2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress

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berbatrick said:
@Revan too


I could give a spiel about symbolism and how when push comes to shove, the House Dems will go with their donors. I could talk about the empty-headed naivete of believing what obviously-bad actors want you to believe.
But instead of talking in abstract here are examples of the Dem party being a rational actor guided by its funding sources, putting forward things when they cannot pass and retreating from them the moment it looks likely.

1. In 2006 there was a massive anti-Bush Democrat wave. They gained control of the House with "far-left San Fransisco values" Pelosi as speaker. On the 1st of March 2007, just 2 months after getting power, the House passed card check, allowing much easier unionisation, fulfilling a 30-year union demand. The bill passed the House easily (same link as before) but failed in the senate.
In 2008, they increased their House majority, got 60 in the senate, and most importantly, had a progressive Democratic president. The bill was re-introduced in the House - and stayed there. Never even made it to the senate, even though there were more Democrats in the House now, and even though the president included card check as a campaign promise. Biden signaled in Jan 2009 (same link) that card check would be done later. It was never even introduced to the House after that.
Today, there is no card check and union density continues to decline.

2. The previous governor of New Jersey was Republican Chris Christie. He dealt with a Democratic legislature. The legislature passed a tax on millionaires 5 separate times while he was governor. Christie was beaten in 2018 by Phil Murphy who campaigned on the same tax.
5 months after his election, the NJ state senate president (D) said: "This state is taxed out. If you know anything about New Jersey, they’re just weary of the taxes." (The same taxes they had camapigned on and won a landslide.) The governor never referred to it.
Today, there is no millionaire tax in NJ, and school fnding will be cut to make up the budget shortfall this year.
Source.

3. In October 2009, Democratic Sen. Rockerfeller said: "I will not relent on [the public option]. That's the only way to go."
In February 2010, it was realised that Obamacare was going to be passed by reconciliation, which meant the 60-vote filibuster barrier no longer existed. Everything, including the public option - which his president had campaigned on - was on the table. There was a comfortable House majority, and a bill with the public option had passed the House multiple times since 2007.
However, the final proposal from Obama did not include a public option. People who value others' lives wondered if it might be added to the bill, and turned to Senator Rockerfeller for his "unrelenting" support.
His reply, 5 months after the previous statement, "I don't think the timing of it is very good, I'm probably not going to vote for that." During reconciliation, the public option was removed from the House bill by the Democratic senate.
This article by the centrist golden boy Ezra Klein reports that many senators publicly supporting the public option privately opposed it, and the WH was "sharply resistant" to it. Ezra calls it "strange politics", but that's because he doesn't understand how politics works.
Today, there is no public option, people die because of lack of insurance, and Obama's VP is campaigning on it 12 years later after he campaigned on it and won.


4. All these are examples of Democrats making mild populist appeals during the campaign, when out of power, or when there was no chance of it passing, and retreating the moment they get in power or find broader support. Now here is a case where they retreated even before they got in power, just because the idea became politically plausible because of the upcoming preidential election.
Medicare For All grew from 25 sponsors in 2003 to 120 in 2017. The big blue wave of 2018 put in about 40 new Democrats in the House!
And the number of M4A consponsors *fell* to 116, which means as a proportion it went from 62% of the party to under 50%. All of the senate bill cosponsors famously ran away from the bill the moment they became presidential contenders, not even waiting to win for the inevitable betrayal.
Today, both presidential candidates have vowed to oppose any M4A bill that comes to their desk.
Click to expand...
Fantastic post.
 
berbatrick said:
@Revan too


I could give a spiel about symbolism and how when push comes to shove, the House Dems will go with their donors. I could talk about the empty-headed naivete of believing what obviously-bad actors want you to believe.
But instead of talking in abstract here are examples of the Dem party being a rational actor guided by its funding sources, putting forward things when they cannot pass and retreating from them the moment it looks likely.

1. In 2006 there was a massive anti-Bush Democrat wave. They gained control of the House with "far-left San Fransisco values" Pelosi as speaker. On the 1st of March 2007, just 2 months after getting power, the House passed card check, allowing much easier unionisation, fulfilling a 30-year union demand. The bill passed the House easily (same link as before) but failed in the senate.
In 2008, they increased their House majority, got 60 in the senate, and most importantly, had a progressive Democratic president. The bill was re-introduced in the House - and stayed there. Never even made it to the senate, even though there were more Democrats in the House now, and even though the president included card check as a campaign promise. Biden signaled in Jan 2009 (same link) that card check would be done later. It was never even introduced to the House after that.
Today, there is no card check and union density continues to decline.

