50 Comments

I SO want to believe we have something good ahead.

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We do. And all we have to do to get it is make sure Biden is re-elected.

Very worth the effort.

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Feb 13Liked by Jay Kuo

Trump could be partially right about stock market maybe it's so good because the world I anticipating his impending incarceration and an end to his insane ramblings.

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Dems need to stop playing so nice. We have only to look at Hur’s report to understand that the Repubs are NEVER going to play nice and will NEVER play fair. Then we need to develop our strategy accordingly.

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Feb 13Liked by Jay Kuo

Another great article. As a history major, I always love the historical perspective. As a market researcher, I’d like a graph that better supports your point about the Do Nothing Congress. This one only goes through Obama’s last year when he couldn’t get anything through. And, I agree Biden and others need to drive home the Do Nothing Congress and probably just ignore all the ageism bullshit. And you need to clean out one of your commenters 🙄. Thanks for all you do.

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author

Oh my goodness, I inserted the wrong chart from my files! It’s fixed now. Thanks for the catch!

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Feb 13·edited Feb 13Liked by Jay Kuo

Thanks for the emotional boost! The last few days I’ve felt really down about Joes prospects!I

I’m a boomer ,born just after Harry left office . I do remember him taking his constitutional walks in the early 60” s. Everything I ever heard about him back then was good stuff! My father had a copy of the paper proclaiming his loss ,kept it for years. The two campaign similarities

and the circumstances surrounding both,give me hope that the American people of the present may just have the political smarts to cause a repeat of Harry’s upset today! 🤞Just maybe!

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Feb 13Liked by Jay Kuo

We need to be highlighting the new jobs and businesses resulting from the Infrastructure and Chips and other bills passed back in 2021&2022 by the Democrats

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Feb 13Liked by Jay Kuo

My dad who is now 95 said he remembers when all the papers said Dewey won and team Dewey was celebrating a victory. when he woke up the next morning his dad was telling him Truman won. Dad said there were tons of parties the might before that Dewey one. His dad said so sad too bad. That saying was said in our home for as long as I could remember.

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Encouraging in light of the special counsel’s political hit job of last week. I hope history repeats itself and that the NYT, WSJ and Washington Post all end up with erroneous predictions come November.

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Feb 14Liked by Jay Kuo

I needed to read this today. With all the chaos it's a comfort. Thank you

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"And yet most Americans rate the economy as poor, and the sour mood is dragging down Biden’s approval numbers."

This is not congruent with what I have learned from Simon Rosenberg's last couple months of posts, Zoom sessions, and interviews. I recall a phrase in a piece by Rebecca Solnit: "Outdated information is misinformation."

I very much appreciate your work, Jay, and trust that you'll look into this further.

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One big difference. We're breaking new ground. Trump isn't Dewey. He's more like Jefferson Davis.

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No Trump is more like a parasite in a bowel movement from Jefferson’s cat.

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Polls and punditry... predictions on human behavior are attempts to rationalize the irrational and failure to say we just don't know.

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Poll and punditry...predictions on human behavior are attempts to rationalize the irrational and failure to say that we just don't know. So many variables...so many possibilities that are incalculable between now a Nov 5, 2024. The world has vastly changed since 1947 and it's changing every day. Trying to establish a similarity narrative is to ignore the extraordinary differences seen and unseeable. BUT we humans like simple narrative stories, especially with data and happy endings. Data makes us think human behavior is understood like rocket science by "experts" who call themselves social scientists when truth be told understanding society is harder than rocket science and far, far less predictable.

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I like the quote attributed to both Will Roger’s and Mark Twain: “ it’s not what we don’t know that hurts us so much as what we know that’s just ain’t so”.

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Einstein never wrote a book on Wisdom, but his social observations were so remarkable..."Imagination is more important than knowledge." He and Bertrand Russell and many more have observed how we are trained to use our minds in schools cripples us.

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I suspect that most informed and discriminating people are smart enough to not respond to polls. As well as being too busy attending to more important matters in life.

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Yes, for sure! But polls still effect smart people. And smart people-social scientists dress up their opinions with data and polls to look smarter. They weigh in certain factors when so many factors are left out when is not even possible to see all factors when some of the tiniest of things unseen factored in so hugely. Histories are being written more accurately with the roles of small flukes playing a bigger role than a singular "great man"... chaos theory and the butterfly effect still mostly eludes-escapes us when we try to account for the happening of things. Failing to recognize this make so much of what we call social science bullshit. As a political scientist I railed against it being called science. The book Fluke gets at all this really well.

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Mr. Brown, good to have your expertise. My professional experience is as a psychologist and I get so frustrated with what passes for “science “. We do well to tread humbly. Thank you for your input and recommendation of Fluke. Jay

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Thanks Jay. Malcolm Gradwell also makes his writing so wonderful telling stories like Bill Gates...luck was what made him an Outlier. But Fluke takes the role of luck and flushes it out better than ever before in Fluke.

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That’s just a BIG maybe. Can’t put our faith in that. Gotta fight hard. Something Democrats don’t know how to do, or won’t do 🤷🏼‍♂️. If Dems don’t take the gloves off, and punch out Republicans at every turn, call them out for what they are, and lambast Donald Diperstain every chance they get, for the treasonous, Russian asset, and biggest threat to Democracy, and the rule of law this country has ever seen, then I don’t hold much hope. This must happen, and I’m just not seein’ it.

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founding

Well, if you want to start, Jeff, you can do like me, and stop referring to Repubs as the GOP. That 'party' is dead, and it was killed by it's replacement, the AFP - the American Fascist Party. That is the only way I refer to them now, and people are noticing, and nodding. It's a winning fight, and my knuckles don't suffer from it!

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Okay then. AFP it is. Me, and my knuckles thank you. 👍😎

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founding

I'm there for you, Brother!

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Dewey campaigned on cruise control. He felt he had nothing to worry about, never really attacked Harry Truman during the campaign, and thought they had planned everything up to Election Day.

Nothing like the sort will happen this year.

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Dewey was far more qualified to run this country than Trump is. Trump will just be reminding people of how lousy he is.

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Sounds like the end stages of the Clinton campaign.

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Another relevant Presidential Election is Goldwater and Johnson in 1964. That was the last time the Republican party went off the deep end. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote. Democrats won two additional seats in the Senate and 37 in the House. That is my forecast for 2024...another big blue wave. Republicans will never learn they are on the wrong side of ALL issues.

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From your lips to god’s ears!

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(1) I'm encouraged by the special election's Democratc outcome. But, while I'm grateful to Jay for the 1948/2024 comparison, his therapy didn't work so well for me. (2) First, Truman was 64 in 1948, not 81. (3) Second, the current MAGA House is doing far worse than "nothing", they are damaging American global security interests in Europe, while refusing to alleviate the domestic "crisis" at the US SW Border. (4) Why? Because drumpf (trump before anglesization) wants Putin to win in Ukraine and plans to abandon NATO Europe, if he wins the presidency. (5) And finally, in 1948 Congress and the American people were still generally rational, recognized the difference between right/wrong and, when eleted, accepted their sworn duties to the Constitution. (6) In 2024, that is no longer accurate.

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