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Counties like Northampton, Luzerne, and Erie flipped not just because of "enthusiasm" (i.e. Republicans got better turnout) but rather because of a real change where long time Democratic voters voted for a Republican. That's harder to change back than just getting your regular voters to get out again, and that was the reason Trump won PA at all.
The same could be said of Chester county the opposite way.
It's worth noting how much of a disaster Trump's "trade war" with China was for PA. Trump's own ego driven deal-making delivered a major blow to Pennsylvania well before Covid ever started.
Counties like Northampton, Luzerne, and Erie flipped not just because of "enthusiasm" (i.e. Republicans got better turnout) but rather because of a real change where long time Democratic voters voted for a Republican. That's harder to change back than just getting your regular voters to get out again, and that was the reason Trump won PA at all.
I think it was a combination of the two, but the Obama-Trump voter is a bit overemphasized. It was more about irregular voters showing up -- this time in favor of Trump. These inactive voters may be registered Democrats, but they may not have voted in many elections. Hillary lacked the enthusiasm to activate these voters.
Besides, I am not so sure it's as hard as you say it is to "change back" voters. Look at Indiana, for instance. It has been a solid red state for decades now. In 2008, it was a surprise to most that it swung blue. Yet by 2012, it was back to an over 10-point margin in favor of Romney. And to be clear, this shift was in large part due to enthusiasm, just like we saw in 2016. This single election cycle shift is totally possible in Pennsylvania as well.
All right for God's sake, "few people from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia are going to travel to Uniontown for a restaurant meal or a night out." You like that better? Spare me the stories about the fabulous weekend that you spent in Uniontown.
Okay, it gets even better but you've forced my hand on this one. I also spent three days in the Laurel Highlands and Ohiopyle for a family member's birthday and we did visit Uniontown actually
No, you're the one who has it wrong. Westchester County, NY fought with the Obama administration for years about this rule. The feds forced them to spend tens of millions of dollars to build "750 units of housing in over 30 overwhelmingly white communities." The "race-based discrimination" that they found was "exclusionary zoning," which means these towns consist of single-family houses on large lots, and have few apartment buildings. Anyone who claims that that amounts to de facto racial discrimination is the one who's race-baiting, if you ask me.
This argument that Trump and the GOP have picked up on is so ridiculous. You realize that exclusionary single family zoning is basically the government telling you what to do with your own property, correct? It's very anti-capitalist, as well, something I'm sure you don't agree with.
Liberalizing zoning and land-use laws allow private property owners to do what they wish with their property - which in some cases involves maximizing the profitable use of the land by building denser - so very capitalist!
Many very hardcore Trump supporters even find ABC or NBC evening news or first 20 minutes of Today/GMA biased when the top story is surge in covid. They feel its biased that its not Hunter Biden related news. I really don’t understand it anymore with them.
I can't comprehend it either.
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I do see a Left bias on CNN (website) but it still doesnt seem as biased as Fox is to the Right.
Fair enough.
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And back to broadcast- with ABC, which is left leaning at times, it does have Republican contributors like Sara Fagen and Chris Christie. I also believe Martha Raddatz is very good at not showing a bias. When she went on a roadtrip through the country last month, she did say clearly that Biden enthusiasm wasn’t there. She didnt hide that discovery when she spoke on The View. I’m sure Whoopi and the other cohosts were shocked she said it.
Stephanopoulous probably has a semi-conscious bias to defend the Clintons, I concede. Roberts has three reasons that may pose a challenge to her being totally objective about the current Administration. I don't consider "The View" to be part of the news division even though politics is mostly what they talk about these days. I'll grant you the cast is 3/5 liberal plus McCain and "Never Trumper" Ana Navarro.
That's not quite true. There's Newsmax, One America News (Trump's occasional favorite) and The Blaze. There's also the vitamin salesman whose lawyer admitted that his show - InfoWars - is basically entertainment and not serious political news.