2. The previous governor of New Jersey was Republican Chris Christie. He dealt with a Democratic legislature. The legislature passed a tax on millionaires 5 separate times while he was governor. Christie was beaten in 2018 by Phil Murphy who campaigned on the same tax.
5 months after his election, the NJ state senate president (D) said: "This state is taxed out. If you know anything about New Jersey, they’re just weary of the taxes." (The same taxes they had camapigned on and won a landslide.) The governor never referred to it.
Today, there is no millionaire tax in NJ, and school fnding will be cut to make up the budget shortfall this year.
Source.

3. In October 2009, Democratic Sen. Rockerfeller said: "I will not relent on [the public option]. That's the only way to go."
In February 2010, it was realised that Obamacare was going to be passed by reconciliation, which meant the 60-vote filibuster barrier no longer existed. Everything, including the public option - which his president had campaigned on - was on the table. There was a comfortable House majority, and a bill with the public option had passed the House multiple times since 2007.
However, the final proposal from Obama did not include a public option. People who value others' lives wondered if it might be added to the bill, and turned to Senator Rockerfeller for his "unrelenting" support.
His reply, 5 months after the previous statement, "I don't think the timing of it is very good, I'm probably not going to vote for that." During reconciliation, the public option was removed from the House bill by the Democratic senate.
This article by the centrist golden boy Ezra Klein reports that many senators publicly supporting the public option privately opposed it, and the WH was "sharply resistant" to it. Ezra calls it "strange politics", but that's because he doesn't understand how politics works.
Today, there is no public option, people die because of lack of insurance, and Obama's VP is campaigning on it 12 years later after he campaigned on it and won.


4. All these are examples of Democrats making mild populist appeals during the campaign, when out of power, or when there was no chance of it passing, and retreating the moment they get in power or find broader support. Now here is a case where they retreated even before they got in power, just because the idea became politically plausible because of the upcoming preidential election.
Medicare For All grew from 25 sponsors in 2003 to 120 in 2017. The big blue wave of 2018 put in about 40 new Democrats in the House!
And the number of M4A consponsors *fell* to 116, which means as a proportion it went from 62% of the party to under 50%. All of the senate bill cosponsors famously ran away from the bill the moment they became presidential contenders, not even waiting to win for the inevitable betrayal.
Today, both presidential candidates have vowed to oppose any M4A bill that comes to their desk.
Click to expand...
Good post, and some researched examples which are welcome. Its obviously a very singular issue, and one you clearly feel passionately about.

Personally I believe that governing and legislating today is incredibly difficult for several of the reasons you bring up - and of course the polarisation of the US. Do Democratic candidates rely on private wealth for their campaigns? Absolutely. Citizens United is a f*cking tumour on the process. Can a Democratic candidate win without that money? No. Does that money come with a price? Absolutely.

Do Democrats get into office with a more ambitious, progressive set of policies than they end up enacting? Again, absolutely. Obama had a unique honeymoon period where he could and acknowledges should have addressed a much wider set of legislation, rather than just focus on the ACA. To be fair, I'm not sure even Boehner could have predicted just how cynical and vile McConnell's obstructionalism would end up being, but fine.

And the ACA isn't a bad example. Does it go far enough? Of course not. If you were designing a system from scratch, would you go with it? You'd be an idiot. Look around the world at where there is relative success in healthcare and you'll see an M4A-ish system. But you don't get carte blanche. You have to work with what is reality. You have to deal with the fact that there are still many Republican governors. You have to deal with your own voters that feel like they're better off in the current system, and they'd be a loser in an M4A equation. You have to convince fellow politicians who sit across the spectrum on this to vote for a single something. So you compromise your most progressive tendencies, because something is better than nothing, a shift in direction is at least a start.

And that's kind of my point. If you're a progressive (and I count myself as one) almost everything Biden does if elected won't go far enough for me, especially on healthcare, military spending, infrastructure and wealth redistribution. I know that. But the Democratic party is at least moving in the right direction, and it's a straight choice between that and whatever dark hellscape a second Trump term would portend.

TL;DR - I agree with you and think you're also making the point both sides aren't as bad as the other. I don't believe Democrats are not bad actors, just that the system requires them to look like it to the most progressive, because that is still a fringe and not their base.
 
entropy said:
Wait till you find out Biden’s record on the issue. This is nothing.
Click to expand...

