media, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Democracy Journal, and she makes frequent television appearances on Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team and as an economist for the Center for American Progress, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. She sits on the board of the Opportunity Institute and is an associate editor of Feminist Economics, and a senior fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic and Policy Analysis at the New School for Social Research.

https://equitablegrowth.org/people/heather-boushey/

[FreepFryer]

23. "The black and browns have stood by him" Wtf

[herding cats]

25. Right on schedule.

I knew, beyond a doubt, I'd see Biden's political obituary before he was inaugurated. I saw the same for Obama.

Fact is, we're diverse and prone to our local issues, urban blacks, Texas Latinos and Florida Cubans, for example. Trying to make that monolithic will never resonate from the middle to the far left of us. Which if you read the article is made clear, perhaps by accident. But, everyone has to know more and be right. Even when they're not. Twist it until it meets your message is always the message at this point. Every damn time.

Yes, we have big issues facing us. Our broken system makes addressing them the same way they do in Europe impossible here. I'm sorry, I hate that fact, too. Another sad fact, it's about to get worse after redistricting.

I'll take rants like this seriously when they address the broken system stacked against us and not some idealistic pipe dream we all want to see as reality. Because, it is the dream we all want, but it's not the reality in our current system. Until we join tougher and try and figure out how to work within our current (granted fucked up) system we're going to have to keep listening to people telling us every cycle (from various fractions) how "the others" have to change. It's counter productive. We're all in this together, but we all live in different regions and live different realities.

We all need to do some reflection and grow the fuck up. But, we won't. We never do.

[Boogiemack]

26. Last time I looked in Philly, DC, and Baltimore...downtown

I couldn't afford to rent a loft there. Urban is getter whiter, wealthier, and they will stick around.

[herding cats]

27. It's the same in almost every urban area.

Prices going up and gentrification are the trend. Suddenly, now they're going away? It was literally a common topic of discussion here just last year.

[Amishman]

37. It will be interesting to see how this changes post covid

The bar, club, and restaurant scenes are going to be gutted after winter.

Businesses are embracing remote work, no need to live overly close to the office. This also means families need room at home for an office area or two - something very hard to afford downtown or even in higher prices suburbs.

[BumRushDaShow]

39. The thing is in those same cities, if you only look at "downtown"

then that is what you are going to find. All of those cities have neighborhoods that are not "downtown" (I live in one here in Philly).

One of the things that really needs to be looked at in terms of regulation regarding "housing" is that so much housing stock, outside of any "gentrification", is being "flipped" - the very thing that helped to fuel the 2007 collapse. I have seen it in my neighborhood and surrounding/adjoining neighborhoods where you have " investors" (and not even the professional/large ones) come in and start buying houses, gutting and renovating them, and selling them at a profit to... and this is the kicker -- NOT a "family" -- but to another flipper!!!

So you have whole streets where no one actually "lives" because people are permitted to flip houses to other flippers and no one actually buys a house to "live in".

[awesomerwb1]

28. Written by a Bernie bro

[OnDoutside]

36. What's there not to love ?

They're some bunch.

[OneBro]

32. 2020 Breaks record for unending stream of utterly useless predictions.

I predict the trend will continue.

[DFW]

33. Well, this is REALLY useful, especially now. Right?

Wrong.

Even in the internet age of instant gratification, this is awfully premature. At least one erstwhile DU member of note waited a couple of years before calling Obama a "POS used car salesman." I wonder if there is anyone here who thinks the man who succeeded Obama was preferable?

Can we at least get Joe Biden inaugurated before waving about negative pieces like this?

I wonder if it has occurred to any of these Excel table crunching PhDs in Political Science that Joe Biden is the FIRST President-elect (IF he gets inaugurated) since 1988 that has vast personal experience with the inside workings of Congress, and won't have to depend on professionals with an agenda to whisper in his ear? If you leave out the one-term Bush, Sr., you have to go back to Nixon to find someone like that, and that was some 50 years ago. He'll have his advisers, of course, but he won't need a Karl Rove, a Dick Cheney or a Rahm Emmanuel to guide him through dangerous political pathways with which he is already quite familiar.

When it comes to how Congress works, what it reacts to, and the demographics it represents, Joe Biden could rattle off more expertise while talking in his sleep than any pundit (except maybe Norm Ornstein)--especially one espousing a political philosophy that wasn't even in anyone's consciousness when Joe first was elected to the Senate. The country deserves the chance to find out whether or not he will fail at putting that knowledge and experience to some good use before trashing him in print.

[betsuni]

35. +1

[Demsrule86]

40. Trashing. We have always needed a big tent in order to win especially the Senate...and the lack

there of has cost us dearly and will cost us Medicare and Social Security next...we need a 50 state strategy.

[OneBro]

42. About the author of the article.

From the Guardian:
"Ben Davis works in political data in Washington, DC. He worked on the data team for the Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign and is an active member of the Democratic Socialists of America."