Want to focus on two of the biggest swing states for the 2020 Presidential election with this thread - Florida and Michigan. President Trump won both of these states in the 2016 election. Narrowly.

Trump won Florida by just 1.2% of the vote, or just 112,911 votes of the over 9 million cast. And he won Michigan - a traditionally blue leaning state - by a margin of just 0.23% of the vote, or just 10,704 votes out of over 4.5 million cast.

Now I won't even bother posting projections this early in the election process as to who would match up most favorably with Trump in either state for the general. But I will say that currently Joe Biden is polling with a double digit lead (or close to) for both the Michigan and Florida primaries, which will both be taking place in March of 2020.

If the trend holds true and the Democrats nominate the frontrunner Biden as their candidate, at least you know those states currently agree with that verdict, if you trust primary poling results. That said, do you think Biden or any of the other Democratic candidates can take back Michigan and/or Florida from Trump in 2020?

Seems the Presidential election will come down to these two states and perhaps Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well. But I am focusing on Florida and Michigan as Florida is one of the largest electoral wins in a race (29) and Michigan says historically leaned blue, so seems reasonable for it to switch back.

I also find it interesting that Florida just passed a law allowing convicted felons the right to vote. Regardless of it you agree with this law or not, you have to know this WILL effect the election as suddenly over a million people are now eligible to vote that were not in 2016. And Trump only won by 10 times less than that margin in Florida. I wonder how that will sway things.

JFoster Wrote:

Here's a quick skinny on the step by step process for applying. It's pretty simple and straightforward, especially after you create a "My Social Security" account, which is also very simple.

That is a shame. I've never understood the logic of open enrollment periods. Or at the very least I have never agreed with it. It should be open year round, anytime in my opinion. And then just put a limit on how long you can go before using it. But beside that, given people have such a small window to sign up every year it does make you wonder how most people would know it's going on at all. Who is even talking about it?

Maybe employers are? Anyone have experience with that here, where your company is telling you about the open enrollment window for signing up on a yearly basis?

Kamala Harris just dropped out of the race.

Amazing there are technically 15 candidates officially still in the running for the Democrat nomination. But for Harris to drop out, a candidate who was always polling at 3-5 in the rankings, that means its only a matter of time until most everyone not in the top 5 drops out. Should whittle down from 15 to 4-5 very very soon.

Who’s Running for President in 2020?

That's the NYT updated list of who's running and who has dropped out, continually updated.

Feel already like a 4-5 person race with Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg and then maybe Bloomberg.

Richard1022 Wrote:

What do you think? Will impeachment help or hurt Trump moving forward?

In regards to your question, I have been thinking of this very question for a few weeks now for the same reasons. I do think he will get impeached and then promptly be acquitted in the Senate. And then where does that leave us? He would make history as the first president to ever be re-elected after an impeachment, which is astounding if that were to happen.

But I don't think it will. I'm not confident of this prediction, but I do think a lot of the country has turned on Trump, basically everyone that's not in his camp hardcore already. I think his narrow victory was won in 2016 by a good amount of undecided voters that simply did not want to vote for Hilary. Agree or disagree, she was not a very liked candidate.

So I think the Democrats just have to nominate someone that is less polarizing than Hilary. And try their best not to make this a 'lesser of two evils' type of election again. I think they will accomplish that and even though we are as polarized as ever as a country now and Trump's base will still turn out in droves, I predict the Dems will win as no one in the current crop is as polarizing as Hilary was, and Trump will ultimately lose out on all the undecided votes this time around.

Had to look up who the 3rd president in this conversation even was.. it was Andrew Johnson in 1868. Turns out it was a pretty interesting story, how and why he was impeached:

Johnson was elected as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president in 1864. The toughest decision facing Lincoln’s second term was how to reestablish ties with the Confederate states now that the Civil War was over. Lincoln’s plan for Reconstruction favored leniency while so-called “Radical Republicans” in his party wanted to punish Southern politicians and extend full civil rights to freed slaves.

Lincoln was assassinated only 42 days into his second term, leaving Johnson in charge of Reconstruction. He immediately clashed with the Radical Republicans in Congress, calling for pardons for Confederate leaders and vetoing political rights for freedmen. In 1867, Congress retaliated by passing the Tenure of Office Act, which barred the president from replacing members of his cabinet without Senate approval.