Worse than Trump's? Surely not - the man is a confirmed racist!

As a non-American, viewing the situation from afar, I'll have to plead ignorance on Biden, but it is truly difficult to imagine a person less suited to high office, than Trump.
 
Infra-red said:
Worse than Trump's? Surely not - the man is a confirmed racist!

As a non-American, viewing the situation from afar, I'll have to plead ignorance on Biden, but it is truly difficult to imagine a person less suited to high office, than Trump.
Click to expand...
Both of them are racists. Biden’s record speaks for itself. Unlike Trump, he has been destroying black lives for the past 35 years and still continues to do so.
 
Infra-red said:
Worse than Trump's? Surely not - the man is a confirmed racist!

As a non-American, viewing the situation from afar, I'll have to plead ignorance on Biden, but it is truly difficult to imagine a person less suited to high office, than Trump.
Click to expand...

Its obviously not even in the same category as Trump, as evidenced by the fact that about 92% of African-Americans support Biden - which of course would never happen if they thought he was racist (or believed any of the other litany of things former Sanders supporters have thrown at him).
 
Raoul said:
Its obviously not even in the same category as Trump, as evidenced by the fact that about 92% of African-Americans support Biden - which of course would never happen if they thought he was racist (or believed any of the other litany of things former Sanders supporters have thrown at him).
Click to expand...
This is just too dumb and overly simplistic. but if you wanna use numbers to justify it(which is disgusting to even begin with) Biden has destroyed millions of lives with his crime bill and Trump will never come close to that.
 
entropy said:
This is just too dumb and overly simplistic. but if you wanna use numbers to justify it(which is disgusting to even begin with) Biden has destroyed millions of lives with his crime bill and Trump will never come close to that.
Click to expand...

And yet they are still voting for him. So obviously something is wrong with the logic of calling him a racist.
 
entropy said:
Both of them are racists. Biden’s record speaks for itself. Unlike Trump, he has been destroying black lives for the past 35 years and still continues to do so.
Click to expand...
No, Biden isn't a racist. Cop on to yourself.
 
Raoul said:
And yet they are still voting for him. So obviously something is wrong with the logic of calling him a racist.
Click to expand...
Dude, you literally argued that Trump isn't racist multiple times on this forum. Not to mention other controversial shit you've said on here. So excuse me, if I don't take your "logic" too seriously.
 
entropy said:
Dude, you literally argued that Trump isn't racist multiple times on this forum. Not to mention other controversial shit you've said on here. So excuse me, if I don't take your "logic" too seriously.
Click to expand...

That has nothing to do with Biden though does it - which is what your original point was about.
 
Raoul said:
As it does yours as well.
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There is no point. If he thinks Biden is a racist then he knows feck all about the meaning of the word. You can have your reservations about Biden and his voting record on criminal justice but to label his a racist is ridiculous. A few weeks back red dream I think it was, posted that Biden was a paedophile. How can you have an adult conversation with anyone that just jumps off a cliff with a statement like that.
 
Raoul said:
As it does yours as well.
Click to expand...
Absolutely. And like I said, Biden's record speaks for itself. Be it rubbing shoulders with rabid racists like Thurmond, his work in the 70's work with Reagan, War on drugs, mass incarceration, the list is endless. And that's just till the early 90s.
 
GiddyUp said:
There is no point. If he thinks Biden is a racist then he knows feck all about the meaning of the word. You can have your reservations about Biden and his voting record on criminal justice but to label his a racist is ridiculous. A few weeks back red dream I think it was, posted that Biden was a paedophile. How can you have an adult conversation with anyone that just jumps off a cliff with a statement like that.
Click to expand...

Its par for the course these days. What is non-contestable is that Biden is getting upwards of 90% support from the black community, which obviously wouldn't happen if these supporters believed he is a racist. So fair to say this would be an extreme minority view, even within the black community.
 