Granted, those first two have had difficulty getting a foothold on cable, although it was available when I lived in Texas for a time. Glenn Beck is basically a streaming service. And Alex Jones keeps getting himself banned off of viable platforms.
MSNBC is definitely liberal even as they have former Bush staffer Nicole Wallace and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough anchoring shows.
CNN isn't so much liberal as it is anti-Trump. If Trump hadn't anointed them with the first "fake news" designation, I don't think they would have gone after him quite as hard although it is difficult to be objective about a gaslighter. That said, you would have appreciated Wolf Blitzer going hard in the paint against Pelosi the other night.
Broadcast news shows aren't particularly liberal or conservative. In the era of Trump, they are merely reflecting what he is (not) doing.
You left out an even bigger right-biased news source, though most of what you see on its stations (as you note) doesn't appear particularly liberal or conservative on its face:
The nation's second-largest owner of local television stations, Sinclair Broadcast Group. Its 193 TV stations in 100 markets reach 40 percent of the country's population, mostly in the South and Midwest.
The company often mandates that stations air news programs with a rightward tilt or (in a widely-mocked-among-journalists case) have their local anchors read the same editorial slamming biased news media. (This Deadspin article includes a video showing clips where scores of Sinclair local TV news anchors read from the canned script.)
"A 2019 study in the American Political Science Review found that 'stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.'" (The authors of the study summed up what they found in this Washington Post opinion piece.)
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Originally Posted by fat lou
No, you're the one who has it wrong. Westchester County, NY fought with the Obama administration for years about this rule. The feds forced them to spend tens of millions of dollars to build "750 units of housing in over 30 overwhelmingly white communities." The "race-based discrimination" that they found was "exclusionary zoning," which means these towns consist of single-family houses on large lots, and have few apartment buildings. Anyone who claims that that amounts to de facto racial discrimination is the one who's race-baiting, if you ask me.
No, you got it wrong. What Westchester County fought was not the 2015 Obama "affirmatively furthering fair housing" rule, which simply implemented a requirement that local governments report what the barriers are to truly fair housing in their areas, but a 2009 court order mandating that the county build a specified number of low-income affordable housing units as recompense for a history of discriminatory housing practices and policies.
Of course, the goal of the reporting requirement was to nudge the communities in the direction of taking steps to lower or remove those barriers — which was what the language in the 1968 Fair Housing Act requiring state and local governments to "affirmatively further fair housing" intended for them to do. But it was never enforced as HUD doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in housing assistance to communities that could probably have gotten hauled into court (as Mount Laurel, N.J., did in a late-1960s case resting on New Jersey state law that did mandate that every municipality in that state provide for affordable housing within its borders) for implementing blatantly or ultimately discriminatory zoning ordinances.
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Originally Posted by cpomp
Does anything think Lancaster County or Northampton County will flip blue this year?
Someone else answered this, but: Northampton, maybe; Lancaster, definitely not. Lancaster City holds only 1/4 of the county's total population. The other 3/4 live in Lancaster's suburbs and the county's many smaller towns, all of which are more conservative, sometimes a great deal so.
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Originally Posted by NewtownBucks
Based on your link, it doesn't seem to do either of the things that you two are arguing about. It seems to be just strengthening a reporting framework for municipalities to ensure that they are FHA compliant while trying to lead them to some of the outcomes that both of you are arguing about (i.e. lower discrimination, more affordable housing, etc.), but without ANY mandate for any action other than to fill out the reports in the new format.
Regardless of what the rule actually says or does or even whether it's a good idea to eliminate it, it's pretty clear that Trump's response to it was in fact fearmongering by talking about "destroying the suburbs" with pretty clear undertones of racist dogwhistles. Trump doesn't really care about anything other than himself and people who lavish praise on him, but he's walking a tightrope here. On one hand, he's trying to promote what he's done for the black community (and some of the things he's done have been positive in many ways - e.g. some criminal justice reforms) but at the same time dogwhistle to the racists and white supremacists who have been his biggest supporters since the beginning. I really don't think Trump himself is all that racist, but he treats them like he treats evangelicals (which he is not one of, either). If they support him and tell him he's great, then he's going to pretend to act like them and support what they want, too.
