US Politics: Passing Gas In Public is Abhorrent Behavior

[Inigima]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

The importance of GA-6 had more to do with reinvigorating the base of resistance just as it was starting to lag.  The loss is demoralizing at a time when any lack of steam is disastrous. 

Does this matter? Midterm elections are a year and a half away. If slowdown now is disastrous, what are the odds of not getting any of that between now and next November?

[all swedes are racist]

also, i think this (and ks04) do matter, but only inasmuch as how they determine the dem machine decides its strategy (lol) for 2018....but now as i type that out and read it back to myself.... i pretty much agree with ini after all.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

31 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

 But the DNC got to raise a lot of money from across the country and they and the media basically had a free roll here on the 'people reject Trump' narrative.  

Kind of a ridiculous narrative to begin with, doncha think? This is a congressional seat in Georgia we're talking about, not Trump's re-election bid or something.

[Dr. Pepper]

1 minute ago, Inigima said:

Does this matter? Midterm elections are a year and a half away. If slowdown now is disastrous, what are the odds of not getting any of that between now and next November?

Um, yeah it matters.  Not only are there several elections between now and midterms, a major win right now (as meaningless as it will ultimately be for numbers in congress) means money continues to be injected into the dem machine.  It means the base is still showing up in droves at town halls, marches are still manned, etc.  And yeah, strategy could be determined.  

It's been a pretty terrible 100 days.  No wins for Dems at all.  The shittiest of people occupy the white house and all cabinet positions.  I find the situation completely hopeless in the face of absolute scum who literally want the worst for their own children so long as they get to erase the black man's legacy.  Yeah, we sort of need a win even if Ossoff would have lost the seat at the next election anyway.

[Dr. Pepper]

One of my friends is running for California's 25th and she states that for several reasons right now is when candidates need a huge groundswell of support and need to raise a whole lot of money by early summer if they have any hope of continuing on.  So yeah, big money needs to be going into the Dem machine and a win tonight would have been a huge motivator.

[all swedes are racist]

and there it is. runoff between ossoff and handel

[Dr. Pepper]

In other words, Handel has a delayed win.  

[Altherion]

56 minutes ago, Dr. Pepper said:

It's been a pretty terrible 100 days.  No wins for Dems at all.

Say what? The Democrats have had a variety of victories with the most high profile ones being the judicial decisions against Trump and the legislative inaction on ACA despite the Republicans holding both houses of Congress.

[Sivin]

4 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Skim "milk" is not milk.  It is white colored water.

That's the first thing you've said since I internet-met you that wasn't batshit crazy!

4 hours ago, Inigima said:

I'm entirely convinced nothing about GA-6 matters. He won't take 50%+, so it will go to runoff, and he won't win. If he did win, it wouldn't matter, because he can change zero (0) results in a hostile Republican-controlled house and he will lose it in 2018. Everything is terrible and mostly I am annoyed with my idiot fellow liberals who think that losing by less than usual is the same as winning. Is your guy in Congress? No? Then shut the fuck up.

 

3 hours ago, r'hllor's reformed lobster said:

also, i think this (and ks04) do matter, but only inasmuch as how they determine the dem machine decides its strategy (lol) for 2018....but now as i type that out and read it back to myself.... i pretty much agree with ini after all.

Do not despair over moral victories, my friends. Any engagement that looks only to engender a swell of euphoria is not worth expending the precious commodity of attention that might be required to diagnose its failures.

There will be other days, other fights. It is to these that I pray you direct your attention, for an enemy such as we face across the isle does not recognize defeat in the traditional sense. Rather it must be surrounded and cut off from any diplomatic recourse so that effective progressive gains may be made defensible enough so as to survive the next round of ignorance-based hostilities that will promise to interrupt the delicate ascension of human achievement.

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Say what? The Democrats have had a variety of victories with the most high profile ones being the judicial decisions against Trump and the legislative inaction on ACA despite the Republicans holding both houses of Congress.

I am curious, what is your no-bullshit assessment of your potential hero of the proletariat? I am not setting a feeble trap or looking to score a cheap shot. You suggested support of Trump over Clinton based on the vague potential of him advancing the interest of the citizens he was pledged to protect, what are your early appraisals if I may ask?

[denstorebog]

5 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

Um, yeah it matters.  Not only are there several elections between now and midterms, a major win right now (as meaningless as it will ultimately be for numbers in congress) means money continues to be injected into the dem machine.  It means the base is still showing up in droves at town halls, marches are still manned, etc.  And yeah, strategy could be determined.  