GiddyUp said:
There is no point. If he thinks Biden is a racist then he knows feck all about the meaning of the word. You can have your reservations about Biden and his voting record on criminal justice but to label his a racist is ridiculous. A few weeks back red dream I think it was, posted that Biden was a paedophile. How can you have an adult conversation with anyone that just jumps off a cliff with a statement like that.
Click to expand...
Come on, mate. Give me some credit. I actually had to study the crime bill.
 
entropy said:
Come on, mate. Give me some credit. I actually had to study the crime bill.
Click to expand...
And your conclusion was everyone was racist?
I've been in this country a long time and I do understand where you are coming from, let's be honest, it has a racist shit hole vein running through it. But the only way to get by is to pick your battles. I've never heard one black person call Biden a racist or blame him solely for that feck up bill. And to hit this election, after all we have seen in the last 12 years alone and with the stakes so high shouting out racist based on that bill does no one any favors. American politics is what it is but fingers crossed these feckers die off and we will be left with a battle for power between AOC and Matt fecking gaetz.
Let me ask you this, in the next four years who would do more for the minority communities in this country, trump or Biden?
 
Raoul said:
Its par for the course these days. What is non-contestable is that Biden is getting upwards of 90% support from the black community, which obviously wouldn't happen if these supporters believed he is a racist. So fair to say this would be an extreme minority view, even within the black community.
Click to expand...

Yeah, because education is so high standard, no one has ever voted against their own interests in the US. (perception is not the same as reality)
 
George Owen said:
Yeah, because education is so high standard, no one has ever voted against their own interests in the US. (perception is not the same as reality)
Click to expand...

Given Biden's policy in comparison to Trump's, they would be voting in favor of their interests - as would most non-insane Americans.
 
GiddyUp said:
And your conclusion was everyone was racist?
I've been in this country a long time and I do understand where you are coming from, let's be honest, it has a racist shit hole vein running through it. But the only way to get by is to pick your battles. I've never heard one black person call Biden a racist or blame him solely for that feck up bill. And to hit this election, after all we have seen in the last 12 years alone and with the stakes so high shouting out racist based on that bill does no one any favors. American politics is what it is but fingers crossed these feckers die off and we will be left with a battle for power between AOC and Matt fecking gaetz.
Let me ask you this, in the next four years who would do more for the minority communities in this country, trump or Biden?
Click to expand...
No. My point is that if your entire career was built on jailing, criminalizing, and destroying black lives then you are most definitely a racist. And Biden wasn't someone on the sidelines, he went against the grain to fight and incarcerate black people. He worked with Republicans to get what he wanted. Like I said, just look at his record. Talk to anyone who has studied criminal justice reform in this country. It is one thing to call out casual racism but to ignore someone who wrote these laws into practice, helped sustain systemic racism that we are watching unfold in real-time, is just willful ignorance.
 
entropy said:
This is just too dumb and overly simplistic. but if you wanna use numbers to justify it(which is disgusting to even begin with) Biden has destroyed millions of lives with his crime bill and Trump will never come close to that.
Click to expand...
By the same token of logic, Sanders is a racist too for voting for the same bill. Right?
 
Revan said:
By the same token of logic, Sanders is a racist too for voting for the same bill. Right?
Click to expand...
Everyone who has ever voted for it at any point in their career is racist, and will continue to be even if they then dedicate their lives to trying to change or improve things.

Edit: Jebus, mind blown, there may have been no black senators at the time. Oh America.
 
berbatrick said:
@Revan too


I could give a spiel about symbolism and how when push comes to shove, the House Dems will go with their donors. I could talk about the empty-headed naivete of believing what obviously-bad actors want you to believe.
But instead of talking in abstract here are examples of the Dem party being a rational actor guided by its funding sources, putting forward things when they cannot pass and retreating from them the moment it looks likely.

1. In 2006 there was a massive anti-Bush Democrat wave. They gained control of the House with "far-left San Fransisco values" Pelosi as speaker. On the 1st of March 2007, just 2 months after getting power, the House passed card check, allowing much easier unionisation, fulfilling a 30-year union demand. The bill passed the House easily (same link as before) but failed in the senate.
In 2008, they increased their House majority, got 60 in the senate, and most importantly, had a progressive Democratic president. The bill was re-introduced in the House - and stayed there. Never even made it to the senate, even though there were more Democrats in the House now, and even though the president included card check as a campaign promise. Biden signaled in Jan 2009 (same link) that card check would be done later. It was never even introduced to the House after that.
Today, there is no card check and union density continues to decline.

2. The previous governor of New Jersey was Republican Chris Christie. He dealt with a Democratic legislature. The legislature passed a tax on millionaires 5 separate times while he was governor. Christie was beaten in 2018 by Phil Murphy who campaigned on the same tax.
5 months after his election, the NJ state senate president (D) said: "This state is taxed out. If you know anything about New Jersey, they’re just weary of the taxes." (The same taxes they had camapigned on and won a landslide.) The governor never referred to it.
Today, there is no millionaire tax in NJ, and school fnding will be cut to make up the budget shortfall this year.
Source.