I agree with you that Trump has done some praiseworthy things for Black Americans during his term in office, none more so than the First Step Act. I also find a lot to like in that "Platinum Plan" for Black economic empowerment he announced on a Friday last month, the one that rapper Ice Cube helped him draw up (that made Ice Cube a target for ire from many Blacks). And I also agree with you that Trump may not really be a dyed-in-the-wool racist either. But his father's real estate firm, which he now runs much as his Dad did, only with more smoke and bigger mirrors, got repeatedly hauled into court for its racially discriminatory practices, and it does seem that he treats the actual black people he deals with, including HUD Secretary Ben Carson, with a little less respect than he does whites in similar positions (someone made this point to me about Omarosa Amigault, who he didn't treat so well before she turned on him either).
But I think the best statement I've heard on this subject was this one. I have this vague recollection that Joe Biden said it to him at the most recent debate but don't think that's the case:
"You may not think you're a racist, but the racists sure think you're a racist."
This argument that Trump and the GOP have picked up on is so ridiculous. You realize that exclusionary single family zoning is basically the government telling you what to do with your own property, correct? It's very anti-capitalist, as well, something I'm sure you don't agree with.
Liberalizing zoning and land-use laws allow private property owners to do what they wish with their property - which in some cases involves maximizing the profitable use of the land by building denser - so very capitalist!
Hahahaha.....what?! I think it's pretty clear that most Americans have chosen to live in places that have single-family zoning. No one forced them to. I doubt that there are many suburban homeowners standing on their half-acre thinking, "Damn government, making me live on this plot of land....."
No, you got it wrong. What Westchester County fought was not the 2015 Obama "affirmatively furthering fair housing" rule, which simply implemented a requirement that local governments report what the barriers are to truly fair housing in their areas, but a 2009 court order mandating that the county build a specified number of low-income affordable housing units as recompense for a history of discriminatory housing practices and policies.
Of course, the goal of the reporting requirement was to nudge the communities in the direction of taking steps to lower or remove those barriers — which was what the language in the 1968 Fair Housing Act requiring state and local governments to "affirmatively further fair housing" intended for them to do. But it was never enforced as HUD doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in housing assistance to communities that could probably have gotten hauled into court (as Mount Laurel, N.J., did in a late-1960s case resting on New Jersey state law that did mandate that every municipality in that state provide for affordable housing within its borders) for implementing blatantly or ultimately discriminatory zoning ordinances.
Yeah, and the "barriers to truly fair housing" are "exclusionary zoning laws." Which is what that Westchester County case was all about. That AFFH rule is based on that idea.
That's what Trump means when he talks about "abolishing the suburbs": the idea that a place made up mostly of single-family homes on large plots of land is discriminatory, and therefore needs to be changed.
If you'd look at the source I provided in my last post, you'd see that it's much more complex than that. Yes, that rule could be theoretically applied in a legal case to provide more affordable housing, but in its broadest form its intent is to protect individuals of color from discrimination. And yes, exclusionary zoning is unconstitutional, and rightfully so.
No one should be shedding any tears for very wealthy Westchester County, NY, and I'm certain no Republicans really are as it's a deeply "blue" locale.
Perhaps the GOP should recognize that we no longer live in 1965. That would save them and the rest of America a lot of grief.
Yeah, and that "discrimination" means that there are neighborhoods that lower-class black people can't afford to live in. Is that really racial discrimination? I can't afford a house in a tony Westchester County town. I couldn't afford a 25-foot-square patch of dirt in one of those towns. I guess I must be a victim of racial discrimination. All this time I never knew it.
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