It's been a pretty terrible 100 days.  No wins for Dems at all.  The shittiest of people occupy the white house and all cabinet positions.  I find the situation completely hopeless in the face of absolute scum who literally want the worst for their own children so long as they get to erase the black man's legacy.  Yeah, we sort of need a win even if Ossoff would have lost the seat at the next election anyway.

While I understand the psychology of your position, it's not rational.

Kansas and Georgia were freebies, not battlegrounds. They were long shots that Dems were supposed to lose. Yes, it sucks that the special elections can't be turned into morale boosters, but the performance of the Dem candidates so far is good enough that, if applied to all House races in 2018, Dems would likely take control of the House. In other words, these results are only bad if they're considered actual losses and cause a decrease in turnout due to demoralization in the later House races that actually can be won. The narrative of what happened in Georgia and Kansas is really important here.

As for Ossoff being sure to lose the runoff - why is that? He got 49% of the vote. Add the ~1% that went for other Dems, and you've got an almost exact split. Yes, republicans will now consolidate around a candidate and pour money into her. But at the same time, she's a candidate with baggage. As in quite extreme. While she'll gain new support, she will also certainly lose a percentage of the Republican voters who went for her primary competitors; in fact, a small share of those could even go to Ossoff. The polls have the runoff as a toss-up; these are the same polls that predicted Ossoff would land at 40-42% yesterday. If Ossoff hasn't run out of money and can prevent his supporters from getting hit by the same fatigue that you seem to feel, he's competitive.

(I don't have time to address the notion that the first 100 days have been a defeat for the Democrats. Maybe it's because I had a really bleak outlook on things two months ago, but suffice to say that I disagree completely. In short, Trump has put the divisions in his own party on full display, and they're likely to become even more prominent when the time comes to discuss taxes, wall and Healthcare 2.0 (or is it 3.0 by now?). He's extremely unpopular for a new president, his administration is in disarray, and he has made a lot of enemies at various levels of government. But this is a discussion for a lengthier post.)

 

[Fragile Bird]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Yet you have a mountain of skim milk that you can't sell, because your managed dairy system is WTO non-compliant and thus you are barred from international trade in skim milk powder. So there is potential significant export revenue that would help your dairy farmers that does not exist because you think you are keeping dairy farmers afloat.

You actually sell about as much food and beverage to the USA as the USA sells to you. In a two way trade that amounts to $59Bn annually (2016) there is only a $1Bn difference in favour of US exports to Canada. You could probably reverse that and put Canada ahead since the USA is a much larger market. For instance our food trade balance with the USA is $3.2Bn in exports and $408Mn in imports, and we have no economically protected industries and low tariffs. Though we do have several biosecurity barriers across a wide range of food products which fully comply with WTO rules. We're not totally comparable food producing economies, but a more open food trading market typically advantages the smaller country.

What are you smoking down there? The US vastly overproduces milk, and has done so for decades. When I was a teen, the US government subsidized dairy farmers by buying tons of butter and storing the stuff in caves. Canada imports 6.3% of it's cheese, 10% of it's butter, and 10% of it's milk powders, while the US imports 3% of it's cheese, 3% of it's butter and 8% of it's milk powder, much less than Canada. And our numbers are about to increase, under the trade agreement we just negotiated with the EU. You should be attacking the Americans, not Canada. The US overproduced milk last year by a staggering 75 million pounds, milk that was wasted or used for animal feed, the highest recorded amount since 2000.

 And by the way, what are the New Zealand numbers in those categories? I know you need to import lactose because the milk you produce doesn't meet international standards, in fact you are the world's biggest importer of lactose. But while I said I was joking about overproduction, it really isn't a joke. The US overproduces, Europe overproduces and New Zealand overproduces milk. 

[Mexal]

7 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

In other words, Handel has a delayed win.  

We'll see. I think Ossoff still has a chance as long as the millennials show up. 

[Fez]

7 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

In other words, Handel has a delayed win.  

Not necessarily. There were 4 other minor Democrats on the ballot, which means Democrats combined for 49.0% of the vote already. Republicans did combine for slightly more (there was an independent or two on the ballot as well); but that's so close as to be meaningless for predicating the June runoff. The big questions become, do the Republicans re-unify? (very likely, but a couple of them were running pretty explicitly anti-Trump; they only a few votes, but if they went to Ossoff he'd win) And are Trump voters more or less demoralized in June than they are now? (so many variables; impossible to say)

The result is disappointing, but it could be that GA-6 had already swung as far towards Democrats as it was going to. That 49.0% is only a bit better than Clinton's 45.4%; however, Obama lost that district both times by around 25 points. And longtime incumbent Price won 61.7%-38.3% in 2016 even as Clinton got close to Trump. I also saw that apparently GA-6 is the only one of the ten most educated districts in the country to be held by a Republican after the last election; and we know education is a predicator of being anti-Trump, regardless of other factors. 