3. In October 2009, Democratic Sen. Rockerfeller said: "I will not relent on [the public option]. That's the only way to go."
In February 2010, it was realised that Obamacare was going to be passed by reconciliation, which meant the 60-vote filibuster barrier no longer existed. Everything, including the public option - which his president had campaigned on - was on the table. There was a comfortable House majority, and a bill with the public option had passed the House multiple times since 2007.
However, the final proposal from Obama did not include a public option. People who value others' lives wondered if it might be added to the bill, and turned to Senator Rockerfeller for his "unrelenting" support.
His reply, 5 months after the previous statement, "I don't think the timing of it is very good, I'm probably not going to vote for that." During reconciliation, the public option was removed from the House bill by the Democratic senate.
This article by the centrist golden boy Ezra Klein reports that many senators publicly supporting the public option privately opposed it, and the WH was "sharply resistant" to it. Ezra calls it "strange politics", but that's because he doesn't understand how politics works.
Today, there is no public option, people die because of lack of insurance, and Obama's VP is campaigning on it 12 years later after he campaigned on it and won.


4. All these are examples of Democrats making mild populist appeals during the campaign, when out of power, or when there was no chance of it passing, and retreating the moment they get in power or find broader support. Now here is a case where they retreated even before they got in power, just because the idea became politically plausible because of the upcoming preidential election.
Medicare For All grew from 25 sponsors in 2003 to 120 in 2017. The big blue wave of 2018 put in about 40 new Democrats in the House!
And the number of M4A consponsors *fell* to 116, which means as a proportion it went from 62% of the party to under 50%. All of the senate bill cosponsors famously ran away from the bill the moment they became presidential contenders, not even waiting to win for the inevitable betrayal.
Today, both presidential candidates have vowed to oppose any M4A bill that comes to their desk.
Click to expand...
To be fair, factually speaking, there is not much I disagree with the post. Yes, democrats are corrupted too (as are any political parties in the world). Yes, they accept money from the donors and then need to return the favor. Yes, they promise things that they have no intentions to then do. And yes, Obama didn't do things that he had promised to do. You found 3 examples, I guess it is not hard to find another 30 (especially if we go for specific cases as you did in the third example).

What I disagree though, is this nihilistic philosophy that has been treating on the Caf that both parties are as bad as each other and that we are fecked anyway. No, not even close. The triplet of Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi is not the one I would have chosen (not even close, I don't particularly like either of them), but it is astronomically better than the one of Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy. It is not even close. And like it or not, these are the only options. Incremental progress vs massive destruction. I choose incremental progress without a doubt.

With regard to M4A, while I think that M4A should be implemented (not necessarily a single-payer option, I don't have a strong opinion on this and seems that both single option and regulated multi-option seem to work in other countries), the thing is, there was an election on a candidate who campaigned on M4A, and a candidate who campaigned in ObamaCare++. The later won fairly, the Democrat voters chose so. It is a bit foolish to call for that candidate to implement M4A. If Bernie would have won, it would have looked ridiculous to see centrists calling for him to implement Obamacare++ instead of M4A. And I am not even talking about practical considerations of M4A implementations (most Democrat senators oppose it, as do as GOP senators). Even if Biden had a change of heart, and Democrats somehow win the senate, implementing it would be close to impossible considering that it would need the votes of center-right Democrats like Manchin or Sinema.
 
Revan said:
With regard to M4A, while I think that M4A should be implemented (not necessarily a single-payer option, I don't have a strong opinion on this and seems that both single option and regulated multi-option seem to work in other countries), the thing is, there was an election on a candidate who campaigned on M4A, and a candidate who campaigned in ObamaCare++. The later won fairly, the Democrat voters chose so. It is a bit foolish to call for that candidate to implement M4A. If Bernie would have won, it would have looked ridiculous to see centrists calling for him to implement Obamacare++ instead of M4A. And I am not even talking about practical considerations of M4A implementations (most Democrat senators oppose it, as do as GOP senators). Even if Biden had a change of heart, and Democrats somehow win the senate, implementing it would be close to impossible considering that it would need the votes of center-right Democrats like Manchin or Sinema.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't go as far as calling Sinema a center-right Democrat: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/28338/kyrsten-sinema. She's similar to Biden. I would ignore the far-left folks who post in this thread trying to redefine the political spectrum. The basic test for right-wing vs. left-wing comes down to taxes: if you are for raising taxes and specifically corporate taxes to oppose trickle-down economics then you can't be considered a member of the right-wing.
 