Believing the law to be unconstitutional, Johnson went ahead and fired his Secretary of War, an ally of the Radical Republicans in Congress. Johnson’s political enemies responded by drafting and passing 11 articles of impeachment in the House.

"Sir, the bloody and untilled fields of the ten unreconstructed States, the unsheeted ghosts of the two thousand murdered negroes in Texas, cry [...] for the punishment of Andrew Johnson," wrote the abolitionist Republican Representative William D. Kelley from Pennsylvania.

Johnson was impeached in the House of Representatives by 126 votes to 47, but narrowly avoided a two-thirds guilty verdict in the Senate by a single vote. After his acquittal, he served out the rest of his term and became the first (and only) former U.S. president to be elected to the Senate.

That's interesting. How the Democrats run their primaries has always confused me. So as long as you pass the 15% threshold, you get proportional delegates awarded based on the % of people voting for you?

In a sense, I think that's incredibly fair. I would think it means a candidate can't rely on marginal victories in just a few big states but has to campaign in several states across the US, right?

On the flip side, yeah. Less popular candidates would never get a big delegate chunk from a single state they happen to win (no matter the margin) but if its representational across the board, I'm not sure they should be artificially spring-boarded.

If say Kamala Harris were to win her home state of California by just a percent or two, I wouldn't necessarily think it's fair she should get ALL the delegates from that state, turning her marginal win from one big state into a commanding win. But maybe I'm looking at it wrong.

Like I said, this still confuses me. Would you prefer they do a winner take all approach instead? Can you explain real quick your thought process on that, I'm curious.

JaredS Wrote:

In short - if you are already signed up for Medicare and are happy with your plan then you don't have to do anything (assuming the plan is still available in 2020). If you want to shop your options and are not enrolled in Medicare Advantage already then you have until December 7, 2019 to make any changes. And if you are currently enrolled in Medicare Advantage and want to shop your options then your open enrollment period is from January 1 to March 31, 2020.

Good info.

Do you know when the next enrollment windows are, in case someone misses these?

JaredS Wrote:

What will be really interesting is when/if Warren or Sanders bows out, which is eventually inevitable. With proportional representation, they will likely split the progressive votes in each primary, which will undoubtedly help Biden. If one of them bows out then things could get really interesting.

Agreed. I don't think we have a great handle on who really can win this ticket until one of the top candidates bows out, like you said. Because where will that 15-20% support go? We rightly don't know. If it goes to Biden, Biden wins for sure. But that's no guarantee. If it goes to Warren or Sanders or even Buttigieg or Harris, the game changes completely and becomes much more of a pure toss up.

These poll numbers vary pretty widely from state to state. In Texas, O'Rourke is polling at 16.5%, only trailing Biden. But in most other polls (not his home state) he barely registers.

In California, Warren is currently leading with 24.5% over Biden's 23.5%. And it's Harris' home state so she is polling better than national avg but not as much as you would expect at 8%.

Of course in Massachusetts, Warren is leading at 28.5%.

So I would say national polling avg are just that - an aggregate, it doesn't mean that every primary state is thinking anywhere close to the same thing.

Getting all this info from Real Clear Politics. They show the national poll numbers, and then break it down via states.

If the top 4 candidates stay as is right now - Biden, Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg - I suspect that Buttigieg will do surprisingly well in Iowa. He might not win it over the other three, but I think it'll be a lot closer than most would think. Nationally Pete is polling about 7-8%, but in Iowa he is outpacing Sanders at the moment, getting 15.8% of the vote.

In Iowa right now its:

Warren - 22.5%
Biden - 18.8%
Buttigieg - 15.8%
Sanders - 15.3%

That's more or less a dead heat. I wonder what that will do for each campaign if those 4 all end up splitting Iowa or close to it. Perception of any one of the 4 could change quite a bit if they end up with a surprising win; could sway voters that didn't give Sanders or Mayor Pete a chance to take them more serious.

But that will all be deceiving as once the SC primary rolls around my guess is Biden comes out very well there. The polling in SC is much more dramatically different right now than the national poll, and quite a bit different from Iowa:

Biden - 35%
Warren - 15.5%
Sanders 12.8%
Harris - 7%
Steyer - 4.5%
Buttigieg - 4%

Pretty massive difference between the two states. Like I said, Iowa results could change this a lot down the stretch. But I don't think anyone can beat Biden in SC regardless, unless something really bad happens in his campaign between now and then.