So the positive spin would be that GA-6 was ahead of the class and had already swung sharply towards Democrats; but much like KS-4 it was so red to begin with that it just wasn't enough to win it. However, there are plenty of less red districts held by Republicans that aren't having special elections before the midterms; but if these trends held true then, they'd be the ones that start flipping to Democrats. Regardless, its just another data point; add it to the pile.

Hopefully, Democrats do actually win the Montana special election next month though. All these potential signs of positive trends are nice and all, but an actual win would do a lot to support recruiting and fundraising efforts.

[LongRider]

Trump's 'Hire American, Buy American' is being chewed up on twitter as he doesn't and neither does Ivanka:

The tag shows that this garment is for sale in a deep discount store that buys overstocked and other distressed merchandise.  $1 for Ivanka's crap is still too much for me!   LOL

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

I can't watch this anymore.  It's almost too unbearable.  If Ossoff loses (which he will because if it goes to a run off, he's definitely done), it says that decency is completely dead. There's almost no more hope that we'd be able to get rid of Trump and the Republican scum that support him.   

There's no need to be despondent. As others have said, it's a 49/51 split with the momentum being on the Dems' side.Factor in that Trump has basically only had two "victories" in three months and it's easy to see how the district can be won in a few months.

[Fez]

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's no need to be despondent. As others have said, it's a 49/51 split with the momentum being on the Dems' side.Factor in that Trump has basically only had two "victories" in three months and it's easy to see how the district can be won in a few months.

Also worth noting.

Quote

Overall, Ossoff ran about 1.5 points ahead of Hillary Clinton.  If Democrats ran, on average, 1.5 points ahead of Clinton, they’d pick up 19 House seats, and be within sniffing distance of the majority.

And that's not counting the fact this district was already swinging Democratic; which may have put a ceiling on growth here.

So yeah, I'm disappointed in the result. But its not a bad result.

[Maithanet]

House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz will not seek reelection.

Apparently he got tired of angry town halls where people yell at him for not doing his job? 

[IheartIheartTesla]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz will not seek reelection.

Apparently he got tired of angry town halls where people yell at him for not doing his job? 

There was an interview he had in the Atlantic where he said he didnt want to become an 'Orrin Hatch'; in other words, he didnt plan on sticking around Congress too long. He has his eyes on a governer's bid.

I dont believe this decision had much to do with the town halls, although they may have played a part.

[denstorebog]

This diagram is pretty good: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-georgia-6-special-election/ (under #1). It shows how the currently Republican-held seats are distributed betweeb R-leaning and D-leaning districts, and where Georgia is placed.

Quote

According to this measure, 47 Republican-held House seats are more Democratic-leaning than Georgia 6 is. Democrats need to pick up only 24 seats to win back the House, so even though this is the type of seat that Democrats probably want to be competitive in, taking Georgia 6 is not a necessity for taking back the House.

Given that Georgia was/is as close to a photo finish as you can get, I'd say that bodes well for all the districts in the same bracket, not to mention the more Dem-friendly ones. But again, this is provided that Dems don't grow too despondent too early, and continue to come together at the same level they did in Georgia.

[Maithanet]

2 minutes ago, denstorebog said:

This diagram is pretty good: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-georgia-6-special-election/ (under #1). It shows how the Republican-held seats are placed in terms of how districts lean towards party, and where Georgia is placed.

Given that Georgia was/is as close to a photo finish as you can get, I'd say that bodes well for all the districts in the same bracket, not to mention the more Dem-friendly ones. But again, this is provided that Dems don't grow too despondent too early, and continue to come together at the same level they did in Georgia.

But there's another issue to remember as well, which is incumbency.  Displacing an incumbent is always harder than winning an open seat, on name recognition if nothing else.  Winning an open seat in Georgia that is R+9.5 is going to be easier than defeating an incumbent that's been there since 2010, even if that district is only R+8.

So while there are 48 seats that have less of a Republican lean than GA-6, there aren't nearly that many that are as good an opportunity to make a pickup.  An open GA-6 is the kind of seat that Democrats need to win if they want to take the House.