sport2793 said:
Wouldn't go as far as calling Sinema a center-right Democrat: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/28338/kyrsten-sinema. She's similar to Biden. I would ignore the far-left folks who post in this thread trying to redefine the political spectrum. The basic test for right-wing vs. left-wing comes down to taxes: if you are for raising taxes and specifically corporate taxes to oppose trickle-down economics then you can't be considered a member of the right-wing.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. Maybe a center-right Democrat is too much. I had this feeling (though did not carefully check the votes) that she has a quite independent streak, and is probably the second-most unreliable vote in the Democrat caucus. I might be wrong though.
 
Revan said:
Fair enough. Maybe a center-right Democrat is too much. I had this feeling (though did not carefully check the votes) that she has a quite independent streak, and is probably the second-most unreliable vote in the Democrat caucus. I might be wrong though.
Click to expand...

Na, if anything, the increasing shift to the left in Arizona gives her more cover to vote for her preferred positions. Plus there will be 2 Dem AZ senators by the end of the year. Always thought the national media was a few years behind understanding the political shift happening in AZ due to demographics, based on the number of times I've heard them express doubt Sinema would support issues like impeachment.

I think part of the reason for this is because AZ tends to have some very outspoken pro-Trump figures (i.e. Joe Arpaio), although the most respected GOP family in the state will ironically vote for Biden in November. This lag effect in understanding will lead to "surprise" in the national media when AZ goes blue in the 2020 election.
 
Fox News announces Biden beating Trump by double digits



Cease and desist letter incoming.
 
sport2793 said:
Wouldn't go as far as calling Sinema a center-right Democrat: https://justfacts.votesmart.org/candidate/political-courage-test/28338/kyrsten-sinema. She's similar to Biden. I would ignore the far-left folks who post in this thread trying to redefine the political spectrum. The basic test for right-wing vs. left-wing comes down to taxes: if you are for raising taxes and specifically corporate taxes to oppose trickle-down economics then you can't be considered a member of the right-wing.
Click to expand...

She's pretty moderate by Dem standards. I think only Manchin has a more conservative Dem voting record. Being from AZ, she wouldn't have stood a chance of winning the Senate seat as a progressive.
 
Raoul said:
She's pretty moderate by Dem standards. I think only Manchin has a more conservative Dem voting record. Being from AZ, she wouldn't have stood a chance of winning the Senate seat as a progressive.
Click to expand...

No doubt, she's not a progressive and could not win as one. Based on having watched her career over a decade or so though, I don't think she will be a major obstacle to progressive ideas. Manchin on the other hand caters to a very conservative demographic and it will benefit him more politically to go against the Dem party. Sinema won't need to make an enemy out of Dems to retain her seat, she just needs to be seen as someone willing to work across the aisle.
 
sport2793 said:
Na, if anything, the increasing shift to the left in Arizona gives her more cover to vote for her preferred positions. Plus there will be 2 Dem AZ senators by the end of the year. Always thought the national media was a few years behind understanding the political shift happening in AZ due to demographics, based on the number of times I've heard them express doubt Sinema would support issues like impeachment.

I think part of the reason for this is because AZ tends to have some very outspoken pro-Trump figures (i.e. Joe Arpaio), although the most respected GOP family in the state will ironically vote for Biden in November. This lag effect in understanding will lead to "surprise" in the national media when AZ goes blue in the 2020 election.
Click to expand...
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/?ex_cid=irpromo

This shows how much does each senator votes with Trump. She has actually an identical score as Manchin, at 52.8% (to be pedantic, Manchin votes with Trump 52.9%). The next incumbent 'Democrat' is Angus King at 38.8%, with the next true Democrat being Doug Jones at 36.5%.

So, he is actually much more centrist than pretty much every Democrat senator not called Joe Manchin. And quite similar to other centrists who lost in the previous elections (Heitkamp for example). As things stand, I don't think that she is a very reliable vote. Her and Manchin are essentially Murkowski and Collins of the left.

Of course, this does not count the importance of the votes, and neither predicts how much they will vote with a Democrat president.
